Vintage finds!

Managed to sneak out to some yard sales 2 weekends ago.  I really wanted to look for an old suitcase to an underbed storage thingie I saw in a Better Homes and Gardens Storage magazine I picked up.  Since I only had 1 kid with me I thought I could quickly stop and check out a yard sale or two.  I made it to 2 and hit jackpot at both!!  The first one was right across the street from me!

Found this cool bar set thingie at my almost neighbours house. She sold me 3 things for $1, so I guess that means I paid $0.33ish for this little gem.  She didn’t even know what was inside.  When I shook it and asked, ‘what’s in there?’  she said ‘I don’t know it was my Dad’s’.  It even has the key!

Then I decided to just follow signs if they happened to be along my way to my final destination and I happened upon this lovely find.

I was so nervous asking how much it was, in my head I was praying they didn’t notice how great it was and name some crazy price. She said “$2?” I couldn’t believe it! So I just acted kind of cool and said “hmmm . . . . ok I guess”. hehe! As I was walking away I heard her say it was her great grandfathers!! Who sells something like that!? It’s in wonderful condition. I can’t see any year or anything that tells me what year it’s from. There is some writing on the front that says “Made in Czechoslovakia” but that’s it.

Here’s a shot of the project I was hoping to find a suitcase for.  It’s in the summer 2010 Storage magazine by Better Homes and Gardens.  I can’t bear to cut the top off to use it for the underbed storage, I’ll have to keep looking for one suitable for that project.

The next weekend I wandered around some sales with some friends and found these awesome dishes! They’re in fantastic condition.

I also grabbed these cute little mugs!  It’s a set of 4 and they were all individually wrapped in plastic and then they were sitting in a little cardboard tray and wrapped in plastic again.  They are flawless, such a cute and fun find.

I can’t wait to go out again before the summer is over!

Annnnd the winner is!

Thank you everyone for leaving a comment and of course to Julie for being so wonderful and agreeing to donate an item to some crazy stranger who just emailed and asked.

Onto the winning! I was going to have someone in my house help me with this but it appears I’m the only one still awake! Then I was going send a chat message to a friend online demanding a number between 1-13 (Corinne commented twice, one was Julie and 1 comment was me) but I’m not getting an answer. Annnnd I’m too lazy to go get the camera and do an artsy names-written-on-paper-in-a-bowl kinda thing. So I googled the thing everyone else seems to use on their blog and went with that!

Therefore the winner is #, and that makes it . . . (here’s me flipping to the other tab to count comments!) . . . HEATHER!!!! Congrats! Now you’re going to have to decide on your favourite after all. I’ll send you details.

This was so much fun, I think I’m going to have to do more of these. Beware local to me indie crafters!

Friday Find – Craft Hope and Craft Hope the book!

So Craft Hope has been up to good for a while now. Being a teacher I love project 7 with it’s educational focus. Currently one of their projects, Project 8 is helping tidy things up with the gulf coast oil spill, another noble endeavor. Here’s some of the little blurb about the project,

“Here is what we are going to do… They need hand towels and wash rags to clean all of the nooks and crannies of the dolphins and sea turtles. They only need small hand towels and wash rags, no large towels please.

If you can sew, knit, or crochet this project is for you. We are asking that you create sets of hand towels and/or wash rags to send. Preferably in sets of 10 or 20. These do need to be handmade since we are ‘Craft Hope.’ If you are crocheting or knitting, please send whatever you can. You don’t have to send a set unless it is something you are up for.”

If you want to help out with that one, go here for the shipping address. Deadline is July 3rd.

AND now there’s a book on pre-order all about the wonderful good Craft Hope has been doing, and some of the crafts in case you’re feeling crafty yourself!

Book blurb: Some of the top designers offer 32-projects that can be made and donated to specific charities. You’ll also find helpful tips on how to give locally and globally, how to give thoughtfully and appropriately, and how to empower those you are helping.

Here’s the Flickr pool if you want to see what they’ve been up to in visual form.

Friday Find – Dress a day with the wonderful Marissa

So a fan/friend Heather gave me a bag of fabric the other day, people are starting to do that, it’s great!  So she dropped it off and I started to sort through the pile.

There were some fun finds inside, including this fabric that made me and my bff had a big chuckle over this funky striped one.  Until Heather informed us she made shorts out of it back in the day!

So we kept sifting through the pieces of fabric and I was sorting into ‘keep’ and ‘donate’ piles, and then I reached in and pulled this little beauty out!  It’s so horrible!  It’s a silky shimmery thing and it was pretty hideous.  We couldn’t really figured out how the front would hang, I’m not sure it’s 100% complete, there seem to be some unfinished edges.

After getting over the initial shock of how remarkably icky it was I thought of New Dress a Day, which I’ve recently subscribed to.  Marissa has decided for 365 days she will create a new item of clothing from a thrifted item, all for the grand price tag of $365.   She does some really amazing things.  Some of her ‘finds’ I would just walk by as fast as possible.  Here’s one of her recent creations.

Starting with that she creates these 2 awesome pieces!

So I sent her an email and offered her the challenge of modifying the hideous dress I found in a gift bag of fabric.  She accepted and yesterday I was off to the post office and mailed her a big envelope full of ugly dressness!  Have fun Marissa.

Friday Find – mmmmmm cupcakes!

My bestest friend ever is getting married in a month (minus a day) and they’re having cupcakes instead of cake!! How cool is that?

So, even though it was really, really tough we let her bring over 4 different cupcakes for us to sample and give our opinions on which ones deserved the privilege of being eaten at her wedding.  They’re from a cute little shop in Toronto called The Cupcake Shoppe. Each cupcake has it’s own fun little name and they taste absolutely incredible! Their site says they offers a total of 17 nut-free flavours, with nine available in-store everyday. They have some awesome sounding flavours, I think I NEED to go to taste the Creamsicle one and the After Ate, I’m a sucker for minty things.

They also asked us to take some artsy photos of their rings stuck in the cupcakes just for fun. I handed that job over to my hubby since he knows the camera better than I do. They turned out great and I think they’d make great thank you cards!

The rocking factor of my bff.

Oh it’s high let me tell you! She ordered some fabric from poppyseed fabrics on etsy and said a surprise was coming for me too. It finally arrived and today for our Tuesday night together she brought it out. It’s some beautiful Michael Miller prints. She ordered enough to make the Keyka Lou bag and some fat quarters.

These ones are for me *little happy dance*  Trees AND giraffes, I love it.

Now to find something I can make with them.

What I’m reading.

I just started reading this book the other day, Little Bee by Chris Cleave. I’m only about 100 pages in (after 3 sittings I think) and I love it so far. I’m a sucker for neat book covers, I think that’s what always makes me stop and pick up a book. That’s how I picked this one up, same with my all time favourite The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I love the silhouette and the flowing cursive writing. There’s no blurb on the back, it’s covered with reviews and praise. On the inside sleeve it says this:

“Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell you friends about it. When you do., please don’t tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds.”

SOLD!

Not at the end yet, and apparently I can’t tell you what’s so good about it when I get there anyway, but I will share part of what’s making me love it. The main character is a refugee from Nigeria and she’s in England, which is all new and shiny to her. She has these little moments of ‘what would they think back home in my village?!’ when she sees something new to her. The last one, that made me laugh out loud was this part when she comes to the busy and crowded highway:
“If I was telling this story to the girls from back home they would be saying, Okay, it was the morning, so they people were travelling to work in their fields. But why do the people who were driving from right to left not exchange their fields with the people who are driving from left to right? That way everyone could work in the fields near to their homes. And then I would just shrug because there are no answers that would not lead to more foolish questions, like What is an office and what crops can you grow in it?”

So far the book is full of awesome observations like this. I like it, they’re funny and some of them I’ve thought of before myself.

I also love books that are written in a different way, I guess I lucked out with The Time Traveller’s Wife. Drawn in by the cover, and neat title it just happens to be written in a remarkable way. I loved this book. If you did too NEVER see the film. NEVER.

Another great book I’ve read recently is The Book Thief. Absolutely fabulous! I think it was the title that got me for this one. Fantastic story and beautifully written.

Well, off to read I guess. That’s what I’m in the mood to do, for some strange reason.

Fun mail for kids!

Wesley got some mail today an envelope full of stickers from his friend William!  There was homework assigned as well.  We have to mail stickers back to William and to another boy, THEN we get to pick 6 friends and send some stickers. They’ll do the same thing and send stickers back to us and 7 other children. Wesley was super excited about the stickers he got today, I can’t wait to see how he reacts as mail starts pouring in for him!

Wesley has 2 friends he wants to send stickers to and I thought it might be fun to find some new friends. So if you have a little one in your life who would appreciate some free stickers in the mail, and like putting together some envelopes for other children let me know you’d like to play! I’ll take the first 4 replies. Leave your email, or send me one with the name and address and we’ll send them out over the weekend.  Anyone can play no worries about postage, as long as you don’t mind mailing back to Canada.

Tell Your Story class! My book and some useful sites.

Started my art journal for the Tell Your Story class.  I ordered some neat ephemera online and went to an antique store and found some old readers and kids books to tear apart.  Here’s my first two pages.

Can’t wait to fill more pages! And shop for more fun paper supplies . . . . just what I need! Another crafty addiction.
On this page I just used some crafts paints (the heart was just a smear of pink left on the brush but it started to look like a heart so I went with it), a sharpie, a colour swatch from the Home Depot flyer,  some scrapbook word stickers and a free printout of school book labels from Martha Stewart.

Despite all my arty and crafty supplies I didn’t have graph paper! Google to the rescue, just went here and you can choose the grid size you want and print it out. I ordered some really fun stuff from thryftypyg, which I will share in it’s own little special post. The packaging and printing on the envelope was sooo beautiful I decided to use it as my pocket.

I’ve been saving folders and folders of crafting ideas, PDF’s, tutorials, images . . . you name it!  Sadly I didn’t keep track in the beginning of where things came from and I’m kicking my self for that now.  But I do have some fun things to share, with proper credit and links!

LollyChops has some awesome free printables that I think would be great for the class, or just your craft projects.

Just Something I Made has neat labels and such. If you look under her ‘free art’ tab.

Get some free airmail stationary, and other fun freebies, from Linda at Tortagialla.

Creativity Prompt has some super neat journaling tags, just in case, like me, you happen to be addicted to them too. I love the graph paper ones.

And of course, the place I run into most of my awesome printables is One Pretty Thing. That’s also the place I open the most tabs and lose most of my time when at the computer. Thanks Rachel!

Hope these few links can help you with your art journals!

Organizing and a change of pace.

I had this idea ages ago for putting pictues on the bins for the toys in our house, but Wesley pulled off most of the pictures and mangled them.  He was younger then.  So today I took some pictures of the craft supplies in our kitchen, that are neatly stored in our handy IKEA shelving thingie (thanks bff!) and printed them out in wallet size.  Then I laminated them with some little quick and easy card sized laminating sleeves from the dollar store.  I switch them to the bins with little velcro dots, also from the dollar store.  Then if toys change or we switch things up a bit it’s easy to fix.

I also re-labelled the toy bin in the living room and then we had a HUGE toy cleanup.  Things were a bit of a mess after the weekend.  All the toys were tidied in about 15 minutes, which with a 3 year old and 1 year old is pretty good!

I managed to finish 5 taggie blankies today.  They were already in various states of completion so it wasn’t too hard.  I’ve been going a bit bug eyed creating the same things over and over in preparation for the craft show this weekend so I opted for a change of pace.  I pieced together a rag quilt I’ve been wanting to try.  I’ve never made one so here’s hoping all goes well!