Thursday, November 10, 2011

Crackle Snowflake

Hi all,

Before I show you my card today, I want to thank everyone for your sweet comments on my last post. I had a much better day today (I knew I would.)

The best part of today, was playing with some new goodies! I had such fun! Here's the card I created.

Crackle Snowflake by bdengler4 (Barb)

The Hero Arts, Flower Dot Pattern was stamped with Silver ink. The smaller, white embossed snowflakes are from the Hero Arts, Decorate Your Holidays, clear set.

I finally bought a large snowflake punch and love it! I punched out two of them and covered each with Clear Rock Candy, Distress Crackle Paint. The effect is so cool! Here's a close-up so you can see what I mean.



Thanks for coming by! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! :)

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Tough day

Hi everyone.

Boy, oh boy, some days sure are tough. I won't bore you with the details, I'm just glad it's almost over. It was one of those days when I needed to remind myself what I learned from my sweet mom - that life somehow always works out, and to stay positive. Gosh, I miss her. *Sigh* I know tomorrow will be a better day.

Here's a little saying that I keep on my craft desk, so I can read it on days like this. I may have shared it before, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded. It says, "The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, the optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty." Words to live by. . . .

I do have a card to share with you. I made it yesterday after seeing Anette's beautiful card here. Her folded trees are so cool, and I really wanted to try it. I used a half scalloped circle for mine.

I colored the different sections with Copics and then stamped and white embossed the Hero Arts Magical Background stamp on the lighter green portions. Then I stamped it again, with a dark green ink, onto the darker green portions. It took me a couple of times to get the idea of folding it correctly, but I really like the way it turned out! It's hard to tell, but I curled up the ends of the scallops a bit for some dimension. The kraft base is stamped with the Hero Arts background stamp called, Stunning snowflakes.

I'm heading to check out some of your blogs - always cheers me up and makes me feel better and it's one of the many reasons I love this hobby. Thank you so much for visiting - it really is so appreciated!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Much Better!

Hey there!

I have finally finished getting my craft space all cleaned and organized - Yay! Before I show you some photos, I really need to thank my good friend, Nancy. I saw her post before the weekend, and that's what gave me the push I needed to get going. And I KNOW that was one of the reasons I had lost my mojo. Just can't work with stamps, paper, markers, and junk everywhere! Thank you, Nanc! :)


So, I've had these boxes, sitting empty, for a long time. I was going to use them, but just hadn't gotten around to it. I still need to make better dividers, but for now it works.


There is a top shelf that you can't see, where I put my printer. All my clear stamps are in two of the boxes on the middle shelf, and the one on the right holds my cling stamps. The box over to the right on the bottom shelf holds all my envelopes, and there is a larger box underneath that where I put all my 6x6 paper pads. My larger papers are in the dividers on the left.


Here is the other side of this shelving unit.

I love those little, white, wood crates. In the floral department where I work, I order small stuffed animals and they arrive in these cute little crates.


This one holds my alcohol inks, liquid pearls, glossy accents and stickles.



And these two hold all my small Versa Color inks (bottom one) and in the top one are my paints, dimensional pearls, embossing powders and perfect pearls.




Here is another tall shelving unit.

It used to hold all my scrapbooking supplies. I boxed them all up (hoping to use them again one day) and moved all my woodblock stamps here. It's not the best solution, but I do know which stamps are what size and shape, and can quickly look through and find what I need.



I have another very large shelving unit but I won't bore with with photos of that. It holds all my ribbon, cuttlebug, embossing folders and lots of jars with embellies in them. It was so nice to get that all rearranged too. It has six shelves, and now, way at the top, I display cards I've gotten from many of you. Another shelf holds card making magazines and books.


I will show you two of the drawers in my desk. This first one holds all my distress inks and ink blending tools. I save the plastic packaging that the foam pads come in. They make the perfect little box for dividing the used foam pads by color.




This drawer holds all my other ink pads, VersaMark pads, a few other tools and small spools of twine.


Okay, I know this is getting way too long and you're probably really bored by now, so just one more thing. My favorite part of this whole clean-up, is that my desk is much less cluttered now, so I was able to move my Copics up to the corner. So much easier than going over to the other side of the room, sitting on the floor and looking for the right color - DUH!


I'm really excited to wake up in the morning and get creating! I'm on vacation for eight more days - yippee! Thanks for sticking with me through this long post. I hope everyone has a great week! :)