last minute makes .....

..... next week is my "open house" week so am frantically trying to make sure I've got enough things to sell. I've been avidly reading this thread at Splitcoaststampers, it's a few years old but there are some great ideas on there!

I made bookmarks from giant paperclips:

And some photo holders from giant bulldog clips:
I also made these little beauties - zippers! When Jack was at primary school he was always (and I do mean always!) losing his fleece, I put an alligator charm onto the zipper to help him identify it and so the "zipper" was born!!

It was a great post week too, I got a parcel from Artymiss with another load of Papermania cards, a DCWV Valentine card stack and hundreds of foam pads. Artymiss is just the best website ever (but I really shouldn't visit there too often, it's not good for my bank balance!!)

a sneaky peak ....

.... at my craft room

I found a blog this week that has the most wonderful picture of, well, the most wonderful craft rooms and I don't mind saying that each and every one of them made me rather jealous! Now, I know I am lucky to have a craft room .... but we've only been in the house a couple of years and getting my room "just so" hasn't been high on the list of priorities. Anyway, I have spent hours and hours tidying and reorganising and thought I'd post a picture of two:This is some of my ribbon storage, it was originally a towel rack that was in my en-suite but I decided that it would have a happier time holding my yummy ribbons! I hope you can see what a beautiful pink colour that wall is!! It's the only pink wall in the house .... but that's what you get for having boys I suppose.This is where I sit to work, the desk goes under the window which looks out onto the back garden. If you look carefully at the top of the photo you will see my beautiful sequinned slippers (never worn!) and the first pair of jelly shoes that each of my boys had ..... also at the top of those cube shelves is a wedding photo of me and Devin.

That rail thing on the right all of my tools that I use everyday are in the white pots (from Ikea of course) ..... there is a lot of Ikea stuff in here :-) The boxes on the desk hold mostly tags, there are also tags hanging on the smaller rail .... I do have a "thing" for tags!

Most of my papers are in these drawers, divided into colours. I keep my smaller sheets in these, and any paper that has been cut up .... smaller pieces that I can use for punchies are put in zip lock bags. That plastic box on the top has my current "favourite" sets of papers, the ones that I need to be able to get my hands on quickly! My 12x12 papers are awaiting a special storage area, at the moment they are in pizza boxes. These drawers are right next to my desk - so on top of them are the two things I use the most, my bind-it-all and my sizzix. Even though I have a craft robo, the sizzix is still my favourite cutting machine!

This is how I organise my embelishments .... there are two rows of these plastic boxes. The back row contains more of the bigger boxes, this front row is mostly smaller ones. They are sorted by "theme" - each big box has stickers, rub downs and larger embelishments .... each smaller box has brads or buttons or charms etc. On the right of these boxes are my four boxes of flowers.

So that's a quick tour of some of my stuff .... I'm hoping for some custom built shelving and a laminate floor in the not too distant future!

I thought I'd finish with a photo of my stall from one of the recent craft fairs .... I need to get some proper stands for some of my items ... but on the whole I was very pleased with how things looked.

today I am .....

..... tagtastic! Not that such a word exists, but if it did then that's what I would be! I've spent a very, very happy morning making tags. I love using the original big red Super Scallop sizzix tag as it give lots of room to decorate.

Isn't this bear cute? My friend The Paper Fairy sent me some lovely bears to play with .... I love swapping things with her!! Here are some more tags I made using these cute bears:

Whilst I was rifling through my sizzix dies, I made some snowmen and some bitty people and then used them on some tags too:

Earlier this week, when I was walking to work, I had an idea for a "message in a bottle" using some bottles that used to contain Prima flowers. I was so excited, that it was all I could do not to turn round and walk back home to start making them. Anyway, they had to wait until I finished work but by the end of the night they were finished! I made a long, slim album held together with a ball chain loop and put lots of embelishments, ribbons and fibres in - and the message in a bottle is all ready to come out and be decorated!! I think they are fab (far better than they look in my pictures!) and am hoping they will sell!

and even busier .....

.... my whole world has turned into making things for craft fairs, pamper parties and home sales ..... I love it!! This weekend, the boys were out pretty much the whole time, playing rugby or working and so I had the house pretty much all to myself. I didn't leave the house at all but, to check I wasn't going stir crazy, my friend Janet came round on Sunday afternoon. I roped her into helping me get my prices sorted, I am totally useless when it comes to deciding how much I should be selling for.

I did get 40 more Christmas cards made along with a load of zig-zag tag books. I've never made these before and I was very impressed by how quick they are to make. Here are some of the ones that I made:I really like the holiday themed one (the blue and orange one right in the middle) but I think my favourite is the pink girly one on the left.

I love this picture - it almost looks like it was a sunny day .... the truth is it was raining really heavily. Anyway, this is the inside of the girly zig-zag book.

My first sale is 12th November at a local bar, they are having a "ladies evening" and I'm having a stall along with my dear friend Vanessa. Vanessa is a very talented dressmaker specialising in bespoke wedding dresses - have a look at some of her creations here - but she also makes fabulous handbags and tooth fairy cushions amongst a whole host of other wonderful things.

I'm still hoping to make a lot more before Monday, including some more zig-zag books, perhaps another mini bag book or two and some earrings ..... if I'm lucky I may get to sleep somewhere along the way!

busy, busy, busy ....

.... this week I've been very busy indeed. Early in the week I got a fab parcel full of things I'd bought from the Artymiss website. Some lovely Blossoms and Butterflies card and a box of chipboard shapes that I got as a "buy one get one free". I am absolutely in love with this range of card - some of it is glittered and some is foiled and all of it is bright and colourful!! This is the cover of the paper bag album that I made with some of it:

I also got a box of Papermania pre-printed cards to decorate and I spent a lovely afternoon with Laura, my God Daughter, doing just that. It was great to spend some time catching up with her but, I have to say, that I didn't realise anybody could talk that much - it took a day or so for my ears to recover! Anyway, we made 5 of each card and here they are:

I love this snowball picture - it's part of a clipart set from the pcCrafter website (I am a big fan of their downloads). I printed this out onto vellum and Laura used my sizzix to cut photo corners to hold it in place.

Another graphic from pcCrafter - I used my craftrobo to cut this out and Laura glued the buttons on.

Yet more graphics from pcCrafter!! I think this is my favourite out of all the cards that we made. We printed these and I cut them out, Laura used a corner rounder on them and we used foam pads to raise them slightly from the card.

This was the easiest card to make - Laura used my punchies to cut out the circles and the snowflakes. Then we glued them on, using foam pads to raise the snowflakes up a little bit.

All in all, a very productive afternoon!! Laura also made some cards to give to her friends. She told me it was the best afternoon she'd ever had .... I'm looking forward to doing it again, but not for a little while!!