Ribbons and bits, and a few Swap Sneaks

Well, summer does seem to be coming to a close, not that Michigan had much warm weather. I don't think we had our air conditioning on for a total of 10 days. Still, the anticipation of new school clothes, changing leaves, and steaming bowls of soup has me ready for autumn.

I'll be debuting some new ribbons, ala grungy style, soon. Here are two of the completed colorways: Blackberry Jam and Bonfire.

Also trying to keep on top of my Silver Bella Swaps (so no peeking for those of you in the Vintage Winter Banner or Paper Dolls Swaps)

Winter Banner base is some lovely flocked wallpaper, topped with all sorts of my favorite bits, crepe, poms, glitter, flowers, more glitter....

More crepe used for the paper doll swap, and a fun new use for cupcake liners :)

So much done, yet still so far behind!

Spring Blooms

I was very fortunate indeed to discover the Garlands and Banners class over at Get It Scrapped. I picked up a few new techniques and supply hints, plus loads of inspiration from class teacher Trish Turay. Our homework included making crepe medallions (I've got those down-pat!) and creating a spring banner. The base is Maya Road chip banner triangles, painted with a hand-tinted paint, collaged with Autumn Leaves "Fresh cut" papers, and layered with glitter (nope, never gonna stop loving that!), lace and other trims, ribbons, pearl stickers, millinery leaves, primas, and lots of crepe! all tied up with beautiful seam binding ribbons and a bit of pink tulle.

My banner will hang in a window (not the best for catching photos) so I shot the photos on the backside of a quilt.

Almost as pretty as the little green buds starting to waken outside the window! Enjoy the pretty fresh spring air!

Fini!

I had a huge list of small projects that I really wanted to finish. Got to a number of them last week while waiting for my next big etsy inspiration. First off is my hot cocoa banner, using the pieces I shared with you a few months ago, plus other letters made by dear friends of mine.

Hot!
Cocoa! My husband thinks the garland looks like marshmallows. Guess that works out perfectly! (Although I bought it cause I thought it looked like snow!)

Then I played with some vintage paper and glitter to come up with these pretty flowers. Look for tutorials soon!

Lastly, I had purchased a small planner to carry around, but alas, having waited til mid January I was left with not many pretty options. So being already covered in glue, I painted the paper insert (it originally had coffee mugs!) and glued and sewed on some music paper, digital images, blue swiss dot and pink crepe paper to make this one of a kind piece.

Course the paint made the paper a little stiff and it won't lay flat yet. (By the way, the small words say "artsy queen".

I have a few more projects on my list, but onto that tutorial!

Crepe Love

Proving that crepe has a place anywhere.

From one Holiday to the Next

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We were snowed in most of the week here at the North Pole, I mean, Michigan. We were not plowed out until Christmas Eve at 9PM! The kiddos got loads of toys and sweets. Santa must've thought me good this year- I got Starbucks and Michaels giftcards and a whole box of Martha Stewart glitter in every color! He also left a Wii here, which Dearest is hooking up as I type. We've also watched many of our favorite Christmas movies, and a new one highly recommended by sweetie Candice Carpenter, Bing Crosby's White Christmas. I had never seen it before, but it's now my favorite Christmas movie (move over Elf!).
I've been working on some new Valentine's goodies for the shoppe. I must give a standing ovation to Lisa's Altered Art. Her collage sheets are lovely and may show up in a few art treats later on. Meanwhile I've been busy keeping my fingertips pink and red with dye inks. Here's a beauty from one of my kits at etsy. I'm still working on techniques that will minimize the tearing in separating layers of wet crepe streamer. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Also have many ribbons soon to be added to the sale block. I've placed a few on vintage flashcards or these lovely mini-cards from Jenni Bowlin. They are hand-dyed, as well, with lovely subtle shadings. Scrumptious!

Here's the full Spun Sugar set, with dyed ribbon and matching crepe. This crepe streamer was originally ivory, although that side is down in the picture so you only see the dipped pink end. I have several larger kits I'm putting the finishing touches on. Hopefully will be up soon!

Sugar Shoppe

I'm hoping to add more basic paper elements to the shoppe soon. Items that can be used for your own crafting. I've started with one set of SugarCubes (basic crepe rosettes). This particular set is Marzipan. You can add collage images, glitter, sparkle, buttons, ribbon, and all little fun sorts of items to them, then they can be added to collages, scrapbooks, mixed media, altered journals, banners....

You may have noticed some of the new sections I've added to my shoppe (waiting to be filled). My thoughts on SpunSugar include all sorts of trims, like the vintage red and white ribbon there now, and also I'm experimenting with dyeing both seam bindings and crepe streamers.

Raw Sugar will be small kits most likely with a few SugarCubes, some seam binding, and some Swarovski crystals all in coordinating themes.

Sugar Rush is to be larger kits including those above, plus some vintage images, fancy papers. I have so many ideas floating around my head, but most of them will have to take place after the holidays.

Sugar Follies

I am almost ready to add some items to my etsy shop. The first batch will include these element sets, which I call Sugar Follies. They will be a grouping of coordinating items that can be included in scrapbooks, altered objects, in home decor, or just plain collecting (something of which I seem to do frequently). These three sets each have a crepe rosette/flower, decorated prima-style flowers -mostly mounted on a manila shipping tag, ribbon or other decorative trim, and mini vintage-style flashcards.
Here is Nutcracker
And Jack Frost

And finally, Snow berries

Melting Marshmallows

I am participating two new banner swaps (Hot Cocoa and Candy Cane). I am creating the "H" and a blank for the Hot Cocoa set. (We use blanks to start, finish, and separate words on a banner). I chose to create a crepe rosette dusted lightly with mica flakes. Center round is old German print, then a Cricut Storybook H and snowflake brad. Background is a candy stripe red ribbon and swirl, again from Cricut Storybook.

The blank uses Cricut Joys of the Seasons Ice Skate, with silver blades! Chalked to age, assorted scrapbook papers, prima, doodlebug velvet brad, and some craft pom-pom trim. I hope my swap partners are pleased.

You're my Cuppy-cake (Journal)

I started keeping notes in a plain old composition book on ideas for arts-and-crafty goodness. Things like themes, great color combos, favourite supplies, and a list of my Doodlebug embellishments (they are so yummy and come in so many colors I had a hard time remembering which I had of what!). But the cover was so dull. So I dressed it up in my favourite paper line (Basic Grey) and added my favourite colors (red and pink) and favourite sweet (cupcakes) and loads of my favourite embellishments (Doodlebug, Jenni Bowlin -love crepe paper!, evalicious newsprint buttons, wish tickets, seam binding, ribbons of all varieties)
A small pocket inside the front cover
Aside from the cover stating to "Think Happy Thoughts" a perfectly "Happy" flashcard adorns the back.
And absolutely everything in here is full of inspiration!

Playing with glue

Been busy playing with crepe and glue again. I've been so inspired by all the flowers and rosettes I've seen on blogs and etsy I tried a few of my own. The little orange posies on the vintage book pages are very close in design to the pretties made by Eve
The crepe flowers are a combination of types I've seen from many artists and the ribbon flowers are my own design. And they use a LOT of glue dots. I vow from now on to never run out of glue dots, Zip-dry, and crepe paper.

Sprinkles Cover All Manner of Faults

There is a reason I buy my children's birthday cakes. I knew there was. I've been so inspired by the beautiful cupcake images and tasty treats posted by other bloggers and etsy sellers. So I broke down and bought a cupcake book (Crazy About Cupcakes). And went about baking the golden cupcake recipe for my son's third birthday. He picked out the Cars cupcake wrappers himself. Note to future cupcake bakers- the wrappers either stick permanently to the cupcakes or they wouldn't stay in shape and fell off the sides after baking. The recipe said would make 18 to 24 cupcakes. My 27 cupcakes were overflowing the pan and stuck to the top of it. Even with the cup only 2/3s full.
I thought for sure that the chocolate buttercream frosting I made the next day would hide the crumbly (yet very moist) cupcakes. Um, no, not really, they just spread the crumbs further.
But somehow the sprinkles covered up all the cupcake injustices of the world and they were still devoured at the party.
At least they tasted good. I would just use regular paper liners and maybe fill the cup only half-way next time.

Thought I'd post another little pretty from my studio. Fun inspiration for me while I work. Big puffy handmade millinery and bag of glass glitter stars by Marilyn . Hot pink sugar bloom and little beige silk posie by Tara . Book page rosette and crepe rosette by me. Pink shoe was a favourite etsy purchase as well.

Count Down to Vacation

Tomorrow we will be on our way to North Carolina! My whole family plus one father-in-law packed into our van, along with our clothes, snacks, and a boatload of scrapbooking goodness. I promised I'd share pictures of the finished packaging for my goodie bag items for the retreat participants. (I'll have to get a picture of my decorated goodie bags, as our hostess Amanda insisted we have one. I was down to last minute, so I have a lovely decoupaged Target redbag.)
Here are the finished sets. I wish I'd had a bunch of glassine envelopes available instead of the sandwich baggies, but I made do. Each is made in the favorite colors of the recipient.

This one here is for our hostess Amanda
More lovelies. I cut the ice creams from Basic Grey's cupcake papers
This one is for Theresa, who invited me into the group. She likes purple, can you tell?
I know it's Kendra's on the left, but can't remember who the other is for. Thank goodness they all have names on the back!