Craft Fair Season 2012: Show 1 (Nov 10)

Well the first Craft Fair of the season has come and gone, and let me just say, after paying for the table, everything I sold and everything I bought, I made a profit of $5 lol  It's not my fault!  I'm a SUCKER for sweets and handmade goodness!  But lesson learned:  I will NOT buy anything at the next one.  Don't laugh!

Moving on...

Here's a shot of our display:

My partner in crime!  My sister Leigh-Anne & I, shenanigans ensued as always lol:

  

And as luck would have it, sitting next to me was THIS sexy bitch!   You might recognize her as Brigitte from Bricolage de Brigitte.

I bought this card from her, I fell in love with it!!  I'm going to frame it though, I'm not giving it away to someone lol  But seriously, go check out her blog, she's pretty amazing!

Here are some shots of the items I was selling.  I have to apologize for the lack of staging for these pics.  I shot them last minute as I was packing up to leave, so they were just kind of thrown on my desk and snapped... very unprofessional, I know lol

First up:  These are card & coaster sets I made at Carousel Rubber Stamps.  I haven't done anything with them yet, but I love them all.  I made the decision that I would try to sell them at the craft fairs and if they didn't sell then they are destined to have a spot in my house lol

Floral Sets

 

House Mouse Christmas Sets

Christmas Flower Sets

Next up are my tag sets.  I LOVE these!  They were fiddly to make, but I LOVE the end result!

Snowman Soup! 

Wishlist Kits!

Pencil & Candy Sets!

Charms!  I made some of these last year, and on a whim I decided to try to sell them, and they sold FAST.  I decided to make some more this year :)

I also had out some leftover tags from last year, and I had 2 boxes of my 'old stock' cards that I'd like to sell off so I can start fresh in the New Year. 

All in all I had a FANTASTIC time!  There was a pancake breakfast, lots of great things for sale and, of course, amazing conversation!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll all be sitting next to each other again next year.  Next sale is this coming Saturday, so I'll try to remember to take pictures there too.  Have a great week, peeps!!

Tutorial: Rainbow Glitter Zebra Print iPhone Case

I have had more compliments on my current iPhone case, and people are always asking where I got it, so I figured I'd do a tutorial to show you guys how to make your own!  You can thank me later ;)

The case itself is a clear soft rubber case I got on the cheap from ebay for $.99, shipping included.  The seller is easy to find and fantastic to deal with.  Message me if you are having a hard time finding them.

So your supplies:

1.  Glitter in whatever colors you choose.  I used my Martha Stewart super rainbow glitters lol
2.  Cuttlebug & zebra print folder (comes in a set of 4 different animal prints)
3. Old paintbrush
4.  Pencil
5.  Blade
6.  Mod Podge or equivalent
7. Your iPhone
8.  Clear iPhone case
9. Piece of plain white paper (something lighter than cardstock. text-weight works great!)



So the first thing I did was use the pencil to trace around the outside of my iPhone on the white paper. Cut it out on the line.

Next get out your Cuttlebug, put the paper into the zebra print folder & use your A+B+B plates.  Emboss!

Take your embossed paper and fit it into the case. Trace the camera hole and cut it out.

 Next get out your Mod Podge and your old paintbrush.  Use the paintbrush to apply the MP to the first (and second, if you so desire) indented section of the embossed image.  Make sure you have the correct side of the insert faced up, you don't want to finish glittering and discover your camera hole is on the wrong side ;)

Sprinkle your first color of glitter liberally over the MP'd section and gently press it down with your finger.  Tap off extra and return it to the container. 

 Repeat the above steps until you have all the areas filled in that you want glittered.

After it's dry you may want to go back and repeat the process on any sparse areas.

 

Once it's completely dry, dust off any extra glitter that might be lingering and fit it into your case and onto your phone!  Enjoy!

I could have used my massive Glitter Ritz collection for this, but let's be serious, GR is expensive, so I save it for cards, and my other high end products ;)  In case you were curious which shades of the Martha Stewart glitter I used:

Whimsy - Miss Fortune!

Hey everyone!  I know I've been slow to make blog posts lately, but the puppy has truly been keeping me insanely busy! 

Saturday night I got a little break and went to Girl's Night for some crafting fun! We went to Pilot's for supper and then went back to get our crafting on.  This time we were joined by the lovely DC & BD!  Hopefully they will be permanent fixtures in our club ;)  I didn't get anything finished, but I did start with the coloring of this card and had a fabulous time with the ladies!

While J was home on the weekend I was able to get this one finished up, plus my Mom's birthday card (which I will schedule to publish tomorrow, so she can't sneak a peak at it before tonight lol).

Introducing Miss Fortune! 

She is now available for purchase in my Artfire Studio!

She is a Whimsy Stamp from the Kenny K Collection.  I colored her in with Copics, and accents were done with Stickles, Viva Decor, Smooch, and Spica.  The "Make a Wish" stamp & ribbon were purchased at Carousel Rubber Stamps, and the "Happy Birthday" was a freebie stamp that came with one of those fab British mags.  I used Spellbinders dies to cut the ovals.

Let me know what you think!

Seahorse ATC

This is a pre-scheduled post because I wasn't sure what shape I'd be in after the Canada Day weekend, and I wanted to make sure I got something up to entertain you guys while I recover :)

Last month our Artist Trading Card (ATC) group's theme was 'Glitter'.  Guess who chose that?  THIS GIRL!!  Thank goodness there are other glitter fans in our group (I'm looking at you, McD sisters!).

I found this AMAZING glitter sheet at Michael's in the loose paper section.  Usually I won't spend money on these fancy sheets because they charge $4 PER SHEET!  Now don't get me wrong, I love me some Michael's, but $4 for a sheet of paper is INSANE.  No matter how beautiful/sparkly/pink/swirly/InsertOtherPaperWeaknessHere it is.  This particular day they had a "Buy 1 get the second for 1 cent" deal on.  That's pretty much $2/sheet, so sure, I splurged.  AND GOT THE TWO MOST SPARKLY PIECES OF CARDSTOCK OF ALL TIME!

Unfortunately I didn't get a pic of the full sheet of the pink zebra print... it occupied a space on my desk for all of 10 minutes before I made that cellphone cover tutorial lol  The other sheet reminded me of the ocean, so I decided on a seahorse stamp that I got as a freebie with one of those fabulous UK card magazines.

Next I used my Spellbinders to cut them out in an oval shape.

It took some precision to get them cut out as they were pretty much EXACTLY the height of the die.  Some of them tails and fins got nipped lol

Next I colored in with my Copics.  As you can see, the one to the far left was my 'messed up card', so I always keep those ones for myself.  That's why most of the seahorses are blue, and my final pic down there is almost teal lol

And then assembled!  I used Viva Decor around the edge of the circle, for the air bubbles, and for the dots along the top and bottom.

I'm still waiting on a few ATCs from both May & June.  As soon as I get them I'll post them too. 

Thanks for checking out my creation for June's ATC :)

Whimsy - Mystic

This is by far one of my favourite cards I've ever done.  I love this stamp so much!  It's by Whimsy and it's called Mystic.  I purchased mine at Carousel Rubber Stamps.

As I said, the unicorn stamp is by Whimsy, the Happy Birthday was actually a freebie clear stamp that was part of a set that came with a magazine.  I used them ALL the time!  I used Copics to color her in (now that I have my greys, I might go back and do a little more shading on her body), the charms were from Michael's, and I used Stickles for the glitter accents.  Oh, and I used my Spellbinders to die cut the Happy Birthday pieces.

I'm planning to make a few more of these which will be for sale in my Artfire Studio.  If you'd like to preorder, please feel free to comment here or message me on Twitter @Mostly_Mandy :)

House Mouse Challenge 2011

Last year there was a House Mouse Challenge at Carousel to make a card that used a House Mouse stamp and the stamp also had to have a flower on it.  Straight forward enough.  So I got to work and this is what I came up with:

Card with Bookmark Gift

 I colored the image with a combination of Copics (I only had about 4 at the time lol), colored pencils and chalks.  I used Glossy Accents on the water around the flower to give it a wet look :)  The charm was done with Shrinky Dinks paper!  I forgot how much FUN that stuff was!  Now that I'm looking back on this project, I think I'll have to bring that stuff out to play again :)

This little entry won the challenge and I received a gift certificate for the shop!

Mother's Day Card

This is the card that I made for my Mom this year for Mother's Day.  I had recently taken a class at Carousel Rubber Stamps and learned this awesome new technique to use with Glitter Ritz.  I liked it so much I decided to do this one up for Mom.

My craft room was a big glittery mess when I was done, but I didn't mind ;)  You can't really tell from the picture, but the butterfly design is done with a die, and then the layers are peeled off and glittered.  It's tedious, but the end result is SO worth it!  I need to get down to the store and get my hands on some more dies so I can make more of these cards :)

Sweet November Stamps - Cinder

I bought Cinder over a year ago.  He was cute and I really never had a plan for him... until I went to Michael'a and saw their new animal print Cuttlebug folders.  IDEA!

Available for purchase in my ArtFire Studio

The card base is white cardstock, chalked around the edges with yellow.  The background paper is shimmery green cardstock from Michael's and embossed with the Cuttlebug animal print folder.  The centre pieces are both cut with Spellbinders, the stamp is Cinder by Sweet November Stamps, he is colored in with Copics and the glitter accents are Stickles,