Hello! Have you missed me?!?!?

Well just to fill you in on a few details as to why I have been MIA, is one I FINALLY FINISHED MY CRAFT ROOM! YEA! @ I went back to school and although I am doing it online, I just do not have as much time to craft anymore, so sad, but I have not stop crafting all together, I am still crafting, although It is doing more personal orders right now, but I have done some fun stuff. (WOW that is a big run on sentence, but I am not fixing it)
I might post 3 or 4 blogs tonight and try to do a few more this week to get you caught up on all that I have crafted.
BUT THE BIGGEST NEWS...I am hopefully going to be opening an online store this summer....I know I know I keep saying this but Erin and I bought the Domain name, www.sparklefairies.com and we want to craft a bunch of stuff for craft fairs this fall as well as sell online. I will keep you posted.
So anyway...HERE IT IS, my CRAFT ROOM, which I absolutely LOVE and thanks to Ray and Hope for helping get Matt off of his butt to finally finish it. It is nice for 2 reasons. 1 I have a place for everything and it is so much easier to keep it clean or to clean up after a BIG project and I can do my online classes in there instead of on my bed. The desk is an old door from Matt's work, to cover the holes where the hinges went I used ribbon to trim it in and then I used shoe organizer on the left. I loved the cubbies and never expected to fill them all right at once, but I did, I have a place for all my papers as you can see by the open cabinets, but I still need extra space for my stamps and I am thinking about a place where I can hang some rods to put my punches on and not to mention a way to put out all my 100's of yards of ribbon, but that sounds like a Summer break project :). Well enjoy and keep a look out for new things!

Save The Date Invitations

SO my cousin is getting married this spring and I offered to make her Save The Date cards. This is the style she chose. Pretty simple, which is nice since I am making 250 of these before I go back to school next week. The colors are Navy cream and silver. Here is the card with out the Vellum on top so that you can see the print. On the Vellum I have embossed Once Upon A Time from the Ever After SU set and the swirls are from the Always SU set in Midnight Navy.

Christmas Trees

I actually made these last year and had said I would make a million more, or redo these, but after my class made a ton for a craft sale I got burned out on them last year. Fast forward to January and Erin and I said we would make topiarys like these for all the seasons using round balls or other shapes, I have seen a bunch online I like, but did I do it??????Nope, so here you go! Christmas trees from last year revisted, well I guess they are new to you since I did not have my blog last year :) I am feeling crafty right now, even though I am sick, so I guess I am going to research some save the date cards, since I am making my cousins Save the dates cards for her wedding in June. I am very excited.

Blue bonnets revisted

SO I made some bluebonnet glasses for my mom a few months back, it was my first attempt at bluebonnets, which takes a little practice to get the hang of getting the combinations of blue right so they actually look like bluebonnets. Unfortunately, they do not photograph well. Well they might photograph well if my photographer husband took the pics, but he is never around when I need them taken. But I digress, ohhh big word, tee hee, Anyway, several people have seen the bluebonnet glasses and asked for some, so I have now made 5 different sets of Bluebonnet glasses for people, but a friend of mine through Cub Scouts saw my blog and wanted some for her mother for Christmas, and she also wanted some bluebonnet dessert plates. I thought, sure no problem and well they weren't BUT I was painting on clear glass and snowmen are easy, you just have to realize you have to paint the details first. Easy enough, except on bluebonnets! You really need to get the blue on there and then add the highlights. SO needless to say, after 1 failed attempt, (Hey look dad, I learned after the first time not the 5th!) I realized I needed to paint a template and then model it on the plate. I have to say. I love the plates. I changed the design slightly from the glasses and added cute little white flowers in the grass, which do not photograph on a white backdrop OOPS!

Anyway, enjoy, I am really enjoying the painting right now, it is so sad I only seem to do it around Christmas, because no one wants my stuff except this time of the year.

Oh yes, I better add this...Mom, I know you saw this and you are going to want dessert plates as well to go with your glasses. I will get right on that so that you can have them hopefully for your birthday in February.

Purple because of LJ

Many of you know I lost a dear friend last month by the name of LJ. Well, it did affect me deeply as I had known this man almost as long as I have known my parents! So after he died my mother asked me to make her some thank you cards for her to send out to those who had extended condolences to them. As I felt I had not grieved completely, I decided to make these all in variations of purple since LJ loved the color purple and called it his signature color. At first, I was like PURPLE......HMMMMM... not sure I could pull it off, but I went back through many cards I had done in the past and actually found several that it worked well on, see I could not do these in say orange or yellow, but I think they are perfect in Purple. Matt came up with a a saying and designed a back logo for me to put on all these cards,as I was not going to sign my name, it said: IT had Purple because of LJ and his birth and death year then it said, It is not what you gather in life, it is what you scatter. LJ scatter both love and happiness.

Hope you enjoy these, I think I have decided I might include a purple section in all the cards I do for craft shows from now on.

Vino

SO matt's work is having an auction and I had plans to make lots of thing to auction off, but fortunately I have run out of time and can only make these and a cheesecake. Fortunately, you say? Yes fortunately I have sold quite a few things this season and have orders for others so I said paying crafts beats just for fun ones! LOL So this is the wine glass set I made for the auction, I even made the packaging. I took 2 Starbucks Frappacino carrying cases and duct taped them together and then covered with some cool wrapping paper I have. I then embellished it with some ribbon and made a cracked glass label"VINO" to go on the front. To finish off all my handmade painted items I have also made "CARE" tags stating that they should be treated as fine china and be hand washed. That is the Fleur Dis Li tag you see the pic of. Oh yes and I also beaded the stems of the glasses. The stem wraps are removable for cleaning and can be put back on or taken off permanently if needed. These are my OTHER grapes I have done, but I think I now like the smaller ones on the decanter.

OK, Now I must go do ARD paperwork and then work on a few more orders.

CHEERS!

Grape-a-licious Decanter

Ok so here is the decanter I sold. I made this for a lady who is very particular about where she gets her Williams Sonoma Wine glasses and who only buys the best. So, needless to say I was very nervous when I took this on and I had to make sure it was perfect and I have to say I like these grapes the best out of any grapes I have ever painted. Ok, you may say how hard is it to paint grapes, but believe me, it is way easier to paint bad grapes than good grapes. I think these turned out very nice. To add a little more pizzaz I decided to also bead a cuff to go on it with crystal beads, I tried to bead a cluster of grapes and I looked all over online for directions on how to do that and I found 2 different ways on how to do this, but I think my hair may be too blonde or maybe I just need an instructional video on how to do this because I could make it to step 3 on both sets of instructions(that had visual diagrams I might add)but I never could get any further, so I gave up. It does not look too bad though. I wish I could have sent this to work with Matt for him to photograph but I had to deliver it too soon. I hope she likes it, I am sure I will find out soon enough, well after Christmas since it is a gift!