Janet's Smiles

My oh my we are down to just 3 letters in this year’s A to Z 10th Anniversary Challenge!  For X I am using EXPO as my word which comes in very handy since the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt is using a word with XP!   Thanks, Linda, for helping us keep on track with two challenges!

I’ve mentioned that I get ideas from magazines and kits, but another big source of inspiration and the place I get a lot of my supplies from is the Stamp and Scrapbook Expo.  There are three Expos a year within traveling distance although I usually only go to two of them.   It is a great time for me to spend a day with my niece, Donna, who is my scrapbook buddy.

We buy our tickets online and then pick them up at Will Call.  If we get there early enough – of course we do! – they give you a Golden Ticket that you can use to try to win a door prize.

The prize table

The workshop schedule

My niece, Donna, ready to shop

They are just about to let us in.

There are also floor demonstrators.  They show you how to use the new products and let you do “make and takes” so you can try them for yourself and then keep what you make.

All through the day they call out door prizes.  There are a couple of ways to win.  One way is just by your name because you bought a ticket.  One is the “number game.”  There are numbers on the floor and when they tell you they are going to pick a number, you try to find one and stand on it.  I was lucky #11 once.  I won a paper pack with some extra goodies in it.  Donna won one too at a different show.

Happy Shoppers

Have you ever been to a Stamp and Scrapbook Expo?  Does it look like fun?  Tomorrow is a day of rest.  Come back Monday for the letter Y.  I’m going to try something really different.  Care to guess what?

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Down to just four letters left in the 10th Annual A to Z Challenge and I struggled with a topic for today.  You would think that W would be an easy letter to find something for and at first I was going to use Wedding and show some cards I’d made that you could use for a wedding like this one:  

But that didn’t seem so very exciting.  Then I thought about Washi tape.  I certainly have a lot of that:

But that didn’t seem very exciting either.  Finally I thought of Weeding as in weeding out supplies that I’ve had around for years and years and actually decided I’m not going to use so I should just let them go.  Like spools and spools of thread.  If I am getting rid of the sewing machine, I certainly don’t need all the thread.  Fortunately I have some friends who took them.

Or piles of yarn.  Not going to make anything out of this any time soon.  I really wanted to make something with the rainbow yarn but no matter how many times I tried nothing came out right.

Even the pieces of yarn for latch hook rugs.  I’ve made some but what the heck was I keeping all this for?

I even have some old Monopoly game pieces.    Some of these are collectors items since they are no longer made for the game but I’m gonna let someone else collect them!

So now I have a lot of empty containers and I’m going to weed through those as well and keep the ones I like and give the rest to the second hand stores.  I guess you could say for the letter “W” I’m just gonna “Wing” it.  Thank goodness I have X, Y and Z (maybe) under control!  See you tomorrow.

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Final countdown in the 10th Anniversary A to Z.  We are at the letter “V” and I was going to write about vellum but then I started working around in the studio and the word “Village” came to me.  Last year during my A to Z of the things that are found in a Michaels Arts and Crafts store, I wrote about the miniature gnomes and fairies that I wanted to get for the garden in front of my studio.  At that time I had no studio so I didn’t buy any of them.

This year, I DO have a studio so I am making my Fairy Village!  They didn’t have all of the same figures but I found some that I think are really cute.  I put this together on my workbench but eventually it will go outside. 

Doesn’t that castle look like a neat place to live?  The front door opens but the inside is nothing special so I’ll probably keep it closed.  The color of the turrets matches the studio so well.

 Since I drink tea every night this was a natural figure for me to get as well.

This is a smaller version of the strawberry house I saw last year.  I thought the little clothesline was a nice touch.  The fairy has a tiny gem in her hands.   

From this angle the bridge and the table and chairs kind of blend in with the rocks but you get the idea.  The “Wizard” is actually a statue of Santa that my late sister made for me a long time ago.  It broke and my husband glued it together but there are spots that are missing.  I was just going to take a picture of it and throw it away but when I started putting the village together, he seemed to fit right in.

The last part is the wise old owl.  There is a pot that my daughter made for me that I’m going to get a plant to put in.  The little boy and girl were figurines my sister used to put on the table when we had family Thanksgiving dinners and the frog is a cute frog. 

I don’t think I’m finished with these.  I may want to get some more rocks and a couple more figures for the village and definitely some flowers.  I’m thinking that I’d like to get some tree stumps at different heights and put one of these on each in front of the Studio.  I bought all of these things at different times and I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to put them in or what they were going to show but once I thought of the word Village, they just came together like this. 

What do you think of my Village?  Are you going to make it to the end of the alphabet with me? 

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I’m going with Unique for my letter “U” in this 10th Anniversary A to Z Challenge.   There are a lot of crafters out there so I try to make a few things that are a little unique.  Tell me what you think about these.

For Valentine’s Day one year instead of making my husband a regular card I decided to use candy to spell out my message.  I taped different of his favorite candy bars on a sheet of poster board and wrote a message around them.  The message says:  (Candy in parentheses)

Baby Love (Baby Ruth candy):

There are more reasons why I love you than there are stars in the (Milky Way) but let me (Take Five) to start:

1)  You take me to fun rock concerts instead of the stuffy (Symphony).
2)  It may not be (100 Grand) but you give me all your money on (PayDay).
3)  You are a great dad to our (3 Musketeers).
4) You show me you still love me even though I have a few more wrinkles and (Rollo)’s than when we first met.
5) B'(Twix) driving through the (Sno Caps) mountains to Reno or watching that Cash Cab guy from New (York Peppermint Patty) we still have good times!

Our life together has been very (Good and Plenty) more to come!

He liked it so much he didn’t want to ruin it by eating the candy!  I guess he could have taken the candy out and left the wrappers.

For my mom’s 90th birthday I made this flower shaped card.  I found different things that happened in 1923 and put them on the petals of the flower.  This is another one that would be very easy to personalize.

These are some of the decorations I made using my Slice machine.  I was really happy with the way the guitars came out.  They will go great in my concert album.

We have a local baking supply store who has a party room for rent.  I thought if I made a mini-album in the shape of a cake I could go to them and see if they would be interested in working with me to offer these to the people who have parties there.

The anchor I made using the Slice design card!

It can be easily personalized with dad’s favorite team colors and if he’s not into baseball or football I have golf or fishing among other activities. 

Have I managed to come up with some unique ideas for gift giving?  I’ve said before I love experimenting.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

Five more letters in this year’s A to Z.  I think I’m gonna make it, how about you?

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For the letter “T” in the 10th Annual A to Z Challenge I am talking about tools.  Every good craftsperson has their tools.  My husband was a mechanic and he has a garage full of tool boxes with multiple varieties of tools.  The neighbors come by asking for this size wrench or that type screwdriver and he has them all.

I have my tools too.  Of course I have the standard pens, markers, scissors, ink, stamps, all that stuff.  I showed them a little bit in my post for the letter “S” last year when I talked about the Scrapbooking section of Michaels.  These are a few of my more specialized tools. 

The first is my Slice machine.  Many (most) people have the Cricut, Sizzix or a version of them to make their die cuts and alphabet letters.  The Slice machine came out about 10 years ago or so and I was so excited to get one.  It is a portable machine whereas some of the others are not.  I can use the Slice to cut out lots of different letters and shapes for almost any theme.  It comes with a design card that plugs into the machine.

Design cards

 Once the card is inserted you have lots of options to choose from.  I used this guitar to make the guitar embellishment I talked about yesterday in the “Special Order” CD Music mini.

It goes from 2 to 4 inches.

 Each card comes with a booklet that shows all the designs you can make.

 These are two journal tags I made using elements from the Slice design cards and then stamped some lines on them for the writing.

Unfortunately the company that made the Slice went out of business and the Slice is no longer supported by anyone.  I will be sad if something happens to mine.

We R Memory Keepers is a company that makes a lot of punch boards that you can use to make things as well.  This one makes envelopes, bows and boxes.  On the inside it tells you what size paper to use for whatever size envelope, bow or box you want to make and then just by punching the paper at certain points and then scoring and folding, you have your finished product.  I haven’t used the bow or box feature much yet but the envelopes I use a lot with my cards.

 This one makes party favor bags.  I made the orange one below.

 I have a lot of regular punches too.  Some are to punch things like flowers or leaves and some are border punches to use for making pretty borders on the page or edges on cards.

This one will take a 6 inch piece of paper and turn the edges into really detailed finishes.

Sticker makers

 Of course there is the Fairy Tales castle!  How cool to use that for pictures of a Disneyland vacation!

This one made the Christmas holders

This one made the ice cream and mug holders

Quick aside, using the “tools” on WP I see I have at this moment 146 “followers” on my Word Press version of this blog and 23 on Blogger.  Can I get to 150 and 25 before the end of the A to Z?  Hope you come back tomorrow for the letter “U.”

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Moving right along in the 10th Annual Blogging from A to Z Challenge we come to the letter “R” which stands for Repurpose, Reuse and Recycle.   I love experimenting with things and when I see some ordinary item I immediately start thinking about what else I could use it for.  Take these Laughing Cow cheese containers.  I really like this cheese so we had quite a few empty ones and I wondered what I could do with them.

And then there are the tea boxes.  I drink A LOT of tea and the boxes were just so cute.

Am I the only one who sees these things and wonders what to do with them?  All of them can easily be thrown into the recycle bin and the garbage company will take them away to melt them down or whatever they do but I think my way is more fun, don’t you?  You can find these and others on my Etsy site and if you can think of a theme you’d like to see one made into let me know!

“Rib” is the prompt for the #SoCS today so I’m glad I’ve been able to incorporate it into my little story here.

Tomorrow is Sunday so there is no A to Z.  I missed last week’s Song Lyric Sunday but maybe I’ll be able to play this week.  I’m going to try to make the rounds to some new A to Z-ers too and make sure I have the letters ready for the last week of the Challenge.  Have a Happy Easter!

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I was going to use Queen for the letter “Q” and then talk about things related to mothers, because you know we are the Queens of the house.  Then I realized that that was just more of the mini-albums and cards that I had already talked about so I decided to use “Quotes” as my word for today.

I suppose when I am making cards I could leave the insides blank.  That certainly would be easier but then the cards seem unfinished to me.  In the post about Overlays I showed the example of tags I had put in with the sentiment stamped on them.  There is always room for people to add their own messages too, but sometimes I think it takes the “pressure” off of having to think of something to say.  Know what I mean?

I am a collector of quotes and am always on the lookout for stamps and other things with good quotes on them.  One of my sources is the desk top calendars with a different quote on each page.  I have quite a few of those. 

New Job

Birthday

Birthday/Wedding

Mother’s Day

Graduation

Just because

I also love to use stamps.  Some have just words on them that you can mix and match to make your own quotes and some have the whole sentiment.

Would you rather have a card that is blank inside so you can write whatever you want or do you like ones with appropriate sentiments already?  Do you have favorite quotes that would be good to use?  Share!

I hope you are getting a chance to visit some of the other 10th Anniversary A to Z Challenge bloggers out there.  I know that some are new and would appreciate the love.  Tomorrow is Saturday so see you here for some R and R! 

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Any good business person knows that in order to sell their products they need to promote them in some way.  I have an Etsy site and whenever I make something new I take pictures and post them on the site, here on my blog and to Instagram and Facebook to let people know about them.  I know that Pinterest is a good way too and I am learning how to navigate that as well. 

Another way I have used for the last few years to promote my crafts is by signing up for craft fairs and Holiday Boutiques.  I had never tried anything like that before but I know that with my type of crafting, sometimes it is better if people can touch the products so I decided to give it a try.  The Etsy site has teams that you can join and one of the teams I was in posted different upcoming events we could register for.  My first one was at an Elks Club event.  My husband had been an Elk in the past and so I was familiar with the building and felt comfortable in the area.

This was my display table from that first vendor event.  It was held in conjunction with an Antique Car show and there was a lot of activity in and out of the showroom.  I didn’t make very much money but it was definitely a learning experience and it showed me some things about how to place my items so they would attract attention.  It also helped me get over my nervousness.

It was a Holiday Boutique so I switched the banner to the gold side to make it more festive.

The events cost money to participate in, anywhere from $30 to $60 depending on the size of the table you get.  I try to feature as many things on the table as I can without having it look too cluttered.

I have a little cup at the end of the table that has my business cards in it and am getting better and better at the displays I think, making it easy for people to pick up things and/or ask questions.

Almost every time I have at least made back the money I spent to reserve the table.  If I do that I call it a win.  At the last Holiday Boutique I actually had a request for some custom made items and that was really exciting.  I have a “Square” device that I can put on my phone or tablet to be able to collect payment with credit cards and that is great.  It also syncs with the Etsy site so if I sell something at an event, it automatically takes it out of my stock online.  I almost had a snafu though because while I was selling at the boutique, someone online bought some cards.  I had to make sure and take them off display right away so someone else wouldn’t try to buy them!  Good thing my phone sends me a notice when I make an Etsy sale!

I am also using this A to Z Challenge as a promotion since I am linking to my Etsy site with each letter.  So far no sales – come on people ~~ just kidding ~~ not really.  Please feel free to share the links with anyone you might think of who likes this personal touch to their cards and gifts.

Okay, enough promotion.  Now on to the letter “Q.”

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Koala’s have always been my favorite animal and I have pictures or statues of them all over the house.  Lately though I’ve been drawn to owls.  Maybe I’m looking for their wisdom.  Anyway, at the recent Stamp and Scrapbook Expo I found these kits with some really cute owl overlays.  Overlays are clear acetate pages with pictures or words printed on them.  You lay them over papers to get different effects.

 The first step is to cut apart the pictures.

 I stamped a sentiment on a smaller card and adhered it to the inside.

Here is the finished first card.  I used some of the colored stickers on the envelope and chalked the edges of the front of the card black.  I thought it came out really well.  This is the first time I have worked with these kits and they are pretty easy to use.  Other than tips about how to put the glitter paper on the back there are no “directions” with the kits so you can do whatever you want with the pieces.  They give you a lot too so I know I’ll have some extras.

 I decorated the corners of the front with these stickers and used some glittery pen to color them in.

I used some chalk ink to go around the edges to give it a little pop of color and a more finished look.

For the inside I used a tag and stamped another sentiment on it.

Here is the second finished card.  I used some washi tape on the envelope.  I’m pretty happy with this one too. 

But just so the Koalas don’t think I’ve forgotten them, these two have prominent spots in the studio as well!

Another letter down!  This year the A to Z 10th Anniversary Challenge has been going very smoothly.  One year I didn’t finish all the letters in time and had to go back to add them.  I don’t think I’m going to have that problem this year, thank goodness.  Hope you liked these behind the scenes examples.  Come back tomorrow for the letter “P.”

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