Paper and String

Well, yarn to be exact. Here's what I've been up to the past few days. First of all, I was invited to a baby shower today, and of course, with me being me and all, I forgot to make a card until the very last minute. This morning found me playing with paper and stamps pretty much right up until it was time to leave.

This card took TWO HOURS!!! Let this be a quick lesson in just why it bothers me when people are always telling me that I should sell my work. Let's not even take into account the cost of materials, which really, were just papers out of my scrap bin, a pen, some adhesive, and a sheet of white cardstock. If you paid me minimum wage just for the two hours it took to make this, you'd be paying $14.50 for a greeting card. That's insane. So sure, someone would want to buy this, but they totally wouldn't want to give me what the work was worth. It's not in me to make shoddy work just to cut costs/time so I can make a buck. I have to do the job to the best of my ability, always. This is why I'll always be poor, I think!

I came across a card like this online somewhere, but of course, it wasn't handmade. It was just a regular greeting card. I recreated it using scraps of various patterned paper on which I either sketched things freehand, or even better, just eyeballed as I cut. I sketched on the ink details with a Zig Millenium pen. I also learned today that the only black stamp pad that I own is a Staz-On pad, which no es bueno. I had to creatively rearrange the wording on the front because my card was smaller than the original. I changed up some of the colors to work with what scraps I had too. I love this card. I think it's the best one I've ever made.

I also made my first scrapbook layout this year, not counting the stuff in the December Daily. Isn't that terrible? I mean, at this point, the DOGS have better baby books than my child. Granted, the dogs are a lot less work to look after, but still. It's sad.

The photos in this layout were all taken by my little man, who is fascinated with the camera. I don't let him play with it anymore though because he keeps getting his grubby little fingerprints all over the lens. Since it's just a point and shoot, it's a pain to clean.

This was kind of awesome, because I was checking out the copyright dates on the borders of the papers I used. I used one dated 2005 and one dated 2001!!! I also used some ancient Gin X rub ons and some Quickutz dies that haven't seen the light of day in ages.

This is the red wall in my kitchen. While I've enjoyed the red wall in my kitchen, I've been itching for a change lately. Apparently, the whole world has gone crazy for the combination of turquoise and red, and I am no exception. Here I thought I was being original too! So my thought is that I'll paint over that red wall and make a new window valance. Eventually, I'd like to paint my kitchen chairs a bright red, the base of the table white, and stain the top a super dark brown. Since in order to do that I need to first buy a sander, and to buy a sander you need some money, it's going to have to wait a while. What I could do though, was make chair pads.

I've been looking through a photo pool on Flickr called Interior Styling, and one thing that kept popping out at me over and over again were pillows made from granny squares. In a modern or contemporary room, they looked surprisingly good. I decided to make the chair pads this way using acrylic yarn because I figured it would be easy to spot clean. Besides, if I decide I don't like them I'm only out of a few dollars because acrylic yarn is CHEAP! (it's actually only $2.59 at Hobby Lobby)

The chair pads look kind of small to me, but that's the standard sized (14" x 14") foam insert for them. I think this will look really cute when the chairs are finally painted the red to match the cushions.

Now, I'm off to try and get that Staz-On off my alphabet stamps and maybe to take a nap.