Flowers & Style

This is the first post about flowers and scrapbooking.  The reason is quite simple; except for the few occasions I've used paper flowers - in very limited quantities - on a scrapbook page, I haven't seen a need from them.  There's a dimensional aspect that I figured would fail when used in a traditional, sheet protected 12x12 album-bound book.  

For the past couple of months when doing the scrapbook store run I've began picking up a package or two of assembled flowers when found on sale.  They aren't cheap.  Last week, TM had a sale on Prima Flowers (the industry standard) which reduced the $4.00 packages down to 99c each.  Talk about building a rapid inventory! 


Though I'm not quite sure where to start, I'm fascinated by the flowers made by I am Roses. You get a big bang for each buck there, and they are truly lovely.  They have a huge assortment of flower types, sizes and colours, and priced very reasonably.  Except that I have to restock on some very basic supplies, I would order enough to sample and play around with.


The big box craft stores all carry silk flowers, which they regularly have 50% sales.  This is an area to pay more attention, especially the bridal section.


And in no way least, there's virtually an unlimited range of paper flowers created with the Cricut.  I've watched scores of YouTube video demonstrating techniques of creating beautiful flowers I never would have thought possible.


Primarily through the warehouse sales, I've built a reasonable collection of Tattered Angels sprays and glimmer paints.  These consistently put out stunning effects, but they really need to figure out a better spray system.  I've yet to complete a project without having the sprayer clog.  Everywhere I turned I kept hearing about Lindy's Stamp Gang, a direct competitor of Tattered Angels.  I watched several videos from both the manufacturer and independent reviews, and I'm convinced this line definitely has a place in my growing spray paint/mist collection.  Lots of them!  The mention of the sprays and mists while posting about flowers is because these play such an important role in colouring flowers... and so much more.


The white flowers at the lower right corner are some left over from a wedding several years ago.  Cheap, cheap, cheap.  The coloured flowers are the same set but with a stingy application of differently coloured Tattered Angel's mist sprays.

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It's taken awhile to figure this out, but I do have a "style".  It is the colours and images predominate between 1910-1960.  Yes, that's a sizable range, but these are the colours I love working with best.  G45 probably helped with that, but it holds true across all paper lines and graphics.  When I heard yesterday about an online store, CraftySecrets.com carrying vintage papers, postcards, and images; I had to go check it out.  Using incredible ultra-human restraint, I left the site with only a large stamp set (perfect for the G45 On the Boardwalk line!!) and 32 page postcard collection, and two booklet sets.  Yes, all from the 1930-60's.  And as it happened, they had a sale in place.  I will go back to "visit" again, some time soon.  Oh, yes, life is good!


Then, as if the gummy karma worms weren't helping along most wonderfully, today I found a blog site here called The Graphics Fairy LLC, with free(!) vintage images... thousands of them.  Too good to be true.


On a sadder note, one of my all-time punches got damaged somehow.  The question becomes:  do I go out and buy another, or do I go with a similar punch? This is really discouraging; having to buy something a bit pricey twice.

New Haul

In an incredible feat of restraint, I made the full scrapbooking run yesterday... and spent only my $80.00 weekly allowance.  Yes, a show of pure restraint.


I would have done much better had TM had not had another two G45 retailer sets out for sell.  There were four more pages from the "On the Boardwalk" collection, and the first four of the "Le Romantique" set.  {My mind begins spinning thinking about how certain elements of the "Proper Gentleman" and the "Le Romantique" collections could/will work together for a wedding, early relationship, or Valentine's Day album.}   Other than a tin of metal hinges, bookplates, and sliders picked up, now that I know how much I'll use these in other projects, that concluded the TM experience.

We had to run to the local TM to purchase three battery operated, personal misting fans. If we are to camp in Texas at the end of July, and we are, wet is absolutely essential.

Hobby Lobby has ribbon 1/2 priced this week.  Four new rolls.  A Sizzix keyhole with key die, regularly priced at $20.00, mine at $7.00. It took almost three albums to realize I was using Tim Holtz,'s Tea Dye instead of Vintage Photo ink.  I kept wondering why my shading came out differently from the examples... well, beginning this next album, that's fixed, because now I own both.  I added one gorgeous golden Prima flower package to the growing floral collection.


The TJ Maxx was a total bust this trip, but that's the nature of discount versus craft stores.


JoAnne's wasn't much better.  Every item I went in for was already sold out.  Not the black StazOn die I've finally committed to using.  Not the 12x12 paper storage drawers.  And not the paper pad I needed to refill.  

There had been many, many numerous clearance items marked down as much as 80%, but it was as if someone had taken a buggy and cleared every rack of every single item.  I'll certainly stock up on certain items, and pick up an extra or two of something I know can be traded or sold, or wipe a shelf out knowing it will be immediately replaced (TM) but whoever did this did so with the mind of absolute selfishness, without regard for others.  It covered every item in the store, across every crafting row to just be a happenstance run of hundreds of buyers.  If I figure out who's doing this, I'll cruelly mark their eBay site as the NWA greedy gut; because if this should show up on eBay it will be marked up by at least 60%.  

We did, however, find a couple of reusable/dishwasher-safe, plastic screw topped Coke bottle to carry drinks in the car during the next few months. 


Internet haul.  I finally managed to find and purchase three magnet sets.  The company I'd purchased from last week refunded my money two days later and informed me the items were temporarily out of stock.  No way!!  As of yesterday, they were still waiting.  That's now remedied.  And, Kiwi Lane Designs has another of their great 2-3 day sales, so I purchased another template set.  These come in so handy it's difficult to imagine putting together a project without them.  Call this one set 4 of the series.

Not strictly considered scrapbook materials, but closely related, were a pair of gold earrings at Sears - they were on sale; however, not included in the $80.00 earlier stated.  Nickle-plated and inferior metals have been causing all sorts of problems lately.  Reckon it will take a while... and many more sales... to rebuild a suitable earring collection again.

This and a major clothes shopping spree for the Miss mad for a very fun, and very long, day of hitting the stores.

Take a Breath

There's been such a flurry of activity lately is seems almost impossible to sit down and get anything done.  Not true, I've finished four 12x12 layouts, got the new organizer in place and well stocked, and have accomplished quite a series of hauls.  

Most everything revolves around an incredible discovery at TM.  They had retail packs (24 each) of almost then entire "A Proper Gentleman" collection.  Martin actually stumbled across this treasure, bought two packs, and made the mistake of telling me they had stacks of other G45 retail packs in different designs.  At the end of the quest I have twelve full 12x12 pads of this collection, minus two pages... for less than what a single pad would have cost.  Profit time!!!  We were also able to pick up almost half the "On the Boardwalk" collection in retail packs.  I think we've exhausted the bonanza.  There were arm fulls of book board, but I stopped at six sets.   They had Tim Holtz Grunge Paper sets, retailed at $40; I paid $8.  Finally, a 5 inch Xyron.  A couple of adorable embellishments and the run ended there.

I decided to hit JoAnn's because we were in town it's rare we make it that far south. Phew!  Almost all paper crafting supplies are 50% off this week, plus a coupon in the paper allows an extra 10% off from the total purchase.  60% savings?!  Heck, yeah!!  I managed some control and walked out of the store with only two large bags.  A wider variety of adhesives, the first alcohol inks, specialty paper, and yes a Crop-A-Dile II (Big Bite).

The stamps, ink, paper, embellishments, etc never quit coming in; however, it's hard to imagine any other tool needed to carry on this business.  Maybe a Zutter Cutter for the extra weight chipboard?  Maybe, but not a necessity. 

I'm attempting to design my first, original mini-album.  It's sketched out, roughly, but I'm finding it hard to cut that first page; there seems to be so little room for error, which, in itself, is an error.  How, besides looking amateurish, can a person go wrong with G45?  For sure it won't be the best album I'll ever create, and will quickly prove true, but it's all part of this glorious process called creative expression.

New Room, Returned Time

It took from Thursday evening (the breakdown and emptying of the craft room) until the following Tuesday afternoon to recreate the room.  I'd forgotten how hard real work can be :)  But it's done for better or worse, and I probably like the results.  Thing is, since I haven't had the chance to work on a project, there's no way of know how truly efficient the changes.  Tomorrow it's back to play time... and planning which area of the house to hit next, without the urgency of this past weekend.  At this point I can't even imagine organizing anything beyond my thoughts.  As much as I earnestly enjoy the process, I've been processed out for a day or two.

I posted the first set of pictures at my other blog.  Maybe I'll split the series between the two sites.

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I managed to make a run to TM while in Fayetteville earlier this week.  The question posited in a earlier post about a binder system is answered.  I had wondered whether the Zutter or Cinch systems to go with.  The decision was made for me!  On the shelf sat a Zutter (Bind it All) for less than $40. No more comparisons beyond that.  Like everything else acquired over the past week, it sits waiting to be opened.  There's not a real need to play with it yet, three other projects based on rings precede the necessity, so it may sit for some time before pulling it out.  That just seems so wrong, but for the price, well...  Did I mention we picked up the UTEE?  Again, this whole timing thing.


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Ah, heck, why not do some more before and after pics now?

Prepped for furniture (the photographer took a slanted photo... the wall is fine!)

A very narrow bookcase.  Decidedly bare.





 

99% complete.  Still not sure what to put in the middle area; thinking something decorative.  Amazing that it holds all the card stock purchased thus far!

Progress Steady Now

I'm almost to the point where I can begin constructing pages for the mini-album.  I shiver with a girlish nervousness simply thinking of sitting down and beginning the first page.

I own a fair collection of Cricut cartridges; like everyone else, there are the go-to favourites.  There's still so much uncovered possibilities in these cartridges; options available that have only been skimmed.  For instance, I tried to make a card and envelope from one of my cartridges, and the effort was a miserable failure.  This was in the early days with the Cricut, when getting the image I selected was magical.  A few more hours under the belt, and I'm looking at some of the functions best left alone until now.

In the upcoming (and future) project, there are dozens of tags and envelopes to make.  Though willing, the thought of constructing all these by hand, with only a limited supply of  "hard" dies was painful.  I pulled a dozen or so cartridges out to look at again and found (duh) that there were literally thousands of possibilities with the Cricut.  The amount whittled down to three primary and a couple more secondary cartridges to work with.  More interesting to discover was that some of the cartridges contained complimentary images to others.

Martin, at the least bit of prompting, hung the six-foot wire rack today.  The hope was to transfer all the punches from the the shoe bag to the new rack..  He had no sooner packed the electric drill before I began moving punches.  The result?  Ugly.  This will never work for what I imagined.  Never.  Had it been in the closet I could have lived with a little bit of ugly, but this is front and center of the entry into the room.  Aaack!  Instead, I've began loading the rack with "pretty" items taking valuable closet space.  Such as:  tatting thread, glass jars with colourful contents, all the bright colours of glitter and stickles, Tattered Angel bottles, etc.  That takes care of the short shelves, but the wider spaced shelves on the bottom half stay empty for the time being.  In the meantime, most of the punches are scattered between the table and closet floor.

Decisions, decisions...  The SSD Annex hosts another 75% sale Tuesday through Friday this week.  The scope of the 75% off is rather limited, but 10 sheets of name brand, heavy weight paper for $1.00 is worth the trip.  There's more, but won't know what until getting there.  Now it gets tricky.  TM also brings out a new line of products at 66% off this Tuesday.  The problem is money.  Martin generously offered $50 split between each sale, because I'd already spent my allowance.  What he may or may not realize it how hard it is to walk out of either for less than $60.  I could be extra sneaky and take him with me!  He's worse than I when it comes to, "Oh, you could really use this.  Right?"  Yes, I think so is the only reasonable reply.  Honestly, there's not much more in supplies I need for now, but the hunt is highly addictive.

Time to wrangle up the punches!