Inky Smiles

A Copic Christmas

2011-12-13T13:28:00.001-07:00

Good morning friends!

I have this friend who’s really super cool. She teaches fabulous classes and has a spot on our local tv channel. I try to make it to her classes whenever I can, it’s a fun night of crafting with the girls. My friend is Sue Neal of My Eye Q. One of the coolest things about Sue’s classes is that if you can’t make it to her local classes she will mail your kit to you! Each kit comes with excellent instructions and her follow up emails contain extra goodies for creating more projects.

Here’s a pic of last week’s class. SoooOoo much fun, and darling gift bags/boxes.

When my mom was here last month we took Sue’s Copic Marker class and created some fabulous Christmas cards. We learned shading and basic coloring. I’m hooked on Copic coloring – guess I better start saving for a bigger set of Copic Markers! I think I even got Mom hooked on coloring. She ordered a set of markers, too.

Here are the cards we made in class. We used Penny Black stamps, stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink. (It’s the best ink for coloring with Copics.)

This card is my absolute favorite. I bought the stamp to make more cards for next year, or maybe this year if I get around to it! I love religious themed cards. Afterall, it IS the reason for the season.

Hope you’re getting all caught up with your Christmas preparations! Get our your markers and make some cards!

Inky Smiles!

PS.. I also figured out a new photo lighting prop, thanks to Michelle Johns. I love it! I love how the photos turn out with the reflection and muted background.

Rather than try to tell you how, here is the link to the instructions:

Homemade Photo Lighting Prop

Adventures In Gingerbread Land

2011-12-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

Wow, so for the last three weeks I have been off the radar again. (We had my parents here for two full weeks over Thanksgiving and I was pretty much banned from the computer except for business schtuff.)

So anyway, at the beginning of Nov we had our date night group get together. Each time we get together we choose some sort of theme for the activity. This month Angie & Aaron were in charge and they chose “Traditions”. Angie’s family had a tradition of building gingerbread houses every year so that’s what we did!

Angie and Aaron built the houses for each couple out of real gingerbread with candy stained glass windows, a front yard tree, and a light attached to the base. They did an awesome job!

We had a very quick and casual soup and scone dinner before decorating our houses. We wanted to get on to decorating Here’s a shot of our little group. (L-R: Aaron, Brent, Angie, Kaisa, Kelly, Jeremy & Kristin)

This photo shows all the sides of the houses.

I brought my Kitchen Aid mixer up, which is a good thing because Angie’s mixer died right before we all arrived. We made TONS & TONS of royal icing and marshmallow icing.

And had TONS & TONS of candy on hand.

Once all the icings were made we went to town decorating.

Everyone’s houses turned out just amazing and fun!

Here are some close ups of our little house…

I piped our initials on the heart window…. I couldn’t resist!

Our cute little house made it safely all the way home from Salt Lake City… It even looked so cute in our front room…. until we went shopping with Mom and Dad and left Sadie home alone with it.

I think we walked in on Sadie when she was at this point:

Yes, that would be the roof. She was moving on to her second course following the devouring of the front yard and tree. The little twerp even gobbled up a window box. She ate the entire tree, too. I guess hot glue does pass, too.

We’ll build again next year. But next time we’ll put the house up higher and out of Sadie’s reach. So, if you build a gingy house this year, have fun with it and put high out of reach of little paws… both the furry and non furry kinds.

Inky Smiles!

An Inky BLACK FRIDAY Sale!

2011-11-24T23:46:00.001-07:00

It's that time again! This year I'm partnering with Linda at Craftaholics Anonymous for a Handmade Black Friday.

All of our handmade InkStaks & RibbonStaks are on sale!

AND I've added a grundle of miscellaneous goodies to the Special Deals & Buys section to help you with your handmade adventures!

OoOoOh, AND the Original Scrapbox Big Boxes (WorkBox, CraftBox, MiniBox, SewingBox) are on sale, toO, SAVE $100.00 now with FREE SHIPPING in the continental US!! Store your supplies for handmade goodies!

...ANNNNND...

We are debuting a NEW HANDMADE INKY PRODUCT!! You can get yours FREE with any order over $50.00 during this sale...

Click on over to Stamper Storage and check out the sales!

Happy Shopping!

Pinterest.. Do you?

2011-11-07T13:57:00.001-07:00

So for the past several months I’ve devoted a fair amount of time to a fabulous little website called Pinterest.

Do you ?

If you do, you know the amount of time that gets lost while surfing the fabulous eye candy of recipes, jewelry, craft projects, style ideas…. if you don’t well, you’re in for a major treat! Just a click away, Pinterest can transport you to the wilds of imagination and help you crawl out of your creative funk/slump.

The first couple of months I was “on Pinterest”, affectionately referred to as PinHole by my sweet husband because of the black hole effect it has of sucking you in, I lost hours and hours of time… I had to find a solution. I loved the ideas that I was gathering, AND, using… (Yes, Brent has loved the new recipes we’ve been trying out… it means he actually gets to eat, haha!")… but I have needed to set some limits on myself so that the rest of the house doesn’t appear to have been sucked into a black hole as well.

So I started setting a timer – and I tell everyone I can who “does Pinterest” to set a timer. It is your pathway to FREEDOM.

30 mins per day , but not every day for Pinterest.

It has been working great! I have regained MY TIME but still gathering ideas… and since I’ve limited my time spent browsing, I actually have time to DO/MAKE/CREATE the ideas I’ve gathered.

My timer was a plain ol’ WalMart $3 something timer and I decided it needed a little bling…. I mean , since I was timing creative central, why shouldn’t my timer be pretty, too?

So I pulled out some bling gems & E6000 glue and went to town.

Lots of fun and loads of color! Happy Pinteresting!

PS… Christmas Festivities have begun at the Grotegut house… tune in later this week for a fun post of this weekend’s festivities. See what these turned into on Saturday night!

Witches Night Out – Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T15:14:00.001-07:00

Happy Halloween friends!

Hope this post finds you getting ready to go out a-spookin’ tonight with your kids or friends! Tonight Brent and I will be chillin at home with some movies, caramel apples and cider and answering the door for trick or treaters… when we run out of candy we will hide out in the basement. :)

A couple of weeks ago I went out “witching” with some girlfriends in Salt Lake City. There’s a shopping center called Gardner’s Village that holds an annual “Witch Fest” &“Witches Night Out” for the public. I’ve always wanted to go, so I was thrilled when Angie invited me to go with her. Angie had the day prior to WF off work so she came over to do some crafting… we ended up spending most of the day shopping for and working on our costume stuff.

{Note – all pics taken with my cell phone, sorry for the poor quality of photos.}

Snacks, glitter, tulle, glue, all kinds of fun goodies for crafting! Even my lovely Sadie got in on the action… She made herself right at home amongst my huge pile of hot pink tulle!

Sadie just LOVES her Auntie Angie and wouldn’t leave her alone… I think it had something to do with the purple tulle bow that Angie tied around Sadie’s neck…

Angie made a “grown up” purple and black tutu to wear over a fabulous thrift skirt she found and made into a ragged edge skirt and I worked on my hat and a pile of flowers for it and the tulle ruffle for my skirt.

Tulle ruffle in progress. I gathered the tulle in sections by hand, then stitched it to some pink satin and then stitched it to the bottom of an existing skirt using long basting stitches so I could remove it for later. I love how the pink just puffs out from under my skirt :)

To make my flower piles I cut strips of pink satin and hot glued it while rolling and scrunching to create flowers. I made tulle flowers by gathering small strips and then using my heat gun to melt-scrunch the petals. I used the heat gun on the satin, too, and it helped create some more scrunching. Loooove how they turned out. I stitched the flowers individually to the hat. I added little dots of stickles glue to the main big flower for some more sparkle.

I WAS going to wear these FABULUSH false lashes, but I got them on and it was like I was a horse wearing blinders… I could not see ANYTHING periferally and since I was going to be driving and trying to walk around in a big crowd that was not a good idea so I opted for a shorter, more reasonable, yet still lucious pair from my stash.

I needed a fru fru top to go with the costume, so I bought a roll of “boa” and stitched it to the neckline of one of my existing shirts. I love how it turned out!

I think we turned to be quite the cute witchy pair!

Here are a couple of snapshots of some crazy witches on the train with us. I don’t think you can see how FABULOUS some of the hats are. It was hard to be “inconspicuous” while snapping pics on the train… I think the lady in the cream sweater/scarf knew I was taking her pic. LOL!

It was a giant costume party… seas of hats everywhere… there were even some Pilgrims that showed up!

We had so much fun! Next year we are going to have a hat party prior to the event so we can work on making some FABULOUS hats! We were UNDERDRESSED and UNDERHATTED compared to some of the guests!

Here’s the group of us waiting at the Trax station, We decided to take the train to avoid the crazy parking lot situation. Witches Night Out is a HUGE event.

Hope you have a FABULOUS Halloween celebration tonight! Be safe and stay warm!

Inky Smiles!

Video Tutorial - Nickel and Dime Style Bling Rings

2011-10-28T00:08:00.001-07:00

Hey guys!

It’s been a LOOONG crazy summer! I know I’ve been MIA entirely too long. We have had so much going on around here and quite frankly, I decided to cut a few things out of my life for a little while and not stress about them. It’s been a nice vacation from the blog, but I think I am ready to get back into some crafty action again!

We’re still in the process of remodeling our kitchen. We took a break from the finishing touches while we had family in and out for weeks and weeks and did some traveling for Brent’s job. And then I got sick the last big of Sept on our way home from a trip (some respiratory flu) and was sick until just last week when I finally went to the ol; doctor and became a walking pharmacy. haha.. feeling much better now, though.

Oh, and it’s been “that time of year” again…. CANNING SEASON… We did BUSHELS and BUSHELS of grapes and tomatoes, peaches, and 40 lbs of chicken again…. It’s been fun :)

And I made a working website for my Creative University Charm Swap Ladies … I’m hosting again this year and it is going to be FABULOUS! There are still a few seats left for Creative University… hop on over and check it out!

So anyway…

One of the exciting things I am up to is teaching at the Junior High here in town. I am now the 4H Afterschool Club Bling leader. I’m teaching crafts and jewelry to a gaggle of 12-15 year old girls. It’s LOADS of fun and loads of work. The opportunity was something I sort of fell into, or rather it fell into my lap, unexpectedly. A friend recommended me to the coordinator and a couple of emails later I was knee deep in the planning. I’m quite enjoying it, actually!

Today we made “Bling Rings” out of Nickels and Dimes, scrap paper, bling, and Glossy Accents. ‘Cuz a girl just can’t get enough bling, right?

I threw this little quickie tutorial together tonight to show you how easy they are to make.

Here are some photos from today’s 4H Club Bling adventure!

My Poor Neglected Little Blog & A Creative Escape

2011-08-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Hello friends!

I bet you thought you’d never hear from me again. But alas, I’ve wandered back into Blog Land again. I haven’t really been very far away, though. I walk past this computer day in and day out, but I just haven’t sat down to write anything in aaaages. I don’t even know where to start again. SOOOO much has been going on here at our house since I last left you with the pics of the start of the kitchen remodel. We’ve been remodeling, had family, went to a fun card making class with Sue Neal, had more family (2 weeks worth), had friends come visit, did more projects, built a gazillion InkStaks, discovered a rather scary health issue, and I even had a mini retreat with some friends at my home at the first of August, with the help of my sweetie pie husband AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND we’re almost done with the kitchen. LOL! No time for blogging, but I have been alive on Facebook (cuz I can do it from my phone on the go).

A Creative Escape

I think since it’s the freshest in my mind I will share with you some snapshots of our little mini retreat I did at my home with a few friends at the first of this month. Many of us met at Creative University and a couple are local friends here in town. We have been talking about getting together here in Utah for a fun little retreat getaway for some time now. This summer went completely crazy on me and we decided not to a full blown “go away to a hotel for a few nights” craft retreat and instead I moved some furniture around at my house, set up some spare beds and we did an overnight retreat at my place. We had so much fun! A few of us put together some projects to teach the group and we also worked on some personal projects. We even had delicious meals prepared especially for us by our personal chef, Chef Brent! He sure spoiled us!

Here’s the gang… well, most of us… Amanda and Jen had some crazy things going on that weekend so they were in and out. Amanda missed our group shot.

Never fear, the magic of Photoshop Elements can sneak her back in. HA.. I’m a lousy extractor/editor, but this works….

That’s all of us. Left to Right: Kim Garrett, Lisa Tafoya (pink shirt), Tahne Timmons (batik shirt), Jenalee Graves, Bobie Glassett, Amanda Bartholomew, and mE.

When I say we crammed in my front room, I mean we crammed…

Next time I will take the couch out and stash it somewhere.. {HAHA.. good luck with that, Erin.. it might have to go on the porch!}

Friday night dinner and treats were “FFY” – Fend For Yourself… we went to dinner at Mi Rancherito here in town and enjoyed some lovely Mexican treats. We came home and had fun playing and creating for the evening. I taught the group how to make altered domino pendants. They all turned out just gorgeous! Here are our pendants (and my art charms) on a tray just after being resin’d. The no name pendants are some extras I made while playing around and practicing this technique the day before. I like the technique so much that I just kept playing. It’s addictive!

Here’s my finished charm that I glued a bail onto and strung on a chain.

Once we all had our pendants covered in resin and placed out in the warm garage to cure we crafted some more and giggled and giggled until the wee hours of the morning. The night is a blur to me. LOL!

Saturday morning-ish we slowly hauled our tired bootays out of bed and enjoyed a delightful breakfast that Brent prepared for us… on of my favorites, Overnight French Toast with an orange maple syrup, fruit, breakfast sausages, yogurt, and juice. YUM!

Saturday was filled with lots of crafting and more yummy food prepared by Chef Brent. Tahne taught us how to make an “inverted round chain maille” bracelet that surrounded a string of Swarovski crystals. I chose a really pretty green crystal called Erinite. For real. Not kidding. I love it.

Tahne created little kits for us in these darling little personalized tins!

For the most part, this bracelet wasn’t that hard to do. The part that was most troublesome was getting the first set of rings started properly.

Somewhere in here we took a break and enjoyed a yummy lunch – my famous chicken salad sandwiches. I made salsa the night before and it was almost perfect the next day. I think it could have used the other half of the jalapeno…

Sleep deprived chicas making funny faces at the photographer…

Bobie taught us a really darling post it note holder that you can make with a couple of scraps of paper, some ribbon, and a daaarling little teeny tiny pen from Staples. Complete directions can be found in August 2010 on her blog-www.scrappyandcrafty.blogspot.com

Amanda put together kits for a 2 page layout for us using CTMH’s retired Cocoa Cafe paper and loads of buttons and chipboard goodies. Here’s her layout. I haven’t finished mine, still need to stitch around the edges and add photos, but I will share it soon.

Saturday night we enjoyed a delightful dinner that Chef Brent cooked for us in the dutch ovens outside. He’s a seriously good chef and makes the best Italian food, too! He made homemade garlic bread, a big green salad, and dutch oven Chicken Parmesan. For dessert I made an ooey gooey yummilicious apple crisp. I totally spaced vanilla ice cream so we just drizzled some fresh cream over it. YUM!

We also did a charm swap with an Oldies Rock N Roll theme. Kim turned her charms into a jumble/junklace necklace charm and I loved her idea so I blatantly copied her. Here’s my jumble:

Lots of loveliness and sparkles! I love it! I didn’t take pics of all the charms, but you can see most of them in these pics. Guitar pics, records, music notes, Elvis, guitars, all sorts of beads n baubles. I made a couple of extras out of shrinky dink material – a jukebox and a diner girl. My art charms were scrabble tiles with an image of Elvis crooning into the microphone to which I attached a fun guitar charm and a bead charm. Each girl got one with her first initial on the back.

I hope you enjoyed a peek at a recent fun weekend here at my place. We had so much fun and I can not wait until we get together next time!

Thanks for sticking with me – I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much this past month. We’re working on finishing up house projects and I will try (but not promise) to be more active on my blog.

Inky Smiles!

The Stamper Storage Becky Higgins Giveaway Sneak Peek!

2011-07-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Here’s our prize package. It is going live on Becky Higgins’ blog tomorrow and you gotta make sure you hop on over and enter to win! Click on the photo to automatically go to Becky’s blog. Becky will not be sending emails to let you know you’ve won. You will need to check her blog when she announces all the winners on Monday 7/11.

Good luck & Inky Smiles!

Not Quite Dead Yet… and Something AWESOME!

2011-07-01T13:23:00.001-07:00

Hey friends!! Just popping in to let you know we’re “not quite dead yet”… The kitchen is coming along NICELY and we’re nearly done. The cabinets are up (but need to change the door color) and loaded up, the floor is in and we’re waiting for the coutertop guys to cut and install the granite. Hopefully that happens next week! YAY! I am so stoked to get this kitchen done. It’s so much bigger than it was and it’s still surreal that we finally tackled this project. I have some lighting to switch out and last night Brent changed his mind on the paint color and thinks the red is too dark with the cabinets, so guess what we’ll be doing this weekend? Haha!

I will be updating the blog with some photos of the progress in the next couple of days when I finally have some down time. (We have had company come throughout this mess and more coming tonight.) I haven’t spend much time on my computer in the studio in weeks. I’ve been facebooking from my new phone because it’s fast and easy and I can do it from wherever I am.

I do have some AWESOME news to share with you all! This week we are participating in Becky Higgins’ BIG WEEK OF GIVEAWAYS… Check it out:Our give away day is Wednesday, July 6th! Make sure you stop by her blog @ www.BeckyHiggins.com to see all the giveaways! I will post our giveaway late Tuesday night here on the blog and then it will be live on Wednesday on Becky’s blog. There are 10 sponsors per day… make sure you leave a comment with:

1) Your name (first & last)
2) Where you live
3) The Item You want (with it’s item #)

Becky said she doesn’t want any extra fluff in your comments… just provide these three items of info or they will skip over your comment (too much to read). You can read more about this and watch her little video HERE.

PLUS!!! We’re having a sale at Stamper Storage
to celebrate this fun week of giveaways!

Hop on over to our store to see the sales!

Hope to see you playing along next week!

Inky Smiles!

A Birthday Bunch!

2011-06-08T10:12:00.001-07:00

{This was supposed to post on Monday but I had some troubles with Blogger and uploading from WLW. }

We’re still in full construction mode here at our house.. all of the destruction is done (minus the removal of some old floor tiles) but for the most part we’re gearing up for the “put-it-back-together” phase. The kitchen is mostly gutted (pics to come soon) and we ~~have an inspection tomorrow~~ PASSED our inspection YESTERDAY for our 4 way (electrical, plumbing, framing, etc) and then we can move forward… YAY!

I did take a break to create some birthday cards. There were six, but one met an untimely death by gruesome mangling when I was moving things around down here in the studio so Brent could move the gas line (in the ceiling)… card #6 is now resting piecefully (misspelling intended) in the city landfill. It was a third “banner” card and was so cute. I will have to make another soon.

These cards were super duper easy to make. I employed Mr Cuttlebug and raided the scrap bags for some coordinating colored cardstocks. The stamps are from PTI and are waaaaaay old. I love this set because it’s got so many sentiments and small images. There’s a lot of glittery bits (around the stars, on the cupcakes and banner pieces, etc – they look grayish) on these cards that was difficult to photograph, but you can see them a bit in some of the single pics. I popped up the banner pieces with foam tape. I love the 3D effect!

Thanks for popping by! Hope you are having a fantastic week!

Inky Smiles!

Kitchen Remodel Part I

2011-05-30T15:40:00.001-07:00

We’ve been in our house now for over 10 years and we’ve made maaaaany changes to it. We’ve finished the basement from the concrete up ourselves (only hired out the carpet), ripped out carpet and linoleum and replaced them with wood floors and tile, ripped out our master bathroom and completely remodeled it and have painted gallons upon gallons of paint and added trim and other fun detail pieces to our home.

We’ve been gearing up for the biggest change ever in the history of “Brent & Erin Remodel Something” for the last little bit and have already been busing going gung-ho on Project Kitchen.

My kitchen is not too teeny, but it’s only got one small section of countertop (we refer to it as “spot 'o’ counter top) space and the layout is kinda wonky for what we need in a kitchen. We’re pushing the kitchen wall 3 feet out into the garage (into “extra” space) and doing some reconfiguring and purchasing new custom built cabinets for our kitchen. The dream prior to this was to add a whole new kitchen on to the garage but that is way bigger and more costly of a project than what we were willing to do.

Here’s a “before” of our kitchen when we very first moved in.

It was nice, but VERY anemic…. So then 5 years later we decided paint would be a good thing… ok, well *I* finally figured out what I wanted to paint.. haha… Brent chose the colors.

We also added some trim (4” crown moulding and a plant shelf) to the top of the 8’ wall that divides the kitchen and front room. The trim really popped and made the walls look awesome and gave the house a more finished feel.

A few years later we had the “Giant Poo Flood” (aka sewer back up in the basement) and so we went to work on redoing floors in the house… you know, “while we were at it”.. .haha!

We replaced the old, icky, holey linoleum in the kitchen and dining room with 18” tiles. Minus the old ratty oval rug this is how my kitchen has been for the past 2.5-3 years.

And then a little over a month ago we discovered a leak in the water line to the fridge/ice maker…. it slowly dripped and flowed under the tiles in the kitchen and we had to remove about 18 tiles (we removed them until we found dry concrete backerboard) from the floor. We cut out all the concrete backer board and let the floor sit open for several weeks to dry and while we thought about what to do…

Then we had this bright idea to do some reconfiguring… move the fridge to where the current pantry is and some other “tweaking”… And this is where I’ve been all week and what we’ve been doing around here.

Here are some snapshots of the work in progress. You can click the image to view larger.

We’ve made some crazy huge progress since this last photo of Brent putting up the new kitchen/garage wall. I will be back soon with more progress reports. I’ve gotta go help Brent move the water line.

Constructiony Smiles!

Vintage Cone

2011-05-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

I saw an idea for a vintage cone on The Graphics Fairy blog a while back and decided that I wanted to make one, too. I’m finding myself drawn to vintagey goodness lately. Anyway, I dug out some styrofoam cones that I had stashed away in my craft closet for a Christmas project that I never got to, cut it in half, and started playing around with paper and Mod Podge.

All images are courtesy of The Graphics Fairy. If you’ve never been there you have got to stop in and take a gander and download some of her FABULOUS vintage images. Lovely schtuff!

I had a really difficult time taking photos today and it’s been very cold and dreary today so the lighting was not all that great, so please forgive the lousy photos. I tried taking them in my studio first and then moved upstairs to the front room in hopes of some decent light. It was a little better. LOL!

Overall I like how it turned out, but I think I am going to add some off-white & bluish lilac sprigs to the top part to give it more “fluff”. This little altered cone is meant to be hung on the wall and I am still trying to decide which wall it will grace in my home…. currently I’m thinking it would really pop nicely on the chocolate brown walls in my front bathroom …. hrmmmmm…..

You can’t tell in the photo but each little vintage card (images printed from TGF onto white cardstock and aged with Tim’s distress inks) has been glittered either on the birds or the flowers/leaves. In real life they shimmer nicely!

Bird envelope pre-glittered.

I plucked this crystal heart and jewels off of a junklace that I don’t think I will be wearing any time soon…. LOVE it.

Thanks for popping by! Inky Smiles!

PS.. the feather in my hair is hanging much nicer today since the hair got a good wash, dry, and straightening. Love it!

Pile O’ Loot – The Winners!

2011-05-18T19:25:00.001-07:00

Hey friends! I’m late in the day posting the winners. I was off having fun this afternoon getting my greys cut and covered and adding a different kind of color to my hair…

(Forgive the awful webcam pics. LOL!)

I added a couple of turquoise feather extensions to my hair! I’ve been thinking about it and decided to do it this time. They are pretty much just like reg hair extensions, held in with a crimp bead, and you can wash, dry, curl, and straighten them. I was playing with them at the salon and they look way cool curled! So fun! I think I might need to move mine a little farther forward.. we’ll see tomorrow when I style my hair myself. :)

So anyway… for what you really came here to read about today!

Instead of drawing names from a hat I used a great idea that Michelle Johns gave me. I wrote everyone’s names down on a piece of paper and armed with a bag of doggie treats put them around the front room in various places with a little treat.

Brent kept Sadie in the kitchen while I laid everything out. When I was ready he let her in and I followed her with my camera. (I’m not sure what happened to the bottom left photo.. it must have been in gif format when I dragged it into the collage, weird.)

ANYWAY… here are the winners in order of being chosen/gobbled by our sweet Sadie…

Congratulations to our winners:

1) Judith #1
2) Robin #2
3) Regina #14

Looks like we have some candy traveling overseas! I will put “gift” on the customs labels and declare the value $1 so you won’t get charged horribly in fees.

Please email me with your mailing addresses by Monday, May 23rd. Please put “Pile of Stamps Winner” in the subject line so I don’t miss your email!

Inky Smiles!!

IMPORTANT: Please read

2011-05-13T13:44:00.001-07:00

UPDATED: It appears that the previous post has been restored but no comments. ARGH! Let’s hang in there and see if the comments come back. If they don’t by the end of the day I will start the giveaway over. There were so many comments that were lost and I am beyond frustrated.

Dear friends,

Blogger has been DOWN for the past couple of days. I am sure many of you who are bloggers and who read blogs have noticed this. Because of this issue with Blogger my last post has disappeared along with all the comments. I am so frustrated with this.

I am going to wait a couple of days for Blogger to try to restore my post and the associated comments. Hopefully they will get their acts together and figure out what went wrong and make the necessary repairs.

If Blogger does not restore the prev post and associated comments I will repost it and we will try to find some winners again.

If I could, this would be the face I’d make at them.

I am so sorry for this inconvenience.

Love,
E.

(PS. This is “J”, my friend’s one year old – photo taken while trying to take his 1 yr photos.)

501-th Blog Post Giveaway – A Big Pile of Goodies!

2011-05-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve been sitting (well not literally) on these goodies for a long time now waiting for just the right time to do a giveaway… I wanted to do it last post, but my Archiver’s projects for NSD took over. I’m not sure when National Stamping Month is, though this would be the perfect give away for that, but I don’t want to wait….

SOOOoOOOoO dear crafty friends… would you like to win some of these fabulous red rubber stamps? I have a huge pile of unmounted red rubber stamps that I am splitting up between THREE lucky Inky friends!!

I ordered these online from My Sentiments Exactly and picked out my favorites and piled up the rest… Look at all these red rubber goodies! They have a sticky foam back on them already.. it’s not permanent, but it’s also not “cling”. You can remove the stamps easily from various types of blocks.

You can read this post about using cling mount/red rubber with acrylic blocks or watch a video here.

I have TONS left to share… wanna see? Can you guess how many are in the pile?

Do you want part of this pile of goodies? I’d love to send some to you… here’s what you have to do to enter:

1) Leave a comment on this post – tell me what your favorite post in the last couple of years has been on this blog. (It should not be this post. :P)

2) For an extra entry share this post on your blog or facebook page. (leave a link to your blog, please) and leave another comment on this post.

3) For 3 additional entries make a purchase from my Bargain Basement. I’ll add your name to the hat 3 more times. You must email me to purchase anything.

You may do one or all three options for a total of 5 chances to win.

I will leave this giveaway open until Tuesday, May 17th. I will post the winners on Wednesday, May 17th. Winners will be chosen by drawing names from a hat.

* Please email me to claim your prizes by Monday, May 23rd or new winners may be chosen.

Happy {belated} National Scrapbooking Day & 500th Post!

2011-05-09T13:37:00.001-07:00

Yes, belated again. LOL! I was too busy actually PLAYING on NSD too blog about my crafty projects (not to mention my laptop has died and needs a new motherboard so I didn’t bring it with me) so I’m going to blog about the day’s festivities today! And how fitting that a post about National Scrapbooking Day on a crafty blog is my FIVE HUNDREDTH POST!!!! YAY ME!

A while back I went to an Archiver’s customer appreciation crop and met some neat people, including my friend, Terri. Well, long story short Terri invited me to go to the Archiver’s NSD all day crop this past weekend and we had so much fun! I’m really enjoying the Archiver’s crops and visiting with fellow crafters while we create our own little works of art. Usually the “big” crop days at A’s include some sort of project in addition to the free make n takes in the store. This crop included a neat little altered frame and the store had a two page 12x12 layout to make.

Here’s the super cool frame we made:

You can also turn it vertical! Love my vintage doll peeking out from behind!

Those of you who know me know that I can’t seem to follow the instructions/sketch/sample of any project.. tee hee! I traced the frame out onto the really cool My Mind’s eye paper and adhered it to the frame, mitering the corners on the inside of the frame to give it a nice finished edge. I also traced the sides and used my fingertip craft knife to cut out strips from the reverse side of the MME paper for a nice contrast.

I made the flowers as they mostly suggested but laid it all out my own way. I added some extra petals to the lily and used an additional rose in lieu of a lace/button flower. I used the lace as an accent and gathered it while hot gluing it down to the frame. (They had this super cool hot glue gun that did NOT burn me! Gonna have to look into that and procure that little treasure! So if any of you reading this know what I’m talking about please leave me a comment on where I can find it!) I also added some green Kaisercraft rhinestones and bits of ribbon (that was originally intended to hang the frame with) to the frame and some Kaisercraft pearls to the centers of the flowers. I used diamond Stickles on the stamens of the lily.

We also made a cool 2 page 12x12 layout. I don’t do a lot of paper scrapping lately, but this was way cool and used a method of paper scrapping that I have been thinking about for a while now.

Here’s the first page… a traditional paper layout.

I left it in the plastic sheet, sorry for the glare. I really like the notebook paper punch that we used on the green ledger/graph sheet and I love the big huge die cut “negative” frame. I just need to find and resize some photos to put in there with a larger family pic. I am thinking I might redo the large butterflies.. trace them onto some solid red paper and hand cut them. I’m not digging the pattern on pattern… it’s almost too dizzying for me.

I do really love the funky ruffled button flower that we made using a new product called Glubers… which are basically a round, super sticky, giant glue dot. I am hooked.

The second page of the layout was a super simple, “my kind of paper scrapping” layout. I’ve been liking the idea of making a few really special “traditional” layouts with my digital stuff and then intermixing some “pocket pages” into the whole thing. We made a “pocket page” layout at Archivers for the second page. The idea is that you make some “mini” layouts/embellishments/journaling spots and drop them into pocket pages and fill the pockets with photos. I LOVE THIS.

Here’s what we made. I dropped a few 4x6 photos that I had on my desk into the pockets just for the overall idea.

Here’s the page w/out photos. Fast little 4x6 mini pages for either journaling or extra photos…

And here it is with some photos dropped in.

This sure would be a great and fast way to get caught up on all my photos… all the many THOUSANDS of them… especially old –pre digital – photos that are already printed and needing new permanent homes and a GREAT way to use up small scraps of paper! I think I’m going to do it!

One of the highlights of the night was meeting a group of girls from Provo Craft. I was chit chatting with them about some cool projects they were making. One of them, Shannon, was showing me a couple of new Cricut cartridges, Damask Decor and Martha Stewart Cake. Martha Stewart cake has all of the Martha Stewart punches as borders that you can cut with your Cricut.. how awesome is that?? And Damask Decor is choc full of gorgeous damask designs… and while I was standing there oogling and drooling over the Damask Designs… Shannon GAVE it to me… I was floored! So Miss Shannon, if you are reading this… THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart :) I am cleaning up my desk so I can pull out my Cricut and play with this cartridge this week!

My National Scrapbooking Day was awesome and I had so much fun! I hope you all did something fun and scrappy, too!

Inky Smiles!

PS.. coming very soon (like in a couple of days) to celebrate 500 posts… a really fun giveaway! Stay tuned!

Happy {belated} Cinco de Mayo & a recipe!

2011-05-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hey friends! We’re just chugging along here enjoying this spring weather we’re having here in Utah this week. It’s been so freezing cold and this week we’ve finally had some warmer weather! It’s been in the 70’s the past couple of days! That sure beats the 40’s and 50’s!

Anyway… Brent and I took the opportunity to do a little grilling last night and “celebrated” Cinco de Mayo. We marinated some chicken Weber’s Tequila Lime marinade and then tossed it on the grill. I’ve got to figure out how to make this marinade without the use of a “packet”. This chicken is out of this world delicious and we like to eat it in salads and on “street tacos” which is what we made for our dinner. You can read about street tacos here. I love getting carnitas street tacos from the little Mexican cafes here in town. They are sooo yummy!

For our version of a street taco I lightly fried eight (reserving 4 for leftovers for lunches on Friday) corn tortillas.. cooking them just enough to make them soft and then set them out on paper towels. We sliced up some red peppers and white onions into strips and put them in our basket on the grill and let them cook while the chicken was cooking.

To make our tacos we just piled up a few slices of chicken, some grilled veggies, diced tomatoes and shredded lettuce (well, Brent did on his), chopped cilantro and drizzled some homemade blender salsa over it. You top the taco with some fresh lime juice.. MmmMMm! Be careful, these are very juicy!

I’ve been wanting to make Cilantro Lime Rice for the last couple of weeks and it went perfectly with last night’s main course. I created this recipe (it’s pretty basic) by combining a plain jane CLR rice recipe with parts of a delicious Spanish Rice recipe and it worked out perfectly. The onions, garlic, and chicken broth give it a nice savory flavor (not just white rice with lime poured over it).

Cilantro Lime Rice
from the kitchen of Erin Grotegut

2 Cups rice (I used Calrose)
3 Cups chicken broth
1/4 C white onion, finely diced
3 Tbs butter
1/2 tsp salt
2-3 garlic cloves, crushed
4 Tbs lime juice
1/4 C cilantro, finely chopped

1) Melt 2 Tbs of butter in a stock pot, add rice and onions and coat rice with melted butter, saute for a few mins until onions are near translucent, but not brown. Add in garlic and saute until it smells very aromatic, being careful not to burn the garlic.

2) Add salt, 2 Tbs lime juice, and chicken broth to pan. Bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for 15 mins. Let sit covered for 5 mins.

3) Just before serving add in the remaining 2 Tbs of lime juice and the cilantro.. toss together and serve hot.

There you go! A super easy and perfect “I want summer here” dinner. Enjoy!

E is for mE… or sprEEEEng…. or ….

2011-04-29T10:34:00.001-07:00

I made this cute little E a while back for the wall/window of E’s in my studio. I’m really enjoying altering things with Mod Podge and paper. The past couple of weeks I have Mod Podged fabric, ribbons, paper, wood, fabric over paper, ruffles, chipboard, all sorts of interesting things. And did you know?? You can Mod Podge carefully over rhinestone bling and it still SPARKLES! (I found this out on accident.. tee hee!)

So anyway.. here’s my E. It’s made from a way old wooden E from Robert’s Craft. I covered it in black paint and then traced it face down onto some BG Urban Prairie paper which I cut out with scissors and Mod Podged (matte sheen) to the E and then trimmed up with my craft knife.

The flower is made using a silk flower which I glued on to the E and piled a ton of multi colored seed beds into the center of and then covered with Liquid Glass/Diamond Glaze and let dry over night. You can see how I did the butterfly with this Faux Stained Glass technique. Instead of embossing the image I used a black StazOn ink.

This altered E is a fun little addition to my studio. I love how the sunlight shines through the butterfly and leaves color on the wall/photobox behind it and is just perfect for sprEEEEEng … if it ever gets here! (We’re due for snow tomorrow… )

EEEEEnky Smiles!

mE.

My Sunshine….

2011-04-23T14:23:00.001-07:00

I love my husband. He is my best friend and he brightens each and every one of my days. He also just celebrated a birthday… which meant I needed to make him a card.

I always struggle with masculine cards so I went with something super simple but to the point. I gathered up some miscellaneous buttons and pulled out some my scrap paper bin and searched through the patterned paper for something fun and a little funky. I kinda had an idea rolling around in my brain and just needed to get it out of my head.

And I like how it turned out. :)

I knew did not want to stamp on this card so I pulled out some fun little alpha stickers and trimmed them up to fit the sentiment “mat”.

When I had it mostly assembled (dry fit) I decided it needed a little something else so I threaded Bernie and did some machine stitching for a little texture. I tore some strips of scrap paper and “stitch bunched” a ribbon onto the strip as well.

I think he liked it, too!

Inky Smiles!

Bargain Basement – A New Addition

2011-04-21T15:12:00.003-07:00

Hey inky friends! I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been making some changes on the blog.. I’m cleaning up a few things and created a new navigation menu along the top of the blog, just under the header. (A lot of you read blog posts in your reader or other rss feeds so I wanted to let you know of some updates.)

For a long time I've talked about doing an Inky Smiles Yard Sale but I just haven't ever gotten around to it. I've sold off a lot of my stamps and goodies to local friends but still have more goodies to sort through and find new homes for. One of the pages I’ve added to the blog is the “Bargain Basement” where I’ll be selling gently used stamps and other art supplies for nicely discounted prices. Hope you’ll stop by and check out the goodies!

Inky Smiles!

Edited: PS - I'm not quitting paper crafting, just getting rid of items I either don't like anymore or just don't use anymore. :) I still have tons of stamps and paper crafting goodies to play with!

Happy Little Breadmaker!

2011-04-20T10:49:00.001-07:00

Lately I’ve felt the need to learn a different set of “skillz”. I’ve never really been able to make bread and I hear my friends talk about their “breadmaking days” and I’ve always felt a little bad cuz I haven’t been able to make a decent loaf of bread. {Brent usually makes the bread and pizza dough in our home. He’s pretty good at it, too!} Don’t get me wrong.. I like to cook and like to think I am pretty good at it… but bread baking, that’s a whole other story.

Until now…

Well… last week, anyway.

Last week my sister was raving about some delicimous rolls that a friend of hers made… so of course I begged the recipe from her so I could try it out. *buwahaha* The recipe was super duper easy and for the first time EVER I did not kill the yeast.

I usually kill the yeast. Dead-O.

Even the instant dummy proof kind.

Here are a couple of snap shots of the rolls I made. They smelled so delicious I barely let them cool before snitching one and eating it. *grin*

{We usually only eat wheat bread, but I took my wheat flour out of the fridge and it smelled like fridge and since flour usually tastes like it smells I opted for a white version.}

And then on Monday of this week I used the same roll recipe to make regular loaves of bread. I just kneaded it longer and let it raise once , then punched it down and formed into loaves and let it raise in the pans on the counter. I was reading in a bread baking book that it helps to form a nice crust if you bake it at 400 for the first 10 mins and then turn it down to 375 for the remaining 20-25 mins. I let mine go a little long at 400 (oops!) and so the crust cooked just a little darker than I’d planned, BUT it still tasted DIVINE.. especially with some butter on it. Nom, nom… Eventually I will figure out the right amount of dough to get equal size and well proportioned bread. Until then the big loaf will look like a runaway from the Hickory Kist deli… (they make some major huge loaves!)

I am so excited about this! Usually I kill the yeast and get a partial rise from the bread… or I do something else wrong and get a huge hollow section under the top crust… or it just tastes gross or is all dry and crumbly. This bread has 3 eggs which gives it a nice moist and dense (but still light) texture. It’s YUMMMMY!

These were made without the use of an automatic breadmaker, too! {I used to own one but it made crappy bread so I tossed it. Ok, call me picky. :P} I used my Kitchen Aid Pro mixer to knead the dough {you should’ve heard the heavens open up and my wrists rejoicing} and let them rise at room temp.. nice and slow.

Hope your mouth is watering like mine.. I think I’ll go slice off a piece for lunch! Back soon with some papercraft goodness!

Inky Smiles!

Updated 4/21/2011: PS. I did call my sister again and ask her if I could share the recipe… but I received a no answer… it’s a “top secret” family recipe from someone who won some awards with it. I did find a recipe online that was very close. Please see the comments in this post for the information.

Wiiiillllmaaaaa!!!!

2011-04-18T23:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I went to the Gem Faire show/exhibit/bead buying heaven with some friends in the Salt Lake area. We had a blast perusing and purchasing fun beads and trinkets.

I went with a small budget (since I have tons from the last gem faire that I haven’t touched yet) and didn’t buy tons, but I DID find some fabulous-out-of-this-world-must-have-them red coral CHUNKY beads.

I’ve wanted to make a Wilma necklace for a while now

but hadn’t found the “just right” beads until this trip. I am in serious love with these red coral beads. They look like carved stones and are very heavy. The beads are a lot deeper red and less “pinky” than they appear. I’ve had a doozy of a time getting color and lighting right lately. :(

I strung them onto three strands of tiger wire and capped the ends with an antique silver bead cap and created a chain from silver jump rings. I wanted to do a special clasp since I have very short hair on my neck and didn’t want a lobster or traditional toggle type clasp. I had one extra bead left and wrapped it in bead caps and decided to use it for the “toggle” for the clasp. I LOVE how it turned out and it’s become a conversation started. I’ve been stopped a couple of times in stores when people have asked about the clasp. LOL!

Thanks for popping by! Inky Smiles!

PS.. I do have some fun paper crafts to share in the near future… I haven’t completely stopped paper crafting… lol!

Why I Won’t….

2011-04-15T13:21:00.001-07:00

Dear friends,

I generally try to keep religion and politics and other discussions that can cause contention and get tempers riled up off of my blog. I am a “Mormon”, a Latter Day Saint, and I am often asked which #wife I am. Well, I’m wife #1andonly. (Please know that polygamy was discontinued and banned over 100 years ago by the LDS church. Those who practice this are excommunicated.) Over the years I have taken and can continue to take criticism about my choice of religious beliefs but today I feel that there is something that I need to speak out about. It truly bothers me and hurts my heart. I understand if you don’t agree and even if you don’t like my religion, but if I don’t stand up for what I believe in, then really, who am I?

There are many things that I do not agree with. There are lifestyles and religions and political beliefs that I can not understand the importance of to some people. HOWEVER, comma, but… I would NEVER mock them or make fun of them. It is their choice how they choose to live. This is one of the beauties of our country. One of our many, many, blessings. Freedom to worship as individuals wish.

Freedom of speech and expression are also a couple of our many blessings and rights in this country. But sometimes we go too far.

Recently I read about a play on Broadway called “The Book of Mormon”, written by the creators of South Park. I guess just by knowing who wrote it tells you what kind of filth, lies, and indecency is in the production. What I read made me upset. It floors me that some people will poke at one’s religion because they see the differing views as "peculiar” or they just don’t agree. The Book of Mormon Broadway musical mocks all that is sacred to me. I will NOT see it.

There was an excellent article in the Washington Post by Michael Otterson entitled “Why I Won’t Be Seeing The Book of Mormon Musical”. I agree wholeheartedly. You can read the article here.

My friend, Jaime D., said (on FB), “A very well-stated article. I haven't even really followed this, but parodies, while funny, really do have a deeper quest, and that is to mock and ridicule things that others hold sacred, and to destroy all the GOOD that is done, in the effort to get a laugh and make a buck.”

Says one of Jamie’s FB friends, Beth H., “There seems to be a trend that callousness in the name of "stating one's opinion" is more valid than respect and good taste...”

Very true.

Parodies have a deeper quest, to mock and ridicule.

I think that’s the problem with today’s world. There’s a constant battering of other people’s beliefs. It is now socially acceptable to mock and ridicule sacred things publicly.

If you do choose to see this production think about these things when you, dressed in your haute couture, stand up to applaud.

* Are you more couth now that you have attended this type of performance?

* Why is it “ok” to attack that which others hold sacred?

* If this was attacking/mocking your religious views how would you feel?

* Why does it matter what religion one practices when they are not causing harm to others? Why mock those who are following Christ and trying to be a Christ-like people?

* Does it give you pleasure in attacking something that is good?

Just something to think about and why I will not be seeing this production.

Love,
Erin

Lime Twist Necklace

2011-04-14T17:11:00.001-07:00

So my sister, Elizabeth, called me this weekend and asked me to make a necklace for her sister in law’s wedding… which is in two weeks… yikes! Cara’s (the bride) colors are lime green, teal, and the bridesmaids are wearing black dresses.

These are the shoes and the dress Liz gets to wear. They are SOOOOOOO darling! I wish I could wear heels like this without falling over and breaking my ankle.. or leg… or hip… hehe!

Liz wanted a lime green necklace to go with the outfit so I went shopping and picked up a ton of beads and sat down to play… I had a lot of fun and ended up making a fun twist style necklace.

Here’s what I came up with…

I restrung all the seed beads and tube beads on to tiger wire and connected them all to one jump ring to create a “twist”/wrap effect. I reallly love how it shimmers in real life. There are a few mixed in teal seed beads and they are awesome. Today I went back to the store and picked up more beads to make this necklace for myself.. lol!

The clasp is my favorite part. I love that you will be able to see the clasp because she has short hair.. not as short as mine, but short.

I’ve got to pop this in the mail for here tomorrow am. I hope she loves it!

Inky Smiles!

PS… sometimes you have to go through a few clasps … ergh..

Woman vs. Mod Podge: A How To

2011-04-05T16:41:00.001-07:00

I’m starting an online class today called Soul Restoration (part 1). Many of you are already familiar with the Brave Girls Club and their wonderful community. Some day my goal is to GO TO Brave Girls CAMP, but until then online Soul Restoration will do… I am excited to do a little “soul cleansing” through art. There’s nothing terribly wrong or anything, but thought that this would be a good way to get a jump start on finding the “old pre infertility nightmare crapola” me. And you can’t go wrong with doing something that involves healing through ART :) SO for the next 8 or so weeks I may be MIA from time to time, but don’t worry, I do have some fun artsy things to share with you. {I may not be sharing my art for Soul Restoration due to the personal nature of it. I will, however, share some techniques that I am learning or exploring and creating with and some other fun goodies I’ve been working on.}

Some of you may also know that Melody Ross (one of the creative geniuses behind Brave Girls Club) is also the Queen of Mod Podge. HA. Yes, that wonderful white gluey goo that adheres, protects, and encases mixed media art.

I want to be a Mod Podge Queen someday.

Today I am a Mod Podge Princess & Monster Conqueror

I conquered the Mod Podge Glued On Lid monster.

And you can, too!

Even if you really want to get a jump start on your journal cover but don’t have a pair of strong masculine hands available at the exact moment you feel the desire to permanently adhere something.

You, too, can be a Mod Podge Monster conqueror. Here’s How:

Step 1:
Attempt to pry open the lid with your hands and fail miserably. Say something naughty to the Mod Podge bottle in hopes that breaking its self esteem down will do the trick. Realize that doesn’t work, so bang the lid on your desk hoping to free up the glue that is holding the lid to the bottle.

Step 2:
Get on facebook and mention your predicament to your 87,896,543,321 friends and hope that someONE, preferably a crafter friend, has a quick n’ easy solution. Get a suggestion from your male non crafty buddy instead. Head out to the workshop {in your wooly socks} for some vise grips or channel lock pliers.

Step 3:
Realize the mouth is not big enough for the lid. Think of something else… (I’d already started step 4, so the glue was dripping down the side. Shush… just keep reading. :P)

Step 4:
Decide that you have run out of patience and just want to get your craft on and move forward. Race off to the food storage room for an empty mason jar. Grab your favorite Fiskars Fingertip Craft Knife from your “sharp things” bucket that hangs underneath your beautiful custom pink InkStak and decide it’s time for the Mod Podge to find a new home.

Carefully insert craft knife into Mod Podge bottle. (Pause to snap a photo because you don’t really have an extra hand.) The plastic bottle should be easy to cut, smooth, like buttah. Realize that you’ve spilled a glob of glue on your desk and reposition the Mod Podge bottle over the top of the mason jar. Carefully rotate the bottle while cutting… the Mod Podge goo will pour into the bottle as you cut.

Step 5:
Squeal (or whatever) with happiness because you finally have access to your Mod Podge!

Step 6:
Pour the rest of the Mod Podge into the jar and use a variety of tools to scrape out as much of this golden glue as you can. Be sure to leave behind the evil crustiness that stuck the lid to the bottle. Realize you’ve made a royal mess of your tools and hope you didn’t get Mod Podge on your camera. Hurry off to a sink to wash your tools. Unscrew your craft knife and toss the blade… you’re probably going to need a new one anyway. Take the craft knife apart and wash with hot water.

Step 7:
Use a baby wipe or wet rag to wash the mason jar lid. We don’t want a repeat of this method using glass… Top with a lid and call it good. Get excited again to start on your Soul Journal cover.

Rejoice! You have conquered the Mod Podge Glued On Lid monster. You are now a Mod Podge Princess & Monster Conqueror. So go glue something!

Inky & Gluey Smiles!

Disclaimer: No art supplies {with the exception of the Mod Podge Bottle and Craft Knife blade} were harmed during the making of this tutorial. Information is for entertainment purposes only. Should you need to open your Mod Podge bottle with a craft knife, the risk is yours.

Spring Madness.. Signs of Spring

2011-04-03T16:58:00.001-07:00

I’ve lived in Utah for almost 17 years now and you would think that by now I would be used to the weather. Nope… every year I am “shocked” at Mama Nature’s “bipolar“ disorder in this wonderful state. One minute it’s beautiful and sunny and we’re workin in the yard and getting sunburned… and the next, well, here, I’ll show you.

{I missed the deadline for Wendy Tunison’s photography challenge so I’m sharing my photos for this week’s “Signs of Spring” theme in this post, too.}

Yesterday we were doing some yard work… pulling out bushes that were struggling and just not right for the place we planted them 10 years ago. We were also revamping the front flowerbed profile {removing the old sunken concrete curbing and replacing with some fabulous new steel edging} and doing some general yard clean up & spring fertilizing. We didn’t get as much done as we wanted, but we made a nice start.

Yesterday I perused our yard, checking out the traditional signs of spring… birds in the yard, Sadie shedding like a wooly mammoth and rolling in the grass, buds on the trees, neighbors out chit chatting after the long cold winter, and the crocuses popping up out of my weed filled tree rings….

And you know it’s spring when the flip flops are donned on grubby, yet newly pedicured toes in a nice sparkley spring pink…. It was nearly 70 degrees… of course I’m wearing flip flops in the yard!

Here’s my favorite view of the day… See that man and his cute bum? He’s all mine. I lub him. I can’t help myself. {Oh and, uhm, bye bye Japanese Spreader Yews… the hottie hubby is kickin’ ya to the curb.}

We didn’t get as much done as we wanted to because it started to get chilly and windy, rain was imminent, and we both had places we needed to be in the evening. {I went to see “Hop” with a girlfriend and her family and Brent went to the priesthood session of General Conference.}

Hold on.. keep reading… Mama Nature DID pull a prank on us… you’ll see….

So this morning I’m laying in my bed and Brent comes in and says to me, “Hey baby, we got 6-8 inches of snow outside”…. I’m thinking, “yah right, we turned the AC on last night for an hour to cool the house back down so we could sleep… no way”….

Yes way.

I covered the bed head hair with a hat and went out to measure.

Yes, I made the hat. It’s making its debut… in April.

Yes, Virginia… 6.75” of fresh, fluffy, beautiful white snow.

The crocuses are completely buried again.

I love this photo of Sadie.. She came running back from the west side of the yard and promptly sat down in the snow. The look on her face is something like, “Really? are you kidding me? I just found Poo Corner again and now you’ve covered it up AGAIN. Where am I going to ‘go’ now?” She has since changed her mind and has spent some fun time running back and forth tunneling through the snow.

Thank you, Mama Nature, but you’re just a couple days too late for April Fools… or waaay early for next year…

Challenge Card – Floating Butterfly

2011-03-25T17:41:00.001-07:00

Today (Friday) Kari Seals sent me an email and asked me to help her bounce some ideas around with a sketch that her CTMH unit was doing. It is a crazy fun sketch and of course I wanted to play, too! I immediately had a ton of ideas flying through my brain but had to reign them in a little…

Here’s the sketch:

So I got on Skype to chit chat with my friend, Michelle Johns, and she bounced some ideas around with me for this card, specifically the butterfly idea. Everything on this card is popped up with American Crafts Foam Tabs. Stamps are CTMH. The butterfly is mounted on a “bent” piece of transparency/acetate sheet. When you move the card it wiggles and bounces… it’s so awesome! Thanks, Michelle!

Here’s my card… You can see that the butterfly, gems, bling, leaf, message, mimic the various circles on the sketch. Stamps are CTMH and paper is Basic Grey – I think Nook & Pantry paper pack. The scalloped circles looked naked and out of place on the card so I added my own layer and anchored them with the orange strip of paper. Makes mama much happier :)

Thanks for popping in!

Inky Smiles!

Charmed, I’m Sure! A C.U. Recap – The Charm Swap

2011-03-18T21:51:00.001-07:00

I’m back with some photos of our Charm Swap from this year’s Creative University. This year Tresa asked me to be the “Charm Mistress”/head Charm Fairy and organize and carry out the swap. This year we did TWO separate and completely different charm swaps!! It was a TON of work and a TON of fun! I created a Charm School and our Charm Guidelines and posted them on our old CU students site. Rather than me retype and post pics of the whole shabang how about you just click on over and check it out and then finish reading this blog post? Click HERE to view the Charm Swap goodness. A separate window will open up and you can click on the tabs to read all about it and visit my Charm School!

My charm fairies were AMAZING at helping me sort all of the GORGEOUS charms that my Charming Ladies turned in. I was truly amazed at the creativity and love that filled this charm swap. Many of the ladies were beginners but you would never know it from the fabulous charms they contributed. One of our Charming Ladies had to step out of the swap due to a death in her family but another Charming Lady contacted me privately and arranged to create both her own and our friend’s charms for BOTH swaps so that our friend could receive some charms back and a bit of happiness in an otherwise sad time. You see, crafty ladies stick together and help each other out. It’s amazing. I love it.

My sweet friend, Michelle, helped carry over the big honkin box of bags of charms to our “secret hide-a-way” where we swapped out the charms. Here she is under the weight of all those crazy charms… and me getting in on the shot.. haha!

What a couple of goofballs!

Here are my darling charm fairies sorting out the swaps. We did a “round robin” style swap and it worked out GREAT! We had two tables full of Vintage Victorian charms and one and a half tables full of Under the Sea charms.

I had originally taken pictures of each individual charm but then I decided I did not want to edit each individual charm so here I’ve grouped them on my grubby Fiskars craft mat (sorry for it’s ugliness) and snapped photos of the charms in groups. I figured this would be faster and easier for me and I’d actually be able to get a post up!

Charm Swap #1 - Vintage Victorian

Theme Guidelines:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils..."
~ Wadsworth

Have you ever rummaged through grandma’s jewelry box or jeweled treasures at a flea market? Find joy in the beauty of old, well loved and worn baubles and trinkets, sheet music, lacey metals, flowers, gears, and magical beauty.
Colors are soft and muted, pastels, pearls, etc.

Party with antique colored, aged and patina’d metals (not bright and shiny) in this charm party. Think OLD!

Here are the charms that I received in my bag. I forgot to write names on these pics but I will write who they were from under the pics.

{top loose beads-miscellaneous from a couple of ppl, red and black-Bobie G., pink n silver – also Bobie G, the flowers on the card – Michelle J, cupcake card – Melody P, loose charms on the greenish card – Linda S, the green card charms – Kari S}

{red square – Nichole L, silver and black – Yvonne H, pendant circle on striped paper – Kandi G, rose circle – Tahne T, bottle charm – Charlene W, teapot pendant – Kim G}

{crystal angel –Kathie D, dice and hearts – Marieke H, heart and baubles – Marieke H, porcelain flowers – Wendi H}

Here is my main Vintage Victorian Charm. I failed to take a photo of my filler charm. My charm is created from a scrabble tile which I raided from our scrabble game and drilled top to bottom with Brent’s Dremel tool (gotta love raiding the woodshop for craft projects). I made a digital design in PSE and then shrunk it down to fit a scrabble tile and printed it out onto cardstock and covered in mod podged on both sides.

I covered the edges of the tiles with crystal effects and then dipped them into Martha Stewart antique silver glitter and let everything dry overnight. The next day I adhered the images to the tiles using crystal effects and then poured resin over them and let them sit for several days. When they were good and cured I finished them up with silver headpins and silver beads which I “antiqued” with a brown Copic marker.

And here they are assembled on the charm bracelet that I made. I made the bracelet base out of twisted jump rings and silver baubles filled with swarovski crystalss. I used liver of sulpher to antique the metal base parts. It was stinky but easy peasy and I love the end result.

Charm Swap #2 – Under The Sea

Theme Guidelines:

“The seaweed is always greener
in somebody else’s lake.."
~ The Little Mermaid

Journey through mystical seas with beads and baubles of blues, greens, purple and silvery tones.

Anything mystical shiny and shimmery goes! Mermaids and fishies swim amongst the glittery stones and shells in our underwater charm garden.

Party with pearls, shimmery shells, crystals, glass beads, silver (colored) and antique silver metals.

Here are the charms that I received in my bag of underwater loveliness. I did remember to write the names of each artist on the cards with the charms. Whew!

And here are my Under the Sea charms. My main charm is created from a tiny glass bottle which I filled with sand and a touch of magic glitter and some teeeny tiny seashells and pearls and wrapped with silver wire cuz they looked a little “naked” and needed something else. Forget a message in a bottle I want some bling in a bottle! Yah baby! My “filler” charm is just a simple shell bead from Michael’s.

Here are all of the Under The Sea charms on a bright silver bracelet that I made from the same twisted jump rings and baubles as I did for the Vintage bracelet base. I forgot to attach my own charm to it, lol, so I have it attached in a pic at the end.

I LOVED both of these swaps and I am totally head over heels in love with both of my bracelets. I have worn the Vintage bracelet several times and have received loads of compliments on it and it’s quite the conversation piece. I can’t wait to start wearing the Under The Sea bracelet now that I’ve got it all assembled! It’s sure to be a great conversation starter!

Thanks for hanging in there with me on this SUPER long post! Hope you feel inspired to make yourself a little blingity bling. All of the artists in these swaps did such an amazing job!

Inky & Blingy Smiles!

It’s Not Easy To Eat Green: St. Patrick’s Day Dinner

2011-03-17T21:18:00.001-07:00

In our almost 12 years of marriage we have never done the “green thing” for St Patrick’s day but this year I felt like it might be fun to do something for it. Originally I thought I’d do the whole Corned Beef Brisket with cabbage, taters, and carrots thing, but then I got to thinking about it… the last time that Brent and I made corned beef brisket neither of us cared for it that much so down the disposal it went.. blech. I made a command decision this afternoon to change the menu plan…

I decided to make GREEN Fettucini Alfredo (homemade sauce) with a GREEN salad with GREEN ranch dressing and GREEN garlic bread. For dessert, GREEN frosted (airbrushed by the bakery) cupcakes. It’s fun what you can do with a few drops of green food coloring… tee hee! Oh, I also picked up some Mt Dew for a green beverage, but then remembered it’s more yellowy than green. (We’ve given up soda at our house… it’s a rare treat now.) Brent chuckled when I told him what we were having for dinner, but I think he also appreciated me NOT making corned beef brisket…

Here are a few snapshots of our fun meal.

It was VERY strange to be eating green alfredo sauce and green ranch dressing. I kept anticipating green frosting with the alfredo sauce, lol! It didn’t taste any different, but it kind of tweaks your brain a little… The garlic bread burned on one half of each piece (due to it rolling on its side and us not paying enough attention) but it still tasted good. We just cut the breads into normal slices once it was cooked and tossed the burned parts.) I printed the cupcake wrappers from the Tip Junkie website because I didn’t have enough time to create my own in MTC and cut them out.

Here are some tips when coloring your food green:

1) Soften your butter to near melted before stirring in your food coloring or you will be chasing it around the bowl forever.

2) Add your food coloring to your cooked sauce at the very end. For the recipe we made (about 1 qt) we used roughly 22-23 drops of food coloring.

3) Shake your ranch dressing like mad to prevent streaking. (I use the Tupperware shaker when I make my homemade ranch.)

4) Buy your cupcakes pre-sprayed at the bakery. mmm!

Hope you had a terrific St Patty’s day!

Inky Smiles!

PS… Back soon with charm pics. I’m sooo behind in editing pics, but they are next up!

Enabler Alert! Free Photo Book AND Dollar Days Sale!

2011-03-14T17:01:00.001-07:00

Hey friends! I’m still “off” for a few days, working on some spring cleaning projects that are driving me out of my mind but need to be done.. lol… but I got some fun info from my blog “sponsors” that I wanted to share with you! {I’m putting both “ads” in one post so that I don’t flood you with emails.}

First off… PICABOO has a CRAZY deal available for new Picaboo X users. Simply set up a new account with them and you can receive a FREE Classic 20 page photo book!! (This is a $30 value.) You just pay shipping. If you have been wanting to try a Picaboo Photobook now is the time to do it! Hurry! This offer expires on March 22nd, 2011.

Here’s the FREE BOOK Scoop:

Don't forget! From now until March 22, new customers can receive a FREE 8.5x11 Classic Custom book from Picaboo using code FREECC. This offer is valid for either a hardcover or softcover book but will only work for our Classic Custom style.

The cost of one 20-page 8.5x11 Classic Custom photo book (up to $39.99) will be deducted from the order total. If the book contains more than 20 pages, the customer will be charged for the additional pages at a cost of $0.99 per page.

Taxes and shipping charges are additional.

This coupon is for new Picaboo X customers only.

******************************************************************************

Also, Lettering Delights is having their DOLLAR DAYS sale on all fonts AND SVG files (those awesome little files that you can use with

Make The Cut (MTC) and your Cricut machine! You can also use these darling SVG files and fonts with MTC 3.0 beta’s new feature “print and cut”. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMAZING little feature!

Here’s the DOLLAR DAYS scoop!

Dollar Days starts tomorrow, March 15th! All fonts, doodlebats, graphics, clipart, alphabets, and paper packs will only be $1. All SVG's will be $2. Mini albums will be $3.

In addition to the slamming dollar days deals, you can also receive the following amazing deals:

1) Over $40 in FREE PRODUCT with new account sign up. We have now added SVG's to the new account product. If you already have a an account, you will find the new product available in your library. (image attached)

2) 9 Free Fonts are available to everyone who signs up for the newsletter

3) $5 off if you refer a friend who signs up for the newsletter. You'll both receive a $5 coupon good on any purchase of $15 or more.

4) Monthly freebies. This month's freebies are the Modern Miss Alphabet (available through Try Me Now Tool) and the Fancy That Digital Paper Pack.

{Shameless self promotion: on a personal note, I’m saving for something fabulous for Brent’s birthday next month… if you sign up as a new user for Picaboo and click through my links to purchase from Lettering Delights I earn money towards this gift. I’m way stoked and hope that I can make it work!}

Back soon with another Creative University Charm Swap recap! Be prepared to drool. I am SO happy with how the Charm Swap turned out!

Inky Smiles!

Winner of The Bauble Earrings

2011-03-10T20:00:00.001-07:00

We have a winner! I used Random.org to draw a winner! I took out the double comments and my comment and we had 13 entries in this contest.
Random.org selected our winner… drum roll please…. tappppity tap tap tap tap tapppp….

Our winner is #2 – Kandi G!! Shoot me an email with your mailing address, Kandi, and I will pop these little darlings in the mail to ya!

Thank you for playing everyone!

Inky Smiles!

PS.. I’m going to take a couple of days off of the blog and do some cleaning in my studio. It’s quite awful and I’ve got to kill some dust bunnies. Be back soon with some more fun goodies for ya!

Mini Purses – Quickie Party Favor “Bags”

2011-03-09T10:58:00.001-07:00

Quickie post today. I was working on a small project with my friend, Amanda, for a church activity. She needed to cut our some “party favors” - 40 mini purses and tags to hold little candies so we went to town.

I have to say

THANK GOODNESS FOR MTC!!!!! I don’t mean the LDS Missionary Training Center.. I mean MAKE THE CUT and my Cricut Expression! I’ve been playing with the demo version for a while and finally a month or so ago bought the full version of it. I love the endless possibilities of using my existing digital art and most of all FONTS… I don’t have to buy a zillion font cartridges. SO HAPPY!

Now, before you Cricut professional ladies go ape on me and tell me I could have done it all with a cart and my dial, I know, I know I could have…. I specifically needed to resize these purses and tags by scaling them and not just tweaking the measurements on the roll-y dial or on my Gypsy (which I haven’t played much with YET). I downloaded some FREE images from the MTC forums and loaded them up. I stamped an image on some scrap paper to figure out the exact size I needed to make the tags. I loved that I could scale it all on my computer right in front of me.

I cut out 48 purses and Amanda and I scored and assembled them and then she came back over last night and I cut out 40 bracket labels and left them on the mat while I stamped a sentiment in each one. It went soooo fast! Then we adhered the labels to the mini purses and stuck little flowers on with some Glitter Glue and added glitter centers to the flowers and popped little Hershey nuggets in each one.

These are really super simple and boring but they needed to be quick and easy peasy. Not a lot of Erin Fru Fru on here, but hey they are cute and they will work :) YAY!

Creative University Recap #2 – Cluster Necklace – My Class

2011-03-06T17:24:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the delay – I got a little distracted by some things at home. Back today with another Creative University Recap.

Tresa asked me to be a teacher for C.U. waaaaay back in the fall of last year. I was so excited and nervous and had a trillion ideas going through my head and then she specified that I would be teaching a Jewelry class. Oh boy… more ideas started swirling around… and then I settled on one idea.

Here is the cluster necklace/junklace that we made for my CU Jewelry class.

I went to a few gem fairs and jewelry shows with my friend, Valerie, and started collecting goodies that I could incorporate into my project and started making a prototype. I spent a couple of weeks hemming and hawing over the last couple of elements for it. I had a budget but I liked the rolo style chain better than the “gangsta style” curb chains and I had an idea for a fabulous “souvenir” style charm that I just HAD to squeak into the budget. Well, I threw the budget out the window and spent a little extra on my project. It was so fun and so worth it.

Packages of goodies in my studio.. It was like Christmas.. a big, fat, blingy Christmas!

Here I am adding the first sneak peek to the CU students facebook page. Buwahahaha. I loved being just a little sneaky!

I pre made 120 charms for the necklaces. First, I did 61 (I broke my first one, which is why I premade them) crystal drop charms shown below tied together like a chandelier.

And then I premade 60 of the custom designed mother of pearl CU “souvenir” charms. I designed the artwork in Photoshop Elements and then brought it over to Valerie’s office and she laser engraved them for me. BUT, laser engraving was not the last step before they became charms. I hand filled them with silver paint and then cleaned each individual charm and set them to dry. My fingers were painted in silver splotches for a couple of days. Here are a couple of snap shots of my CU souvenir charms.

Once my two premade charms were completed and ready to go I set out to sort out parts for 60 kits. Holy moly… this was a LOT of sorting of teeny weeny pieces.

And then I packaged them all up into neat little bags and topped them off with cute little cardstock “toppers”.

Ready to go to Creative University!

I taught two classes at CU. One Friday night after dinner and one bright and early Saturday morning. Here are some snapshots of the two classes. We had so much fun and everyone finished their projects before they left class!

Teaching wire wrapped loops with Erin’s Pipe Cleaner-Noodle Method. Not sure WHAT I was saying or thinking or cheesing with that crazy look on my face but I love the sexay apron that Tresa made for us teachers!

I had four FABULOUS teacher’s assistants/Charm Fairies (two for each class) who were amazing and helped keep us all on track with our charms and necklaces. My Fairies were Kari Seals, Tamara Werderber, Melody Pugh, and Michelle Johns. I made each of them a special charm as a thank you gift.

Here is a pic of me and three of my Fairies… I’m not sure why Tamara isn’t with us but I went back through my pics and found one of me goofing around with Tamara and Kimberly.

And here are some random fun shots of my classes.

I had such a fun time teaching this class! I think everybody learned something new or sharpened their skills or opened the doors to a new hobby.

Inky Smiles!

PS.. If you’ve read through this entire post, thank you! Leave me a comment on this post and tell me why you need a new pair of earrings (be creative) and I will draw a winner for a pair that match this necklace! Winner will be posted on Thursday night after 8 pm mountain time. Winner will have 2 days (claim by Sat 8pm) to claim the prize before another winner is drawn. Please email me your contact info once your name is drawn.

It’s Great to Be EIGHT Layouts – Digital Scapping!

2011-03-04T15:18:00.001-07:00

(I haven’t forgotten to come back and post the rest of the CU pics and fun, but I’ve gotten a little distracted the past couple of days. I’m working on them and I will be back with more!)

This morning my friend, Suzi, came over for a visit and to work on some projects for the kids in Primary (church young children’s group). She needed some layouts/templates for the kids who will be turning eight and getting baptized this year. We had a lot of fun going through some of my digital supplies this morning while I threw these layouts together. I think I really need to get my digi schtuff moved over to the ehd and organized here asap!

Here’s what we came up with. These layouts can be printed straight up and have a pic adhered to them or they can be used as a “quick page” in PSE and have a digital photo inserted in the layout. These pages will be used as a cover for a little book that Suzi is making for each child for their baptism day. The layouts are a standard 8.5” x 11”.

I did one layout for the boys. I used papers and elements from “His Playroom” by Tracy Reid from Sweet Shoppe Designs. The font is Rockwell. Not sure who designed the stitching…

For the girls we did two layouts… but not intentionally. LOL! We got the first pink one done and noticed that the paper did not extend all the way into the frame on the right side, and then we decided to try a different paper just in case some of the girls weren’t “froo froo” pink girls. I love them both, but I really like the yellow paper layout! I think it’s a little more versatile. The papers and some of the elements came from the Shabby Miss Jen “Sweetie Pie” kit. The stitching, lace trim, photo frame, and tab came from miscellaneous other kits that I separated before I tagged, so I have no clue who they came from. The font is BrodyD.

Thanks for popping in!

Inky Smiles!

Creative University Recap Post #1

2011-03-01T23:24:00.001-07:00

Oh my gosh, I have been SOOO sick this past week. Hopefully since this is my birthday (I’m celebrating the sometheenkth anniversary of my 21st birthday on Tuesday) week it will get better and we can have some fun with cake and ice cream and friends this weekend! I did go back to the dr again last night and he gave me antibiotics for this bronchitis and it seems to be workin already! YAH!

The crappiest thing (can I say crappy on a blog?) is that this sickness has put a real downer ending to a really FABULOUS retreat with some AMAZING women at Creative University. I had a most wonderful time but I feel a little like that come home “high” from the retreat was stolen from me so I’ve been trying to “regain” my “high” by looking at the pictures and projects from this AWESOME weekend! I had SUCH a good time and think this year was even more fun than last year!

Here is our CU 2011 class photo. I made it to the photo this year! LOL! Let’s play “Where’s Erin?” and see if you can find me :)

Creative University Recap Post #1

Part of my birthday celebration was Brent and I spending some time together on this trip. The other part comes later this month… more deets later. So anyway, Brent and I drove up to CDA (Coeur d’Alene) on Thursday and camped out at the Days Inn hotel. It was quite a beautiful drive with the exception of the snowstorms we hit in the night as we crossed over the Rocky Mountains two times on curvy mountain roads. I think if it wasn’t dark it would have been more of a fun adventure, but driving in the dark in a snowstorm is always a bit scary for me. Friday morning we loaded up in the car and headed over to Camp Lutherhaven so I could get checked in and unpacked and start the fun.

Friday during the day was mostly free for us. I packed my little “go to” crafty crop bag ($6 @ WalMart – sweet!) full of goodies and started playing… We had a fabulous “Card Boutique” that was presented by Sheila Bennett and Donna Smith. Here are the projects we made. I didn’t follow all the instructions so if mine look slightly different than others you may see on other blogs, that’s why.

Sheila’s Cards: These are all little cards that you can slip gift cards in… or a wad of cash…..

Donna’s cards: Super fun cards with some springy new CTMH papers.

Also on Friday morning I had a mini class with my Charm Fairies/Teacher Assistants to help them make their projects for my class since they’d miss being students in my two classes. From left to right: Kari Seals, Michelle Johns, Tamara Wederber, and Melody Pugh. These girls were so awesome and so much help!!

I taught one class Friday night and one class Saturday morning. I will share pics of the class and the project tomorrow.

Also on Friday Tresa presented her teachers with some fabulous gifts… sexy aprons and some va-va-vooom hair bows! I absolutely LOVE mine. It’s perfect and totally me!

I will be back tomorrow with some pics of my class and class project… here’s a teaser:

Inky Smiles!

I WON, I WON, I WON... Well, It's LIKE I WON...

2011-02-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

Hey there friends!

Recently I was invited by CSN stores to do a promotional review on my blog of some of their products. Well, being an adventurous kind of girl and knowing my love of the EASE of online shopping and comfort of doing it from home in my crazy snowman pajamas, of course I accepted the offer! I feel like I've won some major contest...

HOLEE MOLEEE… have you visited CSN stores lately? It’s like having the Mall of America right at my fingertips… buh bye shopping blisters on my poor feet! Gazillions of products for me to peruse and pour over in the matter of minutes, uh, well… ok I perused for more like a couple of hours. “Oooh Brent! How about one of these? Or one of these?? OR Check this out!” Haha! CSN has pretty much everything a home wants, needs, wants, needs… (what’s the difference? Haha!) Do I buy a cute animal and alphabets print for my niece’s wall or a bbq set for Brent, a fabulous swing set for my back yard, or a zebra striped rug for my Studio floor?

Want to see what I ordered? So do I!! Tee hee! Pop back over in a week or so and I will be glad to show you what I ordered! I’m sure I will be over the moon about it!

Inky Smiles!

You Said Twinchie, But Did You Mean Twinkie?

2011-02-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

{ACK! THis was suppposed to have posted while I was away at C.U…. I opened up Live Writer this morning and there it was still in my drafts. Ooops! Anyway.. I am back from CU but am sick as a dog. I spent 4 hours at instacare on Monday night because I had a 101.7 fever that would not drop and could not stop coughing. Well, my fever has dropped to about 100, waffling back and forth between 99.5 and 100, but I’m still getting the ultra upper body workout which is sponsored by the letter C for cough. I am currently sifting through the 270 pics I took at CU and hope to have some posted by this weekend. Today is the first day that I have been able to sit upright out of bed since Sunday. Be back soon!~}

Hey friends! I’m off having fun at Creative University but I thought I would share with you one of our “group art projects”. Tresa asked us each to make a “twinchie”…

HUH?

A what?

Don’t ya mean twinkie? You know, those fluffy uber preserved puffy cake things filled with a mystery cream that will last through a nuclear war with the roaches?

Nope.

She meant a twinchie. A two inch square bit o’ artwork. I knew what an inchie was but I guess a twinchie is his big brother.

The “rules” were to stay within the theme.: WINGS

“Creative U is about spreading our wings, learning to take chances and try new things, and lifting each other up. Any image or word can be used to follow the theme, use your imagination!”

I’ve always wanted to get into collage and I “guess” this is my feet getting wet. This twinchie was SUPER fun to make. I cut a 2x2 piece of cardboard and mod podged a piece of red cardstock to it. Then I created/printed the digi images onto white cardstock and adhered them to the red background… mod podging between layers so that everything was good and STUCK. And then I drew a line with Crystal Laquer around the edges and sprinkled it with Martha Stewart Antique Silver glitter, let it dry and covered it with more Crystal Laquer and set it to dry overnight.

It turned out fantastic. Well, until I decided that I thought it needed another coat of something harder than Crystal Laquer…. (Keeping it real here….) I put on a coat of Sally Hansen super hard nail polish. Oy Vey! Nail polish + mod podge = disaster. All sorts of bubbly disaster….

So I started over. And this is my second piece… It’s not nearly as pretty as the first one was but was done and I had no intention of starting over again.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep calm , craft on, and try something new!

Inky Smiles!

Oh and PS… if you get the muchies while crafting you can always snack on a couple of these….

Faith, Family, Friends

2011-02-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

{scheduled post}

The world of crafting has connected many hearts and built many friendships. I have been lucky to have made many friends in my creative journey via the internet and have even met many in person. One friend who I have not yet met in person but would love to someday is Michelle Durheim of Creative Treasures. She is so incredibly talented and I have spent many hours drooling over her creations on her blog. One day while I was drooling over some creations I noticed that she had a painting at the very bottom of her blog… a gorgeous primitive angel painting. So I messaged her and long story short… one day she posted that she was working on another painting and if I wanted it she’d sell it. REALLY??? YES, YES, YES! {cuz while I may have some creative bones, I don’t have a painting-that-needs-to-look-like-something bone in my body….}

So one day a surprise arrived in the mail. I squealed with joy. {really… and Brent did roll his eyes at me} and we opened it up and I ~~convinced~~ ,~~made~~, begged Brent to hang it for me. It’s hanging in my front room above my red hutch which holds an assortment of framed family photos. {We’ve since moved the ipod dock and taken down the fall decorations.. lol} This lovely scene is painted on an old cabinet door and I just love it. I have wanted to share this for a while now and finally found the photos hidden in my crazy huge stash of digital photos.

So hard to take photos in the house….

I am particularly fond of primitives, salt box houses, colonial themed goodies and this just makes me smile every time I look at it. The full photos do not do it the justice it deserves. Here are some close ups of the fabulous detail.

Thank you Michelle! I am glad to have one of your Creative Treasures and delighted to count you as a friend!

Inky Smiles!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

2011-02-14T22:37:00.001-07:00

So I couldn’t share this yesterday (Monday) because I never know when my sweet husband might be haunting my blog. And ya know, I really didn’t want him to see this ahead of time. :) He likes surprises and sweet notes. We had a quiet and sweet Valentine’s Day and attended his brother’s wedding. Next week we hope to do a fun/fancy dinner.

I am mostly ready for CU.. most of my goodies are packed and I am tying up a few loose ends before I go. I slipped back into my studio the other day to whip this up for Brent. It’s a simple little card.. standard size with a message that’s “to the point”. :) I used some plain red cardstock, some patterned paper (I can’t remember who’s it is, haha) a Fiskars scallop border punch, some ColorBox chalk ink, some AC Thickers (glitter – yes!), a few KaiserCraft rhinestones and a couple of stamps from the There She Goes stamp set “What a Hoot”, and some AC Foam tabs for dimension. OH, and I used my awesome corner chompers by WR Memory Keepers. I love that little chomper! I freehanded the heart and I am happy it turned out so well on the first go.. usually my hearts are pretty lopsided!

Who loves ya baby? I do!

Inky Smiles!

Digital Art: More Charming Images

2011-02-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

Busy in the studio on the computer still… I’ve been LOVING playing with digital images and and creating fun little doo-dahs. I’m in charge of the Charm Swap at Creative University and have been having so much fun with my charms. I can’t show you my charms just yet but I wanted to share with you the image I am using on one of them (the Victorian Vintage Charm Swap)…

This image is MUCH bigger than what the charm image is. Think very small… under the size of a quarter… Don’t worry, you can still see all the fabulous detail in the finished project. Something like this:

I created the image in Photoshop Elements using images from Itkupilli’s free test sheet. I created the word art using rectangles that I colored, aged, and snipped. The text is made up of individual letters from the Portable Remington font that I manipulated individually (same as the charm cards I shared previously).

The finished product is glittery and sparkly. I can’t wait to share!

I also made some new charm cards in a blue tone. I was trying to use the CU “colors” for the last set of charm cards… I like these better but the first set of charms was already packaged so they’re staying on red cards. LOL.. .the Under the Sea charm swap will get these blue toned cards.

Picaboo Calendar Winner

2011-02-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

We have a winner for our Picaboo calendar! Random.org chose for us again this time.

Please give a round of applause to:

Comment # 3 is from Krista Openshaw:

“I LOVE your jewlery ideas. Still doing the crochet necklaces, but I would love to learn different techniques in jewlery making.”

Congratulations Krista!

Picaboo Premium Calendar Quickie Giveaway- Act Fast!

2011-02-08T08:55:00.001-07:00

Hey friends!

I am a dork.

Really.

Whilst I have been buried under piles of charms and digi art and roomie gifts and.. well… schtuff… I’ve forgotten that I have a giveaway for one of my lucky readers! So without further groveling and such I will give you the info.

Important: You will receive a “coupon” for this from Picaboo and it expires on February 15th so you will need to claim this prize by Thursday, February 10th @ 8pm or I will draw another winner. I will announce the winner Wednesday before 8 pm MST. Start gathering your photos!

Winning is easy! Here’s what you need to do:

Leave a comment on this blog post and tell me what you’d like to see next on my blog. What do you want to learn?

One of my FABULOUS readers will receive a free 11x14 Premium Calendar from Picaboo — a retail value of $29.99!

With more than 40 themes and hundreds of backgrounds to choose from,
and the ability to create your own from scratch, Picaboo makes it easy and fun
to create gorgeous calendars that will make it hard to resist flipping to the next
month. Photo pages are completely customizable allowing you to move photos
and captions anywhere on a page. We recently added editable calendar grids,
which allow you to personalize special dates with important dates like birthdays,
anniversaries, or anything else you want to be sure to remember :)

The Premium calendar features 12 laminated, glossy photo pages that
give your pictures a little extra pop, and matte date pages allow for easy writing.
Use photos from 2010 to create the perfect gift that is enjoyed every day of
2011!

Inky Smiles!

*****************************************************************************************
Here’s the fine print:

a. This coupon is valid for one 12-month Premium Photo Calendar.

b. Promotion does not include shipping costs. Shipping within the
continental US starts $8.99 for Ground.

c. The coupon will expire on 2/15/11 – this could be a great Valentine’s
Day gift for a friend or loved one! Order by Monday, 2/1 to ensure delivery by
Valentine’s Day with Ground shipping (within the continental US).

d. Coupon must be assigned to the winner of the promotion, so please
email the winner’s name and email address to affiliates@picaboo.com once the
winner has been determined.

e. This giveaway is limited to one per person *globally*, so the same
person cannot win the giveaway on more than one site. This means if you have won this same promotion on another website you are not eligible to win here. (Picaboo will verify.)

*****************************************************************************************

Top Chopped Cook: A Date Night Idea

2011-02-06T14:58:00.001-07:00

Each month we do a date night with 2 other couples. We take turns going to each couple’s home for dinner, games, etc. Our goal was to get out and do something with friends on date night. It’s been a lot of fun! This month it was Kelly & Kaisa’s turn to host and they chose to make dinner a game in itself. They sent out a note to each of us with our assignments.

Greetings Home Cooks:
You are all hereby invited to an evening of challenge, intrigue, and culinary crafting at the Norton’s on Saturday, February 5th, at 5pm.

As it is couple’s night, each couple will be responsible for cooking--yes, cooking--at our house, ONE dish, to be chosen at random: an appetizer, a main course, or a dessert. There will be a time limit for each course, followed by tasting (eating), and discussion (laughing or crying).

The rules are pretty simple. You can do whatever you want, but for each course there will be a basket of THREE mystery ingredients drawn at random. Although no one is a trained chef, you still must use all three ingredients in your dish. You can use a little bit, you can use a lot.

In addition to the mystery ingredients, you will have access to whatever is in our pantry, spice rack, refrigerator and freezer. So, you won’t only get those three ingredients to work with. We also have a library of cookbooks and recipes to peruse prior to cooking.

WHAT TO BRING:
THREE ingredients of your choosing

**Use your own discretion at how much of each ingredient you bring, keeping in mind that the combined ingredients with the items from our pantry and fridge need to feed 6 people. For example, one apple alone won’t feed 6, but one apple used as a garnish for pork chops can.

WE WILL PROVIDE THE MEAT, SO YOU DO NOT NEED TO CHOOSE A MEAT AS ONE OF YOUR INGREDIENTS.

To keep the ingredients somewhat of a MYSTERY, put them in a dark or sealed bag, write down each of your three ingredients on a separate slip of paper, and throw the slips of paper in the “HAT” upon arrival, LOL.

Come with your fantastic ideas, your cooking skills, and special kitchen implements if you so desire. BON APPETIT

Well, Brent and I put our thinking hats on an came up with a few fun mystery ingredients to bring. We decided that we didn’t want to go too “far out” with ingredients.. just things that could be pretty versatile. The mystery ingredients that we contributed were:

Pretzels, Pineapple, and Puff Pastry

To start the night we each drew a “course” and then ingredients (written on strips of paper) from a paper sack. We all laughed when we saw that Kaisa and Kelly also contributed pineapple and pretzels.

Here’s what I drew:

Ay yi yi…

and

Oh my.

So I put on my thinking cap and thought

Brent and Kelly went to work on creating their own culinary masterpieces. (They both drew appetizers.) Here’s Brent trying to figure out what to do with Puff Pastry… We were each given a few minutes to flip through cookbooks to try to figure out what to do.

And then he and Kelly took over the kitchen and went to town. Kaisa and I sat back and watched them figuring it all out. It was great!

Hrmmm… I wonder what this could be? Could it be my FAVORITE appetizer of all time?? Hrmmmm…..

I do have to say that the boys did an amazing job on their appetizers. Here are the final results, all neatly plated (and bowl’d)…

Kelly’s appetizer: Vidalia Coleslaw with a twist

Secret ingredients: Pretzels & Tomatoes

This was soooo yummy!! He used a vidalia onion dressing as the coleslaw dressing and used the pretzels as a garnish and drizzled some rasberry chipotle dressing over them. I thought I would hate the raspberry chipotle sauce because I’m not a fan of raspberries but it was so good! It added a nice sweet and spicy bite to it… I even added a little more!

Brent’s appetizer: Puff Pastry Mozzarella Basil Rolls
& Tomato Bruschetta

Secret ingredients: Puff Pastry and a Baguette

Absolutely delicious! Tomato Bruschetta is my all time most favorite appetizer in the whole world. There are some nights we make it and eat it for dinner… yah, just tomato bruschetta… with a little asiago cheese sprinkled on it. DIVINE. The Puff Pastry Mozzarella Basil Rolls were equally delicious.

And then it was my turn. Thankfully I was allowed a sous-chef since I had the main course. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to make with my THREE mystery ingredients. Yes, I got THREE because I drew last and there was an extra one in there. Doh! I finally knew what I wanted to make and peeked in the cookbook but the recipe I wanted for my sauce was not going to work… we didn’t have mirin or sake so I decided to wing it.

While my sous-chef cleaned up and fileted some chicken breasts I set to work making my sauce.

… and some garnish….

It was a lot of fun whipping this up without a real recipe and having to use my mystery ingredients. Here’s my entree all neatly plated.

Erin’s main dish: Teriyaki Island Chicken

Secret ingredients: Pretzels, Pineapple and Coconut

I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but man, this turned out REALLY GOOD. The secret is in the sauce - for real. I created a teriyaki sauce with dark brown sugar, low sodium soy sauce, minced garlic and thickened it with a cornstarch-water mixture. The sauce was a little too thick for my liking so I thinned it with some pineapple juice… oh man.. that made it. (Next time I will try it with a little lime juice, too!) The chicken filets are breaded in crushed pretzels, cornstarch and plain breadcrumbs.

The coconut was SUPPOSED to be toasted and sprinkled on the top of the chicken… but I completely spaced it in my rush to get this plated and ready before 9 pm. LOL! That’s ok, the judges let it slide and we all agreed it would have been yummy sprinkled on the chicken or even toasted and crumbed with the crust on the chicken. (Brent and I plan on trying this out very soon!) The super tender chicken is topped with sliced green onions and grilled pineapple.

Kaisa rounded out the meal with dessert! (She started prepping her dessert while I was cooking dinner and the cameraman disappeared to entertain the doggies and keep the begging down to a minimum.) Here’s Kaisa whipping up a secret sauce while her dessert is baking in the oven. MMMM. Let’s just say that the house smelled heavenly with all the baking and simmering going on at this point. MMm!

Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum. Do I detect a little hint of Pineapple rum in there? Hrmmm…

Kaisa’s dessert: Almond Mini Bundt Cake w/Pinapple Rum Pudding Sauce
& Toasted Almonds

Secret Ingredients: Pineapple & Almond Syrup

Kaisa baked these yummy mini bundt cakes in 4 little glass ramekins/dessert cups. The cake was spongey and yummy like an angel food cake and had a delightful flavor of almond and some ooey gooey pineapple pudding centers. She topped each tiny cake off with a slice of grilled pineapple and her special pineapple pudding sauce. They were very delicious and we gobbled them right up

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed this fun little date night! It was so much fun and we’re already planning our next Top Chopped Cook night for a summer date night! Can’t wait!

Inky Smiles!

Digi Art –Keep Calm

2011-02-03T22:26:00.001-07:00

I’ve been playing around with digi art today and trying to get some goodies packaged up for my Creative University class this month. It’s in less than 2 weeks and I’m trying to tie up loose ends. Most of my roomie gift stuff is done and I think I finished my secret sister gifties. I’ve got to finish my charms and part of that process was finishing up my little “charm cards” to go with them in their little baggies. I could just toss them in a baggie, but what’s the fun in that. I like frilly fun things, especially in tiny packages of jewelry and I LOVE giving them :)

Here’s what I created to attach my charms to. The tiny black dots are where I will poke holes and tie the charms to the card. They fit neatly in a tiny ziplock baggie. Yay!

One of my themes for myself this year is to “Keep Calm and Carry On”… you know, like the British war saying from WWI. You can read about it here. I am trying to teach myself to just be calm and get through it, no matter what life throws at me… I tweaked it for my charm project to say “Keep Calm and Craft On”.. no matter what your craft room/desk/space throws at you.. even if it IS glitter covered globs of mod podge.

So here ya go. It’s 2 5/8 x 1 7/8”.

The crown is from itkupulli something or other.. I think she's on etsy.. it's a free download test sheet. I extracted it from the test sheet (also used said test sheet for my charm image which I will post later). The frame is from graphicsfairy.com I extracted it from a background. The wings are from some random image I found online, the glitter is from some freebie blog train pack, the red is a snippet of a background paper and the black strip is snipped off a black textured ribbon.The CU 2011 are letters from a digital kit from a Sweet Shoppe Designs kit by MBennet (Old News?).

I created the word art from bits of paper and text and I burned the edges with the burn tool. The font is called Portable Remington or something. I manipulated (in all the text images) each letter individually because I didn't like the automatic spacing.

I am TERRIBLE at remembering who’s what I used where.. this is why I don’t usually give “credits” on images I create. I use so many items from so many places. :)

Thanks for stoppin in!

Inky Smiles!

PS.. If you want to see some sneak peeks at my class and others… visit the CU blog: www.creatu.info :)

Paninis – PuertoCuban style! (or Almosta Cubans)… An International Culinary Adventure… or something…

2011-01-31T20:13:00.001-07:00

So I may be buried under piles of paper and jewelry supplies but occasionally I pull myself out of the mess and make dinner for the Brent-man and myself.

My friend, Jamie, has been sharing recipes and pictures of her new “skinny” meals and one of them caught my eye and whet my appetite :) It’s called “Cuban Sandwich Quesadilla” and is made with Pernil, a slow cooked pork, pickles, ham, swiss cheese and mustard. Now, I’m not a fan of mustard but I like everything else on the sammie so I figured we’d try it out.

Here’s what you need for a traditional Cuban:

Pernil (skinny variety from skinnytaste.com)
Some type of bread (we used Naan)
Dill Pickles
Mustard
Deli sliced ham
Swiss cheese (or other easy melting white cheese)

On Saturday Brent and I spent the afternoon shopping up in the “big city” and hit WinCo and Sunflower Market… our two new fave stores. We picked up some yummy organic veggies at Sunflower and made our own peanut butter at WinCo. We were like small children at the peanut butter station. LOL! It’s actually very cool to watch and it tastes DIVINE.. nothing but peanuts… no additives or extra “fluff”.

So after we unloaded all our goodies we pulled out the pork roasts (they were small 1 lb roasts) and threw a couple in a glass bowl, mixed up the marinade and let it sit over night. We turned it a few times that evening and then into the crock pot it went Sunday morning. Our house smelled absolutely DIVINE and thankfully since the roasts were smaller we didn’t have to let it cook the full 8 hours. I think we made it 6 before our stomachs demanded to be fed. LOL!

We pulled the pork out, barely let it cool, and shredded it with forks. We probably could have just used the tongs because that pork just fell apart if you looked at it hard.

I took a little “culinary license” when creating our sandwiches… 1) we were out of mustard and 2) I forgot to buy ham, but that’s ok with me. On my sammie I subbed provolone cheese for the swiss because I don’t handle swiss cheese very well. SO much for authentic, eh? So these are “almosta Cubans”…. they were delicioso anyway! I am all about KEEPING IT REAL here on my blog. You may see fru fru art, but the rest of it is all me, all real… the good, the bad, the ugly, and an occasional panini.

The bread that we used is called Naan. It’s an Indian flat bread and I am sure it can’t be that difficult to make… I’ve been reading about it today and we’re going to try it out sometime in the near future. Yeah, so I think I have REALLY messed this recipe up.. they’re PeurtoIndaCuban Paninis now… and Panini is an Italian word.. well heck.. it’s an international culinary adventure. And we made them again tonight with Dijon mustard… great, now the French are involved… what has this kitchen come to?

But alas, we continue…

So I don’t have a traditional “panini maker” but I was able to create the same effect with a few everyday kitchen gadgets that are common in most kitchens. Brent has this FABULOUS cast iron griddle that can be used across two burners on our gas stove, so I flipped it over to the “grill” side of the griddle and laid out the sammies, then I folded them over and let them heat up.

To “press” the sammies and get the “panini effect” I used a metal cookie sheet and Brent’s new BSA 100 anniversary cast iron skillet (Lodge). See.. Keeping it REAL… always open for an opportunity for creative cooking :P

Look at those yummy little treats getting all nice and squooshed and heated through! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! NOM, Nom, nom, nom…. noooomm…

So we let them sqooosh there for a while.. I didn’t track the time… I flipped them over once and grilled the other side . When they looked all nice and toasty and crunchy on the second side I slid them off onto a plate and sliced each one in half. I served them up with grapes and marinated cucumbers and onions. Delicioso!

Now go out and make your family something adventurous!

Inky Smiles!

PS.. we made them again tonight… so good.

Gearing Up For Creative University

2011-01-24T16:14:00.001-07:00

Gosh I’ve been busy behind the scenes here lately getting ready for Creative University and a visit from my aunt and cousin from Massachusetts who are going to be here when I return from C.U. and stay with us as they travel cross country to LA. Crazy stuff! We DID finally get Christmas down and put away and even de-junked the Christmas/Seasonal Decor closet (aka under the stairs). Yahoo!

I’ve also been working on 60 charms (20 art charms, 20 fillers and 20 extras for swapping on my own) for the Charm Swap that I am in and in charge of and working on the jewelry class that I am teaching. I’m prepping my supplies, packaging them up and planning the agenda for my class (so I can keep on track, haha!) I really wish I could share photos with you of what I am working on, but it’s supposed to be a secret so I can’t share just yet…

However, I do have some photos of the roomie gifts that I did last year and don’t think I ever shared these with you so I’m going to share them now. :)

I wanted everything to kind of have a little “theme” so I found some fun goodies in the CU “colors” and put these together. They were very affordable and easy to make. Everything except the mini nail polish (Sally) and the treats (Wmart Valentine’s aisle)came from the Michael’s dollar aisle. I wanted to be able to do 5 sets of gifts at a reasonable price and still have some fun. Presentation is the key to sprucing up dollar items.

Here’s the package all done up. I bought the bags at Michaels ($1) and created some digi art in Photoshop for the front of the bags. I also cut and punched out some cute lacey borders and adhered them to the main “label” and then to the bag. I looooove the lacey lingerie background.. fun and whimsical.

Here’s a snapshot of the “loot” laid out. The notebooks were $1 and I added some altered chipboard (covered with BG paper) and some Maya Road flourishes that I glittered to death and adhered to the front of the notebook. The pencils came in a pack of 12 for $1… I split them up and made little tiny label size wraps that I stamped with a CTMH stamp “Special Delivery”. The mini pedicure kit was also $1 and I tied a little stamped shoe tag (also glittered) to it with a ribbon. The nail polish was less than 99c at Sally, I think I got it on sale and the sleep masks were also less than $1. The princess door hanger came in a pack of 4 for $1 and I pulled out the pink and green ones and glammed them up with glitter and put a cute little sentiment on it. The treats came in multi packs from Walmart’s Valentine’s treats aisle.

Whether you’re headed to CU, a different retreat, or just need some fun little giftie ideas, I hope this inspires you. This year I am doing something completely different and without quite so many goodies, but it will still be fun! Can’t wait to share the pics with you later!

Inky Smiles!

National Clean Off Your Desk Day

2011-01-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

This is the current state of my desk…

{Pardon the picture quality.. I snapped it with my webcam because I am too lazy to haul upstairs and charge the battery for my camera.} It could be worse… oh wait, it IS worse.. you don’t see the stuff upstairs on my table that has to come down here to the desk to find new homes. LOL!

Today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day… I read it somewhere online so it must be true! :) How perfect! I guess you know what I will be doing today, tomorrow, and the next day. Sorting out this desk and all the goodies that are upstairs on the table. I won’t even mention that all of my Christmas decor is still up and on display. That happens when you go away for Christmas and come home to a funeral, work, and then get a nasty humdinger of a cold. Christmas can wait. The desk, however, can not. I have projects to create and work to do! Creative University is just 6 weeks away and I have lots to get done and finished up!

I’ll get to working on this mess and get back to the blog soon!

In the meantime… show me your messy desk! Leave a comment with the link so I won’t feel so bad.

Inky Smiles!

Merry Christmas!!

2010-12-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

Wishing you and your family the MERRIEST of Christmases and a BLESSED New Year! This is our Christmas card this year… I created it in Photoshop Elements and printed it on 1/3 sheets front and back on glossy cardstock. This is the digi version showing both sides.

And a little disco funk for your Christmas pleasure featuring the three of us crazies… sure wish I could really move like that!

Merry Christmas!!!

Love,

Erin, Brent & Sadie the pooch

Chinese Crystal Jewelry Set

2010-12-19T21:55:00.002-07:00

I know it’s been a while since I promised to show you the necklace I made at my jewelry class earlier this month. This month sure has gotten away from me as I am sure it has for most of us. Today we got the last of our Christmas gifts wrapped and under the tree and tackled some household chores before Christmas arrives including Mt Grotegut, the ever growing mountain of laundry. We’ve been somewhat “lax” on it this past week with all the Christmas festivities and preparations… anyway… it’s nearly done… for now… haha.
So I have had so much fun wearing this jewelry set. I’ve worn it nearly every chance I get. It matches EVERYTHING, almost literally, with all the fun colors in it. It’s been particularly festive to wear to various Christmas parties and gatherings.

I purchased these strands of mixed crystals at a gem fair that came through here this summer for a ridiculously low price and can’t wait to see if the gem show folks bring more back this spring. I just love these beads!

Here’s the necklace. It’s made with silver plated 26 gauge wire and closes with a silver plated toggle clasp.

A closer view of the strands.

I did a very simple strung beads bracelet to go with it. Actually, I made this bracelet about a month prior to making the necklace. I was anxious to make a necklace to go with it but got busy doing other things again. The bracelet is strung on tiger wire and closes with a silver plated toggle clasp.

I am most excited about this piece… a handmade ring.. I used 14 gauge silver plated wire with a mandrel to create this 4 wire wrapped ring (say that 4 times fast). I “sewed” the beads on with silver plated wire and secured with “knots”. I LOVE this ring. it is fun to wear and catches the light nicely… I love when it catches the sunlight when I’m driving and I am surrounded by hundreds of sparkly dots reflecting on the car surfaces. It’s magical!

{Pardon my wrinkly grandma hands. I’ve always had
wrinkly hands…I attribute it to using them a lot. HAHA!}

I’ve had so much fun making jewelry lately and have scheduled a couple more classes for January outside of my home. Want a class? Just ask me and I’ll send you the details.

Thanks for stopping by today! Leave me a comment and let me know what you find most challenging about jewelry making… I'm dreaming up some technique posts...

Have a marvelous week!

Inky Smiles!

Denise Macias Please Contact Me

2010-12-15T18:51:00.002-07:00

Update: Denise has claimed her prize! Merry Christmas, Denise!

Denise Macias -
Please contact me via email by 8 pm (mountain time)on Thursday, December 16th. regarding the prize you won here on the blog. Because this is a time sensitive prize I will draw a new winner on Friday morning if this prize goes unclaimed.

Inky Smiles!

O Christmas Tree

2010-12-12T16:20:00.001-07:00

Hi all!

We’re busy working on Christmas presents and Christmas goodies (aka TREATS) and enjoying this Christmas season. I’ve wanted to share pics of my Christmas ornaments for a while now so I’m linking up to two parties: Thrifty Decor Chick’s Tree Party and Flamingo Toes’ Ornament Party with today’s post. I am excited to share with you my tree and some of my favorite ornaments. {There are tons and tons of ornaments on my tree, but I’ll only share some of them.}

Here’s our 7.5’ Christmas tree. I think this year is our 11th Christmas tree with it. The branches are falling apart slowly and it’s not pre lit. Every Each year we say we should get a new tree, but we end up either buying new lights or fixing the branches… hehe… Brent strings those 1400 lights on by hand every year… the set up & light process takes about 3+ hours. When we decorate the tree we put on our favorite Christmas music (Bing, MoTab Choir, etc) and decorate it together. I love decorating the tree with Brent. It’s so much fun and makes my heart sing. Our tree does have some “matchy” ornaments and is mostly red, white, and gold, but is overall a “memory” tree filled with ornaments that mean something to us and have special memories attached.

The tree is 7.5' tall but it was hard to fit presents under the tree, so Brent built a stand which helps our little tree be nearly 8.5’… much cheaper than buying a new tree! And the skirt drapes nicely over it… Speaking of the skirt, we shopped all over one year looking for the perfect skirt to fit our tree and decor of our home. Ultimately we landed at WalMart… $34 later we found the perfect skirt. {The only one like it and we’ve never seen one like it there again.}

Each year we get a few new ornaments for the tree. This year I added some sparkly leaf branches to poke in the tree and some mercury glass pine cones. {You can see the pokey sparkly branches in the tree.} I just love how much sparkle these add. I bought six but wish I had bought more!

Every time we go somewhere new for a “vacation” or “mini vacation” we buy an ornament if we can find one. This year we went up to see the Golden Spike National Monument {on a mini vacation/road trip/date} and picked up this ornament. We didn’t really go anywhere else “new” this year…

Last year we went to Massachusetts for my Grandpa’s 80th birthday and loved all the covered bridges in New England so we picked this one up at a gift shop that WAS a covered bridge.

When we first bought our tree we needed some BIG ornaments {aka normal ornaments} because I had only had a little 3’ tree in college and before we were married} and we found these glass beauties at ShopKo. I love that they have the “nativity scene” on them. We also have not ever found more of these in gold since.

Last year my sister’s kids made homemade ceramic ornaments and sent them to us for our Christmas present. We have three, one from each kid, hanging on our tree. {A star, a tree, and a stocking.} I love them…

We picked this fortune cookie up on the east coast. I put it on the tree to “bring good fortune”.

Our ornament from when we attended some events at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. We went to some skiing events {ski jump and cross country} and a medal awards ceremony.

This ribbon candy ornament reminds Brent of his grandma. She always had those hard ribbon candies in jars at Christmas. Brent always laughs about how they all think that the candy was the same candy from year to year {meaning it was never eaten, but always there}. I think my Great Grandma did the same, lol!

This is one of my favorite ornaments… our first Christmas together. My mom bought it for us. {The shell in the background is from a fun trip I took to San Diego in college.}

I just LOVE this ornament. I made it in the 3rd grade at school. It is made from a plastic cup {the kind you usually get at wedding receptions and parties}, sharpie markers, and cheap plastic beads. We colored on the inside of the cup with the markers, tossed the beads in and then put the cups on a baking sheet in the oven. I was really excited when mine came out looking like a butterfly. I have cherished this ornament.

This lovely glass ornament was Brent’s Great Grandma Stewart’s. He said that she always had a white flocked tree and lots of blue ornaments on it. We have a photo of the tree that we keep in the box with the ornaments. We only have two and I noticed this year that one was cracked. It nearly broke my heart.

This ornament is a new one for this year. Sorry for the lousy pic. I’m too lazy to go back upstairs and retake and edit pics. :P This ornament has a lovely nativity scene on it. {Did I mention that I am collecting nativities?} Oh and hey… there’s some of those sparkly pokey leaf branch thingie.

This nutcracker ornament is one of about 36 on the tree and reminds me of the many (9)Christmases that I spent in Germany.

This ornament has a couple of memories associated with it. It is one that I made when I was about 7 years old in Primary at church. The silly picture is me at a church Halloween party. I wore my mom’s “nightgown” {uhm, lingerie jacket thingie} and went as a gypsy. LOL! I wonder if she even thought about what I was wearing in public. Tee hee! The backside of it is a felt Christmas tree. I remember making this and trying so hard to get that gold ribbon perfectly round and to stick flat with that awful Elmer’s glue. I guess I knew even way back then that Elmer’s glue was not my favorite craft glue. LOL!

I love these pointsettia flowers. Brent’s mom made them out of wired, beaded ribbon and used some little red berries for centers. I LOVE these and they are great for filling in holes in the tree.

Here’s a corner shot of the room. I love my cozy little Christmas. I wish we had a fireplace to hang stockings from, but they hang perfectly right now on the shelf that Brent built for me for Christmas a couple of years ago. The antique buffet was Brent’s Grandma Grotegut’s and is a treasure to us.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed reading about my fav Christmas ornaments!

Inky Smiles & Merry Christmas!

Picaboo Book Winner

2010-12-10T23:02:00.001-07:00

Ahhh.. running behind tonight, but alas, here we go. I used Random.org to draw a winner for the Picaboo Photo Book giveaway….

Drum roll please….. tappity tap tap tap thumpity thump thwamp……

Counting down the comment list….

#6 is Denise Macias

Congratulations Denise! Please email me your email information so I can have Picaboo send you the info for your photobook!

Inky Smiles!

PS… Kathy S- I looked into where Picaboo ships and YES, Australia IS on their list!

Simple Christmas: Brownie Box Slipcover - Tutorial

2010-12-09T14:28:00.001-07:00

Hello! This morning I had an email from a friend asking me if I had seen a particular template she had been looking for “a slipcovered brownie mix” or something like that… I did a little searching and found nothing but I remembered that some mixes we bought from Lehi Roller Mills last year had “slipcovers” on them. So this morning I set out to create my own template. This is a simple tutorial. I shot from the hip and just snapped photos as I went (on top of the mess I’m currently working on) which explains the messy photos.

Here’s what I came up with. Lou Faye, I hope this helps!

Slip Covered Brownie Box Gift

This slipcover was measured to fit a Betty Crocker Brownie mix. I am sure it will work for other similar size cake and cookie mixes. If not, it is VERY EASY to alter this slipcover… just adjust the score lines.

What you will need:

Your brownie mix box
A scoring tool (I’m using my ScorePal)
Cardstock
Adhesive
Paper Trimmer
Decorative Paper, Stamps, Stickers, Ribbons, Embellishments, etc, to decorate your box

Step 1

Cut two pieces of cardstock to 8”x7 5/8”. Mark the 8” side with a pencil (a little tick or x will do) so you know which side it is. Turn the cardstock so that the 8” side runs horizontally.

Step 2

Measure from the left side of the page, not the score lines. Starting from your left, score at 3/4” and then again at 6 1/2”. Repeat on second piece of cardstock. You may fold your cardstock now or wait until later. {I fold mine now and check the fit by wrapping the pieces around the box.}

Tip: Did you know that when you fold a scored paper that the valley you created by pressing down and scoring should be on the OUTSIDE of the fold? This is because you have already “stretched out” the paper. Folding it on the inside of the fold can cause the fold line (on the outside) to tear and look yucky.

Step 3

At this step I start to decorate my slip cover. Determine which piece will be your “front” and position it so that the folded edges face AWAY from you. (I had to cut a new piece for this shot because I dropped my stamp on my paper… keepin’ it real here, keepin’ it real!)

Decorate your front how you’d like. Here I have stamped a Christmas sentiment from the CTMH stamp set, D1440 “Everlasting Life” in CTMH Cranberry Ink. And then I decided it needed a little bling so I pulled out my Sakura Star Dust glitter pen and highlighted the flourished words with it.

Step 4

Lay out your cover pieces like this..

Apply adhesive to the FRONT side of the 3/4” side of the front piece. (clear as mud?)

Steps 5 & 6

Step 5 -Join your pieces like this by laying the wide piece of the back cover over the 3/4” piece of the front cover. I forgot to take a pic of it so you’re seeing the next “step”.

Step 6 – Apply adhesive to the FRONT of the 3/4” piece of the BACK cover. (clear as mud again? LOL!)

Dang, those brownies are making me hungry….

Realize you’ve run out of adhesive when your tape snaps off 1'” from the top of the cardstock… pull out your super sticky red tape cuz you’re too lazy to change the ATG tape and finish applying adhesive. {Told you, keepin’ it real here!}

Step 7

Fold the box so that the wide piece of the FRONT attaches to the 3/4” piece of the BACK. Press to adhere.

Step 8

With both hands, begin sliding the slipcover over the box. My slipcover fit very snugly on the box and took both hands to gently work the cover down the box. I might increase the score lines by about 1/16” inch next time.

Step 9

Now it’s time to embellish a little. Look to your left at your mess of ribbons {which you took out of your RibbonStack and put in a giant basket to tote with you somewhere and never made it back in your RibbonStack} and pull out something festive. I decided to go simple and just tie a ribbon around the box.

Not bad, but it could use a little more bling… Let’s try adding a fabric strip and some fru fru glitter foliage. MUCH BETTER!

Or print a cute little tag like this on some cardstock and layer it up on the front of the box. You can download a full sheet of labels HERE. Please note these are for PERSONAL use only. Do not redistribute.

There’s all kinds of ways you could dress up your slipcover! Tie a spoon or whisk to the ribbon and put it all in a bowl, tie on some berries or twigs for an earthy look, or attach a handmade ornament. The possibilities are endless! Let me know if you create a slipcover box! I would love to see what you come up with!

Inky Smiles!

Picaboo Book Giveaway HERE on the blog!

2010-12-08T11:02:00.001-07:00

Hey friends!

Check this out! Picaboo is giving ONE of my blog readers a FREE book! Just in time for Christmas, too! How SUPER COOL is that? This is not a standard promotion, this is a book just for YOU, dear winner, whoever you will be!! I will choose a winner and Picaboo will email you with the coupon code to win YOUR FREE BOOK!

Here are the details for what you will win. The coupon will be good for THREE different types of books! YOU CHOOSE! This coupon is good for one 20 page Classic photo book in any style. It does not cover additional pages over 20 or applicable shipping costs. The coupon will expire on 12/30/10.

Classic Custom hardcover books add a "wow" factor and a professional touch to your book with a completely customized cover that really makes an impact. Create a one-of-a-kind cover featuring the layout, background, images, and text of your choice on the front cover, back cover and spine.

Our Classic Leather books have a rich, smooth finish and formal, timeless design that speaks to their lasting quality. These covers are easier to care for than the Classic Linen, which can show fingerprints and other markings more easily.

Our Croc-embossed leather books feature our classic design and durable bonded leather with a stylish embossed finish. Less formal and more "fun", croc-embossed leather can jazz up any photo book. (No – it’s not real crocodile skin! The croc design is embossed on our standard Classic bonded leather).

Our Classic Linen books feature a traditional photo book design with a die cut window on the front cover, allowing your image and caption from the first page to show through the cover when the book is closed.

Not a digital scrapper? It’s ok! You don’t have to be! Picaboo has a wonderful, what you see is what you get, interface for memory makers (that’s you) from beginners to experts. Creating photo books with Picaboo is easy and fun. Photo books can be fully customized by dragging-and-dropping photos and captions anywhere on your pages, and our software allows you creative control so you can make each special page look just the way you want it to.

Photo books make AWESOME Christmas presents and are very fast and easy to do! No more printing and cutting photos and oodles of papers and embellishments. Need a gift in a hurry? Did you forget someone on your list? A favorite aunt, a mother in law? Then this gift is for you!

******************************************************************************

Here’s what you need to do to enter this giveaway:

1) Leave a comment on this post and tell me
what your favorite Christmas memory is.

2) Post about this giveaway on your blog and link back to me,
if you don’t have a blog, tell a friend or two.

3) Cross your fingers!

Winner will be drawn by random.org on Friday evening by 9 pm MST.

Giveaway TODAY! (Well, technically Wed Dec 8th, 2010)

2010-12-07T23:07:00.001-07:00

Hey friends! How would you like to win a FREE book from Picaboo? This is not their "get a free book now" from Picaboo like a recent promo they had... it's a FREE 20 page Classic photo book, valued at up to $39.99.

You will be able to choose any ONE of these books:

I will be posting later today ( Wednesday, December 8th) here on the blog. Come back in a bit for the details on how YOU could win this book.

Inky Smiles!

Erin

Crocheted Necklaces – Jewelry Class Results

2010-12-06T11:46:00.001-07:00

I had a jewelry making class at my home on Friday night. We had 3 girls get sick, but the 6 who made it and, aside from some wire gone wild, had a BLAST! We did crocheted necklaces and laughed into the wee hours of the night.

Here are the girls and their necklaces. Everyone did long necklaces this time. Totally fun! (There are only 5 who finished because Sierra’s wire was literally hopelessly tangled and she has to start over with new wire.) Note to self: Only use wire on a spool. The looped wires are a nightmare!

Marilyn
Her necklace was wild ‘n chunky, but really not that heavy.

She finished quickly so I whipped up a pair of earrings to go with her necklace. LOVE the organic feel to this set!

Amanda
Amanda also used copper wire and earth toned beads.

Krista
Krista went with a classic black and white theme.

Kaisa
Kaisa added some fun focal beads and worked the smaller beads in.

Ginny
Ginny used earth tones and created a necklace with a vintage feel to it.

Erin
I will show you mine in the next couple of days. I created a full set of goodies to go with my necklace. :)

So proud of my girls! They were awesome and this jewelry class was loads of fun! I will do more on a regular basis after Christmas so if you and your girlfriends would like to learn something fun and fabulous let me know and we can set up a class.

Inky Smiles!