Happy New Year

Today we spent a few hours at the barn with Bo.  We did chores and then I rode him for a little while.  A highlight of the time there was pulling Jeff on a sled!  It's something we've talked about doing for a long time and today we gave it a try.  It was fun and Bo did wonderfully for never having pulled anything other than a log before.  Sadly, I had the camera with us, but didn't take any pictures.  I've really got to get better about that.

Tonight I spent about four hours in the Studio room.  (gasp!)  It started as part of my New Years' goals, I suppose you could say.  I had thought how cool it would be to set a goal of trying to spend at least a little bit of time in there everyday.  Tonight that "little" bit turned into hours - only interrupted by it now being time for bed!  I started off doing some cleaning and organizing.  Then I decided to make something and this is the result:

These are all new stamps that I hadn't used before.  I have a collection of motivational/happy type of stamps and tonight I decided to use a few of them on this one card, with a horse - of course.

I pretty much made this card for myself, to reflect my hopes for the coming year (to do what I love - often).  I may end up listing it, or one like it, for sale. 

The "Begin Anywhere. Just Begin." saying is one that has been helping me in my creative journey these past few months.  I discovered that saying on a matching set of cards, stationary, notebooks, and stamps and I had to get one of each.  Sometimes it's so easy to get bogged down in preparations or other things when we should just BEGIN. 

Inside is a Happiness Card stamp that I think is a great idea.  I figure we could all do with reminders on what makes us happy - especially when things might not be so happy at the time...

I think it would be fun to set a goal of making something - anything - everyday.  Or at least set a goal to work on crafty things everyday.  I'm going to think on it and try to come up with a concrete list of goals for the year.

I hope everyone's 2015 is off to a good start!

Craft Day!

I can always tell it's been a while when I pop on here and see the background of my blog is the wrong season.  For instance, today it was fall colors.  Um...  that was a bit ago...  So now we have an appropriate winter theme.

I really would like to blog more regularly... it's not that I don't have anything going on, it's just that I forget to come on here and talk about it.  I don't often take pictures while I'm working, so while I may have stuff to say, I don't have much to show and that would be boring, eh?

Recently, I dug out my old little "point and shoot" digital camera and made its new home in my Studio room.  Compared to our newer cameras, it is a simple little thing, but it is highly portable and is good for taking quick shots of what I'm working on. 

Yesterday was a cold, snowy day, which for me is good crafting weather.  I have been steadily crafting along, here and there, but yesterday I had an all day creative marathon.  It was wonderful!  I made some new greeting cards, did quite a bit of stamping, tried embossing by myself for the first time, and worked on some custom model horses.

Here are some pictures from yesterday!:


First up, a card that I made for my husband for Valentine's Day, which is also the anniversary of when we met.  The stamp on the front says: "Every woman wants a man who will ruin her lipstick and not her mascara".

I've had this gorgeous carousel horse stamp for a little while and hadn't used it yet.  A few days ago I made a Valentine's Day card with it and listed the card on ArtFire.  It sold!  (my first actual greeting card sale)  So, yesterday I stamped several more of them.  I'd like to do a series of cards, all different colors.

I learned how to emboss at a craft get together a few months ago, but hadn't tried it on my own.  I had these pretty tatted doily stamps and hadn't used them yet.  I tried a pad of white ink I'd bought, but it wasn't working.  I was bummed, until I remembered I'd just recently bought embossing ink and powder.  I tried it and was thrilled how they came out!:

I also cut up a bunch of scrap cardstock and paper into sizes to use for bookmarks, artist trading cards, and inchies.

Moving on, I started working on some horses.  I prepped a couple of Micro Minis for paint and then I got to this one...

I just wasn't happy with how he looked, so....  "off with his head!"

Re-attatched, next step will be sculpting his neck and some on his itty bitty head:

To show how tiny the micro minis are:

 Next up was a Breyer stablemate that I had started on last summer.  Here is how this one started out:

Last summer I had repositioned a couple of the legs.  He will be pulling.  A week or so ago, I did some preliminary fill and sculpt work on his legs.  But one major repositioning task lay ahead of us...

Again, "off with his head!"  It was just the day for that I guess....

After sanding down the top of his withers and shoulders and re-attaching the head/neck in an approximate position:

That one will also need a lot of fill/sculpt/sanding.  In researching horses that compete in draft horse pulling contests (my original plan for him) last night, I found that they tend to pull with their heads up, not down.  But I still liked the head down plan I've always had for him, so maybe he won't be a competitive pull horse, he'll just be leaning into a heavy load, or pulling a plow.

It was a good day of making stuff and I'm planning on more of that today!

New Books, Inspiration, WhooHoo!!

Yesterday my wonderful husband and I were in town to run some errands, namely for me to go to the dentist and get a couple of fillings.  (ouch)  Afterwards we ran some errands, including stopping by our local bookstore.  We browsed books for a little while and I found a book on wild horses that I liked, then a book on card making and scrapbooking.  Well, he bought both of them for me!  What a guy! 

-- Wild Horses of the World is chock full of beautiful photos of many types of wild horse and pony, including several that I, with a lifetime horse obsession, hadn't heard of.  The wheels have already been spinning with inspiration of custom horses I could create using this book as a starting point.

-- The Complete Practical Book of Making Gift Cards and Scrapbooking is a small, thick (512 pages!) reference for paper crafts.  Each section in it is lead by several tutorials, showing many different types of techniques.  The tutorials are followed by many, many projects with material lists and step by step instructions.  The book is LOADED with high quality color pictures, which is awesome for me, since I am a visual learner.  I'm already overloaded with ideas after just flipping through the book a few times and stopping on random pages. 

As an added bonus, I discovered a statement in the very back that says the publishing company plants and manages forests that contain 3.5 times the amount of trees used in printing their books.  That is very cool. 

I haven't had much luck yet in selling paper crafts, but to be fair I haven't given them a fair shake in my advertising either.  I've so far only really listed a few paper items for sale.  I need to put the hammer down in getting all of them photographed and listed for sale.  That, in combination with the rush of new pieces that I'm sure this book will spawn, should see me getting some of my paper goods out in the world I'm hoping!

Time to get to work!!

Christmas Time is Here

Another spaced out (as in length of time) blog entry starts...  Now!

Christmas is right around the corner and I received a gift from my Granny that I'm pretty excited about.  She sent me a box full of vintage rubber stamps that came from when her niece was a teenager.  There are some pretty cute stamps there and some that are quite quirky as well - can anyone say chicken marching band? 

Yes, I'm serious, haha... 

I'm looking forward to playing around with the stamps and seeing what kind of new creations I can come up with for them to be used on.  I see a bunch if new and fun paper goods in my future - yay!  Maybe I'll come up with a chicken marching band bookmark!  heehee...

I'm sort of in the middle of an overhaul of EVERYthing at this time, so not much crafting has been going on.  Though the bug has been steadily chomping on me as I come across supplies and items or pictures that inspire me.  My husband is in the military and has been deployed to the Middle East for the past several months.  He'll be home in a couple of months and while I eagerly await his return, Operation Organize the Entire House has begun!  (wish me luck on that - I may very well need it!)

On the sales front, my Nail Necklaces have been somewhat steadily selling, as they always do.  I'm also happy to report that I sold my second ever online dreamcatcher.  I've sold many dreamcatchers over the years in face-to-face sales, but only two so far in an online venue.  That made me happy.  Now if the cards and bookmarks would start selling...  Maybe all I needed was a chicken marching band stamp... 

(I'm sorry, I just can't get over that one, I think it's too funny!)

I guess that's all for now.  Funny how the last post I made I was horrified that I still had a winter background..  now it's winter and I have a summer background.  Sigh.  Ok, it's not really funny, I'd say it's more tragic.  I really do want to get better about blogging.  Maybe that can be a New Years Resolution for 2012. 

Hmmmm....