Paper Odds and Ends

This might come as a surprise, but . . . I collect paper things. If/when we are out and about, I take business cards and brochures of places we go (fun places, not like, Home Depot or Fry's). I buy postcards. I keep wrapping paper, fun packaging, and envelopes with neat cancelled stamps. I have, for a while, been throwing around the idea of taking all those things and making a layout about how I heart paper. In the meantime though, I've just been saving them up.

I went to CKC-Mesa this weekend. I had previously decided not to go because of the time and money, but Greg highly encouraged me to go since I may not be able to go for a while after this. This year, Studio Calico was an exhibitor, which they haven't been in the past, and along with picking up some stamps and Mister Huey sprays, I also got some little handouts (business card, a coupon, and a kit subscription form) that I thought were right up my alley. Look at the backs! Makes me want to use them in a project.


Some other things I've collected and will do something with down the road:

Postcards from Lux Coffee Bar:

Kraft bag with vintage ads from when I bought something at Mystic Paper:

Also, along the lines of paper stuff, oh, hello friend has some super inspiring business card posts. Makes me want to make business cards just to have sweet business cards, but I don't actually have a business.

Flowers Galore Thank You Card

I woke up around 4:30 this morning to use the bathroom and then I couldn't fall back asleep. Annoying. So I've been tooling around on the Internet since about 5:00.

And . . . here's a card:




I made this when I first got my hands on extra colors of distress inks and wanted to play with them. Flower stamps are from the Flowers Galore set from Unity Stamp Company. I was also inspired by this card from one of Nichole Heady's posts.

Doily Background Elephant Baby Card

I have been a crafting fiend as of late. I've made lots of cards. I even finished a scrapbook page in only two days!

I saw this Lawnscaping challenge on a blog (Britta Swiderski) and although I don't actually have any Lawn Fawn stamps . . . I really liked the whole stamp-your-own-patterned-paper thing.


I picked up a BasicGrey stamp set on the clearance table of Scrapbooks, Etc. and it had a doily-looking stamp that I wanted to use for the background. After I stamped the background, it took me a bit to figure out what to do with the card. I finally settled on baby card because there are lots of people we know having babies this year. And if it doesn't get used this year, that's okay, because there are several people we know getting married this year, so that means I'll get to use it down the road. Heh.


The greens don't really match, but I was trying to use up scraps, so it was close enough.

Pink Baby Quilt

I'm slightly embarrassed to say that when I bought the fabric for this baby quilt, it was before Greg's cousin, Tamara, had her first baby a couple of years ago and I was thinking it'd make a nice gift. Well, I started on it, sewed a couple rows of blocks together, got discouraged after realizing that I couldn't sew stretchy fabric perfectly (or anything, really), and then gave up.

Recently, Greg has been suggesting that I finish it before the baby comes so that someone (baby K #1) at least gets some use out of the pile of fabric that has been sitting in my craft room for two years. This past week, I resolved to let go of my need for perfection, suck it up, and just get it done. So I finally finished sewing together all the fabric squares I cut out for the quilt top:


It's a pretty good motivator seeing that all sewn together. It looks pretty legit from the front. The seams and edges in the back are messy, but when the quilt is finished, no one else will see it, so no biggie. My biggest concern is if the stitching might come out, but I'll deal with that later if that happens.

Next up:
- acquire backing fabric (I'm debating whether to buy a sheet or buy some fabric to piece together)
- quilting the top, batting, and backing together
- binding the edges

Rainbow Cards

I'm a fan of rainbow colors. I remember when I was younger, perhaps around six, my friend (Lee Anne) had this set of stamp markers that I borrowed. I was like, Whoa. I can color and stamp this rubber stamp with all these colors?! Very exciting.

Other things that are exciting to have in rainbow colors:
- wardrobes/closets (actually, that blog post is what prompted me to reorganize my closet a couple years ago into ROYGBIV order)
- baker's twine
- distress inks!

Since I recently stocked up on some additional colors of distress inks, I busted those out for this color challenge at Lily Pad Cards:


A commenter also tipped me off to this other challenge involving baker's twine at Wee Memories, so yay to efficiencies in cardmaking!


The purple-ish blue on this card is a bit faint on the edges, but I like how the card turned out overall:

Pretty happy with this card too . . . I was thinking baby card:

I was able to finish both cards in one sitting because Greg had to work late and then when he got home, he played video games with his friend for a couple hours. I felt pretty accomplished from a crafty perspective.

New Tools

JoAnn was having a sale on papercrafting tools and stamping supplies, so I picked up some new things that I tried out when making some thank you cards and was quite happy with the results:

Tonic Glass Cutting Mat

Cutting out shapes with an X-acto knife was so much easier on the glass than a self-healing mat because the blade didn't sink into the mat. The Martha Stewart circle cutter seemed to work better on the glass as well. Also, the glass cutting mat is good for doing different distress ink techniques, protecting the table surface, and easy clean-up.

Stamp-a-ma-jig

I made a boo boo while stamping on a card when I didn't ink it up enough to get the whole image stamped. I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to go back and re-stamp in the same place. You can't even tell that I made a mistake. Awesome!

Additional colors of Distress Inks
Distress Inks are my favorite type of ink to use. I mostly had neutral colors before, but I stocked up on some cool colors and a few more warm colors. I've been using them a lot since I got them. 'Cause they're just that good.

Stretch Marks

I had previously asked my mom if she got stretch marks when she was pregnant and she said she didn't, so I was hoping (oh so very much) that I, too, would be spared stretch marks. Last night, however, I noticed some stretch marks on the underside of my belly. Annnnndddddd . . . let the crying commence. Just kidding. But not really. The saying "no use crying over spilled milk" comes to mind, doesn't it?

I put some lotion on my belly before I went to bed, then again this morning before I went to work. Not that lotion really does a whole lot of good, except maybe improve the appearance. Sigh. Not that I'm saying all this isn't worth it, but the changes to my body are a tad shocking. Big belly! Waddling! Stretch marks! But on the upside . . . No scooping cat poop! Baby kicks! Baby!

Light Rail

Today, I took the light rail for the first time ever. I'd like to say it's because I'm being "green" and junk, but really it's because I'm protesting the parking garage management company for wanting to charge me for NOT parking in their garage.

The light rail was super easy to navigate and fairly convenient - I decided that's what I'll do the rest of the time that I'm working downtown. I was a bit concerned that there would be weird people on it, but actually, there aren't really (that I saw, at least). At the same time, I'm not going to be hanging around downtown, takin' the light rail after it gets dark, either.

I think one weekend, if Greg is up for it, I'd like to tool around downtown just by taking the light rail. It makes downtown seem more urban than it really is!

Mushroom Mail and Waddling

I enjoy getting personal snail mail (none of that junky stuff we get most of the time). It's why I like to ask people for postcards if they go somewhere I've never been, so not only do I get mail, but I also get a postcard - two things I heart! (Though I like just one or the other too).

This weekend, I got a letter from a friend (Kimberly), along with a little goodie inside:





The tape! The doodling! The cute Asian stationery goods! I'm a fan.

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This week, I feel that my waddling has become more pronounced. Really, it's been a gradual thing, because I know I started to develop a waddle before now, but this week, I just feel like, Man, now I'm really waddling. Before, it was kind of like, I could walk normally if I wanted to, but I don't know that that's really an option now . . . there's some actual pain/discomfort in the hip area associated with walking normally (one of the drivers for why I stopped wearing heels about this time last month).

DIY Paper Flowers

Similar to the twine embellishments here, I saw these Girls' Paperie paper flowers while at the scrapbook store and thought that I could make something similar myself:


I first played around with shapes in Microsoft Publisher to get the measurements down, basically creating a template that I printed out and used as my cutting guide. After that, it was just a matter of picking out paper, cutting out three pieces to stack on each other, and securing the layers together.


There are tons of possibilities with the paper that can be used to customize these. Now I just have to figure out a project where I can use these.