21st Century Pillow Book

Hello again! Do you like pumpkin pie? I sure do! It's one of my favorite pies, actually. I am really excited that it's pumpkin season here in NY.  The rest of the Stampendous Design Team is pretty excited too. That's why our theme this week is "Pumpkin Pie." We will be featuring all sorts of pumpkins (and there are a lot!) in our projects this week. Today, I am sharing a cute necklace I made. This is a great necklace for a child. Although, let's be real...I'd wear it too! I used the Cling Create Fall stamp set and the coordinating Die set to create my pumpkin. I stamped him with Staz-On on to a piece of white shrink plastic. I had experimented with clear first, but after I had made my glittery background, he was too tough to see, so I redid him with the white. I colored the pumpkin (before shrinking) with Sharpies. I punched a hole in the top, and shrunk him down with my heat gun. For the glittery goodness in the background, I applied some glue t...

Are you on Pinterest? Oh my word, what a wonderful place to be. I love Pinterest. How clever to have a virtual pinboard for everything you love on the web? And keep it all organized! I've found that many Pinners don't actually go forth and use their Pins. Which is so sad. An unfulfilled pin is a waste! I try to redo, use, and get inspired by my pins all the time. Ok, not quite as often as I'd like, but I really do try. This past week, I used 2 of my pins. I'm going to share one of them with you today. HERE 's the original post where the pin was taken from. And this is one of mine.... I made these necklaces for my son's teachers. I think they are adorable, and just perfect for those amazing folks that are educating our wee ones. I have often seen these necklaces with just a simple silver chain, and the nest is always silver-toned as well. I wanted to change it up, so I used a very pretty brown. And for the necklace, some pale pink glass beads. Here is my othe...

Greetings! Today I share with you a pendant. Not a card! A pendant! As many of you know, I am a jewelry maker first and foremost. Hell, I have a degree in it! Paper crafting is secondary…so that gives you an idea about how passionate I am for jewelry! Sadly, it takes me a bit longer sometimes to make personal adornments…for a few reasons…one of which is that my paper crafting stuff is always “out.” Exposed paper trays and markers are easier to get to then 15 bead boxes that are stuck behind my craft room door, or my silversmithing workshop that is currently housing my mom’s Halloween stuff (don’t even get me started!). So, paper stuff gets made way more. But huzzah! I used chipboard for my pendant! A paper crafting supply! :) I recently acquired the Sugar Skulls stamp set from none other than Bombshell Stamps . But all I’ve had a chance to do was ink up Phoenix and Rhiannon with skulls and flowers on their hand. Their request. Guess who asked for the skulls and who asked for the flowe...

Diana is my family’s “adopted” sister. She lives 5 houses away from us (4 from me actually), she was born 1 week after my middle sister Pam, and the 2 have been best friends practically since then. She is one of us. The closest thing to being a sister without actually being one. I usually give her gifts from The Pyramid Collection catalog, because of their unique qualities, their bit o’ magic and their pure coolness factor. But this time, I decided to make her a gift. I had shown you these crystals in a post a week or so ago in a necklace that I had made for Julie. I had shown these crystals to Diana many moons ago when I had first bought them, and she loved them. I had wanted to make her something with them since then… but just never sat down to do it. Then I misplaced them.. and so on and so forth… But, I finally made it for her and I am happy to say that she loves it. Her birthday is in August, hence the peridot colored beads. I used orange beads as well, because I liked the contr...

Making jewelry has always been a passion for me. It is my favorite thing to create. Yes, even more than cards and scrapbooks (although they are very close behind!). I love that you can show off the craft wherever you go. Carrying a 12x12 scrapbook isn’t easy to do! But a necklace, you can wear proudly and exclaim “I made this!’ So sometimes I don’t have the “mojo” as so many of you call it, to play with jewelry… and other times, it’s just not a good idea to lug my bead boxes downstairs to try and create while my son is playing with his trains and my daughter is trying to stick her hands in to everything that she’s not supposed to. So sadly, my beads and things have to sit in my craft room and wait for me to find a few spare moments to play with them. But yesterday, not only did I have inspiration, but I had the time and energy to make a couple of pieces! Here’s one of them: Those are real pieces of quartz crystal! Aren’t they stunning? I have had them for years… and never got around...

So, I have been trying for weeks now to get some presents and cards made for some of the special friends I have made over the past few months. I Finally got to finish a necklace for one of those friends. I can’t tell you who she is… because I haven’t sent the necklace to her yet… but, I am pretty sure that she will be reading this post. So, she’ll get a sneak peek at her gift. I hope she’ll be surprised when it arrives in her mailbox! I used lots of different beads for this 3 strand necklace. A ton of glass, some acrylic, opalized glass, square, metal… it’s a long list. It’s made of different shades of blue and purple… which I believe are her favorite colors (hope I’m not wrong!). I had fun making this necklace! As usual. I especially love the little baubles I hung off of the chain. So, now I’m off to make some more! That is… if Rhiannon ever takes a nap!

Well, folks, I got a lot of wonderful feedback last week when I blogged about the Twilight Necklace I made. Here’s the LINK if you missed it. So, I decided to make another necklace… I actually really wanted to anyway, since the beading bug has bitten me again. Plus, I still had Pam’s charms so… Here’s my latest creation. Most Twi-stuff is depicted in red, black and white, but the movie had such a blue cast to it, I decided to use that as my color inspiration. You can see here that it’s got a tiny photo of Edward and Bella, during the piano scene, in a bottle cap. I put 5 little charms on the chain, plus another hanging off the back of the piece. I lov e the colors, and I really like the combination of sizes and textures of all of the elements I used. I even listed it on my Etsy Shop so that if you want it to be yours, it can be! I plan on making more of these little babies, but if there’s a specific scene that YOU want to wear around your neck, let me know and Pam and I will...

Hey everybody! Because of the Holiday, TTIC is taking a break from releasing a new challenge this week. Instead, it’s going to be a catch up week, which is great because there are definitely some challenges I wanted to do but couldn’t for one reason or another. So, I decided to use Beth’s Challenge from May 26th: Favorite New Moon Quote. Click on the title to check out the original posting. Here’s the quote I chose: “Before you, Bella, my life was alike a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars- points of light and reason. …And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly, everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. “ -New Moon pg. 514 And here’s my project. I have been on a mega jewelry kick lately, and all I wanna do is make necklaces, so I thought that I could translate my quote into a piece of wearable homage to Twilight. I used a beautiful piece of dichroic glass for my interpretation of Bella as the meteor. The starlight sky is the glimmeri...

It’s Tuesday! Time for another fabulous Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge! This week’s challenge was created by Donna … and what a thought provoking challenge it is! Here’s the scoop. “Creative Portion: Do you have a favourite Edward and Bella, Jacob and Bella or even a Alice and Jasper romantic moment? Create something that celebrate’s their love or how about creating something for that special person who you love. Comment Portion: Tell us about your most favourite romantic moment… be it in the books or real life!” I have been itching to make jewelry lately! I have had no time for my favorite craft! I know... you're shocked. It's NOT scrapbooking or cardmaking! So for my project portion, I decided to highlight my favorite moment Twilight the movie. Literally moment. If you blink… it’s over. It’s when Bella’s is putting all of the pieces together and realizing that Edward is a vampire. You briefly see a couple of frames where Edward looks like a “typical” vampire and he i...