Altered Mini Book

This past Saturday, I picked up this cute little mini book at craft depot.  The title is Ghosts and the author is Kevin Osborn and it only measures 1.75" x 2.25".  It's so cute, I knew I had to do something with it. 

I started cutting a niche in the inside pages. I used a sharp exacto knife and a metal blade ruler to start.

Once you have a few pages cut, you won't need the ruler, because the previous pages will act as a guide. I cut about 1/4 inch deep.

I then covered the facing page with some old text pages from a vintage mini book and glued all the pages together with a glue stick.

I stamped an embellishment using one of the stamps from Tattered Angels, Flowering Vine line.

I made a mold with Sculpey clay from a very small frozen charlotte.  I glazed her to give her a polished finished and glued her into the niche.  I added some bling, lace, small piece of black paper with numbers and a burgundy paper flower.  A small bow was added to the opposite page.

Now, that's the smallest altered book I've seen...makes me want to find more of these mini books.

I also wanted to share this great book of vintage children stickers I found.  It has lots of very small images that are really cute. Although they have this white boarder, you can cut that off and use for your projects. 

I made this quick little note card with one of them and a K&Co dimensional sticker.

Happy Bday Rachel & Happy Easter

Today, my daughter Rachel becomes a teenager (13 yrs old)...how times flies. She's just growing up too fast and I can't believe it.

We made some desserts today of her choosing, this one is chocolate peanut butter whoppie pies.  I'm not into desserts, unless they have nuts...but my husband and daughter LOVED THEM.



We had breakfast out at one of her favorite restaurants, then we went to Japan Town and shopped around her favorite stores and had a wonderful Ramen lunch @ Suzu. One of Rachel's favorite dish is Sheppard's Pie, so my husband and I cooked that for dinner.  For dessert, Rachel and I made a yummy Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake that we saw on FoodNetwork by Anne Thornton...really good too!

And last, a quick Happy Easter everyone!

Earth Day

Tonight, I took a work shop at PaperSource in Berkeley in honor of Earth Day.  The goal was to make things out of disposal products like an old calendar and catalog.

 These are the items I made tonight.  They include envelopes, cards, flower, tags and bill fold:

See that women in the middle?  She took the class with us and was very sweet and gave us all a bag she made out of newspaper.  It turned out that she was published in the same article of GreenCraft magazine as I was in - who would of thought...small world isn't it?

On a special note, my 12 yr old daughter, Rachel, won a clay contest today on YouTube!  She made a video and submitted about 30 of her clay creations.  She posts her work under a different user name (that she prefer I not tell anyone). Here's some of her creations - she has two of these boxes full now.

Petaluma Antique Fair

Today, I went to the Petaluma Antique Fair with my sister Maryl and her husband Rocky.  It was my first time to Petaluma, such a cute town with so many antique stores.  It was blocks and blocks of tables with vintage goodies.  What fun it was to hunt for teasures.

These are the items I picked up...fun pieces I can create with.

Scrapbook Territory Haul

I picked up some new goodies at Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley this week that I wanted to share. This first group is from October Afternoon, the line is called 5 & Dime.  Really cute vintage prints.

Tim Holtz has tons of new items out lately.  My favorite is the 12x12 pad of kraft paper print, called "Paper Stash" and I also love those 3D black plastic letters.

The girls' paperie has a 146 piece crafting kit called, "vintage whimsy" - isn't it adorable?

And last, I also wanted to share a new stamp set I bought from Heidi Grace.  I bought this at Joann's.

It's kinda a cross between rubber stamps and clear cling mount stamps. This set has some fun designs.  I used the typewriter stamp to make this thank you note. I cut a slit in the card and stuck a piece of white card stock through, as if coming out of the typewriter and then stamped the words thank you.  I can imagine using this stamp for lots of quick messages.

Mini Easter Basket

Did you see Amy Power's latest Inspired Idea's issue?  http://www.amy-powers.com/spring2011/subscribe.html. On the cover is an adorable mini Easter basket, above is my version. A month ago I went to the miniature store in Novato and found these mini Easter baskets - perfect for making the project on the cover. 

I made a mold from a miniature bunny and used brown polymer clay to simulate a chocolate bunny.  You'll learn about making molds in my workshop. I used left over color foil from chocolate eggs and covered some mini eggs.  I wrapped some eggs in purple cellophane, then I made some mini eggs in pastel colors with polymer clay.  For the last step, I cut up some plastic grass in mini strips. 

Now you have all the ingredients you need for your own mini Easter basket, all that's left to do is assemble.  You could hang your mini Easter basket on some ribbon for a necklace or do what I did and attach to a ring base.  A fun project for Easter!  If you want a free mini chocolate bunny, the first five people to email me can receive one...just send me a stamped self-addressed envelope and I'll put one in the mail to you.

And on a non-craft related note, my son passed his driver's permit test today!  We're all very excited for him.  I can't believe he'll be driving soon, my gosh, how time flies.

Tahoe Adventures

We just spent the last few days in Tahoe - the kids are on spring break this week.  We skied Monday and Tuesday at Northstar and it was perfect spring skiing conditions.  The weather was great and the slopes were empty.

 My sister Pat and her husband joined us the first couple days.

We did have one unfortunate innocent, but it ended well. You know how when you're done skiing and you leave your skies on the rack, with hundreds of other skies around? Well, someone took my son's skies.  We checked all the racks and lost & found and no luck. We went back the next morning and still no luck. We rented him another pair of skies (Northstar did comp us for the rental). At the end of the second day, we checked lost & found again and luckily someone did turn in his skies - phew! I guess someone picked them up by accident and was nice enough to return them.

After skiing on Monday, we went back to the cabin and my son, Christopher saw a bear in the back yard. We didn't believe him at first, but sure enough, there he was - huge too!

We did call animal patrol, but they didn't do much. The bear eventually went away in about an hour. He sure gave us a thrill.

My brother in law Steve also joined us for a day and just in time too.  When we came back from skiing on Tuesday all the snow on the roof of the cabin fell down in front of the door and basically blocked the front door with about 4 feet of snow. Luckily Steve helped us dig our way through.

We left Tahoe at the right time. The snow really came down on the way home. Visibility was really bad for awhile. You couldn't even see the top of the mountain. Just the day before there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Check out these photos we took on the way home.

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We made it home safely and didn't have to put on any chains. We stopped in Sacramento for some delicious ramen at Akebono - tasted very similar to our favorite ramen restaurant in Hawaii.
Always on a trip, I bring cut outs.  Sheet of either things I've stamped or digital collage sheets that I've purchased and I cut them out during down time.  This is what I cut up this trip...lots of goodies to use for future projects.

It was a fun ski trip with lots of interesting stories to tell.

Great Workshop With Lisa Super

I was really looking forward to today, it's been awhile since I've taken a class from Lisa Super.  I couldn't wait to spend the day crafting with friends and sisters that I haven't seen in a while.  We made two fabulous projects.  The first was the recipe box that was on the cover of the latest Somerset Life.  This is how mine turned out. That's a lot of recipes to collect to fill up that box!

Lisa set up the work area really well. It was a great environment for just playing with paper & fiber, chatting with friends and having a good time. It was fun to walk around to see what everyone was up to.

In the afternoon, we worked on an adorable journal, using the Melissa Frances Postcard Album. Here are some of my pages.

Today, was also Valerie's bday. Lisa had a wonderful chocolate cake. Happy Birthday Valerie!

Laura H., it was great to meet you today. Your work is great, I look forward to working with you more. Cindy, thanks for the frozen Charlotte's, what a treat!  Cindy's mom - have a safe flight back to Oahu - so much fun working with both of you too! Lisa, thanks for putting together some great projects for today, I had so much fun!

Tomorrow, we're headed to Tahoe for some end of season skiing.  Should be lots of snow left.