Craft Room Mess

I wish I had a lovely craft room to show off but this is what I have to work with. I took over the dinning room and made it my craft room. Sorry it's so messy. My cat Sam wanted to be in the picture, she likes me to watch her eat. The cats use the edge of my craft desk as a nail file. I have to feed them on the desk to keep the dog from eating their food.
We got the craft hutch for free. It wasn't very stable so I shored it up with a couple of 2x4.



I store all my miniature accessories in this set of hardware drawers.

I think I'll have to spend the weekend reorganizing in here. Wish I could work on it now but I've got to get some work done.

Leather & Suede Gloves

I thought I would show off my collection of suede and leather gloves. I love leather. My grandmother gave me these old leather gloves that she had worn the finger tips out of. I cut apart the seams and try to use every park of the leather for something mini

She also gave me these gloves that she had lost the mates to.


I found the long pair of white gloves at an antique mall/flea market they are stained and yellowed but I don't mind since I like making my minis look used.

My mom gave me one of the black gloves from her stash and the other is my driving glove that I lost the mate to at some point.

I found these suede purplish gloves at a thrift store a few years ago. So far the only thing that has been created with them were the wings to the dragon marionette that my mom carved. They just happened to match the stain she was using perfectly.

I've found random bits and pieces of leather to add to my collection over the years from old wallets and scrap cutoffs.

kreativ award

Thank you Julie Kendall from http://jakdawsattic.blogspot.com/
The rules of the award are:
1. Thank the person that gave it to you
2. Copy the logo and place it in your blog
3. Link to the person who nominated you
4. Name 7 things about yourself that nobody knows
5. Nominate 7 kreativ bloggers
6. Post link to the 7 blogs that you nominate
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you nominate them.

Well here goes , 7 Things you might not know about me:

1) I have 4 tattoos all Celtic knot work.
2) I'm addicted to Discovery Health channel's Trauma in the ER & Critical Hour.
3) I'm also addicted to the show Hoarders.. (I'm a closet case craft hoarder)
4) I believe in ghosts.
5) I have flown a plane (I didn't land or take off)
6) I've rescued and held in my hands a red tail hawk. (he was hit by a semi truck)
7) I won a 1st place in the Atlanta Humane Society poster contest as a child.

Sorry it's taken me so long to pass this award on. It's so difficult to choose which blogs to send it to. I want to award it to every blog I follow but I had to narrow it down to these 7:
http://woolytalesminiatures.blogspot.com/
http://blog.simple-inspirations.com/
http://myrepurposedlife.blogspot.com/
http://karincorbin.blogspot.com/
http://beautifulminiblessings.blogspot.com/
http://cwpoppets.blogspot.com/
http://zuclay.blogspot.com/

Yard Sales, Thrift Stores and Craft Stores finds

First off I want to thank all of my followers.. I can't believe I already have 99 followers. Thank you. I can't believe 99 people on the web read my random posts. I love following everyones posts. I try to follow all of my followers too.

Saturday was such a beautiful day I had to get out and do something. So I went yard sale shopping. There was one little one on my road so I went there first. I wish I had thought to bring a take a picture there. She had the biggest collection of frogs I have ever seen. I found a few craft kits and a metal ruler for $2.

I found another sale across town in front of a used furniture store (I didn't know about.) I got this box of old checkers and dice for $2.

Then I got this cute little "Doggy Tales" scrapbook set at another yard sale for $2.

I stopped by my favorite Antique store in town to see what "new" old stuff he had aquired. I love this trunk but there is just too much rust on it for $35. But I love the ornate metal. If it weren't for all the rust holes I probably would have bought this one anyway.

The one below it was in much better shape but they wanted $70 for it.

I must have walked past this one half a dozen times before I spotted it. I will probably got back and inquire on the price of it this week. If I can get a deal on it I'd love to pull off all the old canvas and refinish and stain the wood. I'd use this one as a coffee table.
Our house is too small for non functional furniture and I could really use the storage for bed linens. We only have one closet in our whole house that 3 people share.

After checking out all the local stops I decided to go to Michael's Crafts & Hobby Lobby. I picked up most of this stuff on clearance. The DMC floss are the colors I would like to try in my rug design. (I already have black) I got the bead loom at Hobby Lobby but I'm not impressed with it. It doesn't work the way it's supposed to. and the springs are only about 2 inches apart. I'll probably just rig up my own loom. I bought the Liquid Sculpey because I've seen all the cool things other bloggers have created with it so I thought I would give it a try.

Goodwill

I am determined to go to the Goodwill store at least once a week. This week the urge came on Tuesday. After picking up my boyfriends son at tennis practice I decided to drive the 20 miles to the closest one. I was a little disappointed that the craft table I had admired last week had been sold.. but then again I wasn't really willing to spend $50 on it then so maybe it was a good thing. The wood & metal isles still contained the same junk that was there last week and not much new stuff. The plastic isle always has some sort of neat container that I can use for storing minis. I was also looking for plastic lunchroom trays for working on projects in the bedroom. I only found one simple tray for .55 cents. at the far end of the isle I spotted this...

My curiosity always gets the best of me when it comes to containers. I had to open it to see what it was. I was expecting a big empty container but what I found was a plastic sewing basket with 2 removable trays. None of the supplies were included I just forgot to take a picture before I started putting all my sewing stuff inside.

All the little bins had labels molded into the plastic. The empty space on the top tray is meant for buttons but my button collection takes up almost the entire bottom tray.


The color leaves a bit to be desired but at $2.62 it was too good to pass up on. Besides I can always paint it later.
After wondering down the toy isle looking for dollhouse stuff I moved on to the craft/office supply isle. There was a lot of the same junk there too. Then I spotted a grid and thought it might be a cutting mat but it turned out to be a paper cutter. It was covered in packaging tape to prevent injury. It took about 30 minutes of cleaning with Goo Gone to get all the tape residue off but it was worth it.

I've wanted one of these for a while but I'm just too cheap to spend more than $10 on one. At $7.57 it is the most expensive item I've bought at Goodwill so far.. lol
I looked it up online and it retails for almost $40 on Amazon.

Inspired Rug Design

I've been inspired by Casey to work on designing a miniature rug. I decided to use an unfinished design I started in AutoCAD while I was in college. I just have to figure out how to transfer it to canvas and what colors I want in it.

Any suggestions on the colors to use would be great. I'm thinking I want burgundy and black in the background. I'll probably add some sort of simple border to it.

Wanna Trade?

I've got a huge load of micro glass hole-less beads to trade

These are all the colors I have in the .5mm tiny beads

These range in size from .8mm on the left to 2.5mm on the right

I've also got these 5 unopened containers

If anyone wants to trade just let me know which colors and sizes you would like and what you have to trade. I'm open to all sorts of trades. I'm always interested in getting new supplies. I hope ya'll will help me clear out my supply of extra micro glass hole less beads.

Makin Grapes

I started feeling a little better over the weekend. I'm still coughing a lot so working with feathers is out of the question. I had an urge to work on grapes. I've been playing around with different sizes and colors. I just use regular acrylic paint to color the beads before gluing. I used reindeer moss for the stems.

Years ago I ordered a Kimberly House kit Grape Vineyard off eBay but what I received turned out to be a Kimberly House Christmas tree kit in a Vineyard box. I contacted the seller and she refunded my money and told me to keep the Christmas tree kit for the trouble. She was very nice. I would still love to have the Vineyard kit but I've given up on using EBay. I always get outbid in the last 5 seconds



I just love hole less beads. I buy every color and size I can find. I weighed out 6 gram packs of beads to trade so if anyone needs hole less beads let me know. I love trading supplies.
This is just the portion of my supply I use. I've got a tackle box full to trade.

Under the weather

I received the kreativ award recently but have been unable to think of 7 things about me that nobody knows or who to pass it on to. I think I've been sick every week since the New year. I hope to be feeling better soon.

Aging miniatures

I decided to age all of the wooden crates for my General Store. I even aged the ladder & crates I bought at the Atlanta Miniature Show.


I used a mixture of rubbing alcohol and India ink. It only takes about 5 drops of ink to every 8 oz of alcohol. This picture was while they were still wet. They darken up a lot more. I will try to add a photo tonight of the final outcome.

Old House

I've been looking into buying a house for the past couple of weeks. I feel in love with this house.

The house was built in 1906. The walls are 3 bricks thick. Apparently whoever bought it had planed on fixing it up but only got part way into the project before it went into forclosure. They cut into the orginal plaster to install new wiring.
It still has some of the most beautiful features and orginal woodwork and two sets of pocket doors.
I love this curved wall under the stairs.

Upstairs hallway.. just look at those beautiful hardwood floors.

One of the out buildings still has a slate roof.

Everything was moving forward on making a deal on this house until we had an inspection under the house. There are rotten floor joist and a lot of termite damage.
I knew it would be a project home but this new find wasn't something I could afford so I had to walk away from this one. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.
I'll just keep looking.

Storage containers

I love storage containers. I like seeing how other crafters store their supplies too. I thought I would show off some of my neat storage containers and their contents.

The Winner is.....

Jessie at http://beyondbaffled.blogspot.com/

Email me your address and which beads you want.

Bead Giveaway!

Time is running out to enter the drawing for some vintage beads. The drawing will take place tonight. I will post the winner tomorrow morning.