What Fun!

Well though I'm certainly not a garage sale person, we certainly had some fun on Saturday!  The shoppers were thrilled with their bargains and the vendors were thrilled with their sales, so totally win win there.  Linda put a photo or two in the newsletter, here are a couple more.  Oh by the way, the official photographer was Emily, Linda's youngest.  Didn't she do a great job?

Did you enjoy Valentine's Day and get something nice from your "Sweetie"?  My Sweetie gave me an early gift and arrranged for me to meet him in Sudbury on Sunday.  I'd said I'd like to join him there for the few days he was away with the drama group from the High School, but hadn't really anticipated it in quite the unique way he arranged it.  Still the thought was there I'm sure!  The rose above I was lucky enough to receive from another "Sweetie".  He was a busy delivery man on Tuesday morning delivering similar roses to the ladies in his life.......seems to me that I've mistaken him for a florist delivery person in the past and yet he still treats me with love....such a sweet man.  Linda's blessed to have him.......though I've told him the same thing......take care of who you have, you're lucky to have her.

I'm trying to arrange a treat for all you scrapbookers in that my friend Edie is almost finished the Disney album she's been making for her daughter and she may allow us to post a few pages for you to look at.  She's an awesome scrapbooker and in my opinion not enough people get to see the lovely work she does.  She's been the lucky owner of a Silhouette machine for a year now, and on Tuesday went home from the store very excited about some of the new things Linda and I taught her to do on her machine.  She's got so many ideas now for future albums we're sure to enjoy what she will do. 

Are you a Silhouette owner who isn't using their machine to it's full potential?  If you're not sure of all the machine is capable of, then take time out for yourself and sign up to our crop nights which are held every other Friday night to learn a little more. 

Linda and I learned today how to place a fancy shape inside of another shape.  No not welding as that loses the inner shape.  (If you're taking the card class on March 3rd, you'll be one of the lucky recipients of today's learning curve.)  Do you know how to fill a word or shape with colour and make it into a print and cut?  These are just some of the things we can teach you on a Friday night, so keep it in mind.   

You don't have a Silhouette Cameo yet?  Well you're in luck because we have them back in stock again, so drop in and capture one for yourself before they're gone again.

Well as my Mother would say, I've blathered on for long enough, but I did promise a link or two for you needleartists and here they are.  Theres a lovely little Dutch girl here, perfect for household linens, just scroll down the page a little.  And here's another one and if you look down the right side bar on this blog they have some nice tutorials on stitches too. 

Anyway enjoy and happy crafting

Lilian

It's Getting Exciting!

Today we had a number of the Garage Sale Vendors dropping off their product and I might tell you that if you sleep in on Saturday, you will for sure miss some great bargains!  These Paper Crafters have divested themselves of some really good "stuff!"  I know you think.....why would I want/need someone else's "stuff"?  Well let me tell you that although they don't have a use for these products anymore, they are most certainly NOT useless products.  So be warned, you snooze, you lose.

This is going to be a pretty short post tonight, but I did have a couple of things to share with you, like the Garage Sale opportunity.  Also as I was surfing the web I came upon this really good tutorial that you may like to save to a folder somewhere in your PC.  Here's the link to it and a look at the finished product too.

Kudos to Tracy MacDonald for putting together this excellent tutorial.  You still have time to make it for your Valentine with some chocolates in it.

For the scrapbooker, have you ever looked at Sketch Support here?  Much as I love Page Maps, I think this runs a close second for me.  They show you a sketch and all week long will show you a variety of interpretations of it.  Don't you love that Disney layout?  So for all  you folk that are working on Disney albums...take note, a great resource.

Here's a quick look at what Linda was busy doing last weekend with her Silhouette.  Pretty nice don't you think...her dear husband was a pretty happy boy with the results and apparently Brendan (son) wants his snowmobile fancied up now.  No limit to that Silhouette except if your imagination is lacking.

Have you tried any wall art with yours yet?  All you need is a roll of the vinyl that we stock and type up the words of your choice.  There's all kinds of ideas out there for you to tap into.

Here's a great tutorial for you jewellery makers that want to make a Dutch Spiral bracelet or necklace.   Really clear instructions too.

Well I really am going now, not that this post was so short after all, but I tried, just hard to stop talking sometimes...LOL!  This is a family week for us with my sister-in-law's birthday yesterday (oops it's gone midnight so it wasn't yesterday after all, it was Tuesday) and my nephew's wedding this Saturday.  When we are busy setting up for your Garage Sale, he will be joined in marriage to a lovely lady.  Congratulations to Dan and Sonia on their upcoming marriage.  This was the wedding that his Mom and I were busily making invitations for last fall when she was here for a visit.

Happy Crafting, I'll try and find some needlearts for you next posting.

Lilian

Slowly but Surely

Winter is leaving us....HOORAY!   Can you tell I'm not a fan of winter, so why did we come to Canada you say?  Well, when you are young and the opportunity presents itself to step outside your box, you forget all about the geography lessons you learned at school and how Canada has lots of snow!  However no regrets, it's a beautiful country and we love all it's offered us and hopefully we have contributed somewhat. 
Did you see all the exciting things in the newsletter today.  Basic Grey, Garage Sale, Card Days, Classes and Crop Weekend coming up too!  Talk about juggling, it takes two of us to keep all the balls in the air...LOL.  Did you get signed up for everything you wanted to?  I know Basic Grey is filling up as well as the all day card class.

Speaking of that, we have seven of the ten promised cards ready and I think you'll be happy with them if you're signed into that class.  Unfortunately I can't show them to you, not even the ones that didn't make the cut and have ended up as pieces on my worktable.  It's always a challenge to put together a series of cards that can be accomplished in the allotted space of time without being too easy or too much of a challenge to each of you.  So it's heartening to see most people able to complete the cards within the five hour time frame.

I had the pleasure of having Linda's girlies here on saturday afternoon.  We didn't do a lot, but good to be together.  Rachel had me help her repair the teddy that her Oma had given her that belonged to her Opa.  It's pretty special to her now and she wanted to be sure the seams that were coming loose were secured well.  Emily found a great new place to play in our house and surprised her Mommy when she came for dinner.  Oh and they (the girlies) played a great trick on me.  Well from their perspective it was, from mine it was a little dampening.  Rachel put an elastic around the lever of my sink sprayer......have you got the picture?   They had asked for a cup of tea and thought I'd get caught at that point, but I'd already filled the tea kettle......however when I went to make the tea, I thought I'd just turn the tap on and rinse the sink and of course I was just in exactly the right position to get the full force of the spray!  I thought Rachel and Emily would fall over they were laughing so hard.  Each time someone came in after that they got the full story of how wet I was and wouldn't you know, they already knew about the trick!  So that meant Bumpa, Mommy and Daddy could have, but chose not to save me from that wetting!  Did I say pleasure of having the girlies over?

I do have a photo to share with you tonight though.  I'm still working on my craft room and have the walls painted now (can you see the colour), still some trim to finish, but the cabinets are all painted.  The wood has to be cut for the counter top that will bring the two sets of drawers and two bookcases together and a little trim work to do there, then I'll share that with you too.  In the mean time here is a before and after of the laminate bookcase that I re-purposed.  I had read on the internet that to have the paint adhere well to a laminate surface you need to put a good undercoat on it, so both bookcases and dressers were undercoated with BIN first and it seems to have worked.  Of course that meant three coats of paint including the undercoat.  You can see the top shelf I put up to pull the bookcases together.  This is a great place to display some past cards that I can look at for inspiration.  The one shelf of the bookcase looks like it has a bend in it, but it doesn't.  Must have been the angle of the camera.  I was looking at a set of drawers that Linda had in the order that came in today.  I think there were nine plastic drawers in the boxed set and could potentially replace the clutter on my bottom shelf...will have to see. 

Speaking of the order today, some lovely paper came in, along with some great Snag'em stamps for just $1.99.  The photos Linda put in the newsletter don't do them justice, you should drop into the store to see them.

Are you Silhouette users who aren't yet comfortable with your machines signed up for Friday's crop night?  My friend, a great scrapbooker, was in the store recently looking for a new punch to give her a different border.  I told we didn't have the type of punch she wanted but there was an excellent machine that would do the trick for her.  Yes you guessed it, the Silhouette of which she is an owner and which she  hadn't thought of for borders.  She's merrily cutting away borders now though.  So if you need your horizons opened, then make sure you get signed up for Friday night.  

Well it's now February and I'm off to bed....Happy Crafting...

Lilian