So, I have been sharing my laptop with her. Some mornings, I would find myself waking up early and getting over there before she wakes up so I can have it to check my Ebay listings and other stuff. I should make her not use it a little bit though, next week so that I can keep up with blogging posts and blog hopping and other stuff that I would like to do.
Now, I am down at my boyfriends for the weekend, so I will have full control of the laptop. Plus not next week, but the first full week in August they will be gone camping for the whole week. I am thinking I will camp out at their house while they are gone and feed their pets and get a little break from my cats. I love my cats, but they like to sleep on me all the time when I am home. It's because they miss me.
So some days when she was on my laptop a lot, I was making more of the bangle bracelets. I have more to sew up now. I was making some with pretty ribbon yarn.
Then, as I was making this stuff, I was searching Ebay for paper punches and noticed that people are buying the paper punch pieces. Well, this set me in motion, and I got thinking that I could easily do this. So right now, I have several listings going for paper punch pieces packages. I'm selling them in sets of 40-50 pieces.
And, I'm thinking at a later date, I could make my own designs for scrap booking and people could buy my little pieces for their scrap booking projects I've been wanting to do scrap booking and collage work in the fall so right now, I am starting out by cutting up my pieces. So far, I have cut up lots of 2" scallops circles and Martha Stewart hearts. Then, I'm saving all my scraps as I have a really small heart punch that will use some of it. And I've got a music note punch coming and all this good quality black paper waiting in the kids studio. I've found some of my old water color paper in there, that I don't know what I'm using that for yet. I found some scrap booking papers in there that I had bought en quite a few years ago. So I paper punched all those and am going to try to sell a lot of that as some of it isn't my favorite colors.
So all this paper punching has been taking a few days to do.
I had tons of scrapbook paper leftover from cutting my 8 X 10 pages for the paper dolls. And I still have a huge stack of the paper doll paper. And another huge stack of vellum paper. I just have lots of Strathmore 400 paper and the Utrecht Bristol paper. The Bristol paper, I would like to save for drawing on, except for the smaller scraps. Those I will use the paper punches for. They do punch out the thicker vellum Bristol too.
And a few times, I had to reach down into the crack of the couch for the paper pieces that would fall down. And most of us, don't want to reach down the crack for something as we know that bugs may also be waiting for us. In a house with kids, there is always some type of food that lingers down there. Or an old spill.
Then, I also tried cutting up some cereal boxes with the scalloped paper punch. It worked fine. I grabbed about five of the cereal box scallops and stacked them together. Now, another idea I am thinking is magnets. These could easily be glued together, then painted over and then glazed and put a circle magnet in the back. And also for the bottle caps would be good for magnets.
I want to also pull out the beads in the fall and make some beaded bracelets too. Those were fun. Right now, I already have a good amount for the fall time craft show. I've got lots of knitted bracelets, some sewn fabric bracelets, the knitting markers, a few of the yo yo pincushions, a few of the pincushions in the coffee mugs and teacups, the paper dolls, some artwork, photo greeting cards and other stuff. There's just going to be a mixture of everything.
And I got thinking, that I could easily design my own scrapbook pages for selling. I could go into my photography programs, drawing and any other program I have and just get creative. This year, I am going to make my own Christmas postcards. I usually take a picture of each of the kids and do a collage effect. It is so hard to get them all together for a picture. I've got some Christmas scrap booking paper and I am going to do a big collage page with each of their photos and when it is done, I will take a picture of the whole thing. Then, I will shrink it down to wallet size pictures, nine to a page and print the m up. Then the picture gets stuck to a piece of art paper to make my postcard. Yay.
And I started to rip up an old book to think of what I want to do. First, I had found a few hard cover books at the yard sales and I pulled out the books from the binding and threw out the actual book. I'm going to do some collage work on the bindings at some point and it might just be something to hold some note cards in or something.
Then, I decided to keep the book. First, I took these really small flower paper punch pieces and used the ripped up book as a place to set down the flowers and apply glitter glue to. I've heard you can use your yellow pages books for this too. Then all you do when you are done with a page is rip it up and start fresh the next time you are ready to glue stuff. Makes a good little workspace.
And I also started to paper punch some of the written pages for scrap booking needs. I love the idea, but I didn't like the words. So what I am thinking of doing is creating pages or documents just with certain words and fonts so I can come up with some cool word documents for scrap booking and using with the paper punches.
For instance, the word love typed all over the page. Or perhaps cool sayings. It's got to be something that people would want to show up in their scrap booking pages.
I tested it out with my new live scribe pulse pen. I hand wrote love all over a page, Picasso's blue period all over another page and van gogh's sunflower pencil hand written all over another page. I'm going to upload them soon to my live scribe and maybe use my handwriting in other programs too. All just beginnings of finding scrap booking pieces. Found stuff is fun to see what you can use.
I want to take my scrap booking to more of a collage level. I think I am going to look up Joseph Cornell and get my memory jogged of his stuff.
I also want to find a large bird paper punch next month. And maybe get more die cuts for my Big Shot machine for scrap booking. I've got three to six die cuts for it.
And I think I will just explore the whole scrap booking world.
I found myself up late a few nights just going through all my artwork and weeding out. I found myself ripping up a bunch that were just starts and I didn't like them. When the kids were little, I would draw while they napped and they would wake up long before the artwork got finished, so I've had all these starts to drawings.
Then, I just found extra blank paper all over the place. And I decided to cut up some of the stuff I did for the video game I was making. I kind of have changed my mind about making the game. First of all, I don't foresee it ever getting turned into a video game because I don't know how to do it. So I am scrapping the scenarios. Or maybe I shouldn't scrap the scenarios and I could still write them up as a collection someday. Like a set of ten or fifteen scenarios in a book form and not a game.
And I could also still draw out some of the rooms and they could be neat in a scrap booking design page. Like perhaps a carousel horse or a cemetery scene, etc....
And it felt good to weed out and organize my art stuff. Just to know where everything is. I was also able to consolidate and that way, now I have some empty clear folders and containers for the scrap booking stuff.
I might even find some good shoe boxes for storing some stuff. It's kind of fun to sift through a shoe box for your little scrapbook and collage pieces.
And then, after I use up my paper scraps with the little thumb punches, I am thinking that I can't let any of the paper to go to waste, so I might find myself making handmade paper again to get some little paper punch pieces for scrap booking. I like to use embroidery hoops with the netting and I've got tons of netting.
And I also want to try some paper mache in the fall. I knew a girl in the Essex Art League that made these gorgeous bowls from paper mache. I plan on using a metal bowl as a mold and want to try it out.
And the good paints won't come out until the fall time. I always look forward to fall. For quiet time and cooler weather. I can't stand the heat.
And I am five days into good walking. I started last Sunday and did a 20 minute walk around their neighborhood. I've done this five days in a row, either in their neighborhood or near where I live. It is so nice to go walking in the morning. One morning, I went for my walk at 5:30 and got serenaded by birds in nearby trees. Another morning, as I was walking, I got to hear someone play a beautiful song on the piano. And yesterday after my doctor's appointment, I decided to pick a bouquet of wildflowers. Queen Anne's lace, some blue flower and pretty pink clovers.
And for part of the collage scrap booking, I brought over my rubber stamps and ink pads and sponges and started rubber stamping too for the scrap booking. That was fun. I've got a really pretty baby face stamp, a woman's face stamp and some chrysanthemum ones that I love.
I also got to find some scrap booking stuff at a yard sale last week. I will be on the hunt for anything related to scrap booking. This will be a good way to slowly get back into the drawings. I am thinking my artwork can also find it's way into my scrap booking. I can easily shrink the pictures down and place them strategically on the page to create a vivid piece of art. I can draw on any of it.
All kinds of fun stuff.
Well, I will let you go for now.
Jennifer Jo Fay
Copyrighted July 20, 2012
The first scallops I started cutting up. I love the one in the front. The pink lace underneath was a little tablecloth I sewed up years ago for an Easter Card table. I love it.
Some of the inks I got at last week's yardsale. I love the green one in the front as it is metallic. And some of my pens. I also love the grocery store Bic fine tip pen/marker. It works just as well as these expensive art ones. And I noticed with some of these pens and then I used the Martha Stewart markers over it and the color ran and I got this yucky greenish black marker junk. So that piece got thrown out.
A few of the shells I got at a recent yard sale. I got a bag of pretty shells for a few bucks. I should find some flowers to go with these some time. And maybe some other month, I can get some sea urchins to go with the collection.
A piece of butterfly fabric. It's thin and sheer.
Sweet Sue doll with the shells. I am slowly going to replenish a few of my dolls with some of these old vintage dolls. Madame Alexander dolls. I would like to have some that I remember seeing at my great Aunt Mary's house. I think her's or her daughters dolls were some of the old vintage bride dolls. I don't want to collect a lot of them, but I would like a few. I pulled out my mom's old doll thinking I was going to restring her, but then I remembered that she doesn't have any arms, so I am not going to bother.
One of my designs I made about three or four years ago. I did another one of all easter eggs. These were fun to do. And I think I need to start getting back into design work and drawing. It can start with the scrap booking.
Some of my rubber stamps. Sean and I used to rubber stamp when he was really little. He had a Spider Man set and probably a dinosaur set too. I love the hearts, butterflies, dragon flies and the other ones.
Some of the scallops die cuts that I started to draw on. This will be fun.
More bracelets to sew together this weekend. With some of the ribbon ones, I actually made a whole set of bracelet, necklace and earrings. And all these could later have some beading applied to them in the fall.
And the scallops will also come in handy for my tags for my other products for the craft shows.
Making my own pieces for scrap booking. These the heart stamp below worked well on.
My two favorite paper punches so far, some sponges and spiral graph. I used to love spiral graph as a kid and found my set of these. Also could be cool in scrap booking pages.