#49--Paper Cut-Out Something Heart

I don't even know what this is...It's something though and I was inspired to make it yesterday when I was at work...

I was playing with my paper punches and punched a heart right in the middle of the page, but then I decided that I didn't like it and so I free-hand drew a heart and cut it out with an Exacto knife.

Then I folded the edges because I wanted the heart to curve out. I grabbed some paper that looked like a cloudy sky and put it on one of the flaps behind the heart. I used my tape runner (the big one) and secured the ends...It ended up looking like this (over there on the right).  I thought the edges looked boring, so I scraped at them with a blue ink pad.


So what is this thing? I have no idea. I guess I could put a bottom on it and make it a flower holder???? Who knows!  Suggestions are always welcome...what is this thing!

Here it is on my paper wall, as an aside, I LOVE this new paper from Paper Source.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it yet, so it's on my wall. Maybe that will be it...it makes me happy every time I look at it. ANYWAY, I didn't realize that the cloud paper was going to look like the tye-dyed paper behind it. Oops!

48--Paper Clips

I'm cheating on this one I think...I know that we'll see these little buggers again soon though. I love them. Anyway...

In one of my first blogs, I BOUND A BOOK and am now using said book as my daily journal. In the interest of making that an "easier" book binding project, I didn't put a ribbon bookmark in the binding and now I have no way to find my place and really, that's just annoying.  I dug through my heart stash in my mess of a craft room this morning and came across a whole box of these guys!  I love them!  So useful...I just know we'll be seeing these again soon on a project!

47--Pipe Cleaner Heart!

I have been super duper lazy lately. I think I have like almost 2 weeks of blogs to catch up on. Sigh. It'll happen...after working at PS yesterday I think I have some of my motivation back. If only I could just get the craft room clean, then I would be even more motivated. All in good time...

So at 2am, I was in the office of Kryptonite Houston and I spied a fun pack of what I thought were zip ties...they were fluorescent and really, anything that grabs my attention that fast at 2am deserves my attention. They were super fun pipe cleaners.  Our manager Holliday (yes, this is really what he calls himself) was having a bad night. He was tired (poor boy) and so I decided to leave him a little love on his binder...I'm sure he appreciated it. This is the same man that when asked about my glitter hearts on his dance floor said, "yeah, real cute." Hater...

#46--A Good Luck Heart

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

#45--Jelly Bean Hearts!

They're re-doing my Target, which I think is lovely, I really do. They're adding a "fresh produce" section. I'm sure this is in response to the stupid Walmart opening in the Heights (if you're against this by the way, you can sign the petition HERE). So why am I even bothering to blog about this? Well, it annoyed me.  Last week, pre-construction mind you, they had all of the Easter stuff out. So I didn't even think twice when I went in there looking for jelly beans. Imagine my surprise, after asking several store employees where the jelly beans were, to be told me that "the seasonal section hasn't been re-set yet." HELLO! Easter is mere weeks away! How long do we have to sell this stuff?????????  NOT. PLEASED.  So I decided to go on a search, how How HOW could a TARGET not have jelly beans? They must be here somewhere...I searched and eventually found, my jelly beans (Starburst Limited Edition Red Fruits). I was so happy to find my jelly beans that I made a heart out of them.

#44--Linen Paper Printed Hearts

The things you can do with printers these days are amazing.  This is linen paper (like, actual linen, not the fake paper linen kind, it has the actual texture of fabric) that you can run through your inkjet printer. Very cool. It's just like linen book cloth. Love it.  I will use this for everything...It comes in off white and regular white. I used regular white. 

In Word, I created something simple. I wanted a bunch of "C's" and I found some crazy font on my Mac that I wanted to try out that had hearts in it. I love how it turned out.  There was no bleeding at all which surprised me. I LOVE it so much.  I'm going to use these letters and hearts as monograms on books and boxes that I need to bind.  

The whole page

A close up, you can see the texture here, it's very cool!

#43--Turkey Meatloaf Heart

This is kind of gross, but I'm going to do it anyway...

One of the only things that I can whip up in a jiffy (besides a huge mess) in the kitchen is a turkey meatloaf. I use a bastardized version of the recipe found in the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook. I say it's bastardized because 1. I don't measure anything and 2. I'm not sure Weight Watchers would really approve of me using almost an entire bag of parmesan cheese in it's recipe...Anyway, I did this yesterday because the husband was whining in our meetings that he "has a wife that doesn't cook." Hater. So I threw this together...

See the heart?

#42--Burned Velvet

Another day, another Martha inspired blog...I think that I actually saw this in one of her "Craft Of the Day" emails that she so happily sends out everyday. If you're crafty and not on that list you need to get on it. I love those emails. Anyway...you can find Martha's directions HERE. Her's looks much better than mine of course, but that probably has something to do with the fact that "real" velvet ribbon was $30/yard (no joke) at High Fashion Fabrics the other day, so I opted for the much more budget friendly fake $3/yard kind. 

My supplies. Martha asked me to gather a rubber stamp (heart shaped of course), velvet ribbon (fake in my case) and an iron.

That's my stamp. I was worried that ironing my ruin my good ones, so I opted for one of the $1 stamps from Mike's...It was all good though, no ruining.

I placed the ribbon, grain side down, directly on the stamp...

Then I ironed on it. Martha said to do this for a few seconds on the cotton setting, but that was taking too long, so I amped it up to the linen setting and let it sit for about a minute. 

And it worked! I like it. it shall be placed on a card later on today.

TTFN!

#41--A Glittered Floor Makes Everything Better

My husband shocked me the other day when he said that he wanted to go to Texas Art Supply to buy glitter for the floor at Krypto. Ok. I never have a problem glitterizing anything but he does so this was just hilarious to me.

He chose green because it was more "subtle" the silver that I had picked out. I've never heard glitter described as subtle before...so funny he is!

You can kind of see it on the floor there...

Heart #1 right in the middle of the dance floor.

There it is again, this time with a ladder in the middle of it. Thanks Mark. Ruin my art why don't you?

Heart on a bar top...

Heart in a dancer cage...

Heart on a bench...

Mark went out last night when Krypto was open, but sadly (well not really) it was so crowded that all the hearts and glitter were gone. Maybe someone took a photo of my glittered art hearts and put it on Facebook or something...I shall keep my eye out and post it later, should it ever happen...

#40--Today I Yarned It!

I have a crazy obsession with letters that you can decorate. They're all over my house (you can see two of the latest creations in that picture down there).  When I found the collection of styro-hearts at Arne's last week, I bought a big one (already used last weekend) and a small one.  I needed the small one to hang amongst my letters...It represents the love that I have for my husband.

We've already discussed my yarn hoarding, so it should be no surprise to know that I had just a little bit of this Lion Brand Homespun yarn leftover from a project.  It's very pretty and pink and I couldn't just throw it away (not that I would do that anyway, throwing away yarn is sacrilege) so I decided to cover the small styro-heart with it. This yarn rocks, the texture is amazing and it's so warm and fluffy! I just love it!

Here's What I Did.

I tied the yarn into a knot onto the styro-heart.

Then I wrapped it around (this is really exciting right?).

Then it was done and it looked like this. I think it's quite fun and I like it very much!

#39-Punch around the page...

I have a love/hate relationships with my Martha Stewart Punch-Around-the-Page sets.  I bought one last summer to use on these invitations that I was going to do, but it didn't work and it made me very mad. So mad that I had to throw it across the room. 

Here it is. The whole
she-bang.

The other day I opened a handmade envelope and pulled out a handmade card, made especially for me, inspired by this blog, from my friend Cat (Hi Cat!).  She'd used a very fun heart punch from Martha. So I went to Mike's to find it, but could only get it in the punch around the page combo. Sigh. I really wanted it though, so fine. I bought the whole set. 

Here's how to use it...

(I got sick of writing pictorial tutorial...)

This is the corner punch, use it on the corner of your page...

This is what it looks like when you're done with that part. Quite a pretty corner if I do say so myself.

This is the cool part and why Martha is a crafting genius...The sides of this punch have a "map" on them to line up your already punched parts. Very very cool. This one even has a map of the corner, I don't think my other one has that...

Here is the reason why the PATP's and I don't get along...

How annoying is THIS?

So that situation up there happens every single time I use one of these sets and it really makes me mad. What you're looking at is an A9 sized flat card in the color cement.  It finally dawned on me that it might be the size of this making it not work, so I did another one a regular sheet of 8.5x11 piece of fuschia paper and it worked out perfectly. Now I have to apologize to my other set for throwing it across the room...

This actually makes me very happy. Me LIKEY!

#38--Ring things

I was reading the MARTHA STEWART BLOG the other day and saw this very cool way to use her Punch Around the Page paper punches. She made garland out of them, but I think you could also use them as napkin rings or ribbon wrap for gifts or wraps for cards/invitations similar to THIS picture. A very cute, simple idea. 

~A PICTORIAL TUTORIAL~

I punched out one side of a page, and then measured to cut out a strip of paper. For this one I cut 1", but I probably could have done it a bit smaller. 

After cutting out the strips, I punched out the other sides and ended up with these. I love how these look. I can think of 700 things to do with them I love them so much. 

I taped them together and hung them up on my magnet strip. 

There they are next to Paper Me.

It's a very cute project, and I like it very much. I'm *hoping* (HINT HINT HINT) that my sister LINDSAY CRAIG will let me use this for her soon to be born child's christening in June/July...

#37--Chalky Chalky Chalk Chalk Chalk (hearts)

Obviously needing to be
re-done. It's all smeared.

I was in a conversation the other day about IPad covers. Since the IPad2 is coming out in a mere 8 days (listen to how techy-nerdy I sound), I was investigating covers on Etsy and discovered THIS super fabulous one. To be honest, I saw it in a Facebook post a few weeks ago and it stuck in my mind...Back to the conversation that I was having yesterday...It was about Bistro Chalk Markers and if they actually work or not. Well, since the Happy Hour board at our bar, Bayou City Bar & Grill, needed to be re-done I obviously thought it was the perfect blog opportunity staring me right in the face.

So fresh and so clean.

We've had the Bistro Chalk Markers around for awhile, but we also have a ton of regular sidewalk chalk around. I'm actually thinking of taking this regular stuff to Krypto (the other club) and drawing all over the floor with it just because I can. Anyway, I cleaned off the Smirnoff chalk board (thank you Smirnoff rep, I think I have like 30 of these in storage) with a wet rag.

Side by side. Bistro on
the left, sidewalk on the
right. 

Then I took out the blue Bistro and the blue sidewalk chalk and drew hearts (of course).


 I didn't realize that the Bistro has to dry, it doesn't take a long time, but it still has to.  Look at what happened when I smeared it...

Smeared...

The only reason the Bistro looks a bit distressed is because it wasn't dry. Ooops. Anyway, I'd forgotten how, um, chalky sidewalk chalk is. That stuff is crazy dusty. I can't believe they used to make us bang erasers together to get all the dust out in elementary school. Can you imagine that now?  I'm blaming many of my health issues on this. I might sue...

Or not. Anyway, the Bistro Chalk is really cool. Obviously no dust, hence no lawsuits.  It's also really clean and it comes off with a wet rag. So easy and cool. I love it.

I re-did the board. Thom the Happy Hour manager loved it. I think it looks just OK. I needed some fun stencils or something since my handwriting is atrocious. 

The only reason this picture is in here is because I recently learned that some members of our staff read this blog religiously (you know who you are...thank you, but you're about to be called out).  Look at the condition of this office...SHAMEFUL and that's all I'm going to say about that. CLEAN YOUR MESS. YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T WORK HERE.

Have a lovely evening.