Mommy and Me Arts and Crafts

Now that it's that yucky. rainy, cloudy, dreary and cold transition between fall and winter Kaylie has been spending more time inside which of course makes her a little antsy when she doesn't feel like playing with her cars or doll house.  My solution?  Arts and crafts time!

I'm a huge fan of either buying handmade or making your own cute Christmas gifts to give out to family and friends.  Besides leaving more money in your wallet it's more meaningful and of course unique!  This year I had Kaylie help me make some gifts to give out to her grandparents and great grandparents now that she's older and loves to help!  I bought this inexpensive kit and I had her help make these cute hand print stepping stones to give out!  She loved smashing her hand in the cold mushy plaster and then squish all the little tiles and gems in too!  After they dried I painted her hand prints and dated each one.  Grandmas love this kind of stuff :)  Sorry the photo is terrible, I took it on my phone and then forgot to take a better picture before wrapping them!

She's so focused!

Today it was especially dreary outside so I had Kaylie bundle up and go out with me to pick up pine cones under the tree by our house.  She's always collecting pine cones so she's pretty much a pro at this one!  We put them all in a paper bag and then picked out the best looking ones the squirrels hadn't ravaged and cleaned all the dirt out of them.  Now there's tons of fun things you can do with pine cones so I made sure to keep extras for later projects too.  I figure we can make peanut butter and bird seed pine pine cone feeders for the birds with the "ugly" pine cones later!  I told her that today we're going to paint pine cones and hang them on the Christmas tree!  Anything involving ridiculously messy projects are a gigantic favorite for my 3 year old!  She was so focused, making sure she got every nook and cranny slathered with red paint.  She picked the red paint and told me I could paint mine green.  By the time she was finished painting her three pine cones she looked like Dexter after a kill!  Everything set aside to dry and half a roll of paper towels later and LOTS of soap later, the little ornaments turned out super cute!  I just tied a bit of twine around the top for hanging and once she's had her nap she can hang her pine cones on the tree!  Perhaps next year we'll add to them and decorate them with glitter glue but cleaning paint out of her ears (how kids get messy in the weirdest of places is beyond me) was more than enough for me!


While she was napping I did another quick batch of pine cone ornaments using genuine copper paint on the tips and finishing them with a verdigris patina for an awesome look!  It's a bit time consuming but they turned out great!  I just need to clear coat them and add twine to hang.  We're having a "woodland" theme for our Christmas tree this year so these and the painted ones are a perfect fit!  Now if only we had an oak tree so I could make acorn garland...

Once I make it to the grocery store and buy more flour I'll have Kaylie help make some salt dough ornaments to give as gifts too.  They're super easy to make and very cheap as well!  I'll share the recipe with you :)

Salt Dough Ornaments
2c All Purpose Flour
1c Salt
1c Water

-Preheat your oven to 200 degrees
-Mix the flour and salt thoroughly and gradually add the water, mixing with your hands till soft
-Roll dough on floured surface and cut out shapes with cookie cutters.  Use a toothpick to make hanging holes on the tops for string.
-Bake approx 3 hours or till hardened, checking every so often to make sure they don't burn.
-Let cool and paint with acrylic craft paint.  Coat generously with a clear sealant like polyurethane to protect them from crumbling over time and to protect the paint.

Cutsie ornament made with salt dough

Of course you can also make your own shapes since the dough is much like play-doh and you can hot glue ribbon hangers instead of poking holes.  You can write on them with permanent markers to personalize them too.  I actually have a cute pea pod ornament made with salt dough that was given to me for Kaylie a year ago.  The possibilities are endless with this recipe!

Christmas Card Photos!

I'm on the ball this year and got my photos taken for this year's Christmas card photo!  Kaylie was soooo excited to wear her Christmas dress for the photos.  As she puts it it's her "Christmas princess dress"!  I just wanted to share some of the cute shots I got :)

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals!

Is everyone pumped about the biggest shopping deals of the season?  Of course the one year I finish my Christmas shopping early all the local stores here decide to start their black Friday deals at midnight instead of 5am!  Oh well, I don't need a new big screen or camera so I guess it doesn't matter anyway!

My Esty Shop will be having a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale too!  Use coupon code SHIP4FREE (all caps) to get free shipping on your entire order!  This offer ends Monday November 28th at 11pm EST.

Red Poppies Scrabble Pendants

Please do mention to me in a convo or message to seller if you would like me to ship someplace other than the address provided to me by PayPal.  If you're sending a gift I can include a little gift tag made of pretty scrap booking paper with a sentiment to include with your gift at no charge.  Again, just convo or put in the message to seller what you'd like it to say!

Hand Stamped Gift Boxes

If you're ordering from my shop don't forget about my super cute hand stamped gift boxes to put your jewelry in!  They make your gift extra special with that handmade touch and did I mention they're super cute?  They're available in three sizes and if you need help determining which size would be best, just send me a quick convo on Etsy and I'll help you out!

Swirly Birdie

Also new in my shop, Swirly Birdie Necklace!  this adorable little bird has been hand shaped and wrapped with little swirlies for a cute touch!  The entire pendant has been oxidized and shined for a lovely antique finish!  It hangs on an 18' 2.4mm copper plated ball chain.  A very cute gift for the bird lover!

Autumn Glitter

I have a new bracelet in my shop that I'm hoping finds a happy home!  Autumn Glitter is alive with sparkling goldstone and beautiful white magnesite wire wrapped by hand using solid copper wire!  A beautifully carved gold stone leaf and genuine Swarovski crystal grace the middle of this unique piece that looks gorgeous all year round!  Earthy and rustic, this would be perfect for that down to earth gal in your life!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family!  Also here's a treasury I made and a couple treasuries I've been featured in, check them out!

Chirstmas Shopping, New Merch and Upcoming!

SOLD and re-listed!

Isn't this jewelry box SUPER cute!

Galeaz Glass on Etsy makes them!

I'm very happy my sales have been picking up a bit more with the biggest shopping season of the year looming over us.  The stores are getting crazy and thankfully I'm nearly done with my Christmas shopping list!  Jealous?  All I have left is to buy something for my father-in-law tell my husband ideas for the hardest person on our list-me!  I have my eyes set on a GORGEOUS handmade glass jewelry box made by Galeaz Glass on Etsy and a new pouch with cute owls on it for the new Droid I'll be getting the end of December (I sooo HATE my BlackBerry, I think I see a sledgehammer in its future), I'm still deciding which Etsy shop to buy from though, there's so many!

Autumn Sunrise

I recently listed two brand new items in my shop.  The first is Autumn Sunrise, a new pair of wire wrapped copper earrings featuring some oh so lovely autumn jasper beads!  I've wire wrapped these beauties by hand using sold copper wire which I've oxidized and shined for a rustic and vintage touch.  They also hang from hand forged earring hooks made of copper wire.

Cobalt Coral

Next up is Cobalt Coral, I had bought these wonderful blue genuine coral beads some time ago but had no real plans for them till now!  They were too pretty to pass up and had such a wonderful texture!  This necklace features the lovely 14mm coral bead as a focal surrounded with ornate bead caps and beads with lots of dainty brass chain fringe dangling below!

Coming Soon!

I also wanted to give everyone a sneak peek of two items I just finished doing photo edits on!  they'll be listed in my shop before Thanksgiving and (if they don't sell before then) they'll be with me at my next craft show Decemeber 3rd at the Rapid River American Legion from 9-4pm!  If I missed you at my last show, I hope to see you there!

Coming Soon!

In case you haven't seen them yet, I now have a new gifting option that I mentioned was coming soon!  I now offer super cute hand stamped kraft boxes that you can purchase as an upgrade from the organza bag when you purchase jewelry from my shop!  They're only a few bucks each, come tied with a cute little twine bow and you have several stamps to choose from!  All I ask is that you please purchase your upgrade and jewelry together to save you shipping as there's no extra shipping charge for the box if you purchase it with jewelry from my shop!

Hand Stamped Kraft Boxes!

Lastly, I'd like to show you all some sweet treasuries I've had the honor of being featured in, check them out!

It's That Christmas Craft Show Time of Year Again!

Oh my it's been a reeeally long time since I've posted in here!  Lots of crazy things have been going on and I guess I kind of put this on the back burner!  Hubby got a new job at Schwan's as a Route Sales Rep and he just loves it!  I'm very happy for him for landing this job, especially with how young of a family we are.  No more job hopping!  I've been busy with Kaylie's preschooling since she didn't get into the early preschool class I wanted her in this year.  She's only 3 so it's ok, there's always next year but with all the requirements for schooling now I want to make sure she's well prepared!

Sasha

We also added a new furry addition to our house.  In no way did I want to have four cats in our house, three was more than plenty but my mom mentioned to me that she saw a cat at the pound that looked just like our cat, Sasha, we had to give away when Kaylie was a baby.  For whatever reason after we moved into our new house and Kaylie was just starting to walk Sasha decided to pee on everything Kaylie owned.  We tried everything in the book to correct this bad behavior but nothing worked so we were forced to take her to the shelter.  Now I explicitly told the shelter she should be placed in a home without young children.  Long story short, she ended up back in that same shelter because she doesn't get along with children.  Ugh, how can people be so dumb!  I felt sooooo bad for poor Sasha and went to visit her to see if it really was her.  She had no tail, lime green eyes, and a brown patch by her ear, yup this was indeed Sasha!  Sushi, as the shelter had named her (seriously? Sushi?) remembered me and the lady said I was the first person she saw "Sushi" come out from under her blanket for.  How could I leave her there right?  So I brought her home and crossed my fingers that the peeing would not happen again.  It's been about a month and she's actually been perfectly fine to my amazement.  Kaylie is older now so she does listen when I tell her to leave Sasha alone so Sasha isn't stressed out like she was when Kaylie was too little to know better.  I never wanted to give her up in the first place but we're happy to have our Sashie Bear back :)

Wire wrapped tree branches

Cute little dress form necklace displays I made

I knew that old crate would come in handy

Well now for what I came here to write about!  It's that busy time of year again for Christmas shopping and craft shows!  I just had my first Christmas craft show on Saturday at the local high school and it was great!  I was really reserved about it at first since I seemed to have a string of bad luck for the past few private shows and a horrible craft show that wasn't even advertised this past spring that I did.  But, I got very close to my sales goal for the day and had a great time meeting tons of new people!  I got tons and tons of compliments on my jewelry and my displays!  A few people even wanted to buy some of my handmade displays!  I was really hoping to sell out of some clearance items and to sell some more mini paintings but oh well, I still have another show coming up in a few weeks!  As I expected my Scrabble pendants were quite a hit!  I'm super stoked that I made enough to pay myself back for the folding banquet tables I bought (those are sooooo nice to have) and to replace all my black velvet displays with oak, natural hemp and cream leatherette displays.  They were a bit pricy but I think the new displays will look so much better on my tables than the black ones!  Now I get to take a little break between shows and get a chance to list some new items.  I've got one more show on December 3rd at the American Legion in Rapid River from 9-3pm!

One of four tables, this one with Scrabble pendants and earrings

I also wanted to point out recent treasuries I was featured in for the NNNTeam and Etsy Hearts Beads Team!  Take a peek!