It has been awhile since I showed you any of the onesies that I have created.  So I decided to show you some of the designs that I've come up with over the last 6 months or so. 

I have found at the craft shows that the onesies that sell the most are either really sweet or really funny.  I always enjoy watching people laugh as they look through the rack of baby clothes and whisper to their friends, "Hey come here,  look at this one," and then both of them are laughing.  Even if I don't make the sale, at least I was able to put a smile on a customer's face just by being there.  It also opens up ways for interesting stories and someone always ends up giving me a suggestion for a different design. 

Since I'm working, I haven't had a chance to put all of these up in the Etsy shop yet, but they are available for sale.  You can either contact me through this website or convo me through the Etsy shop that is linked here and let me know if you are interested in any of these designs.  If nothing else, I hope I can make you smile today.  Have a great week.

Hi there!!!  Things are going well.  Last weekend I did the craft show at Pala Casino.  There were a ton of people and I made more sales than I ever had.  I went there with my cousin and she sold many of the upcycled bibs and burp cloths she makes.  She gets gently used shirts and sews them into these super cute bibs and burp cloths.  If you get a chance check out her website at www.bibsagain.weebly.com.

I just received a new order of heat transfer vinyl, so I am starting to make more of the jackets and t-shirts again.  People seem to like the onsies and bibs that I make that are a little bit more sarcastic/funny in nature, instead of all the cute stuff that I have.  I had to go out and get a part time job to make ends meet.  I'm working as a care provider for the elderly.  It isn't that exciting, but it helps pay the bills.  I haven't had too many sales at the Farmer's market, and I might have to give that gig up once they switch the hours.  I think I'm going to try to make this business work for another year or two and after that, I'm not sure if I can keep it up after that.  I enjoy it, but the way the economy is right now, I'm not sure how much longer I can last.

Here are the new jackets that I made with the heat transfer vinyl and the Make the Cut software that I just got this month.  It has been fun playing around with the new software.  It makes it a whole lot easier to make the phrases in the mirror image with the Shape Magic tool on this program.  I am trying to get ready for all the holidays.  I started making some Christmas ornaments, some wreaths, and some Harvest items.  With all the packing and unpacking, some of the items are getting damaged.  I need to figure out a better way to transport all of this stuff.

Anyways, I better let you see what you came for and then go to sleep.  Have a great week!

Good Morning!!!  Hope you are enjoying your Friday.  I finally got around to posting these pictures.  Fortunately, for you no one bought them at the Famrer's Market otherwise there would be no pictures.  Did I tell you, I started selling regularly at the Farmer's Markets on Wednesday at Cal State San Marcos from 3-7 and on Thursday at Valley Center from 3-7?  The Escondido Downtown Live lost their funding, so I won't be showing my crafts there anymore.  So I'm looking for different venues for selling my crafts.  My dream is to some day have my own craft store...that would be incredible...then I could host classes for the elderly, kids, and people with disabilities.  A dream is a destination, the journey that gets you there may be long and treacherous, but it will be worth meeting all the people and all the sightseeing you'll do along the way.

So a few weeks ago, I made some of these jackets for the girls.  This week I made the jackets for the boys.  I used the Cricut cartridge "A Child's Life".  I love, love, love this cartridge.  It is so versatile and it is packed with so many cute images and with a really cute font and a few sayings. 

I have to start making some special orders, adding more items to the store, and start making stuff for Christmas and finish the stuff for my cousin's baby shower.  I'll have to post the stuff for the baby shower next time...it looks so cute.  Have a great weekend and remember that there is always time if you make the time to make it a priority.

Hi everyone!!!  Hope everyone is doing fine.  I celebrated my anniversary this past Sunday.  I have to tell you this story because it is kinda funny.  We planned to go back to the resturant where Ed proposed.  Unfortunately, that resturant wasn't there anymore (so it ended up being more like our first date--when everywhere we went didn't exist anymore).  So we ended up going to a different resturant in the same area.  After dinner, Ed pulls out a paper box he had made and hands it to me, like he did when he first proposed.  In the box were a couple of Shazaam rings that he had got from Comic Con.  So we laughed, put them on and did the Wonder Twins Rings activate routine.  We are a couple of nerds that were made for each other.

Anyways, back to business.  I don't know if you checked out the store lately or not.  I recently changed the format.  It is now linked up to my etsy website.  I was not updating either site regularly, so I figured I'd just make my Etsy shop the store and save myself some time trying to update both sites.  This is also forcing me to update the etsy site more regularly and I think you will like the format better.  I have a lot of the baby stuff in there right now, but will start adding the water bottles and the shirts soon.

Here are the onsies that I finished making over the weekend.  I used heat transfer vinyl.  The images are from the Indie art cartridge and Graphically speaking.  I've already sold the "Made in the Usa" on Saturday.  If you see anything you like, let me know and I can recreate it if you really want it.

Have a great day and enjoy the rest of your week!!!

Happy 4th of July weekend!!!

I'm so excited!!!  Yesterday I finally recieved my order of heat transfer vinyl.  What's that you say?  It is only one of the coolest things that you can use your Cricut on.  It is basically an iron-on vinyl that you can cut out with a Cricut or any diecutter for that matter.  It is expensive, so you need to be careful when you use it, or you will waste it like I did.  Below is how to use it---and how to avoid making the mistake that I made.

I would highly suggest making a practice cust on regular cardstock before using the heat tranfer vinyl.  I wish I would have taken that advice, and then I wouldn't have wasted so much.  All the images need to be cut in reverse.  That means pressing the flip button on before cutting.  If you are cutting a phrase out, you will also want to spell the word backwards in addition to turning on the flip button.  If you forget to do this like I did, you will waste some of the vinyl.  Make sure that you cut your image on the dull side of the vinyl.  When the image is cut, you will want to trim the page around your image so that you don't waste any of the vinyl.  Peel away the excess vinyl from your image and any of the inner pieces you don't want on your image (ex. the circle in the middle of the letter "o").  Place the sticky/dull side down on your material----if you don't you are going to mess up your iron and the vinyl---don't ask me how I know...I just made a lot of mistakes the first time I used this stuff.  Place your iron on the cotton setting and let it heat up.  Iron the image down on your material on top of a hard surface for 20 seconds.  I had to put a towel over the image because it started to melt the jacket's material.  You can peel off the backing while it is still hot.  Presto Change-o, you just transformed your garment into a work of art.

I made a ton of mistakes when I started using this stuff, but I would still highly reccommend it because the results are fantastic when you finally figure out how to do it.  You can even do multiple layers by ironing one color on top of the other one.  If I can figure this out, I have no doubt that you can do it too!!!  I bought the heat transfer vinyl sample pack from H&H sign company.  It was the best deal that I've seen on the Internet so far.  I will definately be buying more, especially if these jackets sell this weekend.

This is going to be the last weekend at Downtown Live in Escondido.  They lost their funding source and cannot continue to pay the bads for the free concerts.  So I'm going to be looking for a new place to sell my goods.  I'm going to apply to the Escondido Farmer's market and hopefully I can get a spot there.  There are quite a few people already there, so I don't know if it is going to work or not.  On July 17th I will be at the Shepherd's craft fair in Bonita located at 3990 Bonita Rd.  Stop by and say hi if you are in the area.  I'd love to meet some of my readers.  

Have a great weekend.  I hope this works this time.  I think this is the 3rd time I tried to post this.  Oh well...have a good one!!! 

Happy Memorial Day!  Hope you had a great weekend with family and friends.  I enjoyed the day off by trying to see what my day might look like if I worked on my crafts full time.  It was wonderful to play be your own boss for a day.  It doesn't pay much, but it was nice to plan my day around craft business related stuff. 

I got the books all caught up, did some shopping at Joann's and at Big Lots, checked e-mail, looked for new shows, networked,  experimented with a new technique, got some visors and t-sirts made and even did a load of laundry.    I could so work for myself for a living...if I could figure out a way to pay for the bills.  Actually that's what prompted me to experiment and try to make these new products.   If this stuff sells pretty good this weekend, I think I will make more of these visors and t-shirts.

It was fun playing around with my cricut today.  I had some foam craft sheets lying around.  I wasn't sure if the Cricut would cut them or not, so I tried it a couple of times.  It actually worked pretty good when the pressure is on the maximum setting, the blade pressure is at 6 and you use it with the Multi-cut function.  It's not a really clean cut, but it worked pretty good.  I bet it would work better if I had the deep blade.  I also experimented with a new glue.  The last time I tried to glue the foam with my glue gun it made a huge mess, melted some of the pieces, and I burned myself more than once.  I had heard about this glue called E-6000 in a craft discussion board a long time ago, but never tried it.  I picked some up in hopes that it would work with the craft foam.  It did the trick beautifully.  Those pieces aren't going to come off unless you try to rip them off.  If you do decide to use this glue, be sure that you use it in a well ventilated place because the smell is pretty strong.  The only thing I didn't really like about it, was when I set it down to attach me pieces on the visors, it started oozing out of the tube.  So you have to put the cap on between uses otherwise it leaks all over everything.

I picked the visors up at Joann's.  The cuts are off of the Life's a Beach cartridge.  They turned out way better than I thought they would. 

Here are the visors.  I'll let you know how the t-shirts turned out later this week, because they are still drying.  Hope you like this project.  Happy crafting to you.  Have a great week.