It has been crazy busy at work.  I have so many upcoming meetings in October it is ridiculous.  I think I have so many meetings with parents that I'm going to have meetings coming out of my ears.  It amazes me that Special Ed teachers have any time at all to teach, because they are always in meetings.

I needed a distraction from all my other work, so I tried to make some cards to relax.  It is nice to be home in quiet place where I can retreat from the constant demands of life.  I'm sick right now, but I still wanted to make cards and share them with you.  I think I should be sick more often because I think these cards turned out fantastic.  It is amazing how calming cutting paper can be.  I often lose track of time when I retreat to my craft room.  Cards are the quickest and the easiest things to make, I guess that's why I've made so many.  Next week I'll try to work on something else because you might be bored of looking at all these cards by now.  I bought some wooden jewelry boxes from Dollar tree...I need to work on decorating those.  Hopefully my dog won't eat those like he ate up the picture frames last time.  Well I guess I better put these pictures up because I got to go make dinner because dinner won't make itself.  Have a great week and remeber tomorrow is Friday!!!  Enjoy the pictures and maybe it will give you some ideas.

I just finished a few more Christmas Cards.  I loved the way they turned out, but before I show them to you I wanted to make an announcement.  The blog is more current than the rest of the website.  If you ever find that you like something that I just made, shoot me an e-mail and I'll let you know the price and if you  want it I can set it aside before putting it up on the website and I'll write up an order and send it out to you when the payment is recieved.

Anywho, here are some of my latest Christmas Cards.  I used a punch to get the flower border around the edge of the paper.  It was super hard to press the punch down, even when I put all my weight on it.  I asked my hubby to help, and he set up a clamp with a piece of wood behind the clampy part and then I was able to press it down easily by turing the clamp handle.  I also found my corner cutter and rounded the edges to give the card a softer appearance.  Then I layered the paper and attached a Mary Engelbret Sticker I found at Michael's.  I hope I have a big enough variety for this craft fair next month.  Enjoy the pictures and I hope this inspires you to go out and make some cards of your own.
Have a great week!!!

All is right with the world again.  The weebly support people fixed the blog. Now you can read it without using the RSS feed.  But I guess if you want to subsribe to my blog, then you can just keep using it.

So here's what I've been doing while this was getting repaired.  I went down and got a ficticious business license, a seller's permit, and today I dropped off the paperwork for the State board of Equalization.  I didn't know there was this much paperwork involved in starting up a business.  I also had to run an ad in the newspaper for 4 weeks by law.  This whole business start up thing has been a learning experience for me.  If you ever need any information how to start your own business, I can probably tell you now.  I think I'm just in the waiting stage now. 

So while we are waiting, I'll let you know what I've been working on.  In October, I've been invited by my sister-in-law to sell some of my crafts at her house.  I guess they have a bunch of business women (vendors) go over to her house 3-4 times a year and they sell their goods to all the family and friends that they invite over to her house that day.  Laura gives massages for a $1/minute, someone else sells designer purses, another lady sells jewlry, and I'm not sure how many other people come over to sell stuff.  In July is when she first asked me to do this, after she saw everything I made for my mom's birthday party.  So since July, I just started making most of the stuff you see on this website.  I still can't believe I've made this much stuff already.  This is also why I've been working on so much Halloween and Christmas stuff.

Since July I've made 183 greeting cards, 5 box sets with 8 cards each, 31 gift bags, 31 8x8 pre-made scrapbook pages, 43 12x12 pre-made scrapbook pages, and 10 picture frames, in addition to making this website and creating my own business cards and labels and helping my cousin with some bridal shower favors.    After about the second sale, I kinda got scared that the IRS was going to come and get me---so I did some research on how to make this a legitimate and legal business.  Last Sunday was the first time I put something on Ebay....I'm just kinda experimenting with it to see if that's what I want to do.

I'm not sure if anyone's interested in that business kinda stuff or not, but that's what has been keeping me away from my crafting room.  However, I must confess that today I went to Michael's.  My husband won't go into Michael's or Joann's with me.  He says I take too long.  I can't help it there's just too much cool stuff to look at and to buy.  It is probably a good thing I never worked at either of those stores because I'd be broke all the time---hey wait, I'm not sure how different that would be for the way it is now!!! LOL!!!  But I did get some good ideas, and I picked up some stuff so I can keep on making more crafts.  You know what the best part about this business thing is....I can justify all the money I spend on crafts to my husband....I hope he doesn't catch on to that. J/K :)  No he is a really great guy.  The other day my car battery died.  He woke up early to take me to work, bought a new battery, and installed it before he went to work.  When I came home from work the car was fixed and all was well with the world again. 

I think my camera's battery should be charged by now, so I'm going to go take a few pictures of my latest and greatest projects and upload them here for your viewing pleasure, because I know that's what you came for...not all my rambling non-sense.  I made them with the cricut design studio software.  It's been fun to use the computer to make my crafts.  All of these diecuts are on gift bags.  The blue paper on the last angel is mulberry paper.  I'm not sure if I like that bag or not now that I look at it...it seems more patriotic instead of christmasy to me.  Let me know if you like it.

I had the day off, so I decided to play with my Cricut Design studio Software.  I worked hard all week, so I deserved some much needed R & R.  I am having so much fun with the CDS....it's like I've expanded my whole cartridge collection 10 times.  I've been making so many christmas bags and cards.  I love all the angel designs on the Christmas solutions cartridge.  I also like how you can flip the images and weld them together.  You never know what you can come up with until you try.  I am 95% done loading up all my scrapbook pages to the store.  Check it out if you have a chance. 

The first card is an agel that I aligned along the midline of the CDS mat.  I welded together 2 angels (I copied one angel and then flipped it and welded the wings together).  When it was ust out, I folded it in half and it looked like a really cool card, so I wrote Merry Christmas in it.  I made the other angels using the angel body on the Christmas solutions cartridge and some swirly looking thing on the Storybook cartridge and welded the 2 images together along with the merry christmas phrase I found in the wild card cartridge.  I glued the images on a gift bag.  It was pretty much the same for the rest of the stuff I made today.  The last picture I had to make into a 12x12 scrapbook page because it was a lot bigger than my gift bag.  I think it worked out ok, even though it wasn't what I was orginally going for.  Sometimes a lot of my projects start off one way and end up as something else, because I hate wasting the paper.   Enjoy and go be creative.

Hi there.  I just figured out some cool stuff.  I went on paypal and figured out how to send out invoices for special orders.  So if you need something made, I'll be able to give you a real professional looking statement....say it with me now...ooooooooo, aaaaaaaahhhhhh, oooooooohhhhhhh.  Isn't that cool?  I thought it was.  Sometime this week I'll go talk to a tax guy and look into whether or not I need to charge sales tax...I know it's not a fun subject to talk about, but Uncle Sam always wants his fair cut of the pie.

On a brighter note, this morning I finished up two more orders.  I still can't believe people are actually buying my products and telling me how much they like this website.  I'm humbled and grateful for the response.  I should have done this years ago. 

While I was gone I had my assistant (my Cousin Michelle) make up some of the things I would need to make up the order, so everything went together pretty fast, especially since I used the cards I made on the plane.  See I can be efficient when I want to.

There were a couple of Birthday diecuts that Michelle made a little bit too big.  But being the cheapskate that I am, I found another creative use for them.  I glued them on to some bags I had along with some other left overs, and now we have some stylish gift bags available for you to purchase.  I thought they looked cool.  Let me know what you think.  How much would you pay for one?   I was thinking between $3-5.  Thanks for the feedback.

Chicago was awesome!!!  I loved the windy city.  I used to think they called it that because of all the wind....but now I know it is because all the people that live there like to talk.  I enjoyed visiting with all the people there.

We got our kicks on Route 66, went to visit my grandma, went to the farm, went on the Ledge of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears building), took a tour of the city on a double decker bus, stopped at Navy Pier, got some free popcorn from Garrett's, got a free t-shirt at Millinium Park, and took a ton of pictures.  I definately needed that vacation.

You are going to think I'm weird, but I also got a lot of cards made on this trip.  Most people read or sleep while they are on the plane or when they are waiting for their next flight.  Not me.  I brought a pencil box with some scissors, 5x8 paper, glue, and some stickers and worked on assembling the cards.  I actually made 75 cards on the plane and while we were waiting in the terminal.  All the kids were starring at me like I was crazy...it didn't matter, I got it done.  Actually that helped me get a couple of orders.

When I was at my grandma's house I took pictures of the gifts that I had made her over the years that she had on display throughout her house.  I thought I'd share those pictures with all of you.  Enjoy!!!

This is an ostritch egg that I converted into a nativity scene.  I actually forgot that I had made it until I had seen in in my grandma's display cabinent.  I've only made 2 of these eggs.  I gave it to my grandma because I got the inspiration from her.  She used to decorate chicken eggs with Christmas scenes in them and we'd hang them on our tree as Christmas decorations.  She did beautiful work.  I think the other one I made was given to my cousin and it has a nutcracker scene in it....that's another story...I'll tell you later.   I remeber using a dremmel to cut these eggs and thinking "How in the world can an ostritch get out of this egg" because it took me forever to cut it in half. 

This is the heritage blanket that I had made for my grandma a few years back.  I had been working on all of her genelogy scrapbooks in 2000.  So I decided to use my computer to make a quilt for her using the same information.   The pictures on this quilt are of her parents (my great grandparents) and all of her brothers and sisters when they were little.  I also used the computer to add on the dates, and names of those in the picture.  This quilt reminds me of a giant scrapbook page of my grandma's family history.  I hope it will be treasured by many generations to came.  Check out the next picture for a better view of all the details.

I am so excited...today I finally recieved my cricut design studio (CDS) software.  This is what my DH gave me for my anniversary...actually I ordered it and I let him give it to me...it works out well because then I get what I want.  For those of you that don't know CDS allows you to weld together images from different cricut cartridges to form a unique design.  I had created some files using the trial version and I finally broke down and bought the software on EBAY.

After I called and activated the software, I have been happily creating some really cool designs.  Check them out:

These were all made with George Basic Shapes.  You can personalize anything to what you need.  It is awesome!!!

I got wild and crazy with the CDS and made this cool title.  As I was experimenting with the CDS I figured out that you can copy the image from the 1st pg, open up a new page and copy it in there and when you run it through the machine with the 2nd color it will print out the next color (This one had 4 colors and cuts). 

It was fun making my own designs.  Watch out when you start using this software.  It is addicting and you lose track of time quickly.  But the results are amazing.  And the best thing is that since I saved the file, I will never have to re-do the design...all I have to do is put in my paper and start cutting away.

Before I got CDS, I hated all the disney character cartridges.  It would frustrate me to keep switching paper and then I'd lose 1/2 the little pieces.  I was able to make several winnie the pooh designs at the same time, with CDS which saved me a ton of time and paper.  How cool is that!  (Tip:  You can get the right size shirt by moving it over image on the 1st page and sizing it up the right way, then you copy it and paste it on a new page.  I labeled my pages by color so when I saved it I'd know exactly what colors I'd need for future projects...I'm going to do the same for the rest of my pooh cartridges.)

With the jos of the season and the Christmas solutions cartridge I was all to make some unique Christmas die cuts to put on future cards.  I love the way they came out.

I made these unique Christmas designs and I'm going to be putting them on Christmas Gift Bags.  I'm blown away by what the Cricut can do.  Below are 2 more.