Creative Chaos

Snow Globes are in the house....

I love making these little snow globes.........

 

I received my box of globes from Melissa Frances the other day and got right to work creating little snowy scenes that are the exact opposite of sunny San Diego.  Although, from what I understand, many people on the East Coast can relate......

For those in Buffalo, I just need to add another six feet of snow......

I'll be teaching this class at Paper Tales on Saturday, December 13th.  Talk to you soon! karin 

 

Gearing up for some casses at Paper Tales....

I've been working on some cute little snowy landscapes with globes and trees from Melissa Frances.  I'm trying to get it all complete so that I can finally get it going at Paper Tales.....

The crepe tree is all done.....

I'll be back with more details in a bit!  Talk to you soon! Karin

On my desk today.....

As usual a million different project being worked on.....only a lucky few coming to fruition......

 

Carpool lanes and crafts.........

So, after returning home this morning from dropping off both kids at school, I’ve decided to take it upon myself to write up a few friendly reminders as to how to navigate the swift murky river current also known as the car pool lane. The carpool lane should be treated like military maneuvers.  Drop offs should be carried out precisely, quickly and efficiently along with a sense of community and patience.   You can thank me later and I will accept gifts and cash…….

 

Middle School: For the f*&$%ing love of all that’s holding my sanity together.  Do not have a conversation with your child while parked in the car pool lane as he or she is leaning in the passenger window.  There is nothing, and I seriously mean nothing, that can be discussed that justifies the other cars behind you lingering in limbo in the intersection a mere twenty feet behind your vehicle.  

Which brings me to my next helpful tip…..

I frankly see no reason to even stop the car at this point. I think we should all do a slow roll to the curb while they jump out of the vehicle.  Extra points for teaching them how to do a drop and roll.  Or that just might be me…..

If you hear the words “I forgot….let me see if I have….I need to check…or hold on one second” while parked in the front lane, you simply turn to your child and say “Too bad. So sad. Welcome to the real world. Get out of the car. Now. 

When picking up your child, do not, and I really can’t say this strongly enough, DO NOT wait in the middle of the street thereby blocking all vehicles from moving back, forward, sideways or anyways while you wait for your special snowflake to come running out the front door of the school.  This is not Outback Steakhouse. There is no curbside service.  If you don’t see your child keep on a moving.  Until cars can propel themselves in an upward fashion like a helicopter, I’m telling you right now, you are really pissing off the guy who lives in the neighborhood who simply wanted to drive to the store to get a loaf of bread and milk. 

Elementary:  Under no circumstance should you be getting out of the car.  You are not to be removing back packs from the trunk of your car. Unless you are retrieving a wheel chair for your child or a suitcase full of cash to be donated to the school, the driver should be remained seated while child promptly exits the vehicle with said backpack in lap. 

Once you pull up to the curb, out they go.  The long goodbye should be done on the road while traveling to the school.  This is not Sophie Choice, you are not dropping them off for college nor are they leaving on a three year mission trip to Tanzania.  Good bye…Good Luck…and Good Riddance.  You will see them in a quickly moving time warp of 6 hours.

Which brings me to the opposite point. Everyone is in hurry in the morning. Unless you are a doctor racing to the hospital to do a heart transplant or sew someone's leg back on, quit doing u turns in the intersection. Just quit it. Stop thinking you are going to outsmart everyone by pulling up alongside the drop off lane and not let anybody out of it.  You’re not being efficient. You are being an ass.    Ok….that’s it for now.   I feel better already.

My day.......

The great gold experiment of 2014....

After a particularly exhausting day of subbing, I sat down and proceeded to paint everything with a paintable surface gold........

Gold is the color of the moment and I for one was not going to be left behind on this trend. Earlier in the week, I went to the store to buy a bottle of gold paint and left with five various and subtly different shades of gold......

Then I got way too frustrated painting five coats of paint on cardboard stars and way too tired of making decisions as to what shade of paint to use and called it a night.  The gold will have to wait until some other time.

However, Paper Tales is right on trend with some cute stuff in the shop.......

 

 

Talk to you soon! Karin 

 

The invention and reinvention of the wheel....and mica trees.....

So.... I said to myself yesterday, as I was getting ready for the Regali event and the Paper Tales open house: "DO NOT GET DISTRACTED. You are to focus on the task at hand which is making heart journals that have already been designed.

 

You ...are not to look around the room at shiny things and create something new. Do not reinvent the wheel.  Focus!"

 

 

So of course, not only did I reinvent the wheel, I designed a whole new mode of transportation with my Melissa Frances boxes and trees....I tried my best. But those trees have a way of speaking my language....

And those little snowmen too.....

Going back in time and a Giveaway!

 

This picture kills me......I begged Carlos to dress up like this again this year. He stated that he was moving out of the house effective yesterday.....Whatever.  He's such a spoil sport.

Anyhow.....On to the good news. I'm having a giveaway!  I haven't done so in so long.  I think it's a great way too kick off my" getting back to blogging" groove....

All you need to do is just pop over to my Creative Chaos Studio facebook page and like the picture or you can just comment here on this post.  I may even give away two! 

Although we'll see how i feel after substitute teaching 3rd graders ....on a Friday...on Halloween.   If the excitement level is anywhere near Andres' self combustion stage, I think I will be done for.  But I'm a survivor. So hopefully I'll get out somewhat unscathed. 

I'll announce the winner on Wednesday!  Talk to you soon! Karin

 

 

 

A Paper Tales tutorial to start your weekend off right......

So....the other day, I informed Michelle that as Head Designer, President and Glitter Czar of the Paper Tales Design Team, I was going to do a fun journal cover tutorial for the store.  

She glanced up from her computer and said, "we don't have a design team." 

I promptly responded, "yes, we do." 

To which she responded, "no, we don't." 

To which I reminded her, "yes....we've always had a design team."  

"Since when?"

"Since yesterday when I started it."

"Who's on it?"

"Just me. Everyone else quit citing excessive use of glitter and misuse of the Czar title."

At that point she walked away to take a phone call, which I, of course, interpreted as an enthusiastic thumbs up for the tutorial.  So, without further ado let's make a cute little journal.......

All Supplies Available at Paper Tales!

What you need:

• Kraft journal
• Acrylic Paint
• Book Page or any patterned paper of your choice.
• Glimmer Glam Shimmer (otional)
• Black pen and white pen (I used a black 05 Zig and white Signo pen)
• Stamp (I used Hero Arts "My Words")
• Versafine Onyx Black
• Inka-Gold in Old Silver
• Paintbrush

Here is the journal that I used.  I love this little notebook.  It's perfect for embellishing and doing a bit of art journaling......

The paint I used on the cover was the Martha Stewart Chalk Paint impulsively purchased a couple weeks ago at 50% off while looking for kid's Halloween stickers.......

The interesting thing about this paint is that it dries so quickly.  It's a bit different from using regular acrylic paint.  I mixed it up a bit with my favorite white of all time "Wedding Cake."  It's really not the paint that's my favorite......

It's the fact that it's called Wedding Cake.......

I took a piece of a vintage book page and cut it into a heart.   As you can see by the extra pieces, it took me a couple of times to get it just right.......

I glued it down.....

 

Now you are ready to paint the heart.  I used the delicious "Wedding Cake"white and a bright pink called "Pink Dahlia." (Which by the way was another impulse buy.  I swear, I can't leave Michael's without a least one little bottle of paint.) It ended up working out perfectly though. The pink was almost like a fluorescent...but not quite that bright.

 

I started sweeping the paint around the the edge of the heart.....

And then just kept adding more pink and a bit of white until I was satisfied with the look of my heart....

  

I grabbed a couple of different sized black pens and my all time favorite white pen to add some detail to the cover......

I love this pen.....

 

I added a black border arount the cover. I just freehanded my lines because it was the look I was going for.  But you could use a ruler if you wanted to.....

I outlined the heart in black....

 

 

Here is the stamp set I used for the sentiment on my heart.  I originally bought this set for art journaling but found that I have used it for so much more.  We just got it back in stock.  I can't recommend it enough.....

I ended up using Versafine as my ink pad.  I like it because it works well for fine detailed stamps.  I also pulled out my GlimmerGlam to add to my heart after I stamped it. Because, of course, it just isn't a tutorial party until the glitter comes out. Plus, I just wanted to add an extra element on the heart....

So, after I added my little doo dads around the heart and some while pen swirls around the sentiment, I felt that the journal was lacking something. Something trendy....something gold....something round....Gold Dots! Ha! Because I was planning to pin this on Pinterest and wanted it to go wildly viral, I knew I had to add some trendy, in the moment gold dots...... 

Lucky for me, my impulsiveness worked in my favor as I had just bought some Inka-Gold at Paper Tales a couple weeks ago.  Randi had been doing some amazing projects with it and I was inspired to do the same. Of course, it's been sitting on my craft table since then.  However, I like to look at it as patiently waiting for just the right project to come along....... 

 

Now, I know you are looking at those perfectly aligned polka dots and thinking to yourself.... "Well, it's no wonder she voted herself in as president, head designer and polka dot czar of Paper Tales non-existent design team...... 

That is the dottiest dot that ever dotted.....How did she do it?  Will she give away her secret?
 

Heh.....My big secret.....

The hole from one of my tags.  I tried using a pencil eraser but because of the thickness and the quick dry nature of the product it was just looking too messy.   So of course, not one to wait for proper equipment or tools, like a stencil, I grabbed the next best thing.  The reason it worked to well is because of two things: The product is lightweight and it dries lightning fast.  As long as I was working top to bottom, I didn't have to worry about smearing the rest of the dots.

Here are a couple of pictures of the first pages.......

 

I'll be back to share more!  Have fun....Karin  

 

Halloween happenings....

It's that time of year when mild mannered mommy turns into Spookytown City Planner.  Try as I might to enforce Spookytown code compliance, I am thwarted at every turn by unruly, defiant citizens who claim Lego skeletons are part of the landscape. I was able to remove motorcycle zombie back to the proper area at the Flaming Skull Motorcycle Showroom and Garage.

And, then, there is the 14 year old who insists that "I don't care. Do whatever you want" who aimlessly wanders back in the room grabbing all "his" spookytown figurines from "unruly, defiant 9 year old citizen" proclaiming that he remembers exactly which ones were purchased for him despite the 14 year Spookytown shopping span.  Spooktown City Planner then had to get involved and declare marshall law on all involved.

It's a nevering ending job.

In other news I'm still tryng to make Halloween happen with a tag.  I refuse to put my Halloween stuff away with out at least making a few more things.....

 

I wish I could say I made this beautiful "Spooky" sign but I didn't.  It was made by a blogging friend years back. It's still one of my favorite decorations.

I did make this tag, however.  I used beeswax on the top.  I'm going to do a tutorial so stay tuned! 

Talk to you soon!  Karin

Trying to get back to blogging......

I have had this blog for over seven years!  So much has changed since then.  I'm slowly trying to get back into the groove of blogging.  Because life has taken me in a multitude of directions, I have all but stopped blogging.   I miss it. So I'm really going to try to get back into posting and writing. 

One of the things that has kept me busy is substitute teaching at the boys' school.  The other is working at my favorite place, Paper Tales.....

Italian crepe paper.....

Flowers.....

A card from Randi......

My newest obsession.......

My other obsession....Wool felt....

 

I'll be back!

 

 

 

 

A little more halloween inspiration.......

Some oldie but goodies from a few years back since I haven't really done anything new......

So........

I'm slowly trying to get back to blogging.   I thought I would drop some Halloween stuff here before I had to run out the door.........

My big plan was to do a class with these tags that I created two years ago. Once again they will be carefully wrapped and put away until next year.  At least they made it out of the box this year. 

  

These other cards and tags were born from some free time I had. I plopped down on my chair and decided to just create for the sake of creating.   I used this paint that I purchased a few weeks back because....well, because, it's Martha and it was 50% off and it was chalk paint and it was a pretty color.....

It was fun to use because it dried so fast......which works perfectly with my impatient lifestyle.

Gotta run......Karin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Testing

The "Sweet Life" is here....

I love this paper line by Melissa Frances designed by Jenny And Aaron from Everyday is a Holiday......

 

It's at Paper Tales now and I'm so excited...

 

I'm planning on teaching this minibook at the Paper Tales..... 

Talk to you soon! Karin