Fairy ATCs

So I've been swapping over on Swap-Bot and I joined my first ATC swap. If you don't know what an ATC is, it stands for Artist Trading Card. It is basically a little piece of art you create the size of a baseball trading card, and people trade and collect them. There are even yahoo groups dedicated to collecting and trading. Just do a search on google to find all kinds of sites on how to make them. When you da a swap for one, there is usually a theme, and the theme for this swap of ATCs was fairies.

I had never made one before. I have admired many, but just never tried it. Well this weekend, we went over to my mom's house and I made one. I need to make a second one for my swap since we are to send 2 before I send it, but just wanted to go ahead and post this one because I really like how it came out. My flash kinda washed out the bottom of the card, but it still looks pretty good. I'll post my second one, when I finish it later this week. I'm still deciding on what kind of fairy to use.

For this one, I used embossing powder and then stamped over it, and the part you can't see is that I sprinkled a tiny bit of embossing powder, like a dusting across the entire card, to give it a sparkly feel, and then used the heat gun to set it - that part came out just perfect, so when you tilt the card just slightly it sparkles.



And the person sending to me already sent my fairy ATCs, and they are hand drawn fairies! They are really beautiful. I really like the one up on her tiptoe, doing an arabesque, reminds me of my own ballerina.

So...boring

God, I'm so boring these past few weeks. I haven't done any crafting and I feel like there is just nothing to talk about here. I'm trying to work on my school work so I have no time for crafting or crap, even taking a break to watch TV anymore.

I have 3 sections to finish and the first one is due tomorrow and I have done about 10% of it. And you know in high school and college I prided myself on not being a procrastinator. I was that weirdo that began working on a paper the minute they were assigned and turned it in early. And now...I'm literally inches from quitting. I hate it so much...that's not entirely true, I more than hate it, I loathe it. Is loathe a stronger word than hate? I know if I quit I will feel guilty, especially being like 2 1/2 assignments from graduating, that's just stupid. But dang it, I hate this crap. I think I'm burned out and need a very long vacation. I haven't had a day off in forever.

I don't know. Seriously, this is not what I want to do with my life. It makes me more marketable, that is the only reason I'm doing this course. But really, I feel like I'm wasting my brain.

Well crap, I guess this turned into a rant, sorry. I don't know what I want. Well, that's not entirely true, what I want is to go take a writing class and learn how to get the stories in my head out on paper. But in the last year, I've learned a few things. It's better to fail spectacularly than to never even try. And you have to take risks, that is how the most successful people in the world got where they are now and doing what they love. But it's so hard to just let yourself go like that.

Ok, enough ranting. We are taking the kids bowling tonight while I once again ignore my school work. Bye!

Free Day for Mommy

So today we got up early (as in before 2 in the afternoon, as we are a family of vampires), and met Gramma halfway between our homes at a cute little scrapbook store, and she took the kidlets all day to do fun stuff. They were not sure if they were going to spend the night, but decided they couldn't live without me, so we met again at 10:30 tonight for the pick up.

So first we met at this scrapbook store, Gotta Scrap. It's in Rockwall, if you are in the Dallas area. I love that store! They have such great product lines, and....they have Art Girlz stuff! I don't have to order it online anymore. And you know the adorable sock monkey fabrics from Moda? Did you know they made it in a scrapbook paper line too? I didn't, but I had to buy it. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it...But I spent mucho dinero in that store, and that didn't include the jewerly making class my mom and I are taking together in a couple of weeks. I can't wait, you make a cute little bookmark and an adorable bracelet.


Ms Em is obsessed with anything related to Ripley's Believe It or Not and Guiness Book of World Records, so Gramma took them to the Ripley's/Wax Museum. They got their own wax hands made, which I think are totally cool. Mr E chose 2 colors while Ms Em just wanted one. It was a big day, so he was already asleep before I could snap a picture.

But I had the rest of the day to myself, so I did a little clothing shopping for me. Isn't it great when you have a dressing room all to yourself and no one is there to crawl under the other stalls to scare the crap out of customers?

Then I picked up an online order of some cute postcards at Kinko's for my rustic tart recipe to send in a recipe postcard swap over at swap-bot. The front is a picture of the tart itself and the back is my recipe I'm handwriting - which I have to do 7 times which is a bit of a hand killer, writing so small, lol. Oh, and if you homeschool, get yourself a Kinko's educator savings card, I think it's a 15% discount.

Then I went home and worked a little and took a very long nap, where nobody woke me up and I could watch whatever TV show I wanted. If I hadn't been so tired, I would have worked on a new tutorial I'm slowly finishing on how to make a pattern from your favorite shirt, but I just couldn't stay awake, lol.

My Etsy Shop!!

So I finally got my act together and have put up my Etsy shop. This way instead of having a box of crafty things I've made, I can actually sell them too, lol. My store is called TipToe Fairy Designs based ever so creatively on my website name.



Over the next few days I will be adding a few things. I'll post a big ol' announcement when I'm having the official grand opening in the next week or so and will have a coupon code.

Gotta get back to work, I've been seriously screwing off for the last hour creating my store and stuff for my Etsy store.

Sitemeter can take a flying leap

So I thought there was something wrong with my computer because I couldn't edit my blog and my obsession with Perez Hilton wouldn't work either (gawd, lately he's been annoying me and I haven't been reading hardly at all). So...I switched to my other computer and it wouldn't bring up either site, it kept saying "abort - blah, blah, blah". Apparently, my counter which a TON of blogs use as well called Sitemeter updated something and it's totally farking up the internet. So I've decided Sitemeter can go to hell for all I care and I need to find a new counter and stat site.

So I have taken the Sitemeter counter off my site, and it should open just fine now for Internet Explorer users. Or...you could use the wonderful never a problem Firefox, like I've now permanently switching to.

Sorry for the delay, I just realized the problem about an hour ago. I was awarded the Bad Mommy Award in the ER tonight with my poor sweet little Mr E. He was standing in his chair at dinner and fell off and busted his chin, so now he has stitches. He was covered in blood and so was I. He had a fork in his hand and when I picked him up off the floor, I just knew I was going to see a fork stab wound in his throat. Scared the crap out of me. Thankfully he just hit the table corner and had a large but superficial gash.

I'm such a bad mommy for not telling him to sit down. In the ER, the anticipation and waiting to get the stitches was the scariest thing for him. He would just start crying and asking me how bad it would hurt. So at midnight or so when we finally were discharged, he and I were at Walmart buying lots of Batman toys and donuts to celebrate his bravery.

Uh what?

Ok, so I was reading blogs and came across this YouTube video over on Suicide Food. What. The. Hell. I laughed hysterically until tears were streaming down my face. I can't even describe it, you just have to watch it and wonder.