My name is Karol, and I am a collector.

My garage holds crates and crates of collections. Most are seasonal, some are old linens I can't seem to give up, some are books that are there for the same reason. But mostly it is seasonal "stuff".  Every year I swear to myself that I am not going to buy anything else, but I just laugh and keep adding to the pile. I won't embarrass myself and tell you how many crates are out there, but I will say that my car couldn't fit in there if it had to. I have mostly Christmas, then next would be Halloween. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and if I didn't think my husband would kill me, I'd keep the decorations up all year.

Here are some of my Easter collectibles.

These egg cups started out as a set of chalkware that you could paint. I can't even remember where I got them, but I've had them for over 10 years. I love their facial expressions and poses. There are four total.
















My maternal grandmother used to send us all cards for every occasion when I was a little thing.  The impressive part about that is she had 36 grandchildren and never forgot to send any of us a card. She was a sentimental woman and that trait has been passed down to me. I kept my cards and love to bring them out to make me smile. This one has a fuzzy feel to the bunny.

 

Here is another one next to a thrift store pink duck sitting on one of my chairs from another collection. The duck is half of a salt and pepper shaker set. The other piece was missing. Notice my white plate collection too. I love milk glass. I put some dollar tree gel stickers on the plate... how cute! That was a DUH moment. I usually put them on a mirror or window, but it struck me that the white glass was a perfect background for the pretty pastel gels.

This is a full view of one of my cabinets in my kitchen. I made the egg "banner" with plastic eggs that I simply opened and attached to a ribbon. Not my idea, I saw it on another blog and loved the effect. So easy, and sweet.

I'm also a big lover of bubble lights. This one came from TJ Maxx and although it has glitter in it instead of just bubbles, I love it anyway. We had bubble lights on our Christmas tree when I was a kid, and I can remember how fascinated I was with them. I love that they are back around. What do you collect?

Easter cake!

I made this cake last night as a thank-you for some people who went above and beyond to help us out at work. I saw it on a food website (can't remember which one) and thought it was so cute! It is simply a box chocolate cake mix and tub icing. I'm not a big baker, obviously. Anyway, the sunflower "seads" are tiny chocolate chips, and of course, the Peeps make the petals. I did have to use toothpicks to secure the Peeps. They wanted to slide off. It is so cute in person and made a very nice presentation. I believe I'll be making another one for our family Easter picnic. I'm one of the few who actually likes to eat Peeps, and chocolate cake is my favorite. mmmmmm :)

 

Hippity Hoppity SUG

I made these little thank-you gifts for our fellow coworkers and passed them out this morning. I started with 4 boxes of bunny Peeps, 2 bags of little malted milk balls, a large bag of shredded coconut, and a package of the bags sold in the Wilton aisle that are meant for lollipops. These are so simple to make. I dyed the coconut greenish-yellow then toasted it in the oven on a large cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. I stirred it, and put it back in for 12 more minutes. After cooling, I spooned coconut 2 heaping spoonfuls into the bags with 5 or 6 milk balls and a Peep. I printed out onto shipping labels: "To one of our favorite Peeps", stuck those on the back side of the bag, then zip tied them with the silver tie that comes with the bags. Too cute!!! and so easy. I made 48 of them to share. Peep Peep!

Accessorizing

After almost an entire week of not feeling well, I finally got over whatever "crud" had invaded my body. My spring break was intended to be more productive than it was but that, as they say, is life. I did manage to get around to some cleaning out of the spider webs in my craft room. Not literal webs, I'm not that bad. But I am bad at dangerously close levels of hoarding. So, I have my car filled to the brim with donations for my favorite thrift stores, and a second batch waiting to get loaded after that one gets dumped off. I feel cleansed. I had so much stuff in bags, I had forgotten that I had most of it. That's the bad side of crafting. How many times have we all said, "I will get around to doing something with this later." Of course, later never comes.


My first project was my bulletin board. Remember... I had left over material from my chair redo. Here is the board:

Right now I have some of my favorite family pictures on it, but I will be using it as a place to put inspiration pix that I find on-line or in magazines. I love this material! It is very bright and fun, and definitely sparked up my space. Got it at Walmart.

These are another couple of projects that I did to pull in the green/black theme. I found both of these at thrift stores. One is a cutlery tray and was light oak. The other is a little wall shelf and was a darker mahogany color. I'm am sooooo terrible at taking the "before pictures"... sorry.

On the cutlery tray, I simply primed it with white, painted the inside of each compartment with a spring green, then decoupaged the "walls" with black and green background papers. It is really cute! I attached a picture hanger to the back so I could hang it on the wall.

This little shelf got spray painted green and I filled it with some of my K collection and a few other little things that make me smile.

















The lamp started out as an ugly 80's brass thing with a pleated shade. I sprayed it with a brushed nickel paint and changed the shade. I took some more of the chair material, cut out some of the flowers and used Mod Podge to attach them to the shade. The little black pompom fringe adds so much whimsy! That was hot glued on. Believe it or not, I measured the shade before I bought the trim. Imagine that! I'm a slow learner, but I do learn eventually.

 

I found the bird cage at a thrift store for 50¢ and sprayed it green. I have my large acrylic paint bottles inside. The tissue box was one of those oval ones that Kleenex puts out at Christmas, and I covered it with green striped BG paper and added a black satin bow. Very pretty.

Another view of the lamp without the light on. You can see the color much better now. Enough for now. I'll post more another time. Meanwhile, I'm back to work tomorrow :(

Word Art

I love words and especially when made into word art. When I was younger, my choice of reading material was usually a dictionary. I still will pick one up when I have down time, or maybe books about quotations or word derivatives. I have compiled a mental list of my favorite words. If I'm ever asked by James Lipton what my favorite and least favorite words are, I will know the answers immediately. Onomatopoeia # 1 fave. Phlegm #1 least fave. Kind of ironic that my least favorite word is an onomatopoetic one! Anyhow... back to word art. I found this in a Ross store on clearance after St. Pat's Day. I bought it simply because I liked the size of the wooden block and it was $1. I also knew that I was going to redo it when I got it home into word art.

It had a little dowel with a broken shamrock sticking out of the top. I tossed those. I decoupaged some black background paper on the front then cut out magazine letters to spell out a message. I chose green letters to use because my of my recent chair redo. It has ispired me to use lime green and black accents in my craft room. Here is the first result:

Yuck! The background paper is waaaaaaay too busy to be able to read the letters. So scratch that one and start over. I covered the green letters with a piece of beige card stock then started over with more green letters:

Much better! It says: "she decided to start living the life she dreamed of". I do a lot of this kind of art. I cut out letters from magazines lay out a message ransom style. I call it Ransom Art.
I have this one hanging over the freshly made-over bulletin board which is above my work bench.
I took an old cork board which had an ugly brown metal frame, and (spray) painted the frame glossy black. I took some of the extra material from my chair project, and glued it (using ModPodge) to the cork and added a green ribbon around the edges .

I'll post more pictures of my craft room when I get it looking more photo worthy. I'm working hard at re-organizing and paring down some of my craft supplies. It was to be my spring break project, but that went awry since I got sick on day one of my break. I'm getting there.

Thrift chair redo

I've had this chair in my garage for many months, waiting for the ever rare "time" to work on it. I paid $5 at a local thrift store (shoulda got all 4 of them... doh!) and it is a good sturdy chair. I intended to refurbish and gift it to someone, but I decided I like it a lot and want it for myself. Yes, I am selfish that way sometimes.
Here's the before:

Not all that ugly, just didn't go with anything and had no pizazz. (love that word. you almost have to use jazz hands when you say it) The seat isn't broken, I had just unscrewed it from the bottom before I took the picture.

Got some black glossy spray paint (more about that later) and some material (more about that too) and presto change-o I got a pretty new chair for my craft room.

Here's the more-about-that part...

THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF TODAY:
1. I get an idea and run like the wind to get it done without the proper pre-planning that it takes to get it done correctly. That's how I roll. I'm not crazy about that, but none the less, that's who I am. OK, I have put it in writing and now you know my dirty little secret.
2. I'm not all that crazy about coaching from the sidelines especially from a coach who doesn't do anything handy. No names necessary.
3. Lizards make me squeal like a 9 year old girl.
4. Tyra Banks likes to smile with her eyes. I like to say "KMA" with mine.

THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT SPRAY PAINTING:
1. Spring days in Florida are windy.
2. Wind + spray paint = paint all over you and not the project.
3. Wind + spray paint = twice as much paint as you thought you'd need.
4. Spray paint doesn't come off skin as easily as it goes on.
5. Lizards don't like spray paint.
6. After spray painting 3 cans of paint, that's pretty much all you can smell for a long time. Hmmmm, if they only made something that could prevent that. what? they do? a mask! why didn't I think of that.

THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT PRE-PLANNING A PROJECT:
1. If you need cloth for a project, you cannot guess how much that would be while you are at the cloth counter. You will guess wrong. There's no shame in measuring.
2. You will need twice as much paint as you thought you'd need.
3. Husbands sometimes like to snicker when you don't pre-plan. Hence, the KMA eyes.


Cute, cute, cute! and it only took 2 trips to Walmart for supplies. I have extra cloth now :) so maybe I can coordinate a bulletin board with it.

   

This has been posted at:

http://www.domestically-speaking.com/2011/04/67th-power-of-paint-party-painting-hall.html 

Gator Nation

I found this awesome bracelet at Charming Charlie's  (Avenues mall in Jax) OMG, what a cool store! I love the design of this bracelet and love the assortment of metals. It goes with everything I wear. It has black, pewter, and silver beads. The best part is it is on stretchy cord, so I just slip it on and off.

I stared and stared at the design (my MO) and decided that I wanted to make my own. I am donating a Gator bracelet to a fund raiser in May and thought the design was a good one for that. Of course, Gainesville IS Gator Nation, so a Gator bracelet is just the thing for an auction item.

She's a purty one. The photo does absolutely nothing for the sparkle power it has. I used Swarovski crytals and silver spacer beads. It really is impressive. I hope it brings good bids. C'mon Gators! Get up and go!

City Slicker

One of of my school board perks is attending the annual Youth Fair in our county fairgrounds. My first experience was 3 years ago, and I must admit, it was the very first time I was up close and personal with real live farm animals. I remember Shannon and I sitting in the audience watching cows being shown. The announcer talked about the cow like she was a beauty contestant. He said she had "youthful udders". I swear! He said that and we laughed out loud. I still giggle when I think about it.

I have discovered something about myself, and that is, big animals scare the crap out of me. They're not just big, but kind of dumb and therefore seem pretty unpredictable. We wandered in and out of pens of cows and pigs and goats and saw some cages with chickens and rabbits. I did a lot of jumping and letting out tiny "eek" noises.

We attend these fairs because some of our students are in FFA and show their animals. I admire people who are comfortable around farm animals, I could NEVER be a farmer. I would get so emotionally attached to an animal, it would definitely have a name, and could never be part of my dinner menu. My duty at the fair is to take pix of animals for our files. The above is a baby boer goat and was in a pen with her mama. She is only about 2 feet tall and what a cutie pie! I wanted to hold her.

This guy above stuck his head through the hole in his pen then could not pull it back out because of his horns. We brought it to someone's attention and were informed he'd been doing that all morning. Hence the "dumb" in dumb animal.

While we were in the pig area, I heard a horrendous noise and some very loud snorting. This pig was in a trailer by himself and obviously not happy about it. He was trying to lift the gate with his snout (loud noise) and when I got close to look at him, he tried to charge the gate. See why I'm scared?! I asked about why he was isolated (yeah, I was the city slicker with all the dumb questions) and a man told me he was in there for a bath. Turns out, he was getting ready to show and needed grooming.

Don't even get me started about the chickens. Well, the roosters really. They were in a separate building with the rabbits and were all side by side in their little cages. I have never heard so much cock a doodle doing. Seems, the roosters were in competition with each other and continuously crowed.It was hilarious!
On the last day of the show, the animals are "sold". In my sweet little rose colored glass world, I will take that to mean that someone bought them for a pet for their children and they are going to live happily ever after on some wonderful farm.    It could happen.

Lucky Me

Tonight I made a promise to myself to use what I already have to create a St. Patty's challenge. I love, love to make projects with words, so I started with some silver frames for scrapbooking. Which, by the way, I hate to do. I need an instant gratification that comes with any craft other than scrapbooking. I made albums for my children that took 6 months to finish and tons of hours. Were they beautiful? Yes, but I didn't think I would ever finish them. I digress...

Then I added some scraps of green background paper to the backs of them

...came up with some silly Irish phrases with my bead letters from the craft store. Oh my, I just noticed the front center phrase... LOL, that is supposed to say "sassy lass" not "a slssy ass". I guess my sleeve bumped the letters before I took the picture. Too funny, I make myself laugh!

used tacky glue to add the words to the background papers...

hot glued a piece of cardboard to the back for stability, along with a pinback. Embellished the front with some green bows and shamrock confetti (the only thing I didn't already own - 99¢ from Michael's)

tada! I will give these to my friends at work with a "lucky me to have a friend like you" tag.

Happy St. Patty's Day! Lucky me to have so much ap-cray in my craft room.

Shoes, glorious shoes!

Remember Imelda Marcos? The only reason I do is because of the tremendous uproar that came about when her stash of hundreds of pairs of shoes were found in the palace after the downfall of her husband's regime. The Philippines, remember? OK, I just googled it and there were 2700 pairs of shoes LEFT BEHIND. I can remember that vividly only because I thought to myself... "excessive? really? I just don't think so". If you know me at all, you know I love shoes. I could seriously buy a pair every day. I read a blog recently by another shoe lover and she used the word "shoegasm". Oh mah gah! what a glorious word.
My inventory doesn't hold a candle to Imelda's, but it's somewhere in the less-than-a-hundred range. I don't own any expensive designer shoes like the kind you see on all the Housewives (teehee) but I wouldn't decline them if they were offered. And I do covet them. I don't own many flip flop styles of shoe (hate that fwappa fwappa sound), nor sport shoes. Eegads, that would imply I'm going to have to sweat.  Mostly, I have shoes for work or "dress-up" shoes. You really can't have enough black shoes, but I am concentrating on adding more color to my stash. Stacy London says to use your shoe for a pop of color in your wardrobe. I love Stacy. And Clinton. And I love her choice of shoes.

If you ever see me wearing the shoes above, I will be at a Halloween party dressed like a monkey. And I would not have paid a nickel for them, I would have borrowed them from someone who is not a friend of mine, 'cause friends don't let friends wear crap on their feet.

I would wear any of these shoes. I have some similar, and when I wear them, I carry a spare pair in my car, so I can change out during the day. I'm crazy about shoes but that doesn't mean I'm crazy. I know my limits. Four hours is about all I can handle in a stiletto and that's only if I am sitting a lot. But damn, I look good.

So as spring shoes arrive in the stores, I tend to linger in the shoe department a little longer than anywhere else in the store. Mostly trying on shoes. I could do that all day long. I LOVE to go to places like TJ Maxx because the correct shoe size is sitting right there on the shelf just waiting for me to slip on my foot. I hate shopping where I have to ask for someone to go in the back and get my size - what a pain in the patoot.
Back in the 70's, they had people in the shoe department (mostly men... like Hal Bundy) that not only had to go get your size, but then sat in front of you on that weird little shoe salesman bench and actually put the shoe on for you. I hated that!!! A lot! It totally creeped me out. First of all, I wore the tiniest little dresses and skirts back then and sitting with some stranger directly in front of your crotch area was frightening in a pedophile sort of way. There simply wasn't any way to discreetly lift your leg up to that shoe bench without displaying the merchandise. And second of all, it was the 70's. I was a liberated woman. I didn't need help putting on a shoe, thank you very much. To by-pass the "system" I would: find a shoe I loved, ask for it in my size, buy it, take it home and try it on in the privacy of my salesman-free home. Then, if it did not fit, I would return it to the store. Ugh! a HUGE pain in the patoot. I was elated when decades later, the "system" changed to Try-On-Your-Own-Damn-Shoes.

So, thanks mom, for the shoe fetish. I got it honestly, and as long as I can still walk in them without busting my butt, I will continue to have cute shoes and lots of them. Not to mention the shoegasms.

Double Trouble

That's the name my sister and I call our business. We make and sell snowmen from vintage bottles and found objects. It is a very hard craft to describe, but when you see pictures of them it all makes sense. We went on a bottle hunt today in Webb's Antique mall near Lake City. Jan found a booth on a recent trip, that had nothing but bottles (score!) so we decided to go and make an offer on a bulk purchase. Luckily for us, the booth owner cooperated, and we now own 70 more bottles that we will turn into snowmen for this fall craft show season. Finding vintage/antique bottles is not as hard as you'd think, but finding them for what we are willing to pay is another story. We don't really know much (or care) about the history of the bottles, we just like how they look, and love how pretty they turn out when we are finished creating a snowman out of them.
We have been very successful selling them and actually have "fans" who buy multiple snowmen for their collections. (Thank you, dear fans)

This is the banner we use in our booth display. If you are ever in our area at a craft show and see that banner, stop by and say HI. We love to have company. Or, check us out at www.etsy.com/shop/boogirl99

Some of our snowmen are there, but not very many.

Last year around this time, I was in my favorite place to shop: TJ Maxx/Homegoods. I saw this bunny...

and thought how cute his head was. I took my camera out and photo'd him (yeah, I know, I should have paid for it if I was going to copy it) and came home with creative juices flowing. I love when that happens. Anyhow, this is the result of that...

a little vintage perfume bottle, a little clay, a little bit of found objects, and some glitter = Double Trouble. This bunny was a one of a kind. I intended to make more, but alas, time got away from me. C'mon, Jan, let's make some bunnies!

Bert

Catch-Up Day

I have been so danged busy for so long and have sadly neglected my blog. This is a place for me to collect my thoughts and share, but I haven't done much of that lately. One of my New Year's resolutions is to focus more on the good things in my life and blogging is one of them. So, I am posting some things today to try and catch up with myself.
One of my favorite things to do at work, is thank the people who work in other departments, but do sooooo much to support our department. Mostly, I like to make a small little sump'n sump'n to give each person along with a heartfelt "thanks". We jokingly call them suck-up gifts (SUG for short), but we really do appreciate their help when we need them. I make around 40, so I am always looking for something that isn't going to cost way too much. Anything under a dollar is good for me. Here are a few of the things I have shared with my coworkers...

Dollar Tree Lolli's

I found these cute little lollipops at Dollar Tree (6 for a $ - score!) They had 3 pink and 3 red in each package. Each one has a cardstock heart with a "to" and "from" on it. This doesn't even qualify as something I made, but none the less, it is a cute SUG. I simply wrote "we heart you" on the tag. I will give them out next week when it is a little closer to VDay.

Memorial Day pin

This was a big hit! I bought small American flags on a stick at Michael's for 39¢, removed them from the stick and then folded them up like you would a real flag. I hot glued the ends and then added a pin back to it with more hot glue. I made a card to present them that was embellished with a denim background paper and stamped a patriotic message inside. Love these! Hooray for the USA

(that's me in my office. I really LOVE my Mac, and Photobooth. I don't need no stinkin' camera)

This is another fave SUG. Easy peasy to make and makes a very impressive display. I bought a box of Lifesavers at Sam's, covered them with patriotic background paper, printed out Avery mailing labels with a message "Stars and Stripes Forever!" and then added the cutest firework toothpick that I found at Michael's. I also stuck a little flag toothpick in with the firework pick (also came from Michael's).  I gave these out last year on Memorial Day and people still have the picks on their desks cause they are that darned cute.

I have been making SUG's for years now, for every occasion (Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, 4th of July, Memorial Day... you name it) but haven't photographed any until recently. My vow to myself... keep better photo files, and share. Next up... St. Patty's Day.