my "Mad Hatter tea party stands"

I got a little creative today with my "odds and ends" of vintage china and crystal pieces that have been waiting to be upstyled into something new and useful. I love the look of beautifully decorated cupcakes displayed on tiered stands and I decided that I'd try to make a couple of them to use when we are entertaining this summer at the cottage. Let's just say that I made a couple of them and I found they are useful for more than just displaying cupcakes ... I'm going to call these my "Mad Hatter tea party stands" ...

Here's one of my finished pieces ... and as you can see, I'm using it on a dresser to display some of my  jewellery. I'm going to make another one for my studio because I think that it will look sweet on my desk ... maybe I'll make one with little tea cups that I can fill with treasures waiting to be used in my art.

Here's how I made my Mad Hatter tea party stands ...

I used three different sizes of plates - a dinner plate, a lunch plate and fruit nappy. I also used two crystal pieces to use as supports - a candle stick and a salt/pepper shaker (with the top removed).

To adhere all of the pieces together I used E-6000 glue.

Note: I washed all of the dishes and made sure that everything was very dry before I started.

I arranged the plates from largest at the bottom to smallest at the top. I did the same with the crystal supports, the candle stick was the larger of the two supporting pieces so it was used on the bottom layer. I placed a ring of the E-6000 glue on the bottom of the candle stick and then adhered it to the centre of the dinner plate.

 Allow the glue to set for a few minutes before you move onto the next layer so that the pieces don't slide around on you ... now is a good time to start a kettle of water to make a tea if you are following along with me!

... then add some E-6000 glue to the top of the candle stick and place the medium sized plate over top of the candlestick - being careful to centre the plate over the larger plate. Quickly remove the medium sized plate and turn it over. You should see a ring of glue from the candle stick on the bottom of the plate. At this point I added more E-6000 to the bottom of the plate because I wanted to make sure that there is a good bond between these items. Let the glue dry slightly ... go finish making that cup of tea and bring it back to do the next step which is to place the plate on top of the candle stick. Allow this layer to dry before going onto the next step. You can drink your tea now!

Now you will repeat the process for adding the candle stick to the plates but this time you will do it with the salt/pepper shaker. You need to make sure when you adhere the salt shaker to the middle plate that it is directly over top of the candle stick or your tiers will look off balanced. You also need the top of the salt shaker to be flat so if it isn't - remove the top piece.

Once you have placed the smallest plate on top of the salt shaker ... take a look from the top and make sure that all of the plates look centred ... similar to my picture ...

and check again that the centre supports have not shifted. Once everything is perfectly lined up ... let it dry!

I can't wait to make some cupcakes with the kids at the cottage this weekend and display them on one of my Mad Hatter tea party stands!

Happy Canada Day to all of my Canadian friends! I hope that you have a great long weekend.

I also wanted to share with you a very inspiring magazine called "Mollie Makes" - it is from the UK - and I just found by chance last week ... I think that you will love it! Here's a promotional video that they created to launch the magazine ... very creative! I love their tag line too .... "for people who love the crafty life".

scrapbooking with my vintage buttons

I love to collect vintage buttons ... and I'm always looking for ways to get them out of the vintage canning jars I store them in and onto my art.

I was inspired by some posts that I've been reading this week at Scrapbook & Cards Today blog. Summer Fullerton has been using buttons in her projects and I thought that I'd share with you some of the pages from my scrapbook(s) that include my vintage buttons.

The first picture is one of my daughters, Robyn, when she was little and still liked to pose for Mommy!

This layout was done a few years ago but the picture was taken about 17 years ago. It was one of my favourite pictures of my younger brother with my daughter, Haley, when she was a few months old.

... as you can see I like to hand and machine sew on my pages - I love to make the stitching part of the design.

I can never pass up a container of pearl buttons at the second hand store or antique store ... I used a few of them here on this layout featuring my daughter Robyn playing with a friend's son one rainy afternoon at the cottage.

This layout features a large vintage button at the top and three smaller buttons at the bottom. I used a series of summer pictures from the cottage to work with the words that I added to each photo.

I love this saying ...

"Dance as though no one is watching.

Love as though you have never been hurt before.

Sing as though no one can hear you.

Live as though heaven is on earth."

here's another shot of this layout at an angle so you can see the button details.

One last page ... I love this layout ... the colours were inspired by a project that I was working on at the time for April Cornell. I did a number of marketing, visual merchandising and licencing projects for April a few years ago and this was one of the pictures from a photo shoot that we did in Canada. We used one of my friend's baby as a model in the clothing and on the linens. Although I used vintage buttons on my page, they reminded me of buttons that April would use in her products ...

... they also served another purpose ... to hold the ribbons that I wrapped around a painted chipboard letter in place!

I hope that I have inspired you to do some scrapbooking, take some photos of your kids or do something with the buttons you have been saving for a special project.

before I go ... I wanted to share this photo that I tore out of a wedding magazine last year for inspiration ... another great idea for using buttons in a creative way. Wouldn't this be cute on a summer hat! I bought a bunch of coloured buttons at Scrapfest in the spring and I'm saving this project for a rainy day at the cottage this summer with the girls. I'll let you know how it goes!

recycled tee shirts

As the summer weather has finally arrived, I found myself going through our closets this morning to see what short sleeve tee shirts still fit, what needs to be donated to the second hand store and what can be used in a craft project!!

I discovered that my youngest daughter, who only seems to own tees with holes in them, actually has a few tees hanging in her closet with the hangtags still on them. I really can't wait until she has children someday. So, between Robyn's {favourite} tees and a few of my own, I found myself with a new supply of materials for craft projects.

I bought this cute Mickey Mouse tee shirt over ten years ago at Disney World that was too worn out to donate but I loved the screened logo too much to throw it out ... so I used it to create another one of my sewing kits in a bottle. I did a quick tutorial on these a while ago, you can see it here. I used a mini canning jar this time ... it is just the right size for a few spools of thread, some needles and pins.

I've already packed my mini sewing kit in a jar to take to a class I'm teaching on Saturday ... we are making ribbon bracelets and this will come in handy during class.

fyi ... there are still spots available for this class if you live in the area and are interested ... I'm only teaching this class once because my vintage materials are limited. Any supplies that I have left over after class I will use to make these bracelets to sell in my etsy shop.

I know that my oldest daughter talked about making a blanket out of her old graphic tees ... I think that we saw that idea on one of the Twilight movies. Bella's mom made one for Bella ... come to think of it, I have a feeling that Jacob's mom may have made one for Jacob too and that is why Jacob is always walking around without a shirt on! ;)

 If you have posted any project ideas with graphic tees that your older children can't part with on your blog (or know of other blogs that have) ... please let me know! I have a feeling that we are going to have some ideas flying around our house after school today. Have a great weekend!

book of me ... scrapbook club part 2

Tomorrow night I will be attending the "book of me" scrapbooking club at Scrapbook Queens. This month's topic is "fashionable me". I'm really kind of a casual "jeans and tee shirt" girl but I love my accessories!

I pulled together a couple of pictures of myself to scrapbook and styled a shot of my favourite accessories ...

I've had my cowboy boots forever and they are more comfortable than running shoes so I wear them everywhere all year round. My two other favourite accessories at the moment are made from recycled materials made by Little Earth - a cool belt made from soda bottle caps, a tire and seat belt buckle and the other is a purse made from two California licence plates.

I added a polariod frame to my photos that I downloaded  here from Shadow House Creations. I grunged up the frame to age it because it was too white and I wanted the polariod frames to match my digital collage that created for the second page ...

This is the digital collage. I called it "the sensible fashionista" ... which describes me in a sense because I don't really consider my self to be a fashionista (especially compared to the fashion designers and buyers that I have worked with over the years) but I have developed a style of my own that I feel comfortable with. Most of the images for my digital collage are from the Graphics Fairy.

So I've sent off my images to Costco to be printed in the morning and I can't wait to scrapbook them tomorrow night.

I'm going to pack my Tim Holtz sizzix alterations sewing room die to use on one of the pages as well - I'm thinking that I may cut the judy out of a piece of leather ... I use to wear leather and suede pants a number of years ago and I am having a difficult time parting with them!

linked to brag monday at the Graphics Fairy

{restyled} tote bag with zipper flowers

Here's a quick project that I wanted to share with you.

I found some inexpensive zippers at the second hand store recently and was just waiting for the right project to make some zipper flowers. There are three great tutorials for making zipper flowers at Craftaholics Anonymous if you are interested in making these yourself.

I thought that I'd make a zipper flower and use it as my starting point to restyle a fabric gift bag.

This is the "before" picture of the bag ... my husband received it as a gift at a business function that he attended a few weeks ago. The bag contained two bottles of wine (I'm assuming that ... since the wine bottles never made it home!) and in need of a makeover.

To restyle the bag, I used a fabric label by Amy Butler (I purchased a package of them from Michaels a few years ago), one of my zipper flowers, buttons, ribbon and embroidery floss.

I started by hand sewing the fabric label to the pocket with embroidery floss so that I could cover up the business logo.

Then I added the zipper flower, ribbon and buttons on top of the label. I wanted to achieve a handmade look to the bag so I frayed the fabric label a bit and left top knots with the embroidery threads on the buttons.

You will find the zipper flower tutorial that I used for my flower here .

Here's another close up of the final design.

I was going to keep this tote bag for myself but I think that I will fill it with a couple of bottles of wine and give it to a friend this weekend.

guest hosting at Craftaholics Anonymous today

Hello everyone ... I'm so excited to be guest hosting at Craftaholics Anonymous today! Linda has an amazing site that is full of amazing tutorials and crafting ideas. I hope that you will pop over to visit and say hello!!

Craftaholics Anonymous

I also wanted to share with you my scrabble tile Archie bracelet ... I just finished it this morning ...  

... isn't it cute!

My scrabble tile charm tutorial can be found here.

Here's the "gang" ... Mr. Lodge, Mr. Weatherbee, Ms. Grundy, Dilton, Jughead, Betty, Archie, Veronica, Reggie, Moose and Pop. I also cut a small "Archie and the gang" comic book from an advertisement for the books as a 12th charm.

Have a great day!

playing with photoshop filters

I was checking out some blogs today and found this quote that I just loved ... "Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

As soon as I saw the quote I knew that I wanted to add it to a photo of one of my daughters. I've been spending a lot of time with both of them talking about what they want "to be" when they grow up and where they want go to school.

I found this great photo of my daughter Robyn from a few years ago ... she was sitting on the side of our boat and I noticed that the sun's reflection seemed to be dancing on the water in front of her. I played with the picture in Photoshop CS3 and tried out a bunch of different filters before committing to the one that you see ... artistic/watercolour.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we know and understand,

imagination leads us to all we might yet discover and create." - Albert Einstein

If you have Photoshop on your computer, I'd like to challenge you to pick out picture that you love and play around with it for a while to see what you can do. Send me a link so that I can see what you created.

If you are still learning how to use Photoshop or are looking for some Photoshop tutorials to show you how to do something , I would recommend that you check out pugly pixel for some really simple Photoshop tutorials. I was looking at their tutorial today for creating a photoshop letterpress effect  and it's on my list of things to try out next!

Busy as a bee ...

It's been a busy week around our house ... lots going on with everyone and I'm trying to get ready for the Bread and Honey Festival in Streetsville this weekend. I'll be there with Scrapbook Queens!

I was at the store today pulling together my product to take to the festival ... we are setting up tomorrow night! I will be taking most of my display pieces from the store so if you are at Scrapbook Queens on the weekend - my product and class project samples will be in Streetsville so you will have to "buzz" over to visit us!!!

I was watching the SQ team pack up product this afternoon and it looks like there will be lots of show specials and demos. I'm planning on taking some things to work on ... so if you live in the area and have a chance to come see us ... we'll be at the Arena!

Have a great weekend!!!