Love and Laughter Served to Guests

Whatcha all doin' today? I hope you're out junkin or doing something fun, because I've been stuck upstairs on paint project #2 all week! I'm also working on stamping some brand new release eye candy that I'll be showing soon, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share a fun project that I did while I was on the Dirty Dozen (Splitcoaststampers). I used a bunch of Crafty Secrets products for this little vintage kitchen frame, including their Cooking Cotton scraps & their "Kitchen Classics" stamp set. I used silver detail embossing powder on the fork, knife and spoon, so that they look 3-d and dimensional!

I love to score dirt cheap little frames at garage and estate sales.... I scored this frame for .10 cents. To make the wall hanging, I cut some scrap cardboard to fit the frame, altered the front of the cardboard, and then after I was done, I glued a large strip of magnet to the back to hold it to the fridge. The large red pom poms are another score of a deal I got, from a sweet little older lady's garage sale up at the lake last year. She sold me a whole slew of vintage pompom trim for $1.00. I have to credit Vicki Chrisman for starting me on that addiction! THANKS VICK!

Here is the fridge magnet on my fridge! So note to self, score more cheap-o frames on next junkin trip!

Hope your weekend is lovely and sunny!

L.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Joyful one!~

I am SO excited! I actually sat down and STAMPED something! I couldn't miss out on an important BIRTHDAY celebration for my cutest, sweetest friend, Joy Kennedy, from Eclectic Paperie!!

Today is Joy's birthday, and in honor of her birthday, Our Craft Lounge is releasing a brand new exclusive set for E.P. called "Hangin Loose with Kona"! Kona is this fun little TURTLE DUDE that comes with cool sentiments like DUDE, RIDE THE WAVE and COWABUNGA!


I pulled out my pink sand (stolen from a beach in Bermuda...don't tell!) and glued sand underneath his little turtle feet. To make things extra sandy, I took zip dry glue and coated the corners of the card, and ran it through the sand also, so it looks like the card has been hanging out at the beach with KONA! I also used some swirly Making Memories chipboard, colored it green, and then used Appletini Green Glitter from OCL.

Hope you have a HAPPY BIRTHDAY, sweet Joyful one! L.

Pink Persimmon Best Friend Dog Plaque

YIPPIE! I can finally post this project for you guys to check out! Today is my last day as a guest designer for Pink Persimmon Stamps, and I wanted to share this fun little $1.00 plaque I found from Dollar Tree! Dollar Tree has a ton of different shaped plaques (oval, square, round, etc) in their craft section, so I went and hounded my sister Gina (GET IT, HOUNDED? OOH BAD.) for a photo of her dog Kira so that I could use Pink Persimmon's Scottie Dog stamps with it.

Here's what the $1.00 plaque looked like before I covered it with some fun stripey My Mind's Eye patterned paper.

I also pumped up the cute factor by using black FUN FLOCK on the sweet little DOGGIES, to make them fuzzy and touchable! You can see a full tutorial on how I created this plaque on the Pink Persimmon blog HERE.

I ended up giving this plaque to Gina, since her dog Kira so graciously helped me by posing for my project! Happy Monday, all!

L.

Kitchen Inspired Pink Persimmon Scotties

So one night last week, while I still had RED KITCHEN on the brain, I decided to run with my kitchen as inspiration and sit down to test drive the mojo with my Pink Persimmon Scottie dogs & a Die Cuts with a View paper pack called "Nana's Kitchen". I wanted to start cranking out a bunch of generic greeting cards so that I can slap a sentiment inside if I'm pressed for time. I thought I could stamp birthday, thank you, hello or WHATEVER in these little notes, because the front sentiment is all-purpose!

I only got 3 cranked out before I was on to the next project, but I know I need to sit down and play with these more! I'm hoping for an uninterrupted flow of stamping mojo to hit me next week because I have NO appointments and NO projects, any of the weekdays next week! I want to be a STAMPING machine! I MISS my stamp room!

Happy Saturday!

L.

I am DONE! YIPPIE!

Can I hear a WOOOO HOO OUT THERE? I'm done with the KITCHEN, and I couldn't be HAPPIER that it's finally done! I tried to get good random pics of it to show you but my photos are sort of dark. I'm in a hurry to get upstairs and start taping for another painting adventure this weekend. Here it is, all finished in it's RED glory! (And actually CLEAN, believe it or not!)

Here's a shot of the sink and counters. I cheaped out and left the original cabinets in the kitchen; I just freshened them up a bit with brushed nickel knobs and drawer pulls (under $50). My Keurig machine is verrrrry happy in it's new spot, front and center. (I RUN ON PURE CAFFEINE)

This cool shabby cabinet was a $5.00 steal of a deal that my Mom found at a garage sale. It got prettied up with all of my red aprons, and a red memo board, also from a garage sale that I paid $1.00 for.

When I use the TV, I re-hang the memo board directly below it on 2 nails. My brilliant sister Gina had the idea of putting the TV in the middle shelf to free up counter space and hide it. She suggested curtains on the 3rd shelf. SOMEDAY! For now, the memo board will hold up just fine.

I got a not-too shabby deal on this skinny desk at Haupt Antiek market last weekend. It fits perfectly in this cubby so people can walk through comfortably.

Here's Isabella, staking out her new shabby red painted stool & table. This used to be hunter green. My Mom sewed covers for the cushions out of some vintage yellow fabric (the curtains are from the same fabric). THANKS MOM!

This cute plate holder was an expensive kitchen-warming gift from Mom. FIFTY CENTS! She finds the best deals. She also discovered that you can lean things up against the top of my door and window trims, on the ledge.

Thanks everyone, for being patient with me during my kitchen remodel adventure!

L.

K & Co. Shabby Butterfly

Morning, everyone!

I thought I'd pop on and do a quick post this morning with a shabby butterfly card I made at the cabin a few weekends ago. I bought a new K & Co shabby paper pack at Michael's and the chipboard butterfly accents that matched it. I wanted to try to use some of the cool junk jewelry that I found at an estate sale.

I don't know if you can see it well or not, but I had some little round blingy spacers from a broken necklace, so I ruffled some velvet ribbon and slipped the spacer into the middle of the ribbon for a fun, blingy bow. I also added rhinestones to the butterfly to match my spacer. The cool framed accent behind the butterfly is stamped on a piece of patterned paper with green Tim Holtz ink. The frame stamp is from a Tim Holtz collage set.

Haupt Antiek Market - Rosemount, MN

OH MAN. I am on a JUNKIN high today. My Mom, sister & I took a field trip over to my absolute FAVE FAVE FAVE occasional sale, Haupt Antiek Market in Rosemount, MN. We were on a hunt for the perfect size little table for my new red kitchen, and BOY did we find the cuteness at Haupt today! This month's theme was "GOT GARDEN", and I walked around the place stunned and in cute junk OVERLOAD!















I always get home and start looking through my photos and see all this stuff I didn't see the first time around. I want to go back again tomorrow for the last day of the sale and buy EVERYTHING! I did get my table, fed my button habit, and we came back home & my expert decorator Mom has been helping me pull my kitchen together today! There was something for just about everyone, and let me tell you, the Haupt ladies are CREATIVELY BRILLIANT at putting things together!!

OH THE SHABBINESS!



















Green junk.




















Flower junk.



















Robot junk?

Hope you are having a junkiful weekend!

Lisa

Playing Catch-up.

Okay. Super long post tonite. Lots to update! I'm not really sure what day it is because I'm still seeing red paint spots from the kitchen and have been smelling paint fumes for so long I'm dazed and confused. I finished the last of the touch-up paint on the kitchen last night, took down the tape, painted the window trim and cleaned my kitchen windows to remove the filthy dust layers! I am TAKING THE NIGHT OFF & locking myself in my stamp room to try to learn to stamp again! I SWEAR, I'm not quite sure how to do it anymore, it's been so long! I headed straight to the Crafty Secrets forum at Splitcoast tonite to see what fun challenge I could jump in on for inspiration. The challenge theme this week is FLOUR or FLOWER, so I headed to my stamp room and pulled Crafty's "Sweet Stuff stamp set for my favorite birdie/mixing bowl image! Oops, I think I stamped it crooked. Baby steps back into the stamping, it's been a while. The layout was inspired by some basic grey ruffled ribbon that was gifted to me. I took vintage crepe paper and ruffled it to the back of some polka dot patterned paper for the middle of my layout.

I also snapped some pics this weekend at the cabin from Mother's day; I thought I'd show you the goodies I was able to score for my Mom in my 4 day mad dash for gifts!





I made a stop at a fun store in St Paul called "Gypsy Moon" and scored this cool vintage Mother's Day cardboard wall hanging. Loved the basket of pink roses! I also scored 2 cool iron towel hangers with birds on them. Vintage inspired hand towels from Martha Stewart @ Macy's.












THANK GOD for Amazon.com & free 2-day shipping. They saved my butt. My Mom loves Country Living Magazine and cooking...both books were cheap (18.95 ea) and have fun recipes and craft ideas! FARM CHICKS ROCK!













These Cath Kidston notes & envelopes were a last minute impulse buy at Amazon and turned out to be the cutest ever! $10.95 for 24 note cards and envies! Wouldn't they be cute with Pink Persimmon Scottie Dog images attached to the front? (I'm ordering another box for myself if this no-stamping thing continues!)

Outside cabin pics. The grass is greening up and the birds are here in full force! Dreary but warm! It was a beautiful weekend!

Cabin real-estate. These properties are unoccupied.

I'm off to try stamping again! See ya!

L.

Happy Mother's Day!

Hope everyone has a LOVELY day! Lisa

Dull women have immaculate houses.

Oh man. This kitchen project has definitely knocked me down and taken my lunch money. I cannot catch up with stamping, and the painting just doesn't seem to END! I finally got to sit down and stamp while waiting for paint coats to dry and this card took me 2 days to finish! I can't concentrate on stamping when my kitchen is a disaster area!

I thought I'd sit down and play with the Crafty Secrets "Domestic Goddess" Creative scraps because they seem to fit my current mood PERFECTLY! "Dull women have immaculate houses"! Okay, NOT REALLY, but it's my motto this week because of the disaster zone! I thought I'd give you more peeks of the kitchen taking shape. The beadboard is finally UP (*$&#*@$$@!!) and painting is close to finished!

All except for this green little table and stools which will get a leg makeover with the leftover red paint! OH OH OH! And I GOT THE MOM'S DAY GIFTS DONE & WRAPPED! Progress, people, PROGRESS!

Happy Friday!

L.

Pink Persimmon - May Guest Designer!

HIYA and happy MONDAY everyone! I'm excited to announce that I've been chosen to be the May guest designer for Pink Persimmon stamps! I fell in LOVE with their sweet vintage-style images last fall, and am DELIGHTED that they chose to feature me this month on their blog and in their upcoming newsletter! You can see some of the projects I created with their Scottie Dog & Little Red Wagon stamps on the Pink Persimmon website HERE; I created a fun tutorial for you on how I turned a plain candy box into a "billboard box"! Some of the projects were originally featured in the Splitcoast Dirty Dozen gallery, so you're welcome to take a peek on the Pink Persimmon website and try them out!

The Little Red Wagon girl just BEGS to be paper-pieced; I used some K & Company Berry Sweet paper to create her vintage sweet dress.

I created this bingo card for my Mom for Mother's day, since she's the one that got me started on my bingo card obsession! Speaking of Mother's day, I'm having a gift meltdown because I've been to 10 stores and can't find that PERFECT gift to say I LOVE YOU, MOM! Not to fear, I still have 4 days left to shop!