Paper cutting

You may wonder: "Why hand-cut paper when you have a Silhouette SD?!"  Apparently, though, efficient cutting of textured, card stock on a Silhouette SD requires your tools/accessories to be fully functioning.  A sticky cutting pad that doesn't stick means that the cutting mechanism just moves the paper around and cuts... just not what it's supposed to.

Anywho, I couldn't put off this project an longer, certainly not long enough to wait for the shipment from silhouette.com (that I ordered today) to come in.  So, instead, I chose to just cut the paper by hand... the paper for my lamp... my beautiful lamp... the lamp you see below and that is available at my Etsy shop.

And with the light off...

My new Etsy shop!

Hello everyone!

To your left, you should see a few thumbnails of some items I just put up on my new Etsy shop!  Nothing there was made by me (at least not yet) but they're all unique and vintage items that I found while scavenging around flea markets, yard/garage/estate sales, and the like... which is one of my favorite weekend activities.

Please, take a look!  If you message me here about an item, I'll be sure to give you a discount! ;)

So maybe I said...

that when I found perfect paper for my lamp I would both add it AND refinish it.  And maybe I didn't refinish it...

So, I never found beautiful, perfect, wonderful printed vellum and regular scrapbooking paper is much too thick and dims the lamp's light way too much.  So, I mentally went through options and settled on finally busting out my Silhouette SD and cutting out a *snicker* silhouette for my lamp.  Choosing the paper was as simple as picking brown card stock over black (because I do want to refinish the lamp some day).  I spent most of today finding the perfect graphic.  Now, I originally wanted a grass or dandelion lower border only. But when I found this one, although I initially passed over it, it nagged at me and nagged at me.  I started working on this song lyric idea, but if I cut out text, I feared that I still would be blocking out too much light.  So, I used the border you see below.   Thank you Lori Whitlock over at the Silhouette Online Store.  I had a million ideas before I settled on this, and it was no small decision!  But now that it is up and I've turned it on, I can see why it nagged at me!  Look at the shape of the lamp itself!  haha, somewhere in my head, I was screaming "it's perfect!"

...the end :)

Mmmmm...

Not only do I craft, but sometimes I even cook stuff. Ok, so maybe the only thing that falls under cooking in this recipe is making the sugar syrup, but whatever, I MADE it, lol.

Let's start with homemade strawberry sorbet. I took a number of recipes I found online and teased out the essentials: a quart of fresh strawberries, about 1.5 cups of sugar syrup, and 1tbsp of lime or lemon juice. I found person who added a packet of strawberry gelatin, so I did the same--this, in fact, made the sorbet a smidgen too sweet, but that mattered little for my application. I blended it all up (the sugar syrup needs to be cool, fyi) and then popped it in my ice cream maker for about 20 minutes. Then, it went straight to the freezer. After a few hours--and by the time my friend arrived--it was ready! Next step, making it alcoholic. Some recipes call for you to put about a 1/4 cup of vodka straight into the mix before putting it into the ice cream maker. But I knew that I wanted to make a cocktail out of it, so I didn't bother. I put 2 generous scoops of the sorbet into the blender, topped it w/ ~3/4 cup OJ and enough vodka to make me happy and blended it up... the result? delicious!

Come in, come in, into my dungeon...

As most know, I live in a basement apartment.  There are good and bad things about this.  I love the apartment itself, with some vintage (read: old) appliances, a double oven and grill top.  A walk-in closet in the bedroom and a door between the extra-large vanity and toilet/shower area.  Plus, a huge section of the backyard solely for my use.  My landlord is also pretty cool and very nice.  But, it is still a basement, so sometimes water seeps in through the front door... and I live under a family of bouncing monkeys.  It's nice a cool in the summer but warm in the winter.  But anyway, here's a few views of where I live... (don't forget to mouse over the pictures for a few tags)

My livingroom/kitchen is one open space.  The entrance to the apt is to the right of this...

Annnnd, TJ himself.  At his desk, which is where he normally is (except for the next few days--he bought dead space 2 so he'll be stuck to the tv for a while) the frig, sink, grill top, ovens (didn't get a pic of that) are to the left of this pic...

Something new...

Just a quick peek at a new craft I started working on.  No links necessary, I came up with this ish all on my own.

I've been trying to find the perfect beads or something for the eyes.  I'm not crazy about fish-crafts, but I do love my fish.  Suggestions?  Comments?

This week's crafts

I have a bit more me-time this semester, and so I've tackled a few things I wouldn't have have the time (read: energy) for last semester.  

First, I went to Home Goods (I do this like once a week and I'm not particularly proud of it, lol).  I've been looking for a lamp for a while now because in my dungeon--a post about it will be coming soon--there isn't much light in the livingroom.  I like sitting on my couch and reading whilst TJ produces music things on the other side of the room, in his pseudo-studio.  But, without light, this gets harder to do as the day sets.  Anywho, I found a table lamp that I really liked, and THEN found a little side table that was the PERFECT size.  All in the same visit!  Both on clearance!  It was a sign from the gods of consumerism, to say the least.  This $18 side table was red (stupid-me forgot to take a before picture) and had a dent in it and a few scratches.  Perfect opportunity to test out my refinishing skills.  The after picture is what you see to the right.  As you can see, my couch is red, so a red table just wouldn't have worked.  The blue I got from Home Depot is unfortunately TOO blue.  My next step (eventually) will be to try and stain this bad boy with coffee.  I have some chemical stain that would work, but coffee is much less... chemicalish. 

 This thing you see to the right is the lamp.  I paid $22 for it, a bit too much for my taste, but I love that it came with that plain while shade.  Plain white = easily craftable in my book.  I'm thinking some printed vellum or maybe even regular paper will make this plain-jane lamp a gem.  I'll sand down that black finish and paint it a brown that better matches my stuff.  That'll be a project to tackle when I find the perfect vellum or paper (or at least look through the stacks of paper I have to see if I already have the perfect paper).  Ignore that light switch in the background.  I'm trying to hide it.  It turns off the outlet that my TV and things are plugged into.  Hopefully people don't think it's for the lamp!  haha

Last and least is my attempt to "paint."  The classic crafts: painting and sewing, are just... well... not friends of mine.  I suck at both.  I have no particular attachment to pink and green, but as my first post exposed, the trend started in my craft area and I just can't stop it.  So, I wanted to jazz things up and add some "art."  This is honestly the best I can do.  I'm thinking I'll add words right over the pattern, but we'll see...  Maybe I'll quill some spirals and swirlies and make this thing POP.  hah.