Vintage Velma

The past week has been a lovely journey through all my treasure jars finding little gems for Vintage Velma dolls. I created 5 this week for my summer market inventory. If I can keep my friends from snapping them up!

First up, Flora DeLee. 

She's a happy little mermaid who travels along the coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean looking for blooming coral to add to her extensive collection, which she keeps in her hat. 

This is Graciela DeVille, Cruella's kinder sister, who spends her days thwarting sinister animal abusers and making sure her sister doesn't get hold of any puppies.

Let me introduce you to Minnie the Mayfly. She's a bluesy barfly who buzzes around the nightclubs of  New Orleans singing the blues and dancing with fireflies. 

Miss Kitty is a southwestern cowkitty who keeps villains and outlaws at bay with her cute kitty whiskers and mighty paws of steel.

And Pearlie Mae a mermaid with a purpose. She swims along the bottom of the ocean cunningly coaxing oysters to give up their treasure in exchange for one of her curly locks.

Chunky Chic!

I love, love, love chunky bracelets and what better way to use up some big chain links gleaned from my broken jewelry treasure jars. I've also been collecting some chunky beads over the last year or so as part of my suncatcher obsession and decided to put the 2 together to make some chunky chic bracelets to add to my inventory for the summer craft shows.

Most of the large chain comes from old necklaces found in my treasure hunting, but this last one I actually had to make the links from copper wire because I couldn't find a good chunky chain in copper. They were actually kind of fun to make.

Watercolor Paper Cuff Bracelets

I found this tutorial on Pinterest to make these beautiful cuff bracelets. Very easy to follow and each one comes out a little different.

This one uses Twinkling H2Os for the color and silver (anodized copper) 16 gauge wire. The twinks tend to blur together a little more than I like, but it still came out pretty.

Another one with twinks and silver wire.

This red one uses Distress Paints on watercolor paper. I like the vibrancy and that the paints stay a little more separated. Less mud. Again silver wire.

This one uses Brusho powdered watercolor and makes a nice vibrant background. It gets a little more muddles when the varnish is put on, but essentially keeps the color integrity. I used straight copper wire for this one. Love the teal and copper combo. I mostly use handmade paper for the backs of these, but I'm toying with the idea of coloring the back of the watercolor paper with a coordinating color and skipping the whole backing process.

Majestic Waves

The weather report the last couple of days said that there would be 20 foot swells off the coast, so we loaded up a picnic lunch and headed for Shore Acres Botanical Garden out at Cape Arago and got to see a wonderful show yesterday. I've never seen anything like these huge waves crashing against the rocks and cliff. Sunset Bay just below was even hosting about 20 surfers catching 6-10 foot swells.

A Tribute to Harry Potter (Always)

Part of my new dies for Christmas this birch tree die is a really fun one and paired up with a walking deer reminds me so much of one of Alan Rickman's (Snape's) best scenes in Deathly Hallows. The one where he reveals his patronus.

The card base on this one is a vintage Club Scrap paper. I think it's from the Sparkle kit. And the tag frame is from Joyful

This card base is another vintage Club Scrap kit and this one I'm not sure of. I think it might be Winter Wonderland. The deer are both embossed with a mix of gold, copper and black embossing powder.

Starting the Year off with some PUPPY LOVE!

After a pathetic 4 posts for the whole of 2017, I guess my New Year's resolution for 2018 is to at least make one post a month, that at least would triple my posts from last year. Sheesh!

I've been striving to use my die cut machine more lately, so I'll start with the cards I've been making using some new dies I treated myself to for the holidays. I acquired these cute puppy dog stamps from a friend over at paperartistsonline.com and saw a similar design on Pinterest so decided to give it a whirl with the swirlie heart die from the Tim Holtz line.

The sentiment stamp is from a very vintage Club Scrap kit that features lots of animal quotes and images.

I found this border sheet in my stash that had some strips that echoed the pattern in some of the puppy stamps so I tried to match them up for each card.

This one reminds me of my new "grandpuppy" Nova, who Will adopted last fall. Ya think?

The cards with the "having a rufff day?" quote have the "I woof you" stamp on the inside.

This one reminds me of my other little "grandpuppy" Raven who Paul and Heather adopted a year and a half ago. I swear she's half lab half chihuahua, but I can't quite figure out how that happened.

The last one of the bunch. These will make either a great pick me up card or even Valentine's Day.