It's Happening!

My whole entire house should be under quarantine.  Last week both of the girls had pink eye and one of them had an ear infection.  Over the weekend the husband and I both had pink eye as well.  Sunday something awful hit me and I was in bed all day as well as Monday.  Tuesday my ear started throbbing to the point where I was a small ball curled up under the covers of my bed.  Thankfully yesterday I got some antibiotics and am feeling a ton better today.  My ear still seems it's filled with fluid but it's no longer throbbing, so that's positive. 

On  a happier note, I leave for Ranger U next week!!!  WooHoooooo!  I'm headed to NYC for a day and will be staying with my Craft Test Dummies pal, Haley aka The Zen of Making.  I'm going to crash with her for a night, take a quick look around the city of some of my favorite sites from the past and then head up to New Jersey for Ranger U that starts Friday.   

I can't be more excited to stopping in NYC for the day.  My father grew up in the Bronx and then went to college Upstate, so every year growing up we would always go to the city for the Fourth of July and then Upstate to see family members.  NYC is the most magical place to me.  It's hard to explain if you haven't been there.  There really is a buzz and special energy about it.  I was very fortunate to have parents that spoiled me wrotten and let me go to countless Brodway shows and found my love for Theater there.  The first thing I would do when I got off the plane was buy a copy of, "Time Out: New York," and when I got home after our trip I would direct and choreograph full musicals and write all of my notes and blocking in the pages of, "Time Out."  I was a TOTAL theater nerd, let's not get that twisted.  I used to tell my parents when I grew up I was going to be world famous choir teacher.

  I also discovered my love for make-up and Sephora stores; there were three large Sephora stores in the city and my parents would let me hit up each and every one of them.  Shu Uemura foundation and eyelash curlers, Cargo double-sided lipglosses, Philosophy real horse hair brushes and Jean Paul Gaultier perfume... ahhhh, the good old days.  Now I'm resigned splurging on Bare Minerals and use regular old Cover Girl mascara.    

My Father and I were supposed to go back to NYC together about four years ago when he passed away unexpectedly.  No one in my family has wanted to go back with me fearing it would be too emotional for them.  Matt, the husband, doesn't want to go because he hates large crowds likening them to cattle.  Going b myself is probably not the best idea.  That's why I'm so EXTRA excited to have the opportunity to go to Ranger U and make a stop in the city for the day.  Not to mention having a good friend like Haley that can make sure I don't get lost. 

Well, that's about it for now crafters!  I'm going to try to update the blog a couple more times before I leave, but will be on silent while I'm at Ranger U.  Make sure to subscribe to my twitter feed though, @SaraJaneCrafts,  because I will be updating from the road over there and sharing some photos from Ranger U!

The Bloggess Book Signing

When I joined twitter a few years ago someone had RT'd (retweeted) the Bloggess aka Jenny Lawson aka Queen Awesome Pants, into my timeline.  I visited her blog and was instantly drawn to Jenny's sailor mouth, insane humor and honesty. I could go on for paragraph's explaining just how awesome Jenny is, but I suggest you just go visit her blog and check her out.

I was fortunate to kind of chit-chat with Jenny on twitter.  She RT'd some of my tweets, and one actually also got RT'd by Jery Ryan aka Borg, "7 of 9," from, "Star Trek."  How awesome is that?  And it was about a bug that could deafen you with its penis.  Even better.  Then there was the unidentifiable taxidermied head she found that we agreed was Mr. Tumnus.

So being a super-amazing blogger it only came natural that Jenny write a super-awesome book.  As soon as, "Let's Pretend This Never Happened," was released, I had to read it.  Lucky for me it was around the time I had to go to CHA and fly by myself.  I have horrible anxiety and being an admitted complete and utter ditz and airhead, travelling by myself and going into unknown situations pretty much turns me into a total basket case. Jenny's book made my flights seem to pass in minutes.  I desperately tried to do the silent laugh to avoid having people look at me, but I think my muffled sounds ended up coming out like fart noises.  Whatever.  I have to say one of my favorite chapter's in the book was towards the beginning when Jenny thought she was being given a psychic magical squirrel by her father.  She had big plans for that squirrel... Hollywood plans.  Then it turned out that her father had stuck his hand up the squirrel's ass like a puppet.

One of my favorite lines from the book is, "... You should accept who you are, flaws and all, because if you try to be someone you aren't then eventually some turkey is going to shit all over your well-crafted facade, so you might as well save yourself the effort and enjoy your zombie books."

If you don't want to read her book by now, you must be clinically insane.  Or totally normal.  Because normal people probably only read things like Readers Digest and the fine-print on prescription bottles. At any rate, you can imagine how excited I was to meet Jenny in person when she was coming to town for a book signing.  Since I had the eBook and I'm saving every last penny I can for NY and Ranger U later this month, I wanted to have Jenny sign something... fun.  One night while rummaging around in the garage I found some old church books that had belonged to Matt's step-sister.  One was titled, "I am a Child of God," and the other, "Prayer."  I thought they were perfect.  I tweeted a photo of them to Jenny and she said that we were going to Hell.  I told her they're Mormon books and Mormon's don't believe in Hell, so I think we would be good.    

I got to the Barnes and Noble about twenty minutes early and it was packed.  I didn't mind there were no chairs so I grabbed an end-cap and patiently waited.  Jenny came in and read a chapter from the book which was about the time she overdosed on chocolate laxatives and her possible rapist cat was pushing love notes and band-aids under the bathroom door... or something like that.

Then came the usual question and answer time and Jenny continued to crack everyone up while giving some pretty darn good advice.  Then it was time to stand in line to get our books and things signed.  I stood and went over all of the things I planned on saying and questions I wanted to ask.  I talked to other people in line about Doctor Who and how the only thing I liked about Amy Pond was the way she said, "Rory." I finally got up to meet Jenny and it was complete and utter verbal diarrhea out of my mouth.  Kind of like the first time I did a video of Tim Holtz at CHA and I made up some word calling him, "Abfanomenable," (absolutely fabulous phenomenal) or something like that.  Good times.  Jenny wanted to read through the, "I am a Child of God," book but I was acting like a five year old pageant girl that just got a yard long pixie stick and couldn't focus.  I should have just GIVEN her the stupid book and had her sign something else I had in my bag.  Like a DSLR lens... how many people have a camera lens signed by the Bloggess?  Ummm... No one. Luckily she opened it and looked at it because I totally forgot I drew a picture of a dalek Beyonce on my iPad once for her after I saw her Doctor Who trading cards and decided she needed an archenemy and a dalek Beyonce was the only logical choice.

After some more verbal diarrhea and me rambling and probably not making any sense whatsoever and snapped a couple photos I said goodbye to Jenny. I stepped outside of the Barnes and Noble and thought, "What the HELL did I just say?"  I resisted the urge to walk back inside to try and convince her I'm not a total space-case, but well... I am.  And I didn't want to come off stalker and crazyish, because that would TOTALLY be a great impression to give Jenny.

When I woke-up in the morning Jenny hadn't blocked or unfollowed me on the twitter.  So I guess I wasn't that bad.  I had a great time and seriously urge all of you to go grab a copy of, "Let's Pretend This Never Happened," and check out Jenny's blog.  It's great.  Seriously.

A special thank you to Copernicus (the stuffed monkey) who held a copy of the book in front of my cleavage.

         

My Love for Basic Grey & Knee Highs Collection

Oh, Basic Grey, how I love you... I can recite my favorite paper lines of yours like William Shakespeare sonnets... from Lily Kate and Romani to Origins and Picadilly; Eva and Offbeat or Lime Rickey and Scarlet's Letter...  I have adored Basic Grey since I walked into my first local scrapbook store.  At that time I was just starting to get into 12x12 scrapbooking and was pretty much only using DCWV stacks (*shudder*).  I remember purchasing Lily Kate and Romani papers for the first time and falling in love with the extremely versatile and gorgeous patterns.  The paper was thick and double-sided and I found myself buying doubles of everything.  I loved their their Wholy Cow rub-ons; talk about premium quality transfers.  And they had that signature font that everyone could instantly recognize and everyone loved.  And over the years they released fabulous tools like the rub-on tool, magnetic mat and chipboard file set.  I had to of course, have them all and ever since then it's just gotten better.


Needless to say, Basic Grey has always been a mainstay in my craft collecting and purchasing.  I look at their collections as being reliable in design and versatility.  I can honestly say I have more Basic Grey paper combined then any other company and even all of my other patterned paper combined.  Proof?  Here's my patterned paper shelves:

Basic Grey has three whole shelves dedicated to itself.  From loose paper and opened collection packs, to the embellishment sticker sheets and then the unopened collection packs I have.  Oh, and it doesn't stop there.  I have a *minor* chipboard hoarding issue:

Basic Grey has two of its own tubs on this shelf from strictly chipboard alpha sheets to chipboard sticker embellishments. When Basic Grey released their Chocolate lines I went a bit crazy.  Fabulous fonts in white, velvety chocolate brown and black.  And don't get me started on the chipboard albums.  I'm actually ashamed to say how many I have of those that have gone unfinished.  What can I say, though?  I absolutely love Basic Grey.  I know I will use them eventually.  Have I used this word before.... VERSATILE?  Yes, gonna use that one again to describe Basic Grey.

I've also hoarded their brads and buttons which again, I keep completely seperately from my other stash because even if I don't purchase one lines' specific color pallette, chances are I already have buttons from another line that will coordinate.  LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Ever since I started reporting for Craft Test Dummies and attending CHA's I've stopped past the Basic Grey booth to, "ooh," and, "ahh," at the new eye candy.  The last CHA in Anaheim this past January I named their new chipboard albums one of my top five products of the show!  Seriously love these things!  Go check them out!  I also had the absolute pleasure of meeting Shara from the Basic Grey team.  Shara was such a happy ray of sunshine to meet and so enthusiastic about the company. Some people can sometimes be *ahem* a tad cranky on the CHA floor; but SO not so with Shara.  She showed me all of the new products and patiently answered all of my questions.  I told her how much I was a fan of Basic Grey and she was kind enough to give me some product to play with! So, today over at Craft Test Dummies I am doing a product spotlight of their Knee Highs collection.  This is my personal favorite of the new releases.  It's bright and happy colors, rainbows, stripes and chevrons make my little scrappy heart so happy.  I urge you to go take a look and definitely check out all of the other amazing products at Basic Grey.  I will be doing spotlight's on all of the other releases from Basic Grey this season, so make sure to stay tuned to the blog and Craft Test Dummies!      

Winner of Distress Inks

Hello all!  Today's winner from the Fall Seasonal Distress Inks giveaway is...  

SHARI! 

Shari was the first commenter and said:

Wow, Congratulations, that is so exciting. I can't wait to see all the tricks you learn at Ranger U! Thanks for the great giveaway, I would love these inks. Shari (cricutrookie)

 

Thanks for commenting Shari!  Please email me at PlainSaraJane@gmail.com your address and I will get these out to you!

Please come back tomorrow and visit the blog!  I'm doing a product spotlight on Basic Grey at Craft Test Dummies and will be doing a little co-post here tomorrow!  Basic Grey is one of my most favorite paper companies and I'm excited to have done a spotlight for it at Craft Test Dummies!

Ranger U & Fall Seasonal Distress Ink Giveaway

I am so excited to actually type the words, "I am going to Ranger U."  I cannot believe I was accepted. I wasn't even going to apply but decided to last minute.  And I mean LAST minute... like the last day we had to email Tim our applications. We have a lot of stuff going on at home right now with the addition and me helping out with Matt's business but, boy, am I glad I did!  I've always wanted to go to Ranger U ever since I heard about it.  It's been on my crafty bucket list as well as attend CHA, which I have also been fortunate to check off.  I feel so honored and blessed to go and I cannot wait to share everything I learn with you all!

Anywho, I've been holding onto this extra set of seasonal Fall distress inks and waiting for the right time to give them away on the blog.  I had already purchased the set and my mom had kindly also purchased them for me because she knew of my absolute love of distress inks.  So...  here, they are up for grabs!  Brand new, never been opened and waiting to be all over your pretty manicures!



What do you have to do to enter???  Comment on my blog.  That's it.  No Faceyspacing or tweeting.  I like to keep it real simple around here.  You have until Sunday, March 31st to comment and I will randomly choose a winner and post it on Monday, April 1st. 

Good luck!!!

Doctor Who at the Renaissance Festival

When Matt and I first started dating we went to the Renaissance Festival every year.  Once the girls got a bit older we restarted the tradition.  We've always enjoyed going and grabbing a turkey leg, chocolate wenches (chocolate covered strawberries) and walking around and looking at all of the costumes and attractions.  Two years ago we went on St. Patrick's day weekend and thankfully Emma was going through a Tinkerbell phase and dressed in all green and her fairy wings and wand.  We lucked out and there was a Green costume Contest in the main pavilion.  Emma charmed over the judges and won the competition.  Halle has wanted to win a costume competition ever since and unfortunately last year we couldn't go on a contest weekend.  This year I didn't plan ahead to look at the calendar and we just picked a date.  I quickly scanned the website to see if we could get lucky and oh my, did we!  They were having a Doctor Who/Time Traveler costume contest.  As a HUGE fan of The Doctor, I couldn't resist and my brain quickly went into overdrive about what I could create in less than 24 hours and on a budget. I thought about dressing up one of them as a Doctor's and the other a companion, but that just wasn't sitting well with me for some reason.  Then BOOM, it hit me.  Dalek and TARDIS.  This would be fairly easy.

Here's how they turned out!

This was at the end of the Festival; Halle had her face painted as a Zebra. 

Both of the girls got up on stage and said the lines we rehearsed.  TARDIS Emma said, "I'm much bigger on the inside!"  And Dalek Halle said in her best robot voice, "Identify yourself. EXTERMINATE." Anyways Halle ended up winning third place the contest and we were all so happy.  Even big sister Emma was happy even though she didn't win.  Here's Halle with the other two winners from the contest.

Now let me tell you all something... If you want your kids treated like rock stars at the Renaissance Festival, dress them as a dalek and a TARDIS.  Seriously.  I'm not kidding at all here folks.  The girls were stopped every few minutes asking to have their pictures taken and getting high-fives.  Workers at the festival just loved them so much.  They got lots of free chocolate and I was called the coolest mom in the world.  One thing I found really funny was that most people assumed Matt was the Doctor fan.  He can't stand Doctor Who.  He just pretended he knew what people were talking about when they approached him.  If I started talking about it, they looked at me funny.  Hilarious.

Here are close-ups of each of the girls costumes and what I did:

 
 Dalek Halle's costume turned out so well and she felt like a princess which is always good.  I originally was going to tear up a pair of old red silk pj pants I had and re-sew them into a skirt.  The sewing machine and I got into a big fight and that's when I took this dress out of the closet. It was one of my flowers girl dresses from me and Matt's wedding.  I bought eight styrofoam balls, chopped them in half and spray painted them gold.  Make sure to get a spray paint made for foam.  And even though mine said, "foam safe," it didn't say styrofoam.  The paint ate some of the foam on the balls but no big deal.  (I also saw someone on line use the bottoms of large easter eggs! Genius!)  I stuck them on using some double-sided peel'n'stick fabric fuse found in the notions aisle of your craft store.  This stuff is AMAZING.  Only one ball fell off the entire festival and it easily re-stuck back on. OK, next I put a bunch of green floral tape strips onto a craft mat and spray painted that gold.  That's what I used for the criss-cross pattern on the top half of the dress.  The plunger arm was made out of a McDonalds Shamrock Shake cap I had and spray painted black and was fitted onto a cut piece of gold painted pvc pipe.  The mixer arm is well... a mixer attachment from my kitchen taped to a wooden dowel and I wrapped a piece of gold ribbon to it.  Her little ears/top of the head was made out of spray painting six 2 oz. disposable souffle cups (SOUFFLE! YAY!) and stacking them on top of each other with little fuzzy pompoms glued in between each layer.  I punched holes in either side of the bottom plastic cup and sewed them to a cloth headband. 

Emma's costume was just as easy as Halle's. This was an old blue dress that I had stained and unsuccessfully attempted to re-dye blue.  I bought a roll of blue ribbon at the craft store and a sheet of 8.5x11 adhesive backed felt. I used the fabric fuse to apply the ribbon in the grid on the dress and then put the white squares on top of that.  I used blue cardstock for the grid on the windows.  For the little hat on top I just cut a piece of white cardstock and folded into a tube shape. I used blue cardstock again for the grid and then cut a circular piece of felt for the bottom of the hat.  I hot glued a hair clip to it and voila!  TARDIS complete!

We had such a great time at the festival this year and I have to say it was in part to these little snazzy costumes.  I wish we could have the girls dress as them every year! 

Thanks for stopping by crafters! 

Oh by the way.... you might want to come back tomorrow because I have some kinda sorta big deal news...  and a giveaway of the Tim Holtz nature...

(Ok... I can't wait to share... I'm going to RANGER U!!!!  WOOHOO!) 

But still... come back tomorrow!!!

Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Challenge: Sara's Entry

Hello again and happy Friday!  I was so excited to join in on the Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Challenge! I haven't done a Tim challenge since the distress ink challenge where I created Darbie the Barbie. For some reason I was thinking I had another week until my friend, Barbara Kirk, reminded me on twitter that the due date was today!  Yikes!  (Thanks Barbara!)  So I got to work yesterday and was able to go pretty quickly!  Here's the final project! 

I had such a great time creating it, I thought I would make a little tutorial if ya'll wanted to have some fun, too! So, where do we start?  How about with some supplies!

I used a 6" Styrofoam wreath form, a chopstick, some distress inks and one re-inker, die-cut tissue wrap flowers using tattered floral die, die-cut copy paper flowers using tattered floral die, floral pin, Tim Holtz idea-ology Trimmings and a mini-mister. (I didn't end up using the brown flowers in the photo)

Before I move on I want to get into some specifics with the supplies to help y'all out.  The chopstick is for inserting the flowers into the wreath.  I prefer the chopstick because it has a smaller and larger end. The larger I use for the majority of my flowers but the smaller end is good for filling in smaller gaps and spaces.  You could totally use a wooden dowel or the end of a paint brush.

Using my Vagabond, I cut down 6 sheets of 12x12 tissue wrap into four inch squares to die-cut the flowers.  I chose to use copy paper because I needed something that had a "give" to it once I formed the flowers. Cardstock would be way too thick.  I used 12 sheets of 8.5x11 cut down to 4 inch squares.  And can I just say I love my Vagabond so much???  I was able to cut through 20 pieces of copy paper at a time! (I wouldn't recommend more than that.)  My die-cutting was done in no time.

Next I gently wrinkled and inked up all of my white flowers.  I was originally going to ink the tissue wrap flowers, but decided against it.  I also stuck to just the seasonal Spring distress inks color palette. I was going to add in some mowed lawn and picked raspberry but decided since it was a smaller wreath I didn't want too many colors making it look out of control and busy.   

Next I wrapped a flower around my chopstick and inserted it in to the Styrofoam base. Don't push your chopstick all the way to the bottom and through to the other side; just about a quarter inch or so down into the base.  

Keep going and alternating colors and tissue wrap as you work your way around.  This surprisingly goes pretty fast and it's fun. 

 

Ta-Da!  Done!  But wait... there's more...

We don't like these yucky Styrofoam sides showing!  Ewwwww....  cooties.

Fold and glue approximately ten flowers in half and then alternating colors and slightly overlapping the edges, hot glue them around the outer and inner edges of your wreath.  But hang on... we still aren't done.  

Get on out another sheet or two of copy paper and cut and ink up a few of the smaller flowers.  Using the rosette technique Tim taught in this video I made a few more small flowers.

I then hot glued these to the inner circle of the wreath.  I did have one booboo when making these and that was I forgot to twist back the petals to give them more "floweryness." (That's a word. I swear on a twinkie.)  So don't forget that part! It makes a big difference!

I then used some shaded lilac distress re-inker and a mini-mister to give color to some Tim Holtz trimmings.  I like to let it dry all bunched up as the color comes out with a cool tye-dye/ombre look.

When that dry, trim down a double-pronged floral pin (or just find a shorter one which I have never been able to do.) and push this through the ribbon and into the wreath. 

Last step!  Squirt some Distress Rock Candy stickles onto your craft mat.  Using a paint brush, apply some stickles to random petals around the wreath and the inner flowers.  This just gives it that extra *sparkle* that it needed!

Voila!  All done!  Let's look at that finished project again!

There you have it crafters!  This wreath was so much fun to make and you could do it using book paper, all tissue wrap, (brown paper bags look super cool!) and in any color palette your little creative heart desires!

Good luck to everyone that entered into Tim's tattered floral challenge!  There are some truly amazing and inspiring projects posted on his blog! I know Tim is going to have a hard time making a decision!  Happy Spring and happy creating!