been mia

I know, I have been away for a while. I know that lots of people stopped reading this when I stopped posting. Makes sense I guess. What have I been up to? I guess I have been a little down lately. Stressing about Seth being back in school full time. Ellie is in preschool full time. I just never seem to have enough hours in the day and on top of all that, I kinda lost my mojo! It happens to the best of us, so I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. I blame it on the craft show. My mom and I are trying to be in a craft show or two, and whenever I try to think of things that someone would want to buy from me, I just get depressed. I do my art for myself, so it is really hard to imagine what other people might want. Then I guess another part of it is that I start wondering why would people ever want to buy stuff from me?! what do I have to offer? then I get depressed and just plain dont want to scrap.

Yep, so there it is. Anyway, I think I am starting to get a handle on it. It is always like this when I try something new. So I am not going to give up, I just need to find a groove - both with my new schedule and with my scrapping to sell.

Some things I have been making - halloween wall hangings, packs of cards, explosion boxes and these cute journals. I LOVE making these, but I think I am going to stop making them, they just take too long and I can't charge enough money to make back my supplies and time. Although I am not really trying to make back a lot of time - I know I can't charge like $10 an hour because I put a lot of time into things, but I would like to get a couple bucks an hour anyway. Plus, like Seth said, can't you just buy notebooks? so yeah, I love them but I dont think they are really a great idea for the sale. Here they are though. The bigger one I made to accommodate the Fancy Pants large journaling cards as dividers. The small one was made from the scraps of paper and chipboard that I had to cut to make the bigger one. I also made one for myself and that was SOOOOO much fun! I will have to show you that later. I put patterned paper pages in, and used deco scissors and ink on the edges of some of those. I probably wont write on them, but they make me happy, so why not?!










What else is new? I have been slacking on all of my DT duties - sorry guys. But I am determined to get back into it as of now! There was a crop this weekend at YMBD and at 2 Scrappy Chix. I totally forgot to post it here and announce it, but they were fun - I stopped by a few times.

And now there is an elimination contest going on at Dreamer - Dream youre a scrap star! I love these contests! I can't actually participate in this one but it is so much fun to watch! the first challenge was posted yesterday.

Oh and I am in the Bad Girls top designer contest. I thought about dropping out since I have been stressed and depressed, and I really dont need something else on my plate, but I had so much fun last year and maybe this is just what I need to kick my own butt! I have to do pages for myself for the top designer assignments because you can't use DT stuff and you can't post your pages anywhere else, so it is kind of refreshing in a way - not being able to multitask my pages. I posted last week's page and I made it to the next round. This week the challenge is to use at least two different patterned papers. That is such an easy challenge for me, its ridiculous! I mean, I use lots of PPs on all my pages. But of course, just doing the challenge isnt enough, it has to be a good well presented page. So, I will be putting my thinking cap back on and trying to get some mojo flowing.

Last but not least, I just signed up with Alyssa at YMBD to do a challenge to lose 20lbs by Christmas. Anyone who joins the challenge and succeeds will get RAKs from all the other participants. I totally need to do this! I had planned to start running this week then I had a migraine and then today I was just lazy, so this is going to be my kick in the rear. Come over and join us if you want. We capped the participants at 5 because I can't afford to send that many raks, but so far it is just the 2 of us and we could use some more support.

Oh and if you have any ideas for Christmas like altered items, ornaments, gifts, etc. that I could make for my craft show (instructions, or links to instructions or photos are preferred but not necessary) - leave me a comment. I will draw a name on Saturday and send a RAK to the winner.