WIP Wednesday - A Scrabble Catastrophe!

Since I'm still too gimped up from my surgery to paint I've had to find other creative outlets.

Remember my hand painted Scrabble tile magnets? They turned out really pretty! The only thing I didn't like about making them was the glaze I was using was a pain in the neck to squirt out and ended up drying with a flat surface. I wanted a pretty dome shape on top of all of them.

When I was at my crap show craft show this weekend I had the opportunity to talk to one of the other vendors about resin for the tops of scrabble magnets. She explained to me what she did and how she did it and I raced to Michaels when the show was done to get some resin and try it out.

I did it exactly like she said. I had the resin poured on and I laid them out on the dining room table to dry over night. What happened was my own fault...



Dixie, our dog, had started the habit of needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. So like I had the week before I got up about 3:30am and stumbled through the dark to let her out except this time I stepped on something.

I pulled it off my sock and realized I had resin all over my fingers. I walk over and turn on the light only to be welcomed with about a dozen or more tiles sticking to our tile floor in the kitchen.

It never dawned on me the dog would chase the cat and the cat would jump on top the dining room table. I hurried over pulling all the scrabble tiles off the floor not stopping to think that the wet resin was setting my skin on fire.

So I'm yelling at Cory to get up and he is on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor while I'm scrubbing the resin off my hands with a pumice soap.



Thankfully everything came up okay. We are able to get all the resin off of the floor and our poor cat. I was even able to salvage over half of the magnets!

It doesn't show up the best in the pictures but the salvaged magnets now have a clear domed top on each of them just like I had originally wanted them to.

I can't wait to finish up my second set!

One dead craft show

I thought I had been to dead craft shows before but nothing, I repeat, nothing prepared me for the amount of traffic coming through the doorways of the show I did this weekend.

I knew we were in trouble as soon as Cory and I pulled into the parking lot. You had to swerve around and go behind another building inside a strip mall behind the street with main traffic. The only sort of promotion done for the show were little 8.5 x 11" signs staked into the ground, two banners that kept falling over and putting flyers on people's cards outside the event.

I think it's safe to say we got maybe 100 customers combined Saturday and Sunday. I will not be doing this show again.

This picture above was my booth. It wasn't the best but it worked okay. The second day I changed out the original paintings to hang all prints on the back grid wall for easy visibility and added some mini prints. I forgot to take pictures of the revised layout.

I was so ticked off when I got to the show the second day I was just focusing on setting up. The show didn't have any sort of parking and due to the church crowd next door I ended up having to park and walk like 1/4 mile with my stuff to get to the show. I was hot, sweaty and grouchy by the time I arrived.

The one good thing that came out of all this is I got to know a lot of the fellow vendors. There were three other Etsy Fort Worth members there, one vendor I had met at a previous show and two others that are attending the Cowtown Indie Bazaar in the fall.

WIP Wednesday (err, Friday) - New Earrings

So school and the Cowtown Indie Bazaar planning are kicking my butt! My little blog is suffering I'm afraid. In addition, I have to wear my brace until the middle of August so no painting for me either. (insert sad pouty face here)

The good news out of all this is I WAS able to come up with a new product - glass tile earrings!

I wanted something to go along with my glass tile pendants. These little guys are 1/2" square with original artwork and sterling silver hook and bead.

I really like them too. Of course, like all my projects I snagged the first pair for myself.



I will debuting these earrings along with more glass tile pendants tomorrow at the North Texas Institute Craft Fair. Be sure to stop by if you get the chance! Cory and I will be there both Saturday and Sunday and we would love to see you.

WIP Wednesday - Me, Myself and I

Have you noticed I haven't posted much in the past few weeks? I could have followed proper blog etiquette and posted that I will be gone but when do I ever follow proper blog etiquette?

This week's WIP is a little different than most. This week's WIP, along with last week's and the week before has been me.

I had assignments come up for school that I felt slightly overwhelmed by. Geez, you don't realize how long you've been out of school until you go back. I can't begin to tell you just how stupid I felt.

I took my first exam today and I"m not sure how good I did on it. It's timed!! Granted they give you four hours and it's open book but it's timed!! I got to question number six only to find in my notes part of the answer I should have given for number one. Of course you can't go back either. Grrr...

I have part of the first assignment done and I've started on research for the second. Yes, it's the same assignment I started two weeks ago. The good part about that is I finally figured out how to look up cases! That was the part I was struggling with. I plan on busting these next two assignments out this weekend and sending them to my mentor to review.

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Friday before last I had surgery on my hand for Carpal Tunnel. Evidently I'm one of those people where if something is wrong with you physically it hits you like a ton of bricks. I was down for almost a week. A week of nothing but daytime television, bleh.

On Monday, the doctor wanted to keep me home even longer since I wasn't healing as fast as I was suppose to. I talked him into letting me go back to work tomorrow. The more I use my hand the better it feels, well, mostly anyway.

I have to wear my brace continuously for a another month and then the month after that when I do stuff that requires me to lift things like washing dishes, laundry, etc. I guess all in all it's a small price to pay to have your hand work right.

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Thankfully toward the end of the week I had Etsy Fort Worth to keep me occupied. I had no clue how stressful planning a craft show could be! I think it's funny too the things I thought were the ones that would give me trouble weren't anywhere near what actually did.

Still lots to do with that. I want to work on the website a bit since it's a little bare. Now it's crunch time for everything plus we have to keep planning in mind for our spring event.

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I'm excited to start working on a new commission project I have! Hopefully next week I will be able to start working on it.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

I just finished reading Stephanie Meyer's book The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and I'm a little disappointed with it.

The book is a spin off of the Twilight Saga and tells the story of a newborn vampire recruited to be a part a vampire army seeking revenge on Edward and Bella.

Usually I enjoy Stephanie's style of writing. It's clear and descriptive and unlike some authors doesn't require you to have a dictionary on the side lines to understand what she's talking about. It makes for very easy reads.

In this book she continued with the same style of writing but the story seemed to lack character and background development. It was almost like she rushed through writing the book just to get it out.

I don't know that a person who is not familiar with the Twilight Saga would be able to know what's going on in regard to the newborn army being built or if it would be enough to hold that person's interest.

However, if you are familiar with the Twilight Saga it's an interesting read in terms of giving a different perspective.

It's my understanding you can read the the entire book online starting until midnight on July 5th but for every hard copy sold a dollar will be donated to the American Red Cross. For only thirteen bucks you may as well buy the hard copy and do something good in the process.