VINYL SALE!!!

I'm not having a vinyl sale because I like my vinyl, although I did share some of it with my cousin recently, but I wanted to share the sale that SIGNWarehouse is having right now.

I got an email about their 'Talk Like A Pirate' Sale they are having on their EnduraGLOSS vinyl. If you have never used this vinyl it is comparable to the Oracal 651 that most people love and right now at this price it is $5.98 cheaper per roll than the Oracal 651. The sale runs through  to Monday September 26th and is limited to what they have on hand so if you need some vinyl ya better hurry and order!

I do personally buy from this company and they have super fast shipping and the most awesome customer service!

***DISCLAIMER*** I was not paid or compensated in any form or fashion for making this post. This post was made to solely share information about a fantastic product at a fantastic price. 

Explore and Cameo Dust Covers

A few weeks ago I decided I was going to finally make dust covers for my machines, printers, etc and use the fabric I had originally bought to make curtains for my french doors. Since I did the  faux STAIN GLASS on the doors I needed to use the fabric for something and it did match my craftroom well so problem solved.

I had a new problem, no pattern for the Explore! I actually tried several before I got it how I wanted it, and then I still had to do several adjustments in the process. My mom was great at making patterns and I'm sure she would have gotten it right the first time but I'm not quite as proficient at the skill. 

During this whole process *okie wonders if they understand it was a very long process* my daughter and I went to Wall's Bargain Center and I was looking at fabric and found some I thought Carmen would really like since her favorite color is blue. I sent her a picture and she loved it so I decided to make her covers for her Explore and Cameo. Mind you, I still hadn't made the cover for my Explore or other items. 

Next issue? Well I don't own a Cameo nor do I have access to one close by so I had to have Carmen give me measurements and it was driving me crazy trying to figure out if it was going to work or not. I don't know how many pictures and texts were sent back and forth during this whole operation but let's just say I'm glad we don't have to pay per message anymore, especially with pictures! I finally got some cardboard *okie wonders if anyone else saves their cardboard boxes they get mail in* I had been saving and fashioned a cardboard Cameo so I could check to see if the cover would work. Evidently I do not need to talk and measure and talk and sew at the same time because I got the cardboard Cameo 2 inches too long and the cover about 1.5 inches too short, that was even after cutting down the size of the cardboard Cameo!

To resolve the issue about the cover being too short I added a strip of denim and decided to call it a decorative stripe so my OCD wouldn't have me tearing the whole thing apart and starting over. Finally the cover fit on the cardboard Cameo! Let me tell ya folks...it is not easy sewing blind! Okay for some folks it is probably easy, but for me it is not!

To make of for the shortness of the Explore cover I added a strip of denim at the bottom of the cover and made sure there was enough room to run some 1/4 inch elastic through the bottom. The denim at the bottom didn't bother me nearly as much as the decorative stripe on the Cameo cover!

I asked Carmen how she wanted her flaps decorated and she said she wanted her initials on them. I couldn't do just initials so I made a flourishy *okie doesn't think that is a real word since it just underlined in red but is going to keep it because she likes it and dammit it is her blog and if she wants to make up words she can* design for the initials to be placed in the center. I used HTV to do the design and intials. I also went through my jar of "very special occasion" buttons and had Carmen pick out buttons for the flaps. 

Carmen was thrilled with the pictures and I am sure she will be thrilled with the covers *okie knows Carmen is so easy to please most of the time* once she gets them. Yeahhhhhh...I haven't mailed them off yet. I actually told her this was a "pick up only" order but I know that can't happen right now so I guess I will need to get them in the mail!

After I get my patterns all tweaked I will probably post them on here so keep a look out in the future if you would like to make dust covers!

Button Disney Princess Project - Cinderella

And the last princess, and Carmen's favorite, is of course Cinderella! I always think of her as being the most classic of the Disney princesses and I'm not sure why. She was Carmen's favorite because of the blue dress, Carmen's favorite color is blue.

Now remember how I said I was worried I was going to run out of yellow button's because of doing Belle and then Snow White's skirt? Well guess what color I ran out of...yep blue! I had a lot of the darker blue and teal blue but the color blue for the dress I just didn't have enough of and Carmen sent me her stash of blue buttons so I could finish out the dress. As you can see in the picture some of these buttons were just too dark to use.

Cinderella's slip was the most difficult to do because it was so thin in spots. I was able to find enough of the lighter color blue to do her straps and hip area of her dress. I wasn't quite sure how to do the shoe because I knew it didn't need to be buttons and how in the heck do you make a "glass" slipper out of paper? Well my solution was to add Stardust Stickles on the shoe to make it sparkle. You might have to click on the picture and make it bigger in order to tell that the shoe does sparkle. 

The picture of Cinderella in the frame is the more accurate color of Cinderella's dress and there is no way I could have pulled it off without using Carmen's buttons as well because I didn't have enough of the right color. 

Oh I guess I should tell you that the silhouettes were obviously cut out of black cardstock and I did cut all the clothing pieces in their accurate color or as accurate as I could get because I didn't want to leave it just black in case there were small areas where a button didn't fit or it wasn't covered and black wouldn't be shining through and it also helped tremendously as a guide for placing the buttons. 

You might be wondering what I used to attach the buttons. I wanted to make sure they were going to stay down and even though they finished projects won't be handled I did want to make sure none of the buttons would come lose and mess up the project so I opted to use the SOBO glue that I have talked about before. As far as I know not one button came of in the shipping process. I'm tellin ya, this glue is like magic for keeping stuff together!

Carmen and Lori met for lunch a day or two after Lori's birthday and Carmen sent me a video of Lori opening the button princesses and I was so happy to see a big cheesy grin on Lori's face as she pulled each one out and looked at it!

Button Disney Princess Project - Snow White

For the love of all that is holy I have no idea why we chose to do Snow White and her 1,200 colors in her dress! Okay maybe I exaggerate a little on how many colors but she definitely had more colors than the others. 

After doing Belle and all the yellow I was certainly hoping I had enough yellow to complete the skirt in Snow White's dress and I am glad to say that yes I had enough and still have some left. I don't think I ever noticed the differences in the color of my buttons until I did the princess project. 

The hardest part of Snow White was her sleeve. The red area was way too small for me to even cut buttons up so I decided to just leave that area paper and then try and do the light blue around it. It took a LOT of snipping of buttons to get those sleeves done to where they looked right. 

As you can see I did finish out her skirt and collar with white buttons. After I got her done I actually thought she might be my favorite out of the button princesses and I think it might even be due to the number of colors in her dress. My daughter said Snow White was her favorite out of them and it was because of the dress and colors. 

Tomorrow I will post the last of the button princesses!

Button Disney Princess Project - Belle

Carmen and I discussed how many princess we should do and which ones and the next one we agreed on was Belle from Beauty and the Beast *okie really wonders if she even needed to add the last part of that sentence*.

I was glad I had already learned the cuttin of the buttons trick when I got to Bell because dress was more two tone than what Aurora's was and I wanted the swag in the skirt to show up although I'm not sure it really does in this picture but it does in person. I didn't do the gloves on any of the princesses because I thought that might be over kill and it their hand would have gotten lost in the bulkiness of the buttons.  

I think you can see the two tone of the buttons a little better with Belle in the frame and maybe the lighting on this picture. 

When I sent the pieces to Carmen I didn't have the princesses attached to the background sheets because I thought it would be better if she would attach them after the she got the background paper in so the placement would be correct and I think she did a fantastic job!

Button Disney Princess Project - Sleeping Beauty

My friend Lori's 50th birthday was about a week ago but due to the Labor Day holiday she had her party a little early. Carmen and I had made great plans to get a project done for Lori's birthday party and I was going to surprise her and show up at the party but due to my niece having her baby that weekend I choose to cancel the trip to Houston and I spent that weekend making the baby projects I posted a few weeks ago.

The project Carmen and I decided to do was something that came from Pintrest where someone had made silhouettes of the Disney Princesses and then used buttons for the dresses. I had posted it on Facebook and told Carmen I thought we could make those and Lori and commented that she knew someone who would love those and said "ME!" And that is how the idea was born.

Anyway I had to ship the finished pictures to Carmen so she could put them in the frames and get them to Lori. They were a few days late getting to Lori, partly because my Goddaughter decided to bring the box back in the house that I had set out for the mailman to pick up.  

While I was working on the button ladies I would send Carmen pictures of the progress I was making. Aurora was the first one I did and when I sent Carmen this picture I asked about the white of the slip of the dress and of course Carmen said it needed to be in buttons too *okie makes a note not to ask Carmen questions anymore because she causes okie to have to do more work*. 

The problem became that I didn't have enough small buttons to fill in and I had to think of what I could do to get the area all covered without having too many buttons on there so I came up with the solution of cutting the buttons! As luck would have it I keep a small pair of needle nose pliers in my craftroom and they worked out great for getting the buttons cut down to the sizes and shapes I needed. 

When Carmen went to find frames she sent me pictures of several ones and we decided on white frames. For the background I used some pearl paper and then cut out designs on vellum to put on top of the pearl paper so there would be a nice background but not distract from the artwork.Yes I said artwork because after all the time and effort I really feel they are more artwork than a craft project. I was a little blown away when I saw the finished projects because the frames just set them off beyond what I would have imagined!

Now this Sleeping Beauty wasn't the only one I did...there are 3 more and they will be posted the next 3 days. I could have posted them all together but I feel they deserve their own post. 

Proud Son In Law - File Available

I haven't forgotten about this thing or been on a hiatus. Instead I have been going from one project to another and haven't had time to sit down and upload and edit pictures and write out posts but I'm going to try and catch up with posting my projects, some of which were quite time consuming!

As I scroll through Facebook there are always advertisements about t-shirts and say "order now" or "hurry" "while supplies last" and some of them are hilarious and of course I don't ever think about ordering since I have HTV and a heat press so when one particular t-shirt showed up I knew I was going to have to make it but tweak it just a tad bit.

Since I don't have a son but do have a son-in-law who may or may not think I am freaking awesome I still wanted to make him this t-shirt. I even told him I was going to make it and I didn't care if he wore it to work, as long as he wore it at least once. By the way, he does outdoor maintenance work so I knew the t-shirt would get ruined if he did wear it to work. 

I changed the son to son-in-law, mom to mom-in-law, and the bought to made to customize for my use. 

I did like how some of the words were box negatives and kept that idea and while weeding I forgot a few times that is what I was doing and I took out the little triangle of an A but luckily I was able to put it back in there. I finally decided to just work one area at a time instead of skipping around and that helped me focus on what I was suppose to weed where. 

Here is a picture of my son-in-law wearing his shirt. I had to him put it on for a picture and figured that would be the end of that shirt but my daughter told me he did wear it when they went to a friends house for a get together *okie feels a tinge of pride* and I think has worn it another time as well. Years ago when Chuck first came to be in our lives I made a lot of things for him due to him playing football and he usually was the one to tell me what he wanted and where he wanted it. I guess you could say he is actually the reason I got into the whole HTV and heat press thing in the first place. 

 As always I am sharing the file for free *okie thinks most people slide by the donation button really quickly and act like they don't see it*.

It's Not My Corkscicle!

There are so many brands of the stainless steel tumblers it's hard to keep up! A few days ago when I was out at McCall's one of women out there liked how I had my name on my stainless steel tumbler and asked if I would do hers. I have been avoiding doing the stainless steel like mine because it's not a true smooth surface and like I said a few days ago I don't want people complaining about the vinyl coming off. 

I'm not sure if everyone has seen the Corkscicle brand but they come in some really cool colors and the one the woman had was a hot pink *okie thinks that is obvious by the picture* and I told her I would sacrifice some of my glitter vinyl to do her cup. The mandala is one that my friend Carmen did and was nice enough to share with me. I didn't ask her if I could use it to make money off of it but if she doesn't like it then she can *okie falls out her chair laughing*. 

I was able to use the conical warp feature in Make The Cut to have the image come out looking straight after it was applied to the cup. For those folks who don't have the conical warp feature I really feel for ya because you have no idea what you are missing out on!!

The image was only 3 inches across so you can imagine how small the dots are and I did a reverse weed, where you put the transfer tape down on the whole image and then remove the waste, with the dots. You might notice the slight empty space between the lettering and design and I used another fantastic feature in Make The Cut for that effect. I made a slight shadow of the name and then used the Boolean Join feature to cut way the area so the whole design lays flat instead of having it layered. 

I guess I better get busy on finding some more projects to work on because as I am writing this I have nothing else, zilch, nada to post!

My Cowboy - Altered Frame

I go through phases of doing different projects and a few years ago I was on a kick of altering frames and gave those out as prizes at one of my Christmas parties and I had planned on doing some for a craft fair that Linda and I did *okie remembers what a bomb that was* but I never finished any of them. The other day while perusing through my craft closet I came across two frames that had almost been completed and thought I should go ahead and finish them although I have no use for them.

When ya live in Oklahoma there is never a shortage of cowboys and I am sure that is why I went with the cowboy theme. I think the title came from Miss Kate's Cuttables and I have no idea where the rope, wagon wheel and hay bale came from, like I said this was a few years ago. 

One time when Linda and I were in Tuesday Morning they had a bunch of frames in the clearance and I snatched up quite a few, especially since they were only about 2 bucks a piece. This frame holds a 4x6 picture and think the others do as well but are different sizes. 

One of the things that always make things look so nice is that little extra step of embellishing. I sanded the paper, Coredinations to be exact, and did some inking on some of the pieces. The denim, bandana and burlap paper all came from Hobby Lobby's open stock of paper. You can't see them in this picture but in the first picture you can see some stars I added. They are hotfix stars so they will stay on there pretty good.

Now I just have to find a purpose for the two frames. I think my next ones are going to be a bit more generic so they can be more easily used.