Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Mail Call 02/27/2017

I totally love Etsy! It is one of my new favorite places to find vintage stationary. Especially postalettes. I got a package in the mail and thought I would share my newest finds with you. If I know..errr remember the etsy shops I bought the items from I will link them at the end :)




This totally cute kitty stationary. It consists of 12 pages and 6 envelopes and matching envelope seal stickers.  My only problem is that I never write a 2 page letter. More often I write a 10 page letter..hahaha. Oh well, I can always use the leftover envelopes in envelope swaps with friends from Swap-bot. 😉

This next set of stationary is a set of 12 postalettes. I thought I would use these for Notecard exchanges or those Quick Note swaps that I like to join. I think this design is absolutely beautiful and I love the blue coloring. These were made by Hallmart and I think they are from the 80's? But I could be wrong. I couldn't find a date on the package anywhere. 








Here is my second set of postalettes that I was able to find. I don't think they are quite vintage but I love the victorian feel with the pink roses and the ecru colored background. I just feel so elegant when I use these. I really need to step up my fancy handwriting so I feel worth of using these papers. 




My Third set of postalettes are these pretty vintage butterfly cards. I think they are so pretty.





Last but not least. I am a stickler for stickers..hahahahahaha! I love love love buying cute stickers and some of my favorites are stickers of owls and peacocks. I was just browsing through etsy and stumbled across these and knew I just had to have these.  One of the things I love to do is decorate happy mail when I send it out. I think adding these stickers to my outgoing mail will brighten someone's day. I especially love the foiled owls. They are so adorable!




Where I got everything: Etsy
You can click on the store names to go directly to their shop :) 


The Kitten Stationary -- UniqueJapanDesigns
Vintage Hallmark Postalette (Oriental Design) -- JuntiqueJunction
Rose Fold-over Postalettes & Vintage Butterfly Postalettes -- MaggiesMedley
Cute Kawaii Owl Stickers, Peacock Stickers & Foiled Owls -- ILuvDesign

Monday, February 27, 2017

Recipe Journal Swap


I just finished the recipe journal swap that I signed up for on Swap-bot. With this swap you have to send your assigned partner a notebook or journal of some form that has 50 hand wrote recipes in it. I decided that I wanted to make the journal for my partner a little bit special so I took an tutorial that I found on MayMayMadeIt and used her ideas to make my journal extra special.  I really really love the paper that I used to decorate this journal and I will include links at the end of this blog post on where you can find this paper pack if you wish to purchase it for yourself. I will also link the MayMay's tutorial at the end so you can go and check out her youtube channel.  She is totally wonderful and awesome and I've learned so many crafty things by watching her videos. You should really check her out and subscribe to her if you've not heard of her before.  Now on to the photos of the journal I created for my swap partner, BrooklyBunch. I am hoping she will like this and appreciate all the hard work I put into making it for her. 

Funny story though, I first started out this journal swap just writing random recipes in a notebook then decided I wanted to separate them all into categories, so I started over again. Then once I had a bunch of recipes in the notebook I decided I wanted to add Tabs and such to make it easier to look through, so I added all that.  Then I stumbled upon MayMay's tutorial and decided to order the paper pack she showed so I could decorate the journal. While I was waiting for the paper to show up I decided to finish writing out the recipes. But when I got to the end of the notebook I realized that I loved most of these recipes and I liked having them written down and on hand instead of stored online that I decided to keep the original (second one..lol) for myself and start totally fresh with the journal for a THIRD time.  The pictures you see below are my final project that I will mail out to BrooklyBunch.   I hope you like what I've made! Enjoy!



I wanted a simple cover. One that was pretty but at the same time not too frufru. I just layered a couple layers of the pattern paper from the paperpack and then used one of the cut outs from the kit as the main image of the book. I did the same thing with the back cover and used another pretty pattern. For the spine of the book I didn't want to cover it and cause problems when trying to flip through the book so I just decided to use some sticky back fabric tape to cover the seam between the front cover and and the spine of the composition notebook. Then I added a pretty sequin ribbon to the the front to add to the look. (see close up of sequin ribbon below)

I also made these cool tabs dividers using my WeRMemoryKeepers envelope punchboard. This is something I learned from maymay's video. (see very end of blog for tutorial).


I covered both the inside and back cover with plain white cardstock, thereby covering up all the conversion charts that you normally see in the inside covers of all composition notebooks. I then added a pocket to both the front and back covers to give my swap partner a place to tuck in random things. There are several pockets throughout the journal that can be used for storing more recipes and whatever else Susan may wish to add to this to make it her own. 


Using the patterned paper from the paperpack I decorated both the front and back of every divider. Some have pockets for tucking items and some are just accented with the matching stickers from the kit.  The below picture of the Table of Contents, I used my label maker to add the page numbers to ever page and on the Table of Contents page.  The camera actually added a glare to the labels but seeing them with your normal eye, they actually blend into the page.  I also used my label maker to for all the tab descriptions.



Several of the pockets contain tags that also came from the paper packet and I added them to the pockets with the thought that Susan could add her own recipes to these cards or maybe pictures of things she's cooked. 



I hand wrote all the recipes in the journal. I thought it added a more personal touch and I am hoping that she will be able to read my handwriting. hahahhha I tried to take my time when writing everything out so that it didn't look chicken scratchy. :) I did switch back and forth between printing and cursive and I changed pen colors several times to keep things interesting.














At the end of the recipe journal I had several pages left over that I didn't want to leave blank. After I added the Index to the very back of the notebook I decided to look up and include several ingredient substitution pages and also a Measurement Equivalent chart.  I thought these things would be handy to keep in print where you wouldn't have to look them up.  Things like what is a dash or pinch equivalent to in actual measurements. lol 






The paper pack that I bought for this project is called: " Home Sweet Home" by Carina Gardner and is created by Carta Bella paper company. It is a whole scrapbooking kit and came with 12 double sided 12x12 heavy cardstock papers and a couple pages of cutouts. One being the recipe cards that I used at pockets and the second cut apart page being the tags that I used throughout the journal and put in the pockets I created. You also get a 12x12 page of element stickers that you can see from above that I used as embellishments throughout the whole journal. 
I purchased this paper pack off of Amazon for $9.98 and you can find it by clicking the below link.



The tutorial that I used for inspiration to make this recipe journal I found on MayMayMadeIt's youtube channel. Below you can find the link to take you to part one of the tutorial. From there you can find parts two and three. 

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Would You Rather? Round 9






Another Round of the Would You Rather? series of swaps hosted by kygirl over on swapbot.
For this swap I had 3 partners. I had to answer the 10 questions below & send an email to my partners. Have Fun Reading my answers!
  1. Would you rather be able to teleport anywhere or be able to read minds? Oh most definitely I would love to be able to teleport anywhere. I would be able to visit any and everyplace that I've ever dreamed of visiting and it would save so much on the airfare or traveling expenses :)  I could go to Paris for dinner!
  2. Would you rather die in 20 years with no regrets or die in 50 years with many regrets? I rather live another 50 years but with regrets. Regrets are a part of life and help to form us into who we are. 
  3. Would you rather be feared by all or loved by all? Loved by all is the option I chose. I'd hate to be feared by everyone. 
  4. Would you rather know when you are going to die or how you are going to die? (You can’t change the time or method of your death.) Oh I don't like this question. I don't want to know when or how.  But I guess you could cheat a little if you knew HOW.  You could just NOT do that thing that caused your death. Like if I was told I was going to die while bungee jumping, you can bet your sweet bippy that you wouldn't find me anywhere close to a bungee cord. 
  5. Would you rather be transported permanently 500 years into the future or 500 years into the past? I rather go to the past. I already know what to expect back then and could work with that knowledge. But going forward I would be too scared because I worry about the future 50 years from now, let alone 500years from now. I don't thing the Earth will be here in 500 years to be honest. 
  6. Would you rather never be able to use a touchscreen or never be able to use a keyboard and mouse? I could live without a keyboard or mouse if I had a touchscreen.  It would be impossible to live without my touchscreen on my iDevices.
  7. Would you rather be able to control fire or water? This is actually interesting because I am afraid of large bodies of water like pools and lakes because I can't swim, so being able to control water would be kind of awesome. But then again I think I could save a lot of lives if I could control fire because then I could stop all the forest fires that happen every year. 
  8. Would you rather have everything you eat be too salty or not salty enough no matter how much salt you add? Rather have my food not be salty enough. You can eat bland food but it's almost impossible to eat food that is too salty. Plus it can make you sick.
  9. Would you rather have hands that kept growing as you got older or feet that kept growing as you got older? Oh goodness. I guess I would have to say Feet that kept growing.  What a odd thought. I'd just have to wear really long skirts to hide my humongous feet!
  10. Would you rather have unlimited sushi for life or unlimited tacos for life? (both are amazingly delicious and can be any type of sushi / taco you want). Tacos hands down. You are not ever getting me near sushi...ewwww. 

My partners for this swap were:

JMitchell8814
AThousandYears
WiluJeng

The partners that sent to me are:



As always you can click on a name above to go to their blog where they've posted their answers or to another page where I've posted the answers I've received.

Junk Journal of Lists :)

Recently I took part in a Junk Journal of Lists swap. This is the first junk journal that I have done and I had a lot of fun doing it. I think I will have to do more of these in the future. I ended up using various stationary papers that I had on hand and some envelopes. I think it came out good. :) I've taken a few pictures so that you can see some of the inside of the journal. There were many pages. I did four signatures of 7 pages each.