A Couple of Purses & Possible Enabler Alert

Happy Sunday to you! The Broncos aren't too happy as they are lost to the Raiders today. Blech.

Thanks for the encouraging comments on my card attempts yesterday. I know you are thinking I am being too hard on myself, but I neglected to tell you just how many times I had to take the first tree card apart to get it to look right! I think all the work on it for what should have come together quickly definitely affected my feelings about it. And on the second card, I forgot to mention the stamp I used. It's from a Hero Arts set called Merry Christmas and I got it from Archiver's. It came with the rhinestones I used on the other card and is supposed to be exclusive to Archiver's. But maybe that's just because of it being packaged with the rhinestones. I stamped it in White Daisy Pigment ink from CTMH. The jewels are from Hobby Lobby and the cardstock is New England Ivy.

With that out of the way...on to what I was able to create today. I saw a purse on a blog (but forgot to note which blog...which is unlike me) that was really cute. The post linked to the Scor-Pal website for a tutorial on how to make the clutch & purse and since I want to give the girls' teachers a little something for Thanksgiving, that's what I decided to work on this afternoon. You can find the tutorial here and if you want to print it off, read all the way to the end of the next page for a PDF file. I didn't know there was one and spent too much time trying to copy and paste the tutorial onto a Word document before seeing it! (Just trying to save you a little time & frustration if you decide you want to make these). Anyway...here are the results of my efforts this afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the record, I'm quite pleased with how these came out!

The blue clutch uses paper from Heidi Grace...the Winnefred set, I think. The body of the clutch is cardstock and I added some shimmery dp from the same set on the front flap. I had a matching adhesive backed chipboard circle. On top of the circle is a button I picked up at Joann's today. In fact, the paper is currently available at Joann's as well. For the button, I clipped off the shaft and attached it with a glue dot. The ribbon is from my stash...I think I got it at Michaels. The striped purse uses some Making Memories dp I picked up at Michaels a long time ago. I think I found the cardstock there, too. The pink round "gems" are also buttons I picked up at Joann's today. Again, I cut the shaft off and attached with a glue dot. The corners are a die cut from that Vintage Cuttlebug set. It's actually a square, but I cut it in half and trimmed a couple of "strays" off from that cut. The top of the flap is punched using a Martha Stewart Spiral Lattice border punch and I added the ribbon from Walmart for some interest. I took the second picture with me holding up the ribbon strap (from Michaels). I suppose I could use something to stiffen the ribbon up and I may do that, but I wanted to show you what I made.

This may end up being a long post because I want to share a couple of things with you all. I took a little road trip to a nearby city east of where I live. I was wandering the bead/jewelry aisle at my local Michaels Friday night...taking a kid break to be honest, when a lady approached me and asked if I'd been to the new store in Brighton. I hadn't, since this Michaels is so close. She told me the new store is a concept store, one of only two in the nation. She said they had a huge scrapbooking area as well as a bead/jewelry area that was to die for. Well, that piqued my interest, so I headed over yesterday morning. WOW! I was impressed! The way they have it set up is very different and almost feels more open. There were tons of open stock single sheets sb papers I hadn't seen at a Michaels before with names I both recognized and some that were new to me, more clear stamps (although I'd seen a lot of them before) and lots of fun stuff set up in little sections, like holiday, girls, boys, babies. Remember that Basic Grey butterfly stamp I picked up in Fort Collins a few weeks ago? Well, some other Basic Grey stamp sets along the same lines are being sold there! I picked up a couple. The bead/jewelry section is very different. They actually have open stock beads/jewels that you can buy individually, like you can at a bead store. You are encouraged to take a black velvet backed acrylic tray so that you can get an idea of how things would look together.  You put the open stock beads in a little baggie and mark the numbers on a paper they have available. The department was set up in a U shape with items along each wall, and the open stock items in the middle. You can even make your purchase right there if you want! I think my friend Felicia would be in bead heaven there. (wink, wink). Oh and the kids craft section is fantastic as well. Lots of crafty goodness there! There was a gal setting up for a demo/class and she had a couple of takers before I left. I spent over an hour between those departments just wandering around-I didn't really check the rest of the store, though. (Becky, I think you should head over there one day if you haven't already...I think you'll like the sb area)!

So there's that enabler alert for any local readers. Here's another one. I have mentioned a few times how much I admire Becca Feeken's artwork. Some of the things that really strike me about what she creates are the little details. I noticed some items she listed as brads that were so different from any other brad I have seen and I emailed her to ask where she got them. Well, it turns out they aren't brads at all, but some items she found on clearance at Michaels...earlier this year they carried a line where you could decorate your own bangles. I remember passing this end cap many time without really looking at it. The items I thought were brads were from this line. Of course, I looked to see if I could find any and I was unsuccessful. But, even though I haven't found those I decided to check out the button aisle at the Joann's I frequent to see if they had any smaller buttons I could use to mimic brads. I had a blast! There are many buttons that are so pretty and they don't necessarily look like buttons. You can see a couple of my purchases in the purses above. So, I encourage you to check out buttons as a decorative item for your card-making. I hemmed and hawed a long time before buying a tool to snip off the button shaft, but awhile ago I decided to go for it. I am so glad I did! It makes it so easy to snip off the loop. You can sand any edges down if you want/need to. You can find the snipping tool in the button aisle at Joann's, and probably the same type of aisle at Michaels/Hobby Lobby or your local craft store.

Well, thanks for reading if you got this far! I hope you have an awesome beginning to your week...it'll be a short work one with the holiday coming up, right?

Jeanne