Tag Archive | crafts

Thankfulness #24: Holiday Crafty-ness

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we’re celebrating thankfulness, but I have been doing it all month on my blog. To continue the streak, yesterday I was thankful for some Christmas Crafty-ness.

I think I mentioned before about our Christmas theme this year – we’re doing an “old fashioned” tree – and today I got a lot of the ornaments put made (or at least started.) Like the “gingerbread” cookies:

They’re not gingerbread, but instead ar mostly made of cinnamon and glue.

all cut out and ready to back for three hours at 200

And here’s the mess. Cinnamon is no substitute for flour, I’ll tell you that.

Ta=da!

we left a few unpainted for variety

I say that because they are really made with 2 cups of cinnamon, a cup and a half of apple sauce, and elmer’s glue. After they baked for forever, we used puffy t-shirt paint to “frost them” a little. We didn’t have a lot of it, but it got the job done.

I also started drying the orange slices in the dehumidifier because they take four hours in the oven, and I needed it for the cookies. A few of them are done, but the rest will get finished tomorrow:

And I “frosted” some pinecones. I couldn’t figure out to get the ribbon to stay on them, so I hit google and someone had posted a brilliant idea of using eye bolts. So, eye bolts it is.

And while I was at it, I finally got around to painting the spice jars I have had sitting here for over a year. I know. Laziness. Only I just now found a fifth that hubby snagged to put screws in, so I may need to buy some more white paint to do it.

The goal is to imitate milk glass. Then I have a little wooden holder I am going to fix and paint, and some cherry decals to put on the jars and they will look quite cute. I got the idea from an antique set that was selling for 80$. (this is not the exact one, but it is close enough.)

While I did that, the brother and hubby started stripping wallpaper off in the front room (that will later be the dining room, and made it probably halfway.

So that was pretty awesome.

Tomorrow we have Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s house, and then I get to come home and spray paint red beads red… I’ve been looking for a cheap string of berries for the tree (well, fake berries) but alas they do not exist in my price range, so tonight we gave up and picked up some of those gaudy metallic beads and some silk finish spray paint for plastic. I’m going to spray paint them red, then sponge on a little yellow here and there for variation, and then give it a coat of spray poly. I also have a few toilet paper rolls saved to start working on the santas.

And that’s my day. Hope yours was just as good!

Have a cinnamon cookie kinda day!

Jo 🙂

November 22, 2015

in Random Yacking, Rant
3 Comments

Bleh

Well today was the craft fair. My first ever craft fair. I went with high hopes that were dashed on the rocks of reality. In total we made 54$… I don’t mean 54$ of profit, I mean 54$ period. Less the 25$ booth fee that’s 29$ and I’ll give you a hint, the crap I bought to make an this cost a LOT more than that.
*sigh*

People looked but almost no one was interested in buying it. I had one lady who bought 3 sets cards (sold in sets of four) for $7 a set exclaim in amazement how cheap they were but evidently no one else agree. That or they thought they were crap.
Sure, I can try to unload the crap on Etsy, but I find the site confusing, especially the shit of paying their cut at intervals. What? Sorry, but I prefer a consignment arrangement where they just take their cut to start with. Plus you only get to sell a handful of items with the free account and I’m not looking to be a crafter for life, so not interested in paying. I get that some people make money but it’s not me. I’m too slow and even when I practically give the stuff away no one wants it anyway.
Yeah, I’m depressed over it. I’m allowed to be. I don’t need to justify it, or shrug it off, or pretend I don’t care because it’s “silly” or because other people wouldn’t be depressed. That’s more aimed at me than anyone else because when ever I interact with others I dismiss my feelings because they are “stupid” and people will think I’m “stupid” for them. But I am depressed. I’m upset because I already felt like it was junky crap and that sort of proved it – but even so I expected to sell more than one ornament, two bottles, and a handful of card sets. And I had to reduce the ornament to 50% off to get her to buy it.
Anyway, I won’t do that again (burned me once, shame on you. Burned me twice…) I don’t have the time out money to invest in it to come out with a negative balance. And I didn’t enjoy sitting at the table with a fake smile trying to think of chit chat and silently praying someone might look at my spread (desperation much?). I hate chit chat. (Frankly I hate deep conversations, too, and unless someone wants to take about anime, books, TV, movies, writing, house renovations, or organizing closets I am just tired of it all. ) I’m not good with strangers, and I’m lousy at selling things (this explains my book sales) and then to push through all of that terror, anxiety, etc etc for nothing…

I dunno. Anyway, the crap is on my Facebook in a crafts album with prices listed.

The pics aren’t the best because they weren’t meant as sale shots, but I can take better ones….

https://facebook.com/joleene.naylor/albums/10206654744020829/?_rdr

Hopefully that works. Anyway, I’m going to bed now. Have a better one than me.
Jo 😦

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November 12, 2015

in Art, Random Yacking, Writing
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NaNo and Christmas Crafts

I haven’t done a real post in awhile. I don’t know why I always fall off in October. It’s when I actually start to do things worth sharing. maybe that’s why – my extra blogging time is taken up with other stuff.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year to try to get most of book 8 (Masque of the Vampire) written. I was already on 23,000 words when it started, and have managed a total of 16,359 as of this moment. Unfortunately, I am supposed to be at 20,000, so I’m behind. One of the problems I have with naNoWriMo is the getting behind – I was sitting at almost 16,000 earlier today and needed just 18,000 to be caught up. So I stay up late and – bam! At midnight ti rolls over and now I’m 4,000 behind instead of the 2,000 I was just an hour or two ago. It makes it feel kind of hopeless, like no matter how much you put out you can never catch up.

Really, I’m not sure NaNo is a good thing anyway. I use it as an excuse to get to write – I tell authors/friends/fellow writers wanting book covers or favors that I’m working on a book the rest of the year and they say “Okay, but can’t you do this?”. But, during November you use the words, “NaNo” and they say “Oh! No problem! See you in December!” So in that respect it’s good, but it’s encouragement to just vomit as many words as you can might not be the best. For instance I like to write a bit, then instantly re-write it, cull it down, tighten it up, then go to the next bit. NaNo discourages this because by deleting even one single word, I am taking away from that precious word count that is o, so very important, meaning that the time I spent writing that word is now irrefutably wasted in terms of the end goal. This means a LOT more editing when NaNo is over, because since I’m not doing it now I’ll have to do it later.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Anyway, not much else. My website has had a graphic redesign – though none of the content or navigation changed, just a bit of cosmetics. I haven’t had time to keep up with blogs because besides NaNo and book covers I have also stupidly signed up for a craft fair, meaning I need products to share. Sadly, I haven’t managed very many. Please enjoy a bunch of my crafting photos. (note these are ALL I have gotten done. Eek!)