Love is My Fave

Ta da! I's my first piece I created on my own start to finish. Yes, I know nothing to write home about but I cut the glass, cut the strips into pieces, laid them out, grouted and cleaned it up so that's a success in my eyes. I have charcoal grout that I felt was too dark so I mixed it with some of the white grout to create a light grey. I felt it looked better against the purple and green tile. I put a little votive candle inside so you can see how clear the purple is. I'm thinking I want to sand it down and maybe seal it, especially if it's used as a vase with water.

My first mosaic tile vase (or candle holder) woohoo! Thanks to Robin and Bonnie for their instructions.

This is vase number two. I'm using off white solid tiles on opposite sides and turquoise-ish solid tiles on the other opposite sides with white grout. I'm not a big fan of it, nothing too special but sometimes those things turn out the best so we'll see. I think it will make a decent vase.

This is my third vase I'm working on. It's going to have one letter on each side and will spell out Love and I'll be using white grout. I'm going to start experimenting with words and other shapes. My next pieces will be smaller than these vases. I don't have enough creativity yet for such large pieces!

Dollar Store Score

I knew the dollar store would be a good idea! I scored 3 flat sided vases for less than $10! (woot woot) Below is a picture of some of my glass I bought the color is funky because it was in my dining room which is dark but has a chandelier so hence the weird tone and reflection. Home Depot was a bust when it came to looking for pliers and wheeled nippers so I'm going to either hit up amazon, ebay or another glass store. SIGH.


If you can't tell the one with the straight up reflection is solid black glass, the next is solid yellow then a marble green.

It's Okay, It's a Gift

The Glass Crew took a ride out to Rainbow Stained Glass in Bristol, PA. I've never been to a glass store but they had a huge selection and what seemed to be reasonable prices. I bought several sheets of colored glass for under $20 and by first glass cutter! Next stop will be to Home Depot to get the other tools I need to cut glass, like nippers and something else but the name escapes me. Oh yeah and different colored grout.


Back to Robin's and we grouted our projects we started two weeks ago. Robin and Bonnie are working on about a thousand different projects and Erin and I continued with our "beginner" trivets. Grouting turned out to be fun. Robin prefers wearing the swine flue gloves but I definitely thought barehanded was better.

Below, is my trivet mid-grout. I think it would have looked really sharp if I had some charcoal colored grout but I guess that's all part of the learning process. I'll post a pic of H trivet when it's all cleaned up. Next project will be a mirror! And I need to throw in a CONGRATS to Bonnie for selling a vase on Etsy :)

Sometimes Simple is Good

I decided to get my Aruba 2006 page out of the way and just looking at my new "south beach" color card stock I decided I would make the page a beach scene and it was so easy! I really needed a colorful background since the pics are b/w (I ran out of color ink mid printing 2006 and was too lazy to reprint them heehee.) Also, I stole my sister-in-law's lobster she stamped for an envelope once...hope she doesn't mind.

Sale notice: AC Moore has the brand Top Load scrapbook albums 2 for $8!I bought some plain ones because it's really about the pages inside right?? :) Don't forget you can print the coupons from the website.

Michaels Scrapbook Sale (and this week's projects)

Although Michaels (the arts and crafts store) annoyed me today, I'll make sure everyone knows scrapbooks are on sale this week. The annoyance came from the fact that they had a 50% coupon this week and coincidentally the scrapbooks were on sale 25%. Soooo of course I can't use the 50% on them. This was obviously on purpose and its irritating! But anyway, just an FYI the scrapbooks are on sale this week. The Michaels (in Princeton at least) had a giant selection of scrapbook paper pads on sale pretty cheap, so this week is a good time to pick some up.

Projects this week: Relining the kitchen drawers and shelves with new paper and cleaning up the guest room. The husband was good enough to rip out the carpet today and then its time to redecorate!

Garage Sale Prep

The Glendale 'hood is having a yard sale tomorrow so I'm participating and prepping on this fine Friday night. I can't lie, I'm totally enjoying making a master list of items, then making price tags and organizing all the items. Many of you don't get it, but I know many of you do :)

Walkin' on broken glass

Today was our first Mosaic-ing (not sure what the correct term is) lesson hosted by Robin and taught my Robin and her sister. First we had dinner, which was delish, then we moved on to the outdoors and Robin showed Erin and I how she cuts glass and breaks it with the nippers tool. That's right nippers

These pictures are the trivets me and Erin made, Robin kindle donated some glass trivets and some of her glass that she pre-cut. Mine is obviously the one with the H. It was really fun and more relaxing than scrapbooking. Those of you who scrapbook can understand how intensive it can get! Robin's sister was working on a side table but I didn't get a chance to take a pic.

Finally Robin mixed some grout and finished a vase she was previously working on using a light sand colored grout. But since grouting is our lesson for next month I'll save those pics and we will be using a charcoal colored grout, which I think will look pretty sharp with the colored tiles we chose. Hopefully, we should be making a trip to the glass store before next month's meeting!

2006 scrapbook update

Here are a couple pages from the 2006 scrapbook including part of the invitation that was stamped by MIL (mom-in-law.) Pages subjects include Red Bank, Trenton, and a graduation party. Trenton page I didn't have many pics so I printed a map of Trenton from Google Maps. Red Bank page took me an entire Paper Cuts session to do, but it was worth the time. It's one of my favorite pages.

In two days a friend of mine will be showing me and another girl how to mosaic! I found an old mirror that I think I will try to do something with I have a feeling it will be harder than it looks.

(I wonder if I am just a Blogspot newbie and that's why the pics are posting funny or if this is just what you get with a free blogging site?)

Red Velvet

Decided to bake red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (from Le Gourmet Chef) for Kim's birthday at work tomorrow. I should stick with what I know sometimes. They're kinda dry, taste kinda funny (maybe I don't like red velvet cake that much though) and the frosting is off. Thank god the guys will eat anything at work.

Update: Only 3 were left. Boys will eat anything.

Podcast Potential

I came into yesterday's Paper Cuts get-together very prepared (for once.) I knew I was going to do my sister-in-law's graduation party (undergrad/wake forest) and had the pics all pre-cut. It was nothing spectacular but I did have the invitation they hand made for the party so it the pages had a really nice personal touch. (The women in my husband's family are incredibly good at stamping I'll have to take some pics of there cards as well.) Mind you, I'm still on my 2006 album so I'm trying to get through it pretty quickly.

Stacy mentioned she started an arts and crafts blog as well and registered a domain and everything, as soon as I get the url for it I'll post it on here. Her husband also mentioned recording our meetings and maybe doing a podcast. I know we were laughing at the meeting, not sure if the world will find it just as interesting but you never know! The lighting is bad for taking pics of my pages so I'll do it in the daytime and then post them on here. I also finished a Trenton pics page but there wasn't much to it. Courthouse, Trenton Makes Bridge and I think William Trent house.

Thanks to Jane for being such a fab host and making some delicious Gordon Ramsey burgers!

Starting Over

Going through my facebook updates today and I saw a picture of a cake from one of my facebook friends. This young woman started baking and decorating cakes (think Ace of Cakes) and is really good at it. From her posts she's now making these cakes for family friends. So of course now I'm thinking "I want to make cakes!" I pretty much laughed at myself at this point. I always want to start some new hobby but never get around to it or it takes me forever to start. So I decided I'm going to chronicle my efforts and hopefully it will keep me on track...realistically, I'll probably stop blogging as well. Tomorrow I have a scrapbook meeting (papercuts) so hopefully I'll have something to post and some pics to show off as well.