More holiday lights

When power goes out this winter - I'm going to be more than ready. But will I be able to light such beauties?  Who knows!  Went to the local thrift store and found this gold tray with 4 candles that spell "NOEL" for $1.99

Dad always said his name was "NOEL" spelled backwards.....and it was!

Creative Impressions in Colorado Springs makes wonderfully fun blossoms.  I buy them in white so I can airbrush them the colors I want, but today, I left them white and layered them into wonderful flowers.  Note, layer snowflakes between flowers for this great look.

I added one flower over each letter, then covered the rest of the candle with Diamond Stickles Glitter. Note, diamond has a gold tint to it, so it looks great over cream colored candles.

And when I set them back on the tray - it's a year round candle tray!  Simply gorgeous....and only $1.99!!!

Next, I found a plain candle for 50 cents.  Too good to pass up.  But it has some damage on it and I wanted to show another way to cover the damage.

 Beeswax comes in sheets that's rolled up.  Use your Heat-it tool to soften it as you unroll it in order to keep it from cracking.  These 4 rolls were given to me years ago as a gift.  Yes, I tend to keep everything!

I cut it to size and wrapped it around the candle.  Then I took a foam brush and dabbed Diamond stickles glitter all over the beeswax.  Turns it into a glitter candle!  Use the Heat-it tool to slightly warm the top and pressed it into the existing candle.  Added 2 more of my blossom snowflake flowers to the front.

Notice how nicely the beeswax blends into the top?  And don't you love the glitter?

Finally, do you see the "star of david" in the center of the flower?  Perfect!

My sister, April, and her best friend, Cheryl, from Indiana were here for the weekend and they found tiny little cubed candles.  The brown beeswax went over the pastel colors just perfect.  We used Crystal stickles on the brown which actually turned it sort of turquoise.  We all loved the results!

The stickles didn't get dry so I couldn't photo the final results as they had to run to the airport for the Cheryl's flight home.  But what a great way to cover up flaws on thrift store candles!

The 3 cubed candles and tray were $1.00, $2 for my tray and .50 for the other candle - we only spent $3.50 and have such lovely candles to add to our collections.

My challenge to you - pick up some candles that someone else has discarded and see what you can turn them into before December 20th, - the first of 8 nights of lights!

Be sure to check out these links:

My Etsy Store

My ebay auctions

Snowflake blossoms

Today, I brought my friend Shelly, down to Canon City on a "shopping" trip. We stopped at Creative Impressions in Colorado springs and I got a ton of white felt flowers. These come individually and you stack them up and put a brad in the center and can make countless "flower" arrangments. Ok....there are some snowflakes in there as well!



My niece and nephew came to mom's for a visit. And I gave them both a bunch of flowers and they got out their markers and started coloring them.

Very creative coloring, I must say!!!

OK.....extremely creative coloring!

This one happens to be my very favorite....not sure why, but I really love it!

It kept them busy for about 2 hours while my brother and I went over genealogy notes. So if you are looking for something to entertain the kids with.....I'd have to suggest that you check out Creative Impressions and buy them all in white!

Now, I can hardly wait to get back home in a couple of days and see what happens when I apply alcohol inks, acrylic paints...you name it....to these! I think it's going to be great fun! But mostly I'm wondering what Friendly Plastic bits and pieces are going to look like if melted on top of the felt! LOL!!!

It's Cheaper than Therapy!!!

No, really, trust me, it IS Cheaper Than Therapy!!! That's the name of the website for Album Memories, a great little store in Commerce CO which is probably the number 1 store in the entire nation for sales of dies. This tiny little store does an amazing business, both in the store, at shows, and on line.

But really, it probably is cheaper than therapy - going shopping at Marie's store! Let's see, I'm going to guess the going rate for therapy is $250 an hour? Yep, I believe I managed to spend less than that in the hour I was in the store today! But I thought you might enjoy seeing what I picked up.....and yes, I'll be bringing them all to San Diego so we can play!!!

This is Sizzlits Decorative STrip Flowers - Flower Garden 655331 cut in pink white core cardstock and a lighter pink glitter. I can see how I could use this in the tiaras we are going to be making for our movie night next month! Sure looks like that felt floral strip - I will have to go get some felt and give this a try!



This is their decorative STrip Die - Swirly 654774. OK, I like both the die and the negative!



Birds & Branches 654826



Close up of the birds:



Flip Flop with Sizzlets flower:



Flip with Creative Impressions blossoms flower



Sizzix Bigz Die, Decorative Accent w/Flower 655368



Then I got my first Movers & Shapers - have you seen these??? Kit # 2, Vertical Note 654781



and the Movers & Shapers Die - Flower 654784 - so you can literally position the dies anywhere in the window....or anywhere on a 6" wide piece of paper. How cool is that? I have the 3 little squares and the flower to play with!



Here they are repositioned in the window in the card. I can see a card class coming up! LOL!




And then I decided to run the card through a cuttlebug folder, add a bit of ink - not too bad. I'll give this some more attempts, but I think we could have fun with this!



I picked up a few more dies that I'll be playing with later on - you know how it is, new toys - gotta play!!!

Marie carries just about everything and anything Sizzix, Quickutz and she is adding Spellbinders to her impressive inventory. If you would like to order direct from her, just give her a call. She almost always has a great sale going on!!! Her number is 303-288-5222. Tell her you read about her on Jen Lowe's blog! After all - we need to let her know that she really is cheaper than therapy!!!

Anyone want to come over and play???

Today we made boxes

KandCompany Paper Boxes. Just punch them out, fold them up and decorate. Problem is, there are NO instructions! Just a photo. So it takes a bit of creative thought to get a few of these folded up. But we sure had fun!



We added blossoms to a lot of them.






















Yeah, she doesn't look old enough to live in a retirement center! It's one of my sisters! LOL!









We had loads of Hershey's kisses to put inside the boxes and we gave them all away to other neighbors who came to see what we were doing. Now, I'm not so sure they wanted the boxes....or if they just came for the chocolate!! I learned a good lesson today - bring chocolate every single time you want to play at mom's! You're sure to have a great crowd!

Blossom fun!

When you are at a show, you have a limited amount of product with you. So I brought some blossoms home and decided to play a little harder! For this one, I ran some acrylic paint on the back sie of the tag. Stamped the dragonfly with blue stazon ink. Used a white pen on the top and stamped "Explore" with black stazon.

Notice the blossom...all blue, but I've used nylon, mylar, and felt. Not sure if you can see the difference in the layers or not. A total of 6 blossom layers and the glitter brad. I swear I could sit and make these all day long!



Here, I used a small acrylic flower. Put a piece of scrapbook paper behind it. Stamped the girl in black Stazon and then used the white pen over her. Isn't this just great for a card or as a page embellishment?

This blossom has 5 layers, using 2 leaves on the bottom, nylon, felt and mylar again. I really like this one!



This is about a 5" flower. I made one big blossom in the center. It has 7 layers including a felt snowflake and a transparent snowflake. The little blossoms are made up of just 3 layers.

I put the acrylic flower over an older piece of Chatterbox paper that had a floral print on it. Took the white pen and just outlined the flowers on the paper, added dots and leaves. So easy....so much fun!



OK, I promise I will stop for now! No more blossoms this week! Well....maybe....I don't know if I can stop! All of these went our as "store" samples....maybe I need to make some just for me!!!