Gettin' Crafty !!!

Well don't think I've mentioned yet about the Craft Sale I'm doing this Saturday. I haven't participated in one for years... just got out of the routine of doing them... but Holly approached me a couple of weeks ago to see if I'd be interested in selling some of my cards and crafts at a booth as she's signed  for to raise some funds for the Vista School District Music Department... ie. her job!

So of course I couldn't resist and started stamping away... spending most every night last week up until the wee hours of the morning stamping stamping stamping... and lovin' every minute of it! You know I don't really need an excuse but this was perfect for me to start "gettin' ready!! And as you know, I have such a awesome resource of stamping friends... I even recruited some of them... and you know who you are ~ thank you thank you thank you big time!.... several donated huge amounts of cards they had in their inventory and even got a few cute stationary sets and projects.... Lori sent over 100+ cards and cute tags sets; Judee made up some packets of cards along with several of her projects and stationary sets, Shelly, Pam and Kendra all gave me boxes full of cards and Chris even stamped out some darling cards to add to the inventory!

So I of course not only started stamping, but used this opportunity to go through most of my pre-made items and see if I couldn't use some of those too.. which, after some altering, I am. Plus  I did come up with some new items I thought would sell well at such a craft show.

Here's a glimpse of some of the goods...


This is a packet of Magic Reindeer Food.... Deidre had a sample of this at our Fall Festival and I just adore it...  she said the kids go nuts over it and really think it's magic...  When they sprinkle this magic food on their lawn, they can be sure Santa won't miss their home on Christmas Eve... too cute! Just read the poem, it says it all...

You remember the Test Tube cards I made at Pam's Halloween SAS...  Well I figured Santa deserved some too.. so I went and bought the Holiday M&Ms and came up with a few designs using the Sparkly Bright Stamp Set.

Of course while I was at Target getting the M&Ms, I found some Mike & Ike Christmas candy (or is it Ike & Mike?)...   just couldn't resist it.. so I put them in the little clear bags and came up with this.. I just love the little stamp that says  Even the Naughty deserve something Nice!

While I was in the "candy" mood (which is nearly daily), I got some Hershey's Nuggets to put in the Thanksgiving gift boxes I made... but during my search for items I could re-vamp, I found a few empty containers from the Build-a-Brads and loaded them with the Nuggets and decorated the tins... I think they came out pretty darn cute... and even though they are more "elegant" ... I still used the fun little saying as I think it just has to make someone smile! Now how would resist these at a Craft Sale???

Hey some of you remember a couple of years ago, us Rubba Sista's hosted our Annual Spring Fling ..this one as at Olive Garden I believe, and we made these Bath & Body Spa sets... came up with a recipe we found to make bath salts... so I found two left over bottles I had... ripped off the spring paper and ribbon and put on some silver Christmas snowflakes and silver and white ribbon.. and voila... a darling little spa gift to go!  Who says I don't know how to recycle!!

So one of my original thoughts was to make the easy 12x12 tall boxes for the Craft sale... I came across this set of my favorite from last year... so rather than having them set in my cupboard.. I can see if they will sell so some little first graders can have Miss Holly for their Music teacher again next year... right?

So I made 20 "Fall" theme boxes... just six of the tall boxes and 14 of the half sizes.. filled them with the Hersey Nuggets.. tied a little ribbon on each and taa daa.. done!  I actually had Holly help make some of the boxes when she was here on Halloween... now she can say she made some of the crafts too !! yippee...

OK talk about scrounging... I found some of my little "Spring" items from about four years ago... the little jars I had decorated with some rub-ons... again removed the Spring paper from the inside and the Spring colored ribbons, replaced them with Fall colored ribbon, filled the jars with trail mix (nuts and M&Ms look like Fall right?).... and again .. easy peasy lemon squeezy...  three more items on my list... wonder if this is how Santa does it.

Here's some of the items I've either made or have been given over the year... this is the darling candy and note box set that Wanda made us last year.....

Here's the little post-it note pad we made at Fall Festival Make n'Take....

Not sure when or where I got this... but it's darling... using Tic Tacs made a cute little snowman... I've been keeping all these little odds and ends to someday make a pattern and create more on my own.. have I done it yet??... no!

 Cute way to hand out candy canes to the neighbor kids...

makes for a cute ornament on the tree too.

A lot of the stuff I've made has been from using scraps or stuff I've had on hand... same is true with these little note cards.. I've had these forever.. they were retired colors and just never got around to making anything with them.. so again.. the perfect opportunity to use them up...

Here's the two boxes of tags that Lori sent along with her 100 cards.. she is amazing!

Thank you again Lori!! You're the best!

This is too funny... in the midst of all this, and cleaning out my stashes of stuff.. I came across the box of leftover red ,white and blue paper and stars I had used for my July Open House... so again, just took a few minutes and finished off some of the cards.. put a few into packets and will give it a shot. Since I'm selling more than just holiday items... figured it couldn't hurt.

Here's a couple of other cards packets.... since I had like 6 of the same card.. these were left over from a Stamp-a-Stack I had last Spring.... hey does this count for "Spring Cleaning"??? hee hee hee

Here's one of the packets Judee gave me... she made several from here really nice cards and bundled them together....  great idea!

I have 8 boxes of variety of cards I will sell individually... most of them are older ones or pretty simple; I call them "flat" cards.. no dimension to them or hardly any accessories..... It's been fun to see all of them and especially see how much we've all improved... I've sorted them into various boxes so customers can easily find a birthday card or thank you card or whatever...

My biggest fear is that I'm going to buy my own stuff back..

just so I can keep the patterns!!

Wouldn't that be a hoot!

OK this is gettin' pretty bad when I'm roaming the house looking on my shelves to see what else I can sell... found my Paint Can from my class last summer.... so in the pile it goes!

And here again are the Thanksgiving card sets I made

for the Fall Festival project table...

hope they'll make it into some one's shopping cart...

Now this I'll have a hard time letting go of... it's the new Christmas Advent kit in the current Holiday catalog. I purchased it back in September and had never put it together... so it was now or never... well maybe not never but perhaps by December 24th... it's really darling if I do say so myself.... but it took a lot of time to do... it comes with rope and clothes pins to you can hand the boxes from your mantle or doorway. Judee had a great idea just to put them in your tree like ornaments... excellent!

Last but not least are my darling Reindeer 2-4-6-8 boxes... who can resist these??? I'm also going to feature these at my Secret Santa Swap Stamp Camp on December 4th...

I'll let you know how we do at the Craft Sale..I'm really excited and hope Holly makes a bundle.

She has another teacher bringing some chocolate goodies to sell and yet another who makes jewelry, so hopefully our booth will be a popular one!