Maya Road and Me

Changes

It has been a year of changes for me. From the bigges one to the little ones I wanted that to reflect in this canvas I made of myself for CHA-S:

This was something simple I put together. Some Maya Mists and gesso formed the perfect green background when applied to tissue paper. A couple of self portrait photos, some Maya Road stamping and Maya Road embellishments completed this in a simple manner.

 It is a season of changes, my kids are moving up a grade in school. A new school year starts next week so we have been busy - like making an Angry Birds Pizza (this is one I saw on Pinterest that Noah has been asking me to make)

Learning to make green chile enchiladas:

And sewing lots of fun skirts:

The top one is for me, the bottom ones are for my baby girl. Sewing is a newly revived hobby of mine which sorta breaks up the day to day grind and when I don't feel like doing paper crafts, sewing seems to take up the slack.

There is a lot going on in the next couple of months here for us. We have lots of fun events I will share with you soon and lots of things that have me neck deep in samples for kits in my office. Will share with you all soon!

 

quick and easy

So right before CHA, I was busy making lots and lots of tradeshow samples. Would you believe that this necklace is made totally from Maya Road:

This is a super simple project that will literally take you a whole 30 minutes to complete. Quick and easy. That is what I do for most of my projects. 

Here is a simple list of supplies you will need:

1. 6" of linen burlap trim from Maya Road

2. One Antique Mum in Antique Pink from Maya Road

3. One Beaded Pearl Center from Maya Road

4. Two Alterable Vintage Trinket - Large  Beadsfrom Maya Road (this is the leaf part)

5. 24" of our 8 mm Pearl Chain  and a 4" piece of the 8mm Chain- seriously the best chain for making jewelry out there - each bead is resin and will not flake at all

6. Pliers

7. Hot glue and glue gun

 

And here is all you do:

1. Glue the Pearl Center onto the middle of the Mum Flower

2. Glue the Beads to the back of the flower

3. Form the chain into a loop and glue the flower where you want it. Add the 4" piece of the chain to dangle under the flower

4. Glue the Linen Burlap to cover up the hot glue on the chain

BAM you are done!

How easy is this and it looks like something that you spent some dough on:

How fun would these be as presents for your jewerly loving friends?

I will be back soon to share more fun and easy projects!

 

 

Going Fast and Going Small

Have you all been watching the Olympics? My family loves it. We don't have cable at home nor do we have a DVR so watching the Olympics together is something that we are letting the kids do during the summer. We do have to be vigilant about commericals because my kids are not big fans of the scarier commericals.  One of us has to have the remote in hand ready to change the channel when a scary commerical comes on.

I have to say that the Olympics is inspiring me to work out more. Yesterday I did some hill repeats in the mid day sun after watching the men's 10,000 meter race. How inspiring was that race? So mid day, I put on my sunscreen, bug spray and hat and off I went to do about 20 minutes of hill repeats. That will definitely take it out of you in the Texas weather!

In my creating time, I have been working on a couple of projects. I have been wanting to make my gal a little apron as she is starting to get interested in cooking with me:

This is a very simple apron to make. I had picked up some of that yellow gingham seam binding at a sale a couple of years ago. It was the perfect width to make the tie. I then eyeballed the apron front (it is basically the shape of the letter D just cut as two pieces. I turned the pieces inside out and sewed along the curver part of the "D". I clipped corners and turned the apron right side out and left the top open. The seam binding was then just sewn on to form the tie. And then I cut a heart out of fleece to make the pocket (another hint - since it is fleece it does not fray so it is so simple to just sew the two sides of the heart to form the pocket). And I was done. A fun project to do in under half an hour.

I love small projects as they are so easy to complete in an evening. For example, I made this tiny canvas layout for the tradeshow:

I always seem to save my contact photos and I thought they would be the perfect base for a tiny 4" x 2.5" layout. I added a bit of paint, patterned papers, stickers and lots of Maya Road and I was complete.

I love this and I have a tiny little easel that I can display it on and change out with different canvases throughout the year:

My mom comes back to our house tomorrow after a visit with my sister. Looking forward to hearing her stories and I am sure she is waiting for hugs and kisses from these two:

Hello World, I Am Back...

So as with the best of intentions, I had meant to update my blog earlier and unfortunately the month of August is already upon us.

July was a big blur as most tradeshow Julys are. This one turned out to be especially eventful. For our tradeshows, we typically arrive 3 days before it starts and set up for the 2 days before it begins. I like planning ahead and getting there early because I am not a fan of surprises and boy did we get a good one this time.

So we arrived at the CHA convention center the morning of our day 1 set up:

The most important thing about set up is for all of our pallets to be there. We had sent them all about 5 days before and paid for extra special guranteed early morning Sunday delivery. So, guess what? They weren't there. None of them. After some frantic calls, there was a realization that someone who was working to arrange freight forgot and sent it to a terminal that was closed on Sunday. Oops.

What that meant was that we even though our whole team was there, we could not set up because there was nothing to set up. And we couldn't do anything actively to get our stuff because the terminal that had our stuff was closed. 

It was stressful for me worrying about getting everything done so I ended up eating a lot of this Chicago style popcorn that day to decompress (and if you haven't heard of Chicago style Garrett's it is a caramel/cheddar popcorn mix and super AMAZING):

So we ended up having to work really hard on Day 2 of set up but my team is well amazing and we got it done:

And we got it done. The show was good and it is always an honor to meet new fans and old ones who enjoy our products we bring to them.

This show did bring me a flood of memories of the CHA-W show. It was during the show that we found out that my dad's cancer was starting to take over his body and that it was time for him to rest, be loved and be with us.  My dad passed away peacefully just 2 months after the show ended. The last 6 months have been a blur of activity and such. Not a day goes by that I don't think about my dad and his larger than life attitudes and love for it all. It does get easier with time. I know my family misses him terribly - especially my mom - but we rest in the comfort of Eternity. And I am happy with that. 

But with each day we breathe again and laughter comes a little easier and even funny faces like this one:

I have a lot to share so I will be posting regularly for a while. It is good to be back.

 

(photos borrowed from Lisa Pace and Ronda Palazzari because as usual I was too scatterbrained to take pictures during the show)