The point is to spread the word about the 4 new stamps sets. Please read the post on Starving Artist’s blog for your chance to win Doodle Factory’s ghoulies set! Plus that post shows some samples of the awesome cards you can make with the sets! Drool!

A shaker postcard swap. My partner likes lighthouses so I dug through my archives and found this photo I took when Yves and I went to Washington State right before Sienna was born.

An owl stuffie from the Stitch Fall 09 magazine. I’ve already made the raccoon and the chipmunk is the last one in the trio!

The owl stuffie was part of the Woodland Profile swap. I made my partner an owl pouch, woodland creatures glass magnets, hedgehog keychain, and a mushroom keychain.

I’ve been experimenting with some glitter and rub ons (print my own rub ons that I got for my birthday from Yves). I made the top one into a keychain for a keychain swap and the bottom one is a pendant for a WTA in one of the groups I’m in.

Bird pc for a mail art group

I joined a swap to make Red flowers from this pattern. I had so much fun making them that I joined the swap to make orange ones. I almost did not want to send the orange ones away. (Unfortunately I’m still waiting for the orange swap from my partner and it’s past the due date. argh!)

We had 3 partners for a handmade earring swap. The above 2 sets were for someone I knew personally!

These 2 sets were for the host of the swap, who likes flying pigs (I had her for a partner before!)

It was hard to make this last set for the last partner because she really didn’t indicate her likes in her profile. Still waiting to hear if she likes these!

This was for a Sublime Stitching embroidery swap. I had bought these Aunt Martha paint pens thinking I could use them to color in the patterns (I see such beautiful coloring by so many people!) They didn’t turn out the way I thought (it’s supposed to be used for outlining, why would you want to do that?!) Anyway, I figured out how to use them, which I’ll show in another post. Here I used my gocco fabric paint for the brown and used the glitter paint from the same Aunt Martha order.

These notecards were for the Hand Carved Stamp group. I just finished reading Water for Elephants and was inspired to do a circus theme. I carved the circus tent, CIRCUS, elephant and ringmaster. I even had some clown scrapbook paper!

And finally, for the woodlands wearable swap (I’m finally happy with the photos) ! I made my partner a bunny pendant necklace and a bird bracelet. I’ve gotten a lot of uses out of the woodland graphics I got from Etsy seller Plan F Studios and the bird is from Piddix.

There are a lot of photos of Sienna and Caitlyn, can’t help it, they look so cute together!

Holding hands

Stingray

Shark!

So many fishes!

Look at that fish!

Surprisingly Sienna wasn’t that into the penguins!

I caught Heather’s flash on this (purposely) so that’s why it looks a little funky
The girls posing and being silly in front of the fish

I love that I caught the light rays in this shot

I wasn’t lying! Shirley and Daniel were there too!

He’ll be a ladykiller when he’s older!

Here’s a video if Sienna dancing at Nathan’s after lunch. I swear, I don’t know where she learned these moves from!

Nathan’s Dance from Lisa on Vimeo.

I told Sienna she could pick 2 rides and the first one she picked was the roller coaster! She is my daughter after all! The first 2 go arounds she was having a blast laughing and screaming. By the 3rd and last go around, she was ready to get off. I could tell she was saying stop around the 3rd turn. Good thing it only went around 3 times or it would have surely ended with Sienna crying.

She’s ready!

I know it’s blurry, I was just snapping away!

Almost over!

I was surprised she picked the merry go around for the 2nd ride but I suppose after the craziness of the roller coaster, she wanted something more calm? (Of course after the merry go around, she wanted to go on the tilt a whirl!)

And I couldn’t resist taking yet another photo of the wonder wheel. I applied a lomo effect on it. I promised Sienna we would come back another time to ride it.

I was really thinking and thinking about what to do when I was looking at an old wooden frame that was on my desk. I thought the fabric might look neat wrapped around the frame. I cut some of the polyester into strips and began wrapping them around the wood. I thought about painting the wood but thought the natural color would keep with the color theme of the paper.  I used the adhesive squares and it stuck it really well.

I liked how it came out! I knew I wanted to add some embellishments and used my Sizzix and the flowers layer #3 die with the rest of the paper and polyester (did you know that if you placed paper on top of fabric when cutting, it will be a cleaner cut for the fabric?) and added a bit of color to the edge.

I knew I wanted to use one of the nails for the middle of the flower. I used this white plastic nail and put one of the adhesive squares on it (I was a little leery but it worked out!) for the beads and a little glitter for bling. (I couldn’t get a good photo of the adhesive on the nail so you’ll have to make do with the beads and glitter!)

Then I thought, now what am I going to do? I liked the animal theme of the paper and decided to go from there. I used Tim Holtz’s Fragments to glue over 3 squares I cut out of the paper for more embellishments. Here I show 2 of them, a dog and a cat. The 3rd one is a heart.

It started coming together real fast so there are less assembling photos. Here it is all finished and on my desk!

I printed out 2 photos of my daughter Sienna, one of her with our cat Neo and the other with our dog Skippy (get the theme I was going for?) I glued bigger pieces of Fragments over them. I used the rest of the paper for the background, added another flower and found a spot for this on my desk! Here’s some close ups!

(it’s too bad you can’t see the glitter in the photo. Believe me, it’s there!)

I used cotton fabric for this flower to add a little bit of color

I think these are gazelles but I can’t be sure!

“Melvin” (we were on the lookout for the Madagascar Movie animals)

I love the look she has here at the turtles

“King Julien”,”Maurice” and “Mort”

Climbing up the rope web

I think Sienna’s favorite part was the petting zoo!

She was having a conversation with the alpaca!

This chicken in the tree cracked me up!

Sienna big ears

When I tried to show Sienna this cool porcupine, she replied “We don’t have time to look at that”

I love the contrast of the bird with it’s neutral surroundings!

We saw these elephants on the Asia Monorail ride, something we saved for last because I thought it would be nice and relaxing while seeing a bunch of animals. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see much.

I saved the bug carousel photo for last because I’ve been playing around with some vintage photo filters and picture frames.

It really amazed me how much older Sienna looked while playing dress up! They also rented a real hokey and fun disco party dance video from the library. The girls enjoyed dancing to it while me and Erin cracked up (not sure how old it was but a very young looking Jamie Lee Curtis made a guest appearance).

Sienna really liked the first princess outfit. Mikaela dressed as Dorothy.

Erin made yummy cucumber sandwiches and antipasto for lunch!

Time for another outfit change for the dance party!

Waiting for dance instructions

Sienna liked this hat!

Mikaela gets in on the hat wearing!

And sharing necklaces too!

Water Bottle singing (it was actually an exercise video so MK was copying the moves!)

All tired from dancing, a super quick game of Candyland because Sienna was getting tired.

Mikaela was sad because it was time to end the playdate.

Saturday we headed out to Siam Orchid for dinner. It was really cute that Sienna wanted to bring her camera, just like her mom and dad! We took a little walk before heading over to dinner. Besides the boats in the marina and some swans in the water, there really isn’t much to see. I couldn’t decide which photo I liked best so I am posting both.

Here is Sienna calling after the swans:

Yves with gorilla on his shoulders:

And on to dinner! Funny how Sienna loves satay but claims to not like peanut butter (satay is usually marinated with some peanut butter and soy sauce, among other things). One steak skewer escaped before I was able to snap this photo!

It seems as if Sienna is saying, you’re coming into my mouth steak satay!

I forgot the name of my dish but it was basically chicken with mixed veggies:

Yves’ Pad Thai:

And we even got dessert! Coconut custard!

Everything was yummy!

These earrings came as a complete surprise for me! Mamacrafter, the partner I sent the A-Z Creative swap to loved the package I sent to her so much that she bought these from my Etsy Favorites! How sweet is that?? The earrings are from Heather Boyd.

Here’s one I did a couple of months back for the Handmade Summer Dishtowel swap. My partner likes things showing where you are from so I used the taxi cab fabric from the City Quilter and printed out one of my holga shots of a street sign onto printable fabric and sewed it on.

Here is one of the items I made for the A-Z Creative swap I mentioned above. My partner had something similiar to this on her Etsy favs so I made her one! The artwork is from TTGart.

I had lots of fun stitching this one up! It’s a free pattern from Aimee Ray (I can’t wait for her new book to come out!) This was for the Make Me Anything profile swap as I mentioned above. My partner loves unicorns/pegasus so I made this pillow using one of Yves’ almost made it to goodwill linen shirts. Her hair and tail are made up of 3 different strands of floss with one being a metallic. Unfortunately, the photos don’t really show the sheen of the metallic, which is too bad because it looks really cool!

This next one is for the Woodland Handmade swap. This pattern is from Fall 2009 Stitch magazine (I made the cat pillow from this magazine too!) The tail called for needle felting and I finally pulled out my kit that I bought earlier this year and never tried. Well, I need a lot more practice as it came out pathetic (my partner rated me a 5 with a heart anyway!)

This one is not for a swap. My friend Barbara from Seattle put a call out for some penguin stamps so I carved one for her.

And speaking of carving, I made this for a Winner Takes All game on one of the group forums on swap-bot. It was for profile surprises and my partner (Pandessa) likes pentagrams.

These are the Altered Domino Magnets I made for the swap of the same name.

And 2 holidays in August for the Wacky Holidays swap! A crocheted potholder for Happy Watermelon day and a pendant for Happy Daughter’s day (her daughter likes Nightmare before Christmas and black and pink!)

For the stenciling, I used one of the fabric sprays I made with the Earth Safe Finishes product. I wrote a post about it here (I have since gotten some tips from ESF for a truer red, more experimenting to come!)  For the vinyl, I used heat vinyl I bought from Nick at Craft Vinyl earlier this year. He is really an awesome vendor! My vinyl arrived the same week (I ordered regular vinyl, glow in the dark vinyl and the heat vinyl.) I was really excited to try the heat vinyl (initially with my Sizzix to cut) and was totally bummed when the instructions say not to cut through the protective layer of the vinyl. Drat! All the fancy digital die cutters can do that (none of which I have but feel free to buy me one!)  but certainly not a Sizzix machine. I tried looking online for some helpful tips or videos. There was nothing. I finally wrote to Nick and he asked me to call him on his 800 number. He was so very nice and informed me that it was ok to cut through that layer and just use my nails to take it off that layer. I was still reluctant so had done a test on a scrap shirt. It was easy to come off! And if you don’t have nails, you can also put it through the wash and it will come off there too or at least loosens it up to make it super easy to come off. What a relief!

For the heat vinyl, I printed out her name on my computer, cut those letters out and then traced it on the heat vinyl. Because of the plastic protective layer on the vinyl there were no worries of my marker transferring to the shirt.

I did an initial layout:

Then started spraying! I used ESF’s tackifier to keep the stencil down. Stencil is from The Crafter’s Workshop. I learned while doing my test shirt to do the spraying in layers

and to dab off the excess between each spray

the spraying is done!

Now on to the vinyl!

I’m not very patient so did all the letters at the same time. Here is the teflon sheet you should use over it and then iron. You don’t need to iron for very long but make sure you keep it moving! Let it cool before peeling the protective layer. If you see the vinyl coming off when you try peeling it, don’t worry, just iron it some more.

You can see the layer that I peeled off. I may keep them to use as templates or stencils for future projects.

All finished!

And Sienna was kind enough to try it on and pose for me!

Yves took me out the Saturday before my birthday. Since I didn’t satisfy my seafood craving while in Florida, I thought going to Randazzo’s would fill the need. I believe my dad took me there when I was younger (although he doesn’t remember) and I figured that it must be a somewhat decent place in order to still be in business. Unfortunately, I was not really impressed. To be fair, I wasn’t very hungry since we went out for lunch to Jay and Lloyd’s earlier that day and Yves isn’t a big seafood person so I didn’t get to sample too much. We shared fried calamari (they didn’t bring a lemon with it! What’s up with that?), Yves got a crab cake sandwich and I got stuffed filet with fried zucchinis. All I could say was eh. I am willing to go back and try some other dishes.

For my actual birthday my parents took us out to a new place in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. I don’t recall the name but it used to be Ming Gee’s on 6th Avenue and around 63rd. Sadly, not impressed here either. We got peking duck to start and it was a bit chewy. Sienna didn’t care for it. The other dishes were Japanese style short ribs (I ended up being the only one eating this!), the usual Hong Kong style steak,  sauteed snow pea greens and fried rice (that took forever to arrive!). It wasn’t terrible but we definitely had better. Probably won’t be going back there anytime soon.

Later in the week, Joy took me and Sienna out for lunch. I was still trying to satisfy my seafood craving and read that Rocco’s Calamari was good. When we got there, the gates were down as they were closed for vacation! Joy’s suggestion of Spartan Souvlaki turned out to be a great back up. As per usual, me and Joy ordered too much food! I ordered a cheese pie for Sienna and then we got grilled octopus and a salad to share. I ordered the Greek sausage pita with fries while Joy got the gyro sandwich with greek fries. I think Sienna filled up on pita bread and feta cheese because she didn’t even try the cheese pie plus she probably was leery of us as we got her to try the octopus and she didn’t like it. The octopus was absolutely DELICIOUS!And it didn’t matter that Sienna didn’t even eat the cheese pie because me and Joy chowed down on it! It’s made fresh to order! Feta and ricotta cheese in a flaky phyllo dough. MMMMMMM. The greek fries come with lemon, feta cheese and oregano. YUM! We didn’t finish the salad and Joy ended up taking one bite out of her sandwich before calling it quits. I only ate the insides of my sandwich and was quite satisfied. I liked the place so much, I went back the next night with Yves! So these photos are from that night.

This salad came with Yves’ dish! I was expecting a small scoop on the side of his main dish. We were able to share this.

Yves enjoyed the octopus as much as I did and asked why I ordered the small plate.

Yves got the sausage and unfortunately did not care for it. There was something in the sausage that he didn’t like and that I did not taste in mine the previous day. Plus they didn’t cut it up like that in my sandwich. I wonder if they were different, well they must have been because mine didn’t taste like this did. Hmmmm…

Every Saturday in the summer they have a pig roast. When we arrived, we saw the pig roasting outside in the front. I didn’t take a photo of it because I thought I would take one when we left. It was done by the time we left! Just the head was laying there.

Oops! I totally forgot to take a photo of the greek style fries! Oh well!