Jennifer’s blog

We went to Kaden's Pirate themed birthday party on Saturday. I made a pattern and whipped up 3 vests for the Birthday Boy and my older 2 sons, Paul and Kyle. Rick got to wear an earring and bandana. I was pretty proud of the costumes. Even Sean helped by cutting out cardboard swords!

I very recently discovered inchies!  I joined a swap on craftster to make and receive some of these great little works of art.  

There are whole blogs devoted to these!

http://smallworldofinchies.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/inchies/
http://artjunk.typepad.com/art_junk/square_love/

Other people have made tutorials, and probably many have had similar ideas as mine, but here is a quick tute of how I am making a base to start my inchies.

This is the end product:  (i know I always like to skip to the end to see what it looks like first.  :)  )

Inchie bases

I gathered some supplies:

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I used a manila file folder to make a stiff base.  I also used a glue stick, scissors

and a small paper trimmer.
I cut the folder into strips and then squares using the paper cutter.  Man inchies are small!  A 1 inch square does not seem very big at all. Than I traced one of my squares and cut it out to make an inchie view finder.

I desecrated this book to get my inchies:

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I know that you could scan or copy the pages first but I was in too much of a hurry.  Plus as a bonus I managed to get 2 of the exact same book!  However, I found that I wanted inchies on both side of the same page.  Now what?
I held my page up to the light and glued a cardstock square to the back.

Hold up to light

Glue the inchie base

The great thing about this glue is I can kinda wiggle the square around until i am pleased with the framing of the image.  Remember that images slightly off center can be more eye catching  (check out the rule of thirds for art).
Now I added some more squares to the other faces I wanted.

Check both sides of page

Two sides of page to use

Once all squares are glued in place I can cut them out without fear of ruining another image!

Cut out images

Now I just need to embellish!   I will probably add some mod podge over the whole thing to protect and seal the surface.  Hope this helps someone!  Leave a comment if you have a question or if you liked this technique!  :)

We purchased these toys at a yard sale:

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I believe that there is more than one set involved here.  We would really like some more information on these cool space toys.  What model are they?  are there any instructions?  any other pictures?  If you don't want to comment please email me at lukenlarry at yahoo dot com

I see some numbers and words on these parts, including mattel matchbox, x-33 Lockheed Martin, 1997, 1998, 32422

Mattel Space Toy 5

Mattel Space Toy 4

Mattel Space Toy 3

As some of you know I decided to participate in a very involved swap on Craftster where we planned to swap 78 or more items, most of them hand crafted.  Well the time has finally come to show off the rewards!   Here are my boys opening up some of their goodies.

Links----

Things I made (i'm lukenlarry):
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=277365.msg3138459#msg3138459

Things SheridanLA made for us:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=277365.msg3139712#msg3139712

Sean Birthday

We had a simple little gathering at our house for Sean's 29th birthday.  The weather was very very cold!    But my sister and Dave and my parents braved the roads and came anyway!  We had oven baked burgers.  (best recipe ever!!!!!!) and chocolate cheesecake.  Papa as usual had a good time goofing off with his grandsons.

Sean Birthday

Sean Birthday

ok so I am very skeptical of making money online but i happened to try a few things lately and I thought I would share:

Absolutely the easiest I have found so far is over at youdata.com  they actually pay you weekly and I am amazed to already have a balance transferred to my paypal account.  They require an email address and a cellular phone # capable of getting text messages.  You do have to give out quite a bit of personal info, but hey i figure my credit is already screwed and I have nothing to hide.   earned so far:  $5.55  I have only been a member for a few days so very cool!   I don't expect to make a whole lot with this but so far it is easy to use and i have actually seen results!

greenfieldonline.com  has supposedly earned me $7.00 but I let the rewards expire.  I think they require a min balance of $5 and send you a check.  You might be able to get your money through paypal now.  This requires you to fill out surveys.  Some surverys do take a considerable amount of time and the ones that pay you money are few and far between.   This is definitely not a get rich quick scheme.  you may never see any money, but then might.  They also offer entries to various cash sweepstakes

something a little more promising if you like to write is Ciao.com  New orginal reviews net you 25 cents each and quality reviews are supposed to have a chance at splitting $2000 a month.  I joined during a promotional time and earned $5.46 so far.  If you decide to join use this link Ciao and  I could get a few more cents here and there. (I'm BlueTourmaline)  You also get a few cents for people reading and or rating your reviews.  you have to request payment and they only pay once a month to to your paypal account I believe.

A funny but cool song for star wars fans