An Awesome Find....

Oh my lucky day....

On Wednesday, I decided to visit a new to me thrift store that is just a few miles from my house and I am so happy I did because I found something totally awesome just waiting for me.  And mind you, this was being displayed outside the store so it was the first thing I saw when I got there.

An awesome metal magazine display stand...

And yes, it was already pink when I bought it so I didn't have to do a thing to it.

I just had to buy it even though I wasn't sure where I would be able to put it.  I couldn't pass it up though as I knew it was likely that I would never find another one just like this again. And it only cost me $25.00.  Not exactly garage sale price, but I'm guessing if I were to ever stumble upon something like this at an antique shop, it would have cost me a lot more, so I was more than happy to pay the cost.

Isn't it great??  It's going to be perfect for displaying all of my gorgeous Stampington & Company magazines.

For now I had to put it in my living room as it's the only spot I could fit it in at the moment.  I was hoping to put it in my craft room, but sadly, there's no room for it in there.  At least there isn't right now.  Maybe I can get it in there at some point if I do some rearranging of furniture, but I'll have to wait and see.

This has been an awesome week of thrifting for me and it's been a fun way to spend my vacation week off from work while trying not to go overboard on my spending.

Now it's time for me to enjoy my last few days of relaxation before starting another busy work week.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

What Five Dollars Will Get You.....

Hey there girls...

Would you like to see what I scored at my local Goodwill stores for just five dollars total?

My find from the first Goodwill store on Tuesday was this shabby chic style picture frame that was just $1.99 and has the appearance of being made with pieces of vintage wallpaper, but its actually just painted. 

It required a bit of a makeover to get it just the way I wanted it.  The inside and outside edges of the frame and  the grooves on the front of the frame were an icky blackish/brown color.  Totally not my taste, so I used a bit of vanilla colored craft paint to make it look the way I wanted.  So much better with very little effort on my part.

My second Goodwill store find that I found this morning was this cute Shabby Chic style lined wicker basket...

This was just $2.99.  I believe it is one of the older Simply Shabby Chic home decor items from Target.  I have a couple similar baskets in larger sizes.  I love the smaller size of this one.  I'll be using this in my craft room to help keep things organized (if that's even possible)...

Well that's what I've found at my local Goodwill stores. Have you found anything great lately while you've been out thrifting?

Goodwill Find....

Hi Girls...

I'm a bit slow in getting around to showing this to you, but I just wanted to share with you a great find I came across at my local Goodwill store the weekend before last that's gone a long way in helping me organize and tidy up my craft room.

I've been wanting to get a bookcase that would fit under my window that is within arms reach of my crafting table, and while it isn't exactly the bookcase of my dreams, I did find this great open 3 tier bookshelf that was in great condition for just a mere $7.00.

It fits the space perfectly and now it holds lots of my crafting stuff that had previously been on the floor.  Yeah for me!!!

A smaller little table I had previously sits right next to it with some more of my goodies stashed on it...

My new bookcase will work great for now until I find the one of my dreams. 

Gotta love those Goodwill stores that's for sure..

See you soon!!

My Latest Mini Album.....

Hi girls..

Are you ready to see yet another one of my mini albums I've created??  Well, I sure hope you are because that's what you're going to be seeing today.

For this latest mini album, I used some of the gorgeous Melissa Francis 5th Avenue collection of scrapbook papers that I've been hoarding long enough.  I knew it was time to put it to use in one of my projects.

So here's a page by page look at the mini album, starting with the cover...

 

A little close of of some of the pretty crochet trim and crepe paper I used..

And more pages...

 

I even used one of my newer rubber stamps which says "Find beauty in all things" in this project for something just a little bit extra....

And here are the final few pages...

Sorry for this next photo which is a bit on the blurry side...

More crepe paper and fun embellishments...

Whew.. that's a lot of pictures for one day.  Thanks for sticking with me till the end.

Well, that's enough for one day.  I'll be back again soon.

Mini Album In Progress....

Hi Girls..

I've been busy off and on in my craft room this week working on another mini album.  For this one, I used the 5th Avenue paper collection from Melissa Francis.  Such pretty paper in my favorite pastel colors.

I had purchased two 6 x 6 paper pads of this collection online late last summer and also some coordinating chipboard pieces.  Being the hoarder of pretty things that I am, it took me a while to actually get up enough gumption to put it to its intended use.  I find it so hard sometimes to cut into such pretty scrapbook paper.  But I am getting better as I've come to realize there will always be more out there.

Here's a sneak peak of just a couple of the pages, still in progress...

It's almost, but not quite finished.  I still have a few smaller details to finish up and then I'll show you the rest. 

And as I took that last picture above, I realized I forgot to show you the pretty lace trim I found at the antique store last weekend.  It's very hard to tell from the picture, but it's the softest, prettiest shade of minty green..

There is quite a bit of the trim on the roll and it was very reasonably priced.  Less expensive compared to what I would have had to pay for it in the craft stores or fabric shops.

Well, that's all for today.  I'm heading out soon to take a short road trip up to St. Cloud to visit the Crafts Direct store in hopes of finding lots more scrappy goodness to add to my stash.

See you soon..

Inspired By Pinterest.....

Hey there girls...

For those of you familiar with Pinterest and all the beauty and inspiration that can be found there, you won't be surprised to know I've become quite the Pinterest addict.

My favorite part is all the wonderful craft ideas I see out there.  Many of them that I want to try myself.  The one I'm most anxious and a bit intimidated to try is creating an altered shabby chic style journal/mini book.

Something similar to these beautiful art journals I've seen on Pinterest.

Created by Karin at Creative Chaos

Created by Christina at Sweet Pea Ink

Photo Courtesy of Flickr

Pages created by Heather at Pretty Petals

So, to start my artistic endeavours, I recently purchased these two books from the antique store to help get me started.  An old journal/ledger book...

And a very interesting vintage textbook for bookkeeping..

I love how the pages are just perfectly yellowed and some of the text is very elegant.  Who ever knew that learning something so basic as bookkeeping could be made so pretty..

I

I'm a bit perplexed on how to start my altered art journal, but I know I'll figure it out.  I'm sure it won't be anywhere near as beautiful as the one's I shared with you from Pinterest, but I'm sure going to put my best effort into it.

If you'd like to see more of the journals that have inspired me, check out my Mini Books & Journals  board on Pinterest.  Maybe it will inspire you too..

Until next time !!!

A New Treasure.....

Hi Girls...

For those of you who have been following my blog for some time may recall seeing these first two pictures before.  Pictures I took after a little tragedy that occurred last Spring when a trip to the antique store ended in a bit of a mishap with one of the treasures I had found.

A vintage Pin Money bank that sadly broke after I accidently dropped the bag it was in as I was getting out of the car and before I had even made it into the house..

 
Boo Hoo.... It was quite heartbreaking to say the least.  :-(

Well, thankfully, my luck recently changed for the better and I am now the happy new owner of a replacement for that broken Pin Money bank.



It looks to be an almost exact duplicate of the one that broke, but I can't say for sure as the first one ended up in so many pieces it's really hard to tell.  The spray of flowers on the front look nearly the same though so I am guessing that it is. Or I can pretend it is anyways.

A pretty new pink find to add to my collection.

And let's just say, I was extra, extra careful with this one to make sure it made it safely into the house in one piece.

See you soon !!!

A New Collage .....

Happy Tuesday everyone...

I'm just popping in real quick on my lunch break here at home to show you the latest collage I created using a piece of chipboard and leftover pieces of scrapbook paper...

After I thought I was finished with it, I decided it needed just a bit of sparkle, so I added some gold glitter glue around the image of the pretty little girl..

Much better I have to say...

And now as I'm looking at it again in these pictures, I think it's still missing just a little something else.  I think I will add a few small color coordinated beads to the top corners of the piece of lace trim, just to finish it off.

Well, my lunch break is just about over, so I have to get back to work..

See you again soon!!

Shopping Goodwill For Crafting Stuff....

Hi Girls...

If you're a crafter like me, you've probably found yourself looking for things to use in your craft project in all sorts of places.

I myself am always keeping my eyes open in hopes of finding different and maybe slightly ordinary and mundane things that one would typically not think of as being something to use for crafting.

And I lucked out today at one of my local Goodwill stores where I came across these in the "Office Supply" aisle.

Just a box of unused manila index card dividers, about the same sturdiness of the manila colored tags that I use in creating my tags.  The box was completely full so there were lots of them in the box...

And at the bottom of the box, were some blue, heavier weight alphabetized dividers..

I altered one real quickly with just a leftover peice of pretty scrapbook paper as an example to show you how they can be turned from something boring and mundane, into something a bit more pretty..

In addition to the box of index card dividers, I also found a ridiculously cheap roll of some vintage looking vinyl wallpaper. 

While it's not the truly vintage wallpaper I would love to find, I think I'll be able to incorporate little pieces of it here and there quite easily in my tags and collages.

So remember... keep your eyes open wherever you are shopping as you just never know what you may find.