Beverly's Stamping Beehive

             Just a reminder - I have a NEW BLOG - have YOU been there yet?   If not, check it out!!!! CRAFT ROOM AFTERNOONS with TAYLOR B!              And to my FOLLOWERS - please re-join me at my new blog               and for your trouble, if you   contact me at craftroomafternoons@gmail.com                   ....and leave me  your address, I will personally send you a HOLIDAY CARD!              Each one will be totally unique - as my personal " THANK YOU "  .......So c'mon over !!!!!

Hi crafters! Have you SEEN some of the prices for Halloween items like spooky houses?  Well, after deciding I wasn't going to spend $40-$50 for one at a certain store who shall remain nameless, I went home and rummaged through my storage till I found an old blue + white  b i r d h o u s e .  Giving it a look-over, I realized it would make a cool haunted house!!! So - - here I am beginning, and while I am not done {have to run out to buy some orange buttons! and maybe a spider or two}...I can show you what I have accomplished so far! Birdhouse purchased on sale. Very much what I need to create a spooky house! First - my BEFORE PICTURE!    Here's the birdhouse the way I purchased it - on sale, 70% off - sweet!  Now I DID PAINT IT and basically EMBELLISH IT to transform  it into a cool HAUNTED HOUSE - here's how! PAINT YOUR BIRDHOUSE You will need: black and colour paint - use Halloween colours.  Water and saucer. Cheap Artist Brushes. ...

Hi everyone! Here's this year's edition for WCMD - 2011!  Enjoy! For all the details - please visit my OTHER BLOG HERE Hope you had a great day! 

A little sweetie of a songbird left us today. I feel somewhere between sad and glad.  Sad it had to be 'put down' graciously with the help of our local TORONTO WILDLIFE CENTRE  and glad that we helped it when it needed some. Yesterday when I went to walk Pepper - a little tiny roundish "ball" was sitting on the sidewalk in front of our building.  A set of sisters were standing nearby looking at it and I stopped {with Pepper off to one side}...and in the next second, a man stopped too. So there we all were and the little ball was a tiny, wee yellow breasted bird - clearly a baby too. It was sitting there surrounded by us giants, and was quiet. For a minute, none of us knew what to do. Finally, the man picked it up by its wing (not reccommended!) and put it in the small hedge near the sidewalk - where it would be safer. Then we all sort of went on. I made a mental note to check on it. Hours later that day, I came home with my daughter, we went towards the bush...

Here's some tags I made using the MY FRIEND stamp set.  The floral stems and the hello greeting are lovely, don't you think? I misted the tags and decided to treat some white fabric flowers with the same dye - and I then rolled the flowers up tightly and there they are!   It's fun to mist and dye things - lots of fun! I made the mist by adding a half-half solution of pharmaceutical alcohol and water to a mini-mister, then adding drops of ink refill [here in a deep pomengranate-red].  It does stink at first due to the alcohol, but that evaporates anyways {it does keep the solution fresh in the bottle though} and everything is fine when the object dries.  If you do it on paper - mist lightly at first - if you come up too close and mist, you may also get 'droplets' - which can be useful for a different 'look'!   Also spray on a very covered surface - I save and use ol' wrapping tissue which I spread out on the floor. Even that can be interesting if you ...

A little idea and a need came together with fun results lately.... Musing about my loads of scraps - again - I came up with the thought that I could kill two birds with one stone so to speak! Since I have been wanting to express my gratitude to those who I see on a regular basis - and whose jobs do  not allow them to receive tips, I thought " Great!  I can make a group of Thank You Notes - AND - in a nice, summer-y fashion! " So hoping to brighten up someone's day, I made little notecard after notecard - and it went amazingly fast! How so you ask? Well...because if you, rather playfully - without pre-conceived notions - slap together your scraps onto notes of all sizes and shapes - in other words, just wing it!  You will have notecard after notecard in no time! Stick to scraps which reflect the season too, and its just a fun exercise!  I spent two mins. tops on each one and then a bit putting on some bling. Here is a sample of the notecards I made ...

It's time for a card for my dear   Aunt Elsie !  At her lovely age of 97, I want to send as many cards as I should. I turned again to using my  Stampin' Up! Designer Series Papers  - they are always reliable for making your handmade projects look as nice as can be!  You receive 12 papers - 2 of each of the 6 double-side designs!  They really go a long way if you are using the papers for different sized projects, or whether you are strictly using them for scrapbooking - just as they are! Here I am using one of the pretty floral patterns in  BEYOND THE GARDEN DSP  - with the delicious colours of Wild Wasabi, Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, Tangerine Tango and one of my favs, Pacific Point - I always lean towards those ocean blues!  You can find the papers on page 23 of our  SUMMER MINI CATALOGUE  effective until Aug 31rst! OK!  I wanted to allow the Designer Paper's patterns to do most of the design - and focus on ACCENTS! I ha...

Note - this is not to my regular readers, but today, my tote bag was stolen from my wheelchair at the mall. WHO DOES THAT! IF YOU ARE READING MY BLOG - I WOULD ASK YOU TO DROP OFF MY TOTE BAG TO THE SECURITY OFFICE - say whatever you like, but I could use my only copy of my working catalogue back. I can not even begin to understand why on earth you feel the need to take from a wheelchair - you would think that the person in the wheelchair - obviously - is at a disadvantage.   But you did.  So DO THE RIGHT THING and RETURN IT.  My small change - keep it, makes you feel better. Honestly - if you need stuff so bad that you need to steal - try just asking for help!  We'd be just as likely to give you help than for you to have to steal. Later.

I have a confession. I have owned a wall decor item for-ever and ever.  I believe I was somewhere between 16 and 20 when I received this as a gift, a...oh, what do you call gifts from travels?   Its on the tip of my tongue - memento, no...a gift that we give when we go away and we bring everyone close to us a small gift from our vacation - we all have had that happen. Well, my confession is that I didn't really like it so much. NOT the idea - no, I treasured the thoughtfulness that my Aunt included me in her offering; but I really didn't like the 'design' of the gift so much.  I am not sure why not - its a pretty design, but I think its the frame.   Here it is. CLICK ON PHOTOS TO SEE LARGER VIEW. It looks nice on my orange coloured walls of my stamp room - but over the years since I was really young, it just didn't seem to go with anything I owned. And it was really a strong and striking piece - I tried many times to find just the right spot and failed many ...

Lasso up a card for this coming FATHER'S DAY! Hey guys and gals who need to conjure up the perfect card for that special 'DUDE' - rootin' tootin' fan of the old westerns - fan of John Wayne?  Or the new cowboys of the rodeo today? Well - if you just want to let DAD know he's #1 - this card ought to do that! I was thinking of how to represent the ol west when I didn't have any cowboy stamps per se, nothing western at all - zip, nada!  Then I thought that the Sheriff's Badge would be easy enough to make if you broke it down to basic parts - basically, its a circle with pointy triangles, nes pa? So that is what I did! 1) first I cut me a circle with our 1-3/4 inch CIRCLE PUNCH. 2) make them thar pointy parts!           To Make Triangles for the Sheriff's Star Badge          cut a strip of cardstock twich as wide  than the length of your points, and about 6 inches in length          sc...

I feel sort of bad :( Because now Stampin' Up! decision makers have put some  of the BIGZ XL DIES for The BIG SHOT on  chopping block !  I can only surmise its due to their lower sales value and to follow that line of logic then, we 'demos' didn't do enough to show the   ' p o t e n t i a l '  of these dies, so we share some of the blame. So - here I am last minute trying to make up for some of that with this project!   In my last post, I pointed out the fab talent of the designer behind the pop-up dies manufactured by Sizzix, and so I pulled out the POP-UP BIGZ XL DIE - O CHRISTMAS TREE!  and co-ordinating SIZZLIT DIE ' MERRY DETAILS ' which has several tiny decorations for the tree including a bird! And I also pulled out the BIGZ XL ' PERFECT SETTING ' - which includes the CUPCAKE HOLDER/WRAPPER! As for cardstock - I've chosen the retiring HOSTESS LEVEL - PATTERNS PAPER STACK which showcases the new IN COLORS of the retiring 2010-...