I've never been big on reading blogs...

...but there are a few that you just have to follow.

Yes, I co-author a blog but I have a hard time getting into reading others. I have tried blogging in the past... it has typically been posts filled with teenage angst and how much my life sucked (okay it still sometimes ends up that way but you understand.) Amanda and I occasionally browse the World Wide Web Internet for craft ideas (HELLO PINTEREST ARE YOU THERE? IT'S ME REBECCA) I also enjoy reading blogs about how others have  made failed attempts  gotten less than spectacular results.

Which is essentially what we strive to do here at Crafting for Sanity. Although we are both working on items for the Yuletide Festival in Belmont, NC we are still crafted out and a lot of our inventory will be things we have taken to the other festivals. That being said, we have not had any crafting fails or successes aside from Amanda's feather earrings that I absolutely ADORE.

              

Back to my original post... I did a search this morning for "Top Craft Blogs" on Google and I got a nice list of results. My all time favorite blog, although it is not crafting related but is still hilarious is HaHas for HooHas  my second favorite is Pintester.

I discovered some new blogs from my search this morning and I will let you check them out for yourself.

• Craftbits
• CraftFail
• Dollar Store Crafts
• Make and Takes
• One Pretty Thing

We would love to know what blogs you follow! 

Stay Crafty!

Rebecca

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, Part Two

DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
(sorry, just thought that needed to be there)

     So Rebecca told me earlier that I would have to continue as she was way to wasted to continue her train of thought. I can be thankful that I no longer work in retail, however I was one of the people crazy enough to be at Walmart on Thursday night. Everything seemed pretty well under control at my local Walmart, although in retrospect the fourteen cop cars parked outside might have had something to do with that ( I really need to find my camera, the picture would have been worth it). On Thanksgiving my in-laws decided that they wanted to play the whole "What am I Thankful for" game over dinner, and I admit I was a smart ass and said that I had a feeling I would be thankful for Shout later on but in reality I suppose that what I'm really grateful for is a husband that despite my short comings treats me like a queen and is at least usually reasonable. I know that sometimes I complain about him, especially when he's sick (sick men *shudder*) I didn't anticipate going into the last two weeks of class before finals and for him to develop kidney stones. I may bitch, and I may complain, but that fact of the matter is that in the year and a half since I lost my job he hasn't once said anything about me getting another job. When I decided to go back to school he supported it, even still when I changed my major after the first semester. And aside from a spat about housework the only thing he has ever said is "we will figure it out".

       The cease and desist on Rebecca's coasters sucks though, those coasters are cute as hell! It make me want to put something Hello Kitty on mine for the hell of it! Aside from the slime and a little bit of jewelry I haven't done a whole lot of crafty stuff of late, most of my time has been spent trying not to fail any college classes that I really can't afford to fail! The Yuletide Bazaar is coming up in a little under two weeks, and anyone interested can find out about it here: http://misfitsanctuary.org/yuletide-bazaar/ I need to get off my butt and make some candles for this!

Everyone try to stay warm, and as always,
Stay Crafty!

Amanda

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday

Being as I work in the hell that is retail, I had to work Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday (go figure). I'm 99.9% sure that the only time my place of employment will close is if the store burns to the ground. I had put up a discount in my shop hoping to get some more views and some buys, well.. I got views but the buys were lacking.

Fortunately, I had some super nice customers who thanked me for working Thanksgiving but the majority of them were too far gone into their turkey induced comas to care about me. It was really depressing seeing as I had to family to really spend Thanksgiving with. Black Friday was kinda slow fortunately, I had a good bit of down time but then Saturday, DAMN YOU POWERBALL WITH YOUR $325 MILLION JACKPOT. We were busy as hell everyone wanted a Powerball ticket. Now with it being $425 Million, I'm glad I don't have to work Wednesday. I encourage my customers to buy their tickets beforehand and not bombard the poor gas station employees on second shift the day of.

Cyber Monday did not really hold a ton of deals that I was looking for... or maybe I just wasn't really paying attention (not like I had the money to buy anything anyway..)

On to a more crafty note? I received an e-mail today while at work  using the bathroom and playing on Facebook on my phone at work. It was a e-mail from Storenvy telling me that they had received a cease and desist letter from the creators/makers or whatever of Hello Kitty and that they had to hide my Hello Kitty coasters because they violated the cease and desist letter. I was saddened by this.

Rebecca

It's the BLOB.......................

Just kidding. It's slime that I made at the kitchen table. I'm getting a bit of the creative side for an upcoming show that I missed last year, and as I am letting my Pagan flag fly this year there is no way I will miss the Yuletide Bazaar again! Giving credit where credit is due, I found the recipe I used at http://kimmccrary.blogspot.com/2011/10/halloween-fun-magical-monster-slime.html 

 My friends on facebook (including the group that follow us at https://www.facebook.com/crafting.for.our.sanity) may have gotten a really colorful mental picture when I said that I had a pink bowl of snot. The picture doesn't really do the pink justice, it looks good in the picture, the cups next to me look like pepto. I was really disappointed with the set on the right, it was suppsed to be black, but it came out more of a dark purple. The answer there would probably be 1) if you use white glue, add more than 6 drops of food coloring, or 2) make sure the glue is clear. 

It's fairly simple to make, water, glue, glitter, borax. Yes, I did my homework on this one. there isn't enough borax in it to hurt anything. Each batch will fill 12 2oz cups, and there is only 1 tsp of Borax in the whole thing.

 

                               

My son totally flipped out when he saw the slime, but as you can see he thought that lifting the spoon up and letting the slime ooze off was loads of fun! He also said that it didn't smell very good, but he loved playing with it. He also stole one too. Next color, green!

Stay Crafty My Friends! 

And to my Pagan and Wiccan Brothers and Sisters

It's hard being a girl...

...and trying to do crafty things for guys. Being a 21 year old female, I typically drift to the pink/girly/summery  fabric and scrapbook paper. I realized that I only have a few papers and fabrics that are really "male species appropriate" so I went to Hobby Lobby because they had a sale on a venture to see what I could find. I found some really girly scrapbook paper for my coasters (as usual) but I finally found some hunting camouflage paper that looks quite nice. My quest for fabric did not turn out as successful.

I was going through my stash of paper yesterday with my neighbor and found paper I forgot I had, one of which was military camouflage, it looks interesting on a coaster as well but I like the hunting camouflage better.

Do you ever find yourself having this problem when you are making things for others? Being a small business owner it is a huge down fall because all of my items are marketed towards women since my taste for manly designs is severely lacking.

Here is a conversation between a friend and I the other day-
Me: OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO CUTE!
Friend: Yeah, it's seashells, I really like it.
Me: Me too!!! I've got to get it, it's 50% off.
Friend: I thought we came for manly stuff.
Me: Guys would like this...
Friend: ...not so much, but okay.

Yeah, this is why I am horrible at buying things for men. "Cute" and "Adorable" should not be used when describing fabric/paper you plan on using for guys and that is my downfall because I like cute things.

I'm a girl, bite me.

These are the newest coasters I've made with the new paper I got, it's still girly.



Be sure to check out Crafting For Sanity on Facebook along with my page and Amanda's page.

Stay crafty my friends,
Rebecca

Craziness happens when the two of us are in the same place......

So Rebecca is here spending the night at my house and we realized earlier that the two of us think so much alike that is fucking scary hilarious. This maybe a less then crafty post, sorry.

By the way, I made this for my cousin Lynn. She seems to have an affinity with Dragonfly's, so now she'll always have some!

So as I was saying, Rebecca and I think disturbingly similar. I appropriate situations and not......
After the wireless net card in her laptop died we ended up having to go to Best Buy so that the Geek Squad could give her a new USB wireless card, we also hit the local Dollar Tree. I will be the first to admit that I am addicted to the Dollar Tree. Needless to say there was a good deal of joking going on as we went, and then we made it to the end of the Health and Beauty Aids section. That's where we found this:

I always thought that pregnancy tests were bad enough. But as Rebecca put it, the Dollar Tree is there to see you through all of Life's Stages. An ovulation predictor to help you get pregnant, the pregnancy test to confirm it, drug tests to see if the bundle of joy is partaking of the wacky weed, the menopause test, the diabetes test, then one for the ever popular UTI. I'm not sure if I should be scared, shocked, or just go with it. Although if the Dollar Tree now has drug tests for weed then maybe my former employer will actually start testing for drugs, but probably not.

This is here just for the sake of I think it's a damn good idea. Rebecca says that life would be more tolerable. 

Rebecca agreed to make a key chain for a lady we both know, however she started cutting the cord for it on the spare bed next to my cat, Beltane. I swear I haven't seen that cat react to something like that in months! I really need to clear out some of my extra supplies!

As always, Stay crafty everyone! 

Crafting to save our sanity... from all the political madness

Cue the choir of angels, the political commercials are finally gone and the television debates are over although since Fox News has PROJECTED the winner to be Barack Obama, I've seriously thought about removing people from my Facebook friends or at least banning them until after January. The Electoral College does not cast their vote until December and the real winner will be announced in January. Although the television debates are over, the real debates surely are not. I'm not saying this just because I support Romney honestly, I didn't want either one to win but I had to vote for someone. I am saying this because since Fox News has projected that Obama will be in office four more years, the people on my friends list are acting like morons. I'm not going to be that person and call you out on it, but you know who you are. 

I haven't exactly had the chance to do any crafting although crafts encompass 95% of my dreams with the other 5% being invaded with dreams about how people might actually come into my work and not act like morons/assholes/some variation of this.

I have been perusing through Pinterest lately but the Food & Drink category has been catching my eye more than the crafts although Amanda has found  few cool craft things. This goes back to how Pinterest should be invite only. But for the most part, Pinterest has been my escape from all the Political madness.

I've been doing some serious thinking about craft shows and if we really want to attempt any more, what I'm going to work on when in reality I need to get some of the stuff out of my house I really want to make a quilt so I've turned on a 15% discount through the end of November in my STORE! Amanda has turned on a 40% discount in her STORE! We also have items in a few auction groups on Facebook but we would still love to take your custom orders :)

How have you been staying sane from all the political madness?

Stay Crafty My Friends,
Rebecca