Politically Correct? Not Usually!

Am I the only one who struggles with this? Probably not....

When I'm creating yet another new pin or magnet, there is always (I won't even say 'usually', because that is not the case...it's 'always') a sarcastic, or at the very least, dark, snarky remark right there with a somewhat innocuous picture from the 40s/50s. 

It's just what I do, lol.

Politically incorrect? Or just a little bit of fun?

ANYway...there have been times where I think to myself, "wow, this is a funny saying, yet somewhat horrifying at the same time...is this politically correct?" And I'm in a quandary at that moment, wondering to myself, "Is this going to offend someone/everyone?". Truth be known, everything we say at one time or another is going to offend someone, somewhere. You just can't get away from it. So what is the measure that we use to figure out where that line should be drawn? Oh, I know, there could possibly be a list somewhere, pages and pages long, listing all of the things we can't/shouldn't say. But I have a better idea. 

Common Sense.

When you know that something you say/write is going to be truly offensive, I mean, truly offensive, when you know that it is wrong (and yes, deep down? We know...), well...you don't say it. You don't write it. 

Now, there are going to be people (and I've run across them) who are going to find something to be offended about in either what you say, or what you write. And there is just not a thing you can do about that, it seems to be what some are about, you know? But by using some good old-fashioned common sense, we can pretty well figure out what it is that we should and should not be saying. What was it Jiminy Cricket said? (Yes...Jiminy Cricket!)

And honestly I think if we all do that, unless we're some sort of mindless, hideous, brain-eating zombie (just kidding, lol), it won't let us down.

God bless! :)

Refinish Like A Boss!

I think I can safely say I actually accomplished something this last week. Well, wait a minute, I accomplished a lot of things this week....I mean, I'm typing, aren't I?! Heh...anyway, I'm talking about starting out with an idea...following up on it, and seeing it through to completion. That's what I did this week, and I have pics to prove it! Let me back up a little bit here...

When I was a kid, my mom always had one of those old Cosco metal carts in the kitchen. I mean...she always had one. It wasn't always the same one, but she always had one, and so did my grandmother and every other person we had ever known. And you know what, those things were made to hold up, back in the day when they actually made things to last!

Retro Cosco products, made to last like a tank!

I really needed some storage room in my tiny kitchen, and when I started looking around for some sort of kitchen cart to put in there, I was really disappointed by what I was finding. Cheaply made, just...blah. And if they were made a little better? WAY more than I was willing to spend, lol. And then I remembered the days of the Cosco metal kitchen carts (well, I couldn't remember the name- I don't think I even ever knew the name back then, haha), so I started looking around online for one. 

Having an Etsy shop myself, I like to 'buy local' when I'm looking for something, like craft thingies for my own shop, or things like this cart. And wow, I found a lot of them! Pretty reasonably priced, and I wasn't looking for one in pristine condition, but something that I could refurbish, and not have it look like someone tossed it down 10 flights of stairs. I found an Etsy shop called FromTheSeller with lots of 'vintage treasures' to choose from. 

And I chose! 

Retro 60s kitchen cart prior to working my magic, lol!

Here is the cart I purchased from FromTheSeller and the condition it came in. Although it had quite a bit of rust and things on it (what can you expect, the thing is old, lol!), it had great bones, no dings, it was totally workable.

Now...you know how a lot of times you go into a project like this with high expectations, telling yourself you're going to do this and that to it, fix it up, etc., etc., and then....it goes into a closet or something and you totally forget about it, or just don't have the time to get around to doing anything with it?

Well...that DIDN'T happen here, lol!

I was psyched, and I got right on it~ I went out and bought the following supplies that I figured I would need:

1. Paper masks - last thing anyone needs is to be breathing in dust while sanding on an old, rusty    metal tray, yes?
2. Sandpaper/Stainless scrub pad - the rust wasn't too horrible on the trays, worse on the bottom than the top so I wasn't sure what I would need to use in order to get the stuff off, or manageable, at least...so I bought both.
3. Krylon Cover MAXX Ultimate Coverage spray paint - no particular reason for this particular one...I was in 'A Big Box Store' (haha), and I've used Krylon brand in the past for other projects, I like it...and this one has rust protection as well as being a paint AND a primer, and it's for metal as well as other things. I bought Blue Ocean Breeze/Gloss

So now, I was ready to go. The cart was mailed to me (SO quickly, seriously...this etsy store had it to me in three days!) unassembled which was good, so I started out by washing the trays - VERY carefully, on these Cosco carts the underside of the tray can be sort of sharp- and with rust in the mix, I wasn't up to a trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot, haha - anyway, I washed them well with soap and hot water. Then....

1. I put on the paper mask, and got to work lightly sanding the worst rust spots with the steel wool - and going over it with regular medium-grit sandpaper. You want to lightly sand everywhere with the sandpaper in order for the paint to really adhere to the surface better.

2. I re-washed with soap and hot water again, and dried the trays well.

3. Time to bring out the spray paint!  Since the paint I bought already had a primer built in to it (in my opinion, this is the way to go!), there was no need to primer the trays before painting them. You want to shake these things up well, so you don't get splotchy color blobs, you want the paint to go on evenly...I had two cans and probably should have attached one to each hip, and merengue'd to some music to shake things up a bit, haha!

Where are the paint cans?

4. I sprayed in vertical lines, then horizontal lines- keep your can moving somewhat slowly but not TOO slowly, so the paint doesn't pool in one spot. You won't have great coverage at first so don't expect it... but it will be even coverage. Let it dry, repeat two or three times. After you are finished, you'll have really nice, even coverage that looks awesome! I also sprayed the underside of all of the trays as well.

And here is the finished product!

The paint looked awesome, and I was really happy with the end result...even though someone told me the cart itself and the color made it look like I should have medical instruments laid out on it...

Pffffft....what do they know?!

Just goes to show you that with a little bit of elbow grease, a vision, and by paying less than you would if you bought a (much cheaper) version in a 'Big Box Store', you can have something that is a quality product, and that you finished yourself! Nothing like a sense of accomplishment, and the proverbial pat on the back!

God bless! :)

Gearing Up For Spring Selling!

I just KNOW that Spring is on its way, because I'm only seeing little blobs of snow here and there on the ground, and hoping that it won't snow again! 

Enough until NEXT Winter, because by then we'll be tired of the heat, and ready for some more snow. Hard to believe, isn't it? lol! 

And with Spring on the way, my thoughts are turning to gearing up my Etsy shop with new ideas, and taking it in a new direction! I've been wanting to come up with some new sets, and I'm working on that at the moment, along with a few other ideas :) 

One thing I have been working on which I touched on a little bit in my last blog post, is learning to be more organized. It isn't that I don't know how to organize, it's more a matter of I just....well, I'm kind of lazy sometimes, lol~ 

One thing I did start doing (since it's a Monday, and it seemed like a good time to 'start' doing something- Mondays are notorious for that!) was to make a 'To Do' list on just a scrap of paper, number them in order of importance, and cross them out as I do them. I'm on number two at the moment, which is posting in my blog! My first one was to go through and change all of the postage rates in my Etsy shop. Postage rates went up recently (sigh), and although I know there is probably an easier way to 'mass change' the postage, I went through them separately because some things are different than others, so...Yeah, I took the 'road less traveled', ha! 

Either way, this list is helping today- I feel a little more...'together' with things, and feel that I'm accomplishing things a little better, as opposed to just being all over the place. 

If you need to organize more in your small business as well (and who doesn't!), I would say to start slow, such as with the 'To Do' list- and go through each one before starting on the next- I used to have a bad habit of jumping around on a list, and would discover that at the end of the day, I had the beginnings of several things started, but not finished~ best to just go through and finish each as you go. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, as well. I know, that sounds so lame, lol, but it's true- and if you have a small home business, it's a necessity- there is nobody around to give you orders and tell you what needs to be done - we have to kick ourselves in the pants!

And on that note...I'm back to work!

God Bless :)

Do You Ever...

I'm curious...how many of you out there are working on your own small business from home? Sometimes it's a necessity, sometimes just for fun, but it's always something that we have deep down inside of us. The creativity, I mean! 

I recently found a blog called justagirlandherblog and this site was pretty awesome, seriously. I don't even know how I landed there, but I did.

Let me tell you...I was impressed. 

I have to admit, I felt like a completely disorganized sloth after surfing around on her site, lol- she just has EVERYthing together, and it is a really fun site. Not to mention the fact that she and her husband make some serious $$ with her blog, etc.- so awesome for them. I even printed out a few of the free printables she has there, along with the first chapter of a book about blogging that she wrote- now this isn't to say that this girl hasn't had her huge troubles in life- she had a double mastectomy (the whole same situation as Angelina Jolie had, along with the...plastic surgery at the same time...the females in her family have the BRCA gene, I believe..), but she has managed to just overcome and pull together and be successful, and...and...makes me breathless to think about it, lol. 

Does your fridge look like this? Mine neither! 

So here is MY question to all of you! Do you feel overwhelmed with which way to go in your small business, such as...Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy, Blogging, how much, when, where, etc., etc., ETC.! What are your secrets to pulling it all together, and making sense of it? 

Moment of Honesty: I'm sitting here amongst printouts, button orders, looking online at various sticks I have in the fire and I have to admit, I feel a bit overwhelmed. Well, maybe 'overwhelmed' isn't the correct word to use...wait, yes it is, lol! After looking at just a girl's site (and if you go there, you will see exactly what i mean), it has a tendency to make one feel a bit...ok, a LOT...disorganized! 

Goals this week? For me, definitely prioritizing and organization! 

I will let you know how it goes, and what worked for me! Meanwhile...if you have ideas that have worked for you, definitely leave a comment and tell about it, I would love to hear from you!

God Bless! 

:)

Own your creativity!

The actual term that is on the new button I made is, "Regift like a Boss!". It features one of my fun, 1950s housewife images (from some truly awesome old 40s and 50s ads in the public domain, I love it!) of a woman smiling (they always smiled back then) as she is tying a ribbon on a fancy gift. Here is the original image I used:

Aren't these pics just awesome? I think we all have a tendency to believe the past is where the 'better days' were, well...maybe so...but I doubt that they thought so then, lol. And what's really fun is to add sarcastic quotes that are common for the lives we live today, to these 'picture perfect' images of (mostly) housewives from the past. Which is what I do.

And I love it :)

I've been crafting in one way or another for a lot of years, although making buttons and magnets (and soon, cupcake toppers!) is a newer endeavor for me, just in the last couple of years. Prior to this, off and on, I've done mostly artistic painting, some sewing (decorative dolls, back when they were the craze in the 90s), and I was actually quite successful at it. Not enough to make a living but I did alright and I had a lot of fun doing it. These days the majority of my 'creativity' comes in the form of pics like the above, Gimp (it's like PhotoShop, but for my Mac...and it's FREE, look it up it's awesome), and my button maker/magnets. I wanted something that was more...streamlined and wouldn't create as much clutter as some of my past crafts had done. So what do you suppose happened...? Yep...I have things scattered from one end of the house to the other, lol.

Creativity is not a 'neatness' thing, is it? At least for me, it isn't! I need to remind myself that a future blog post needs to be about an orderly area for craftwork (a girl can dream, right?!). Something inexpensive, cute, functional. You wouldn't believe all of the things you can do and create with what you have around your home, trust me on this one! Like I said, craft it like a boss, and OWN your creativity...sky's the limit!

This is my first blog post, and in the future here is what I hope to add to it, in order to have people actually want to come here and read what I have to say, lol:

*Sarcastic Freebies - I would like to post some finished 'sarcastic' quote images for you to print, and use whatever way you would like to use it~
*How-To - Maybe you would like to figure out how to do your own 'clean ups' on Gimp- I don't think I would ever be successful enough at Gimp to write and publish an extensive book on all of its attributes, but...I get by, and I can show you how to as well!
*Blogs on Other Crafty-Type-People - I don't need to steal all of the thunder for myself (!), when there are LOADS of truly gifted crafters that I admire out there, many on Etsy where I have my own shop as well~
*Tips on having your own crafting business from home - I'm not giving up my day job (ok, I don't have one, I stay home and my husband works, but I work too! lol), but I've actually had some success at my shop on Etsy. It wasn't overnight, for sure- but I can tell you the things that have worked for me, and I'm also spreading my wings a little to include a Shopify site, and I'm even looking into posting some youtube how-to videos, as well!

Brave soul, yes she is, lol.

Until next time, God Bless!