The ReadyMade blog posted about a new color toy from Adobe today – Kuler. Just move the sliders around or look at the color combinations other people have created. Super fun for web projects – but also just great for ideas and inspiration – for fabric, paint, paper – anything!

Personalized felt bag, originally uploaded by cafe crafty.

Baby Girl has music class on Fridays. Yesterday was our last class until the middle of January. I decided about an hour before we left that we should bring the teacher a present – class is fabulous and we just love Amy! I had some felt bags still in process so I decided to make one just for her. Now – I love the little initial. I wish I had thought of this idea before I loaded everything into the craft show…

Wyly Wares 2006, originally uploaded by cafe crafty.

Linda and I have participated in Wyly Wares for the past 3 or 4 years. It’s a local holiday craft show to help raise funds for a small non-profit art center. I set-up our stuff today – that green stand with the books is ours and the pedastals on each side have my new felt bags and our cards. Baby Girl came with me and was really patient and helpful the whole time we were there. It’s amazing getting stuff done together. There’s lots of cute handmade stuff at Wyly – it definitely feels like the start of the season!

Yesterday I wrapped up my Holiday Swap ornaments. They turned out pretty cute – but each one is very unique. It’s funny how different the glue and glitter and string can act (not very complicated ingredients). Really, I just love anything wrapped in the celophane bag.

I packed them all up to travel around the world. The three international are missing from the picture because I shipped them out first thing. I think it took me just about as long to find 9 small boxes as it did to make the ornaments.

…now I’m using them on the bingo books!

I’m getting everything ready for the craft shows this weekend. I’m using my moo cards as part of my tags. Since I have so many different images it’s fun to pick colors and images to go with each other. I’m selling sets of 3 gocco cards. Linda has the printed flower cards above mine.

I received my batch of mini moo cards yesterday – I love them! I picked about 30 – 40 images so I got 2 – 3 of each image with my blog and etsy store address on the back. They are so cute! I shared them with everyone at work and already have the whole digital department interested and then the rest of the crafty chicas.

I think I’m going to order another batch with Baby Girl and use them for New Year’s cards.

I think I discovered something about snow today – after 24″ it’s hard to see it getting taller. I think the weight of the new snow starts to compress the snow below. (This picture was taken at 2pm and it’s still snowing.)

My fabulous Boy is back-up and running as the photographer for our ski company’s website. It’s super fun because it makes him get out on the mountain at least twice a week (if not more) and they post his shots on the SkiCo webpage. He also got to shoot The English Beat Saturday night for the opening weekend concert. Baby Girl and I went to the show – they were fabulous!

Baby Girl and I made the Molasses Spice Cookies from the Cook’s Illustrated Holiday Baking edition. I like molasses cookies enough…but these cookies are fabulous. I followed the directions pretty closely (which I’m not always prone to do) and they came out pretty perfect.

I’m also in love with these little clear bags. I think they’re made by Wilton’s (like from Michael’s). They make everything look cute and holiday-y.

Biggest Sand Castle, originally uploaded by cafe crafty.

We spent Thanksgiving in Chicago with family. Baby GIrl had a great time playing with everyone. It was one of the warmest Thanksgivings. We had to wear coats, but we could play at the beach and make sand castles (a really uncommon event for late November). I don’t think I ever made sand castles as a kid so it’s been great fun with Baby Girl.

My crafty business partner in crime – Linda – took some pictures of me when we were cutting book covers. We get really thick archival chip board – which I do love – but is very hard to cut by hand. We have the advantage of having access to a sculpture studio at work. We take the book board there and cut it on the sheet metal cutter. It gets done really fast!

I’m in love with my new bags – I admit it! I like my regular sock bags – a lot – but they didn’t feel seasonal. And winter has definitely settled into Colorado.

I bought a ton of wool felt last month to make creatures, but I haven’t felt (ooo, not a punny person) very motivated.

I got very excited when it occurred to me to make some bags out of felt. The felt makes for such a great canvas to play with other fabrics.

I made three and then sold one at work. My etsy store sold out of regular sock bags about two weeks ago, so I’m going to try and get some felt bags made for etsy and see how they do…

My Yarn Aboard! box – Leif Eriksson – tried to fly out the morning we got 12″ of snow. Leif spent the day sledding with us. The sun came out for a gorgeous afternoon of playing in the snow.

I’m not a very still person. Maybe most crafty people aren’t.

For The Boy’s birthday this year we got him an aquarium for his office – a little company, a little humidity. I thought I would just go to the store, buy a tank, buy some fish and plug it in. I did’t know that it takes weeks to set-up an aquarium waiting for all of the balances and cycles to settle in – weeks until you can even buy a couple of fish.

Now though, after a few months we have a nice happy tank and I was surprised to find that I love it. I love watching the fish. Sometimes they’re peaceful, sometimes they play tag. Watching the fish is a real mental break that I never expected.

I came up with a new variation on a previous idea. I’m pretty excited about all the possibilities. We’ll see how it goes tonight and maybe I’ll be able to show more tomorrow. (…maybe Baby Girl will even go to bed on time…)

Baby Girl and I were the glitter queens – or the queen and the princess. She was in love with the big bowl of glitter. I’ve never owned so much glitter in my life. She picked her ornament first…I think she made a pretty good choice.

Each snowball ornament is definitely unique. I think in the end I’ll use a red ribbon and tag. I hope my swap partners realize that there will be just a little bit of glitter – everywhere…

– complete acceptance – even happiness – of using a store bought crust (instead of making my own) if that means actually having pie

– understanding that crafting comes in waves – waiting for the big ones and treading through some little ones to keep my mind happy

– finding any means necessary to get a photo – actual camera, camera phone, scanner, getting someone else to take a picture (even if it means harassing my professional photographer husband to the point of getting the ‘marge’ noise made at me to get the picture)

– hoping my family is reading to stay in touch and up to date when life gets too hectic to use the camera phone to make a phone call

– realizing that swaps make the best motivators and that there is often good crafting mojo after that

– complete appreciation for knitters – it takes so much longer then anything else i do (understanding that there probably won’t ever be handknit christmas or channukah gifts and that those may come at times when there aren’t…hmmm…19 people thinking maybe they’ll get the handknit gift)

– loving selling in the online world (the sweetest customers and the best hours)

– an amazing record of the things i’ve made (sometimes it feels like there has been no crafting, but i have this blog that tells me otherwise)

– and a new world full of remarkable people and inspiration (really – competition may be my best motivator!)

Preparing for the upcoming holiday craft shows has meant stitching lots of books – mostly bingo books so far. I get them into ziplocs as soon as I can for fear of something happening to them. (Besides the fact that I’m a ziploc junky and have to buy them at Costco now to keep up with my habit.)