Happy Thanksgiving

Hi, long time no see? Right?  Sorry, I have been busy creating lots of Christmas decorations.  I even managed to put some up on Etsy.  Why, you ask, do you not have your Etsy shop 10 pages long, full of all sorts of fabulous and glittered, sparkly, blinged out items for sale?

Well,  I have an answer for that question.  You see I have run into 3 problems with getting a good amount of inventory up on Etsy:
1.  Those damn Stromlings, Pirate Stromlings, and Ronins.  You see, Lego Universe has invaded my life.  Defeating those Stromlings and collecting Imaginations while at the same time getting enough infected bricks Paradox coins is EXHAUSTING.  Why can't I ever remember that Chase can't read?  Even if he can read some words he certainly can't read words like "Stromlings, Ronins, Paradox, and Avent Gardens" therefore needs help playing multiplayer on-line games?  I signed him up and initially I was thrilled when it finally went live.  "Happy days are here!!!!".  But after exactly 10 seconds of playtime, I had to help him.  Ok, so change of plan, we got started and all goes well for about 30 minutes and then frustation set in.  That is me being frustrated.  Stupid me- I didn't use strategy at all; just ran around breaking things and dying all over the place.  Excpet with you are a Lego you "smash" rather than "die" and you have to "rebuild" yourself every time you get "smashed".  So it wasn't too long before Chase, joined me on the frustration train to crazytown.  I HATE THIS GAME!  Let me call somebody... what no phone number anywhere.  Guess they knew parents like me would be calling for advice.  Ok, I know what to do, lets Google the walkthrough, surely somebody has completed the game already and provided a detailed account of where to go and how to get there.  This strategy works for Wii games- I head to Gamefaqs where teenagers with more time than brains provides a step-by-step accounts of how to play games.  Bad news... Gamefaqs was noncommittal on Lego Universe so I decided to go for a general scream for help and Google "help lego universe".  I get a few pathetic hits on Lego's own site but at least I figure out you need STRATEGY to play this game and the game goes on and on forever.  Strategy?  Hmm that's an idea I hadn't thought of.  Alright, so I needed to have a plan.  Something like break everything in site to get points, actually complete the missions I was collecting but ignoring, and those silly heart and shield numbers on the top left, yeah they mean something.  Something important.  Hearts are how long you have to live before you end up a pile of Lego dust and the shields, act as your armor.   We realized you can change the number of shields and/or imaginations (used as a way to pay for your actions) you can carry by changing you clothes and weapons you carry.  By using the best combination of clothes we went from 2 shields to 10 or even 12 if needed.  Ok, so now we aren't dying every 20 seconds. we are on to something....   Today I can say with pride we are well on our way to beating the nasty Maelstrom.  Rick and Ryann, being little whimps who are scared to fight the Ronin, refuse to help Chase, each claiming that they "don't know how to play" as if I was born with inait Maelstrom fighting knowledge.  They don't know how much fun they are missing- Shhhh!

2. I never make the same thing twice.  This is a huge problem as you can imagine, it significantly slows down production.  It takes me awhile to time to make ONE item and instead of making another I get excited about something else, move on, never look back and grab a new item to work on.  This is NOT a great manufacturing strategy.

3.  Glitter...Glue...Paint brush.  I have discovered that with a little glue, a tiny paintbrush and some spectacular glitter I can go to town and bling out anything and everything.  Oh, so much fun to put a little glitter on scrapbook paper to bring out the design.  The problem is I never know when to stop, I glitter everything, and I get glitter everywhere.  I even started to mix colors which then leads to an issue of find someplace to store those new colors. Oh but it is oh so much fun.

This piece of paper had NO glitter when I started.

I will continue to plug along, flinging glitter everywhere.   I hope to get my Christmas stuff up before Christmas and I promise to post lots of pictures.  Until then enjoy the pictures of my latest work.
I am taking a class called "Color or Colour?"   The green piece is above.

This is for the color Orange 

Yellow

Red

This beautiful banner I had to cut into two piece it was so big.

The ornaments all started as a kit but I added all the glitter, rhinestones, and beads.

I have lots of other ornaments but I have to make the files smaller before I can post them. 

I love the way this turned out.

Laters...