The cute stamps I bought from Etsy

Thought you might like to see them! 

They're so cute...honestly, gorgeous. 

And how dooooes she hand carve them?

Amazing. 

So what we have here is a DSLR on the left and a regular camera on the right. 

The rubber is yellow on the regular camera because I stamped it already and my ink stained it a bit. 

I also bought the heart in the speech bubble too - know how I'll be using it...just to add to the scrap pages. 

Ha ha, was only having a go with them and didn't notice until now that the camera is saying that it loves me. 

I'd love it back if it came to live at my house :o) 

The stamps don't have a cushion in between the rubber and the wood, so I put my paper on some thin foam (like fun foam) and stamped on that. Apparently it gives a better impression when you do that.

It does and it did.

Ah, yes, and just for fun I thought I'd try a glittery camera. 

Stamped it in Versamark and put some Pralines & Cream Fairy Dust Glitter on it. 

So gorgeous!! 

I don't know if it's going to be permanent or anything (I don't know much about these things), but I'm definitely doing this again and putting it in my book (scrapbook, that is). 

SO FUN.

Thanks, Olga, for sharing your amazing talents with us. If you do a typewriter stamp, let me know!

You can check out her shop (called Cupcake Tree) here. It's so worth a visit. 

You can get personalised things too. The dog one with 'Cody' on it would be cute. The kitty one is cute too. And the bacon and eggs! 

:o)

My tips for shopping on Etsy

There are a lot of great things to be found on Etsy, so here are my coupla tips for shopping there.

(PS. If you're not sure what Etsy is, it's an umbrella company set up for individual people to sell their handmade wares in. Ebay is auction. Etsy is shop - love that. Don't like auctions much. Etsy is handmade, and supplies to make handmade, only. It's cool)

1. Go there, look around, get a feel for the place.

2. Search for something you like.

Up the top there's a search engine. If you're looking for "tickets" for example, make sure you click Supplies on the drop down menu to the left of the search bar bit. No use looking for bakers twine to purchase in the Handmade section. Make sense? I did this and then realised I was a nong.

3. Shop around!

There's lots of people selling lots of stuff on there, so shop around to get the best price. It takes time, but it's worth it in the end. The good thing is you can buy in bulk, or just buy little bits. I love just buying little bits. Gotta watch the postage too, of course.

4. On that, the postage is generally pretty good. If you buy a bit of bakers twine and some tickets from the same person, you may only pay a couple of bucks in shipping. It's quite reasonable like that.

5. When they say "convo me" - they're talking about having a conversation. Like Ebay, you communicate through the site (rather than personal email), so it can be monitored and kept above board. When you register you will probably find out more about that. It's no big deal, you just learn as you go. These sites are pretty easy to work out.

6. You pay by Paypal. It rocks. It's easy.

And I don't think you even need a Paypal account to pay by Paypal. They (the seller or anyone you want to send money to) sends you a Paypal invoice and you can pay by credit card or log in to pay through your Paypal account. I'm not totally sure on that, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them say that somewhere.

7. You know how you just want to buy something and then you end up having buyers' remorse because you spent way too much?

Go to Etsy!

You can satisfy that need to buy and get a few (very cool) things for a very reasonable price. It also takes time to sift around to find what you want sometimes, which can be good for the hip pocket. Not as much spending in the two hours you're on the computer! Anyone, anyone?

You might get some vintage sheet music, bakers twine, stick pins and little tags (maybe from a couple of different people) - all for under $20 (or less) depending on what you buy. It's pretty good like that.

Okay, that's it for now.

Enjoy your shopping!

(If you dare)

:o)

What I made with my tickets...

...I thought you might like to see!

See what I mean about them being embellished? These were bought like this and they're the type we crafters like to try to make ourselves. Cue Papertrey's stamp set and you're sorted. I linked to that yesterday.

I actually have a ticket punch (I've had it for years), but I've not used it much because it's just a ticket. No stamps to match, nothing. Should pull that thing out and give it another whirl.

Here's the card I made.

See the ticket tucked in there?

I got the idea of the strip background out there in cyberspace somewhere. The idea is to get a piece of card and put some strips on it, then run it through your Cuttlebug using your die of choice.

I found it harder than I thought. I like precise placement and getting the die lined up on the striped paper was a bit of a challenge. It turned out fine, though I'm sure there's an easier way to do it.

After I had my base piece I just started playing around with bits and pieces.

I used the ticket, of course.

I used bakers twine because it rocks (it's from Martha Stewart. You can also buy it on Etsy - be careful, there's a lot of bakers twine on there and it's hard to resist!)

I used my great grandmother's tracing tool around the edges because it's easy and it always looks good.

I used Stickles on that because that's the way I roll. I do the same things over again - they work, so why not?

I added buttons because I liked 'em and I wanted the texture.

And I used two other finds from Etsy.

1. These little cards from Pretty Little Studio.

She has all sorts in all different sizes. I just got small ones for cards. 

2. These pins.

They're from some lovely lady, I can't remember her name! You could do a search for stick pins or crystal pins to find some.

And here's what I did with a ticket from the Tim Holtz ticket strip. It's embossed with the 5 x 7 Cuttlebug Polka Dots folder. Added just the texture I wanted.

And coupled with bakers twine, well, scrape me off the floor, I've melted.

(The pic above is of a card from the Vintage Inspired class that I'm teaching on August 21, so only a sneaky peeky allowed!)

Here are some little tickety, cardy things I bought on Etsy too. They're small - I love the polka dots. I used my postage stamp decorative scissors to turn them into stamps, which makes a nice accent, I think. They'd look good as faux stamps on envelopes too.

Hope you enjoyed my ticket creations today!

Thanks for dropping by, talk soon,

:o)