Thompson Family-Life

Kitschy Digitals Creative Team Call

Hi! I'm wanting to fill a few spots on the Kitschy Digitals Creative Team... we've lost a few members due to other obligations coming up, so I'd like to fill those spots. Please send me an email at thousandclowns(AT)yahoo.com if you are interested! I'm looking for Digital Artists as well as Hybrid/Paper Artists. You do not have to be a scrapbooker!  **Please include a link to your online portfolio in your email.** Thanks! :-)

that thing we call "eye candy"

Poor neglected blog! Sorry I've been sort of MIA... Was sick all last week with a sinus infection. And then this weekend I was in Memphis visiting my family.. so I'm getting back into the groove of things. :-) I didn't take one photo in Memphis (I enjoyed the break) but I did snag a really cute vintage find that I was determined to bring back on the plane with me!! :-) It was pretty big, but still fit in the overhead compartment. Phew.

I just LOVED this vintage toy shelf when I saw it. I had to have it. The illustrations are what sold me on it. Too charming to resist. And the colors!

I'm going to hang this above my desk in my little "Studio Corner"... I've been so into and inspired by vintage toy-and-doll themed finds lately.. no doubt due to my time with my new Blythe. :-) This shelf just charmed the pants off me.

It needs some cleaning, but it's in pretty good shape considering it was used for toys.. not too beat up at all. Need to clean some rust stains....

Here's the back... How *SAD* that it will be covered up when i hang it!! such a tragedy! :(

Seriously, how charming? right?

 

On the sides of the shelf...

 

 

 

And more from the back...

And more vintage fun... I wanted to find some cases to keep my Miss Sally Rice's clothing and accessories in because they were spilling out all over the place on my desk. So I've been searching and searching on Ebay for some cool vintage doll cases... My first round of searching wasn't fruitful because every bid I made, I lost. Then I did some more searching and decided to big on 3 auctions just in case. Yep, i won all of them. *LOL* Funny. So me. So I will probably be reselling a couple of these in my Etsy shop soon. :-)

Here's one that I will definitely be keeping though. Finding these vintage vinyl Barbie cases *in good condition* was hard since the vinyl tears easily over time. But all of the ones I won were in darn good condition all things considered! A couple smell a little smoky. Is there a way to get the smoke smell out of vinyl? anyone??

The keeper:

I absolutely *adore* these colors, patterns, and the design. To-die-for, really.

 

 

 

And the great thing about this case, as the name suggests, it not only holds your doll's clothing and accessories, it folds out into this CUTE diorama type thing with little beds! **CUTE**!

Miss Sally Rice modeling her new digs...

 

 

 

 

 

The graphics are just TOO MUCH. I love them! I love the idea of thinking that some little girl used to play with this... she took very good care of it. :-)

I've been playing with some ideas of Blythe headband accessories... this is my first little bow-headband (very obviously Gossip Girl inspired.. although i've never watched the show!) :-) I hope to sell these in my Etsy store once I get everything nailed down as to how i want to design/create them.

 

 

And on a non-doll-related-note, I posted some links over at the Kitschy Digitals blog on how to get started with Hybrid and Digital Scrapbooking/Art-Making. If you've been wondering how the heck to use my kits, hop over to the new post to find some (hopefully) helpful links. :-)

Happy Press for Kitschy Digitals

Just posted some Happy-Press for Kitschy Digitals over at the Kitschy Digitals blog if you'd like to read about it! :-) I'm feeling very *lucky* and thankful for the positive response to KD recently. So i just wanted to share this with you! Hop over to the KD blog for more details and links! :-)

*New* Thrift-Store Chic Picture Frames Deux Kit

I'm really excited about this new kit, Thrift-Store Chic Picture Frames Deux! This is a continuation of my "Thrift-Store Chic" Series and part two of the Picture Frames kits. You might remember my first Picture Frames kit. People seem to really love this kit! That makes me so happy. I think anyone loves a beautiful vintage ornate picture frame. :-) So that is why i'm so excited about this new kit. It's PACKED full of pretty frames. You are getting even MORE frames with this kit. The last one only had 4, with this one you get:

22 frames total, but also a brush set that will allow you to customize your own frames very easily.  

You can create your own colored frames by recoloring the original gold frames (lots of ways to do this, using the brushes I've provided or using Duotones, to name a few), *but* I've also recolored the original frames in fresh colors myself, to give you options that are ready-for-use immediately! This kit will provide you with endless options.

For the oval frame I've also created some beautiful opaque silhouettes for a more flat, graphic look. I've created a brush for this as well (so that you can create your own colors easily), but I've also provided you with this silhouette in 7 different colors that are ready-for-use.

 

I have so many project ideas myself for this kit, can't wait to carve out some time to do those. These are great for scrapbookers (digital artists or traditional paper artists - just print them out!), photographers, or use in your personal or commercial website or blog (personal AND commercial licenses available! see Terms of Use for both for more details). These are great for any crafter because you can print them onto paper, fabric, transfer sheets, acetate, or whatever else you can dream up! :-)

If you have never used .abr Photoshop Brush files, I will be pointing you to, or creating my own, tutorial on how to use them very very soon. :-) They are really fun to use! But you can always just use the .png files to get started! The brushes are just an added Bonus of sorts.

Thank you again for all of your support over the past several months!! :-) If you purchase this kit I would love to see what you've created with it! Please feel free to add your projects to the Kitschy Digitals Projects Flickr group. :-)

Valentine's Recap & School Holidays

I wanted to share what I spent a whole afternoon doing last week for Cooper's classroom Valentine's Day party... I purchased these supplies a while back from one of my favorite new shops, Bake It Pretty. Amanda used to have a store on Etsy called A.Bel.Emporium that I loved! But now she has all of her cute stuff in her own shop, and stocks even MORE awesome things for baking. I stocked up on these incredibly cute moustache, mushroom and vintage button chocolate molds (i've seen these vintage button chocolates run rampant in the blog world over the past week or 2!) and all of the other supplies I needed like lollipop sticks, platinum luster dust (which i didn't even know existed), and lots of colors of chocolate melts. :-) I had to hold myself back from buying more of the chocolate molds... her selection is just *cuteness* overload. :-)

I made some moustaches and mushrooms on sticks for his class and plan on making the vintage buttons for another time. :-) I was a little worried because as anyone knows that reads my blog, or knows me well, the kitchen and I just don't jive well. I don't cook. I don't bake. I actually start having heart palpitations when I enter the kitchen. No not really. Wait, yes, seriously I do.

But luckily melting chocolates in the microwave and pouring it into molds ended up being pretty fool-proof (the fool being me). I did the moustaches thank goodness first! that were a breeze! the 3D mushrooms were a bit more time consuming, but still doable! they came out so cute! there were about 3 or 4 more steps with those... "painting" on the white dots with white chocolate was a little tedious, but fun. :-)

And I have to say that whoever started the whole *moustache trend* in the indie craft world should be given a million dollars. Or at least a cut of every moustache oriented handmade good out there right now.. they'd be rich. ;-) What a brilliant and clever concept. I couldn't help but jump on the bandwagon with these CUTE lollis! (i don't know why, but i'm thinking it was these guys that started it, but i might be wrong....)  :-)

The *MOST* tedious part of the whole thing really was putting on those foils believe it or not. The sheets were pretty small and one barely fit over each moustache, so it took some playing. And they don't really stick that well at times.. more like the foils don't stick well to each other. And they're fragile and tear easily. But they really look amazing! The hardest ones were of course foiling the mushrooms.. those took 2 sheets each... but they were worth the work!

Here's my last-minute-thrown-together little photo shoot i did with these... i needed something to stick them in so they would stand up, but didn't want to use the sand like i did with the unfoiled shrooms above, so i saw a ball of yarn and went with it. And then i couldn't stop adding things like fake mushrooms and a tiny deer.

 

I wrapped each one in a clear cellophane bag, tied off with a silver twist tie, and then added the tags from my Kawaii Cute Fruits kit and had Cooper write his friends' names and his name on them. I didn't take any after pics, but they turned out cute!

On another non-chocolate related note, Cooper had friday and monday off for school holidays (not sure why the friday... never could figure that out), so he and I had 2 fun Mommy-and-Son-quality-time days that were mostly spent at a park of some sort. Miss Sally Rice came along for the ride to give Mommy a little something to do while watching the boy ride his bike and play on the playground. :-) Luckily he is not phased by mommy playing with dolls. In public. Yet. So I just go with it. ;-)

Although he does get a little miffed when we have to interrupt his bike ride to take a couple shots of the doll in front of a tree.

Made me laugh out loud when I saw this. :-)

Here are the shots minus grumpy boy (and don't feel sorry for him b/c a total of maybe 10 minutes out of about 5 hours were used to take pics of the doll. Heaven forbid. ;-)

 

 

She even got to come along for the ride at Coop's swim lesson. Fun times. :-)

 

Here she is chillin' at the park in my colorful purse...

 

She travels in style. ;-)

More pics to come from Monday... another day spent at the park.. a different park this time: Piedmont Park in Midtown Atlanta. FUN! :-)

I posted LOTS of new artwork from Kitschy Digitals Creative Team members in 2 posts yesterday... check them out here and here. They are creating faster than I can post! i love that. :-) And as always, here's a small sneak peek: