Thompson Family-Life

more beach pics, vintage crewel & artwork

I've got some more beach pics to share, and then i'm off to finish cleaning the house since we have company coming to town! (booo on the cleaning, YAY for the company! :-)

I got this little pennant skirt from a lady at I.C.E. Atlanta (Indie Craft Experience) a few months ago. I couldn't pass it up and just HAD to get it for my little neice. She's my only little girl to buy for! :-) I adore this skirt and wish she made them in my size. ;-) She uses alot of vintage fabrics. Incidentally, she is also on Etsy! Her store name is called Handmade Charlotte... she sells all sorts of cute bonnets, bloomers and other sweet things for little girls.

I was lucky to get these pics because Cecilia is at that hard-to-photograph age.. always on the move and not happy in front of the camera. :-) And also, my camera is acting up and i need to have it serviced!! I'm having issues and i think it's because I dropped it when I was in NYC this summer. :( But luckily I still got some good shots.

 

And here's a pic with Nana and the grandkids... you can probably see in this photo how uncomfortable Cooper was from his itchy sunburn on his face.. little did we know how swollen his face would become by the next day!In between shots he's scratching like crazy!

On another note, I'm very much in love with vintage needlepoint (aren't we all?!) and recently aquired several pieces from ebay, etc. 2 of them I need to frame, but I took pics of this one... gotta love those hooty owls! It's really well done and in great shape. I saw this posted on a design blog SOMEWHERE a while back and couldn't believe no one had scooped it up yet! It was a great price too.

 

 

 

I'm always wanting to purchase some vintage needlepoint kits to make my own and was recently inspired to look for some needlepoint yarn because my friend was talking about it.. I did some searching online and found some, but then not long after that, i got a newsletter from Purl Soho where they shared that they had NEW needlepoint canvases and a whole line of needlepoint yarn! Great timing! I hope to buy some soon. What a fun project that would be.

Here are a couple images courtesy Purl Soho...

 

 

I bought this book FOREVER ago and really need to dive in... this was also recommended by Purl! Although this is technically Crewel.. is there a big difference between that and needlepoint? **edited to add... thanks Rebekah for the clarification.. needlepoint follows a grid like the above, and with crewel you fill in with satin stitches, etc... I think i prefer the crewel, but love both!**

 

And last, I did two NEW posts over at the Kitschy Digitals blog with tons of new artwork by Creative Team Members! One post is all digital work and the other is all hybrid. Be sure to check it out! Here's a mosaic for a sneak peek...

In my next post I'll be sharing work by a Guest Designer and some new Contributing Artists. And also some new fab Kitschy Digitals Press!

I designed some new products this week that i'm super excited about. They've been sent off for production and i should get them back in a few weeks! It's an idea i've had (of course) for ages, but finally made time for it. Can't wait to show you!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

our vacay, Harry Potter, and a photo tease

I'm trying to catch up on weeks and weeks of things i've needed to catch up on.. got back from our vacay (i swore i would never be one of those people that uses the word "vacay", but i'm too tired to type it out all the way. ;-)

The, ahem, vacay, was one of the best family beach trips we've had in a long, long time. Bliss.

Been spending ALOT of time with the boys the past few weeks... my schedule has been changing, ebbing and flowing, over the past several months because of less work hours (at my "real" job), so Cam especially has been at home with me more instead of daycare... I've been eating and breathing that little man latey and I'm loving it. Trying to find a part-time church type program for him soon, so that way I can still get my "work" done, but still get to spend lots of time with him.

Cooper has been at a summer camp this summer and LOVES it. He's my boy that gets easily bored at home (and is our prize-whiner... ;-).. so he'd much MUCH rather be spending his time with FRIENDS!!! so he's in heaven. :-) But i've been soaking him up as well.

Again, trying to find the balance between my work (my freelance work, my Kitschy Digitals, etsy shop, etc, etc) and family, and family seems to be winning out lately which has been totally fine with me. :-) Once school starts, i'll have more time to devote to all of the many ideas i have in my head, as always. (i know i'm not the only one here that has more ideas than i have time to devote!)

So anihoo... just a random, late night ramble there for you. And since i'm rambling, I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince tonight for the second time (Ethan let me go by myself a week or 2 ago.. he's so nice), so we went together tonight, and i'm also reading the last book (i actually never read the 2 before it, but since i saw this recent movie, i was jonesing to find out what happens NEXT. But i know i'll go back and read the other ones... i especially want to read more about how Ginny's and Harry's romance unfolded since they don't go into it too much in the movie.)

phew, late night rambles hurt my brain. I need sleep!

Maybe all this Harry Potter going on in my life lately explains why i seem to be secretly (or not-so-secretly?) crushing on Daniel Radcliffe. I can say that out loud right? especially since he's 20 now? he's not like, 14 anymore. i'm not embarrasing myself am i? i mean, he IS sort of dorky looking. Maybe that's why i like him. I dunno. I'm 34. Wow, i guess i'm too old to be crushing on a 20 year old, right?

maybe not?

ethan reads my blog and will not let me live this down, i'm sure. ;-) although he can't give me crap because of the earfull i get about his "top 5" which changes quite often, but lately consists of ScarJo, the girl from WipeOut (oh yes this family LOVES WipeOut!), the girl from Attack of the Show (those gamers), Zooey (i can't blame him there, i have a crush on her too), and i do believe he has a new crush on Emma Watson, oh yes, Hermione herself... and the list goes on............. hmm, me thinks i need to come up with my own Top 5, whatya think?? :-)

ok, so moving on....

here are a few pics i had time to edit.. more to come... These are my nephews and niece with Coop and Cam.. i have to say that i LOVE getting all of them together. My memories with all of my cousins growing up are some of my favorites. I love that having my cousins around alot was such an important part of my life. They were almost like my brothers and sisters. I want that for Cooper and Campbell, so much. This lot is a cute one.

 

I've had this beach towel idea in my head for like two years and FINALLY was able to pull it off! We are rarely all together at the beach. I hope we can make this a yearly event. Maybe one day we can do the same beach towel photo 10 years from now with them all grown up. ;-)

One-two-three JUMP! well, at least 3 out of 5 ain't bad. ;-) Love that sun haze in the right top corner.

The oldest boys are SO GOOD with Coop and Cam. I always feared that the age difference between Cooper and the oldest boys would be too much, and maybe it will be one day, but Ross and Brooks are SO good with him. And funnily enough, it's Brooks (the oldest) that plays with Cooper the most! Those two are very much alike i think. And one day Cam will be able to play with Cecilia more, who's only a year younger.

The two oldest boys are also SO SO good with their little sister and love on her to death. That poor girl doesn't have a chance with all of these boys around doting and kissing on her!

 

Some things I remember from this trip:

- lots of fireworks and sparklers being lit in the street

- burs getting stuck in feet

- clear nights with every star in sight

- loads of beach time (more so than we usually spend! we're not sun worshippers...)

- great weather (we weren't dying from heat exhaustion by 8am like we usually are)

- incredible food (courtesy my father-in-law who could cook any "real" chef under the table. The food he cooks often exceeds what i get at great restaurants here in atlanta.)

- night out with the "adults" while the in-laws watch all of the kids. HEAVEN.

- incredible seafood

- breezy dinner at Bud and Alley's rooftop bar

- lots of interesting cocktails (some really great, one not-so-great... let's just say my sister-in-law and i were calling it a PCB special by the end of the week... ;-) if you're from the South and you've managed to make it to Panama City Beach at some point in time, you know what that drink probably tasted like. ;-)

- killer cupcake at Queen Bee Cupcakes in Seaside.. they sell cupcakes out of an airstream! DREAMY!

- humongous stingrays floating in the water

- and lots of walking around either in your underwear, or naked. Well, at least the boys did. ;-)

 

 

 

unfortunately, the trip ended on a very sad and scary note.. Cooper had a BAD allergic reaction to a sunburn (yes, we religiously put sunblock on him, but a full day in the sun with not alot of reprieve FROM the sun, makes for a sunburned Cooper... :(... his face swelled up so much by the day we were traveling home, until we almost couldn't recognize him. SCARY. And nothing like i've ever seen. Luckily it didn't affect him internally.. no asthma or breathing problems, but the swelling is just NOW going down... after about 3 days. Poor guy! I'd love to hear any of your experiences with sunburns and allergic reactions. We've never had a problem with coop and the sun, in fact he's our tan boy! Cam is the one with the milky white skin!

gotta go to bed.. PSSSS the Tiny Bazaar 20% off sale ends after tomorrow.. just thought i'd put out that reminder. :-)

P.S. I had to come back and add that I know i said I'm 34, but i just realized that I'm actually 33. Sad that I think I'm older than i actually am, no? ;-)

One-Year Anniversary Tiny Bazaar Sale & Butterfly Festival

So, I should be packing right now for our trip to the beach, but I wanted to share with you the 20% off One-Year Anniversary Sale I'm having at Tiny Bazaar! :-)

Ever since I saw that I hit the one year mark at Etsy, i knew I wanted to have a Sale and celebrate! It's been such a fun year.. you really can't go wrong having a shop at Etsy. It's too much fun and I love being at a place where I LOVE to shop myself.

To celebrate, I have some New Prints in the shop, as well as TONS of the New Vinyl Decals! I'm so happy to have those in stock! They really turned out beautiful. Here are all of the decals that I have in stock.

Here are the new photo prints I've added, some of them you've seen already, some you haven't... some of these would be so cute hanging in a craft room, I think. :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's how the sale works: Since Etsy doesn't have a way for people to add coupon codes (booooo), this was the easiest way for me to do it. Instead of going into each listing to change the prices (UGH!) I will simply refund your 20% after you make your purchase. That's 20% off every item in the shop. The sale goes from now til next Wednesday, July, 29th. I will be out of town from the 22nd til the 26th, but I'll still have my laptop with me, so I can make refunds from there, but bare with me if it takes a day or 2. I will ship out all orders after my return on Monday.

For the decals: I've stated in those listings that if you buy 3 or more decals, you get 15% off. That is an all-the-time deal. But for this sale, each decal is 20% off, no matter how many you buy. :-)

In other news...

I'm working on a new digital frame kit.. they will be Woodgrain frames and i'm so excited about them. Who doesn't love Woodgrain? I'm working with some new silhouettes and other woodgrain styles. Be looking out for these soon!

 

This weekend we went to the Chattahoochee Nature Center's Annual Butterfly Festival.. it was totally luck that we went. I got up Saturday morning and was like, "we need something fun to do today." So I looked up events on the handy AccessAtlanta site and stumbled upon the festival. It was SO GREAT. I had no idea they had this every year. We were really impressed with it! If you're in the area, you should check it out next year, or at least check out the Nature Center, which is great too. They had crafts for the kids, a butterfly release, bubbles, butterfly kites, etc.. before the butterfly release that had some, should i say, performance art by a very quirky and eccentric bunch. :-)

I, personally, LOVED it. I eat that sort of thing up: a bunch of quirky ladies dancing around as flowers and bees... I think just to see the confused and bored looks on the very suburban adults that were there, made it ALL worth it. Lol! It was all QUITE odd, but SO wonderful at the same time. It was quite lengthy and I think they could've shortened the performance a bit (little kids have short attention spans) and got on with the butterfly release (which is what everyone wants to see!), but it was still great.

I'm not sure where these women were from.. maybe a local theater group? they were something. ;-) They really did a great job.

 

I loved their handmade costumes!

The lady there with the yellow flower hat was especially quirky and reminded me of someone who should've been in the movie Brazil (one of our favorites). If you've seen it, you know what I mean. ;-)

(Kitschy Digitals Washi Tape Frames Kit available here.)

And since i showed Cam with his face-paint, i have to show Cooper too, who was quite proud of his shark.

I have one thing to ask you guys... I'm in need of someone to create a one-stop shopping website for all of my Kitschy Digitals stuff. I had someone that I was talking with, but I'm not sure that is going to work out... SO, i'm looking for someone that tweaks, say, Wordpress or Typepad blogs and makes them into working sites that include shopping carts, etc, etc.. I'm trying to keep my costs down, so I think this route is a great route for me to go, being a small business. I can help with designing graphics etc... but I'd love someone that has some design background because I of course want it to look GOOD. :-) I also need someone that is *dependable* and available (meaning, someone that answers emails fairly promptly).

If you do this, or know someone that does, I'd love a link to a portfolio, etc. You can email me at thousandclowns (AT) yahoo.com.

Thanks!

New "I Play with Dolls" Merch

Hi! Just a quick note to let you know that I've opened my Printfection shop with merchandise using my "I Play with Dolls" Blythe inspired logo. :-) I know alot of people were interested in shirts, etc. from the batch I had printed locally. At Printfection there are tons of styles you can choose from. I have Women's fit styles, Regular fit styles, Girls' styles and a Tote Bag design. Here's a sample of what's in the shop.. make sure to look through all of the options within each section! And remember that each style is available in many colors, so be sure to click through all of the color options as well. The actual design itself is also available in 3 color options: Chocolate Brown, White (for dark colored apparel), and Light pink (also for dark colored apparel). Thanks for taking a look! I might have to order some things myself! :-)

home again, home again...

My two sweet little Boos are back. We had such a fabulous week and by the end of it, Ethan and I were READY to see the boys again. I might even say that I was missing them pretty hardcore the day before we got them back. Mostly craving the hugs and kisses. (I know, i'm such a mom.)

 

It's strange how one week of only being accountable for yourself can really refuel you. It's like just having that ONE week, has refueled me for the rest of the year. I know that sounds strange. But it's amazing what you can accomplish in one week being childless. Lol. And gaining back that sense of independence if only for a short time is good for your sanity. ;-) You remember how to be just *you* again. Ya know?

And now I feel like I got all of my "me time" out of me, at least for a while, and now I can refocus on them...

... in all of their sunny, sticky, sweet, and silly wonderfulness. :-)

I wanted to share some more photos I took on our little parenting-hiatus last week.. we went to a sunflower farm in Rutledge, GA.. about an hour from us. It's actually at the end of the season for sunflowers, but there were still tons in bloom and lucky for us, we were the only people there that day! They had just had their big Sunflower festival, so i guess everyone had their fill the weekend before. So we had the whole place to ourselves. :-) Here are some straight-from-the-camera photos so you can see.. i haven't done anything to these photos and you can tell, but so you get an idea...

I looked through my photos from 2 years ago when we went to that Festival.. look how little Cooper looks!

 

 

 

And wow, Campbell was only about 6 weeks old!.. here he is at the festival...

 

My baby!! (sniff!)

So anyhoo.....

I tried out the Through the Viewfinder process for the first time with my new Anscoflex, 100mm macro and smokestack that my VERY sweet husband made me (3 times to get it right)... you can read about this photography process here.

It's really a simple concept.. you're just taking a photo by pointing your camera (for me a digital SLR) through your smokestack (a black tube that can be made from lots of things - we used black posterboard and used the tutorial above for instructions on how to put it together).. the smokestack is connected to your antique camera (mine is an Anscoflex as was recommended to me by Tara! :-).. the smokestack essentially keeps the light out. And you focus your camera/lens on the picture that you are seeing through the viewfinder of your antique camera. The cool thing about this process is that you pick up the distortion from the lens on the old camera.. and the specks of dirt, grime or whatever that has accumulated on the lense over time and it gives you a really cool affect for your photos...

Here are 2 for the most part straight from my camera except for some saturation on the colors to make them pop more...

 

And here they are with various photoshop actions I ran on them....

 

 

There was definitely a slight learning curve with these. I really needed a step ladder because with the length of my smoke stack (I wish we had brought another camera so ethan could've taken a photo of the anscoflex/smokestack/SLR set-up), it was hard to get good shots of the very TALL sunflowers. I'll remember that stepladder next time. ;-) Luckily we found the really pretty sunflower above that was very low to the ground.

And then of course I had to bring the girls with me for some happy Blythe Sunflower photos. ;-)

They travel in style.

 

 

Margaret, the carrot top, got a much needed hair cut.. it was too long and shaggy in the back (reminded of Jennifer Anniston's first hairdo on Friends, remember? the one that everyone copied?).. it was SO not good. :-) So i chopped it into more of an angled bob in the back. Might go shorter one day.. She looks SO much better. And i'm soooo digging their Mod get-ups. LOVE!

 

It was suuuuuuuper hot out in the middle of this sunflower field in the middle of the day.. but so worth it.

And Ethan is so patient with my silly doll-posing and picture-taking.

He even held them up in the air for very long minutes at a time so i could get their photos with the sunflowers in the background... with bugs and bees swarming his head all the while. Poor guy.

;-)

The things these men do for their women! LOL. :-)

I tried to sit one of the girls in a sunflower, but the flowers weren't quite strong enough to hold them, but mostly because I didn't want to piss off any bees. Did I mention there were ALOT of bees?

In other news, I FIIINALLY got my decals in from the printer and mailed them off to customers.. They really turned out great (except for the ones that need to be reprinted.. grrr) The colors are yummy!

 

I will have these in stock in my Etsy and Kitschy Digitals {Goods} shops soon.. 

And speaking of new things in stock in my shops, I have some new Kitschy Digitals {Goods} Cut-Out Sheets in both shops! All artwork from my digital kits, but in printed form for those that just aren't interested in going "digital". ;-) You can find these in my Etsy and Kitschy Digitals {Goods} shops.

And a better look... 4 new sheets.. you just cut out the elements and use in your projects!

And last (this is a photo heavy post, no?) I wanted to share something that I FINALLY photographed.. I've had this embroidered piece by Kitschy Digitals Creative Team member Jessie Senese for MONTHS and have just now photographed it. I'm such a putz. She did another project as well that I'm keeping to myself until the embroidery pattern she used is available! :-)

On this one she used the Olivia Embroidery pattern (available here and here).. I LOVE her take on it.. I made mine a redhead, but I love her brunette version. :-) Jessie is such a talented artist. Check out the details on this! Can you believe the teeny-tiny fabric flower pin she made for her "dress"? so cute.

I also adore how she added the fabric to Olivia's dress and shoes. Seriously adorable! You can read here about how to add fabric to your own embroidery.

Jessie also writes for the super inspiring embroidery blog, Feeling Stitchy. You can see more of her work on her blog and in her flickr stream.

ok, that's all i have for now! I am scheming up a BIG giveaway and sale at Tiny Bazaar for our one-year anniversary. :-) Be looking out for that. Also, some people expressed interest in the "I Play with Dolls" shirts I designed.. i plan on selling them in a Cafe Press or Printfection shop soon, and will let you know when they're available!