Featured in a Youtube Video: das Kinder Geister (the children ghosts)

A customer who purchased an instant cemetery from my etsy store used it as a background in this short, how cool is that?! There are a lot of great shots of the cemetery and the moss that she used makes it look super creepy.

Beaded Tree of Life Ornament

I have long admired the tree of life pendants that I've seen on etsy and I thought that they would make good Christmas ornaments. This is my first attempt at any sort of wire wrapping and I can see how it would be addicting.
I really like how it turned out, the two different colors of glass pearls really give it more interest and depth. I will definitely be making more of these, maybe I could use up some of my gigantic bead stash or maybe I could buy some new pretties to play with.

MIA

I know that I have been missing in action for about a month, the Halloween instant cemetery rush has been insane!!!, but in a good way :). I have been making a few other things, but it's stuff I have already shared on this blog, like recycled crayons and polymer clay ornaments.

I have been working on some new things for my etsy store that I will share soon, but today for a little "me" crafty time I have been making stamps from corks. I saw TracyU's journals on flickr and was inspired to make some personal stamps to use for a visual journal of my own.

The restaurant where I work is closing its doors next week and there is this huge box of corks behind the bar, so I took a few (think 95). These are all synthetic corks, they're kind of like spongy rubber and give a crisper image than regular corks. I was hoping to use my linoleum cutter for the carving, but it did not work well, I got better results just using an exacto knife. The best part is if you mess up just cut it off and start over.So far I have made a cupcake, a candle, two different hearts, two different clouds, a sun, and a moon. I used both ends so I have only used four corks! It took me about an hour to carve eight. I'm hoping to make at least one alphabet. I think that using acrylic paint will work well with these stamps and give me more color options, currently I only have a black stamp pad. I will also embellish some the images with gel pens or glitter for more detail.

I have made stamps using erasers, styrofoam meat trays, those pink easy cut blocks, and fun foam stuck to wood or acrylic blocks. I love making my own stamps!