Makeup Station Makeover

I love makeup!  I love makeup of ALL kinds.  I am not a makeup snob,  I have equal amounts of high end and drugstore brands.  I love trying new products, whether a friend suggested something to me, or Ulta has a mega sale on a certain item or if Ipsy sends me something new in my glam bag.  

About 6 months ago, I had to move my makeup to one of my spare bedrooms because my collection was overpowering my tiny bathroom.  One of my storage units literally tipped over from the weight of my collection..  When I moved it in there, this is what it looked like.  

Although it served it's purpose, look how messy it is.  And every time I tried to open the top drawers on the left, the whole cart would start rolling towards me.  Plus, I had to stand to apply my makeup and I'm extremely lazy.  

For months and months, I had my eye on a desk that was at my mom's house.  In my eyes, it was perfect for a makeup station.  The only problem was getting it to my house.  You see, this desk is quite heavy.  Like dead hooker heavy.  My nickname is not Muscles and I wasn't sure who would be able to help me drag it into my house and up the stairs of my 2 story home.  But the stars aligned and baby Jesus smiled upon me and all that good crap.  The desk has arrived!  

Behold!  All my makeup is in or on this desk.  Look how clean, look how organized!  I momentarily struggled with how I was going to organize the drawers and I think I came up with a system that works for me.  

The top drawer on the right had all of my face products (foundations, face primers, setting powders, highlighters and bronzers).  I use these on the daily.  I needed easy access to them.

The next drawer down is where I keep my blushes and my face wipes.  

The last drawer on the right is actually a deep double drawer and this is where I keep all of my cosmetic bags.  I actually have a shit ton of them.  

The middle drawer is for all of my eye liners, eye primers, mascaras and brow powder.  I got the divider trays from the Principal Financial Group when it went out of business.  Office inserts organize makeup wonderfully.  On a side note, I've had that lit makeup mirror for about 15 years now.  

The drawer on the top left is for my cream based shadows, pigments, some single shadows, NYX jumbo pencils and my neutral shadow palettes.  I use the neutral palettes on the regular so they were a top drawer item for me.  

The next drawer needs a little help.  It's all eye shadows.  It includes small palettes and quads.  I will be getting some sort of dividers for these to better organize them.  

The next drawer is for most of my other palettes.  These palettes are more on the travel sized.  I only use these on a semi regular basis so they are fine closer to the floor.  The last drawer at this point is empty.  I'm sure I'll find something to put in there.  

The lip products are what I struggled with the most.  You see, I consider lips to be top drawer too however with my face and eye being towards the top, the only space I had was the bottom drawer and that wasn't going to work for me.  So I opted to keep one of my smaller plastic storage units on top of the desk.  It had 3 drawers allowing me to separate by gloss, pencils and sticks.  

And I kept another even smaller plastic storage unit which includes tinted moisturizers, extra foundations and other tools such as scissors and tweezers.  

I keep my false lashes in there.  

And these are great for all those samples of perfume you get.  

CRAFTY TIME!  I made these brush holders out of Campbell soup cans and scrapbook paper!  Just cut the paper to the height of the can, wrap it around the can and then glue it.  

I have built in shelves in the spare bedroom.  I use this for my perfumes and my big makeup palettes.  P.S.  I AM a perfume snob.  

And lastly, just for shits and giggles, this is the nail polish slash body spray/lotion slash wig part of the spare bedroom.  

So, I love my makeup station.  I love that I haven't had to invest any money in it.  I used stuff that I had or was given to me, including the chair I sit on.  And I can take my old storage unit to the craft room.  I'm excited to be updating my hair station soon.  

I hope you enjoyed my makeup station makeover and I hope my storage solutions were helpful.

Thanks, 

Jules 

Girly Bubble Gum Birthday Card

Hi, everybody!  I'm back with another birthday card.  I enjoyed making the bubble gum birthday card for my dad's birthday so much that I decided it was time to finally use the Bubble Gum machine Doodle-Pop sticker for my friend Josi, who turned 12 last month.  

This was a 4 x 5 3/4 card.

The polka dot paper is by Pebbles "Hip Hip Hooray" Party Time and it is cut to approximately 2 1/2 x  5 3/4.  

I have the solid yellow card stock (which I believe was textured) cut to 1 1/2 x 5 3/4. 

The polka dot ribbon is5 3/4 inches.  

Then I cut textured light blue paper into a square 2 1/4 x 2 3/4.  

Next I cut a solid flat lavender paper into a smaller square 2 x 2 1/2.  

I adhered it left center of the card, overlapping both papers and the ribbon.  

The cute bubble gum machine, as a I mentioned before, is Doodlebug Designs Doodle-Pop in "Gumball".  

I believe the Happy Birthday banner is from K&Company.  

Happy Birthday, Josi!  I hope you had a great day and enjoyed this card.  

Love, 

Poison Ivy aka Julie 

Daddio

I made 2 cards in the month of June, both for my dad.  1 for Father's Day and the other for his birthday on the 22nd.  I'm going to start with the Father's Day card.  

Unfortunately, I don't know the brand of any of the supplies for this one although I know I got the letters from Tuesday Morning.  

I put some junk food in a mason jar for presentation.  Presentation is half of the gift. 

My dad with his card. 

And on to the birthday card.  I also do not have the brand of any of these supplies.  I went with a gumball theme even though I'm pretty sure my dad doesn't chew bubble gum.  The only other theme that would have gone with the "Blowing birthday wishes your way" stamp wouldn't have been appropriate for this blog.  

There he is again!  

Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.  How many pieces do you wish?  

I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July.  I plan on spending time with my family.  I will take a stab at that firework cake that has been floating around Pinterest.  I also will be making my highly requested tortilla roll-ups and some brownies.  

Stay safe and don't blow off your hand, 

Jules

May Cards

Long time, no blog.  I wish I could say I've been living it up and have been too busy but sadly, I've just been too lazy.  

My first card was made for my friend, Jennifer's birthday. Here are the supplies: 

• Paper from The Paper Studio "Tie Dye Lime"
• Flowers from Dahlia Layered Burlap Flowers "Little Yellow Bicycle"
• 1 paper lunch sack
• I got the free printable maze from here: The Joy of Stamping.  

I bought the paper months before making the card.  I immediately thought of Jennifer when I saw this tie-dyed cloth paper.  I struggled with what I was going to use to decorate it with but decided "natural" was the theme I was going to go with.  Jennifer once showed me her Smash journal and inside I noticed a finger labyrinth.  So I was lucky enough to stumble upon the website with a free printable maze.  It also had the cute phrase "you're a-maze-ing".  I printed it on the lunch sack to keep with the natural theme.  

Jennifer and her nature card

Next up, Mother's Day!  

• 1 fuchsia colored sold paper.
• 1 turquoise colored solid paper
• The Paper Studio "Poteeka  Butterflies"
• Turquoise & White Silk Flowers by The Paper Studio "Spare Parts"
• Monogram 3-D Sticker Embellishment Letters (in M & O) from The Paper Studio "La Petites"

My mom and her Mother's Day card

And a birthday card for my friend, Wendy!  

• 1 piece of black solid paper
• Bright Pink & Black Silk Flowers by the Paper Studio "Spare Parts"
• Glittery leopard print paper from the Recollections "All Girl" paper pad
• Solid pink paper for birthday sentiment
• Stickles
• "Happy Birthday" stamp

I outlined the glittery paper in Stickles

Wendy and Rhoda with the card.

I made Wendy some Scotcheroos and monster cookies!  

And here's a graduation card for my friend, Stacy's daughter Justice

• The blue paper is by Bazzill "Mediterranean"  
• The red paper is by Bazzill "Ruby Slipper"
• Graduation gown and stars by Jolee's Boutique "Kindergarten Grad" (even though my grad was a high schooler!)
• The "Congrats" sticker was by Soft Spoken

And last but not least, an artist themed birthday card for Miss Miranda!  

• Paper is "Recollections "Multi Paint Splatter"
• Smock and paint stickers from Jolee's Boutique "Artist"
• Jolee's Boutique Stickers "Bright Colored Pencils"
• Solid paper in orange
• Solid paper in white
• "Happy Birthday" stamp

7 year old Miranda holding up her card!  

I hope you enjoyed all of my cards!  See ya soon!  

Love, 

Miss Jules

The soundtrack to most of this card making:

A Mermaid Card

Good afternoon!  I'm busy working away in my craft room today.  I can't tell you the last time my craft room has been cleaned top to bottom.  I can't even tell you the last time my craft table top has been spotless.  I've added so many fun craft paper and tools to my stash in the past year, I haven't had a chance to put it all away.  I actually plan on doing a craft room show and tell in the near future here in this blog so look out for that.

Let's get down to business!  I have another birthday card today.  This one is for my dearest friend Stacy.  She turned 35 years old last week and we celebrated over the weekend.  She wanted to be treated to dinner and a movie for her birthday so we ended up seeing Evil Dead.  What did I think of the movie?  I was entertained but it was more gruesome than scary.  That's pretty much how I feel about a lot of horror films of this generation.  I'm glad I saw it and will continue to see today's horror films hoping one of them will terrify me.  I hear they're remaking Poltergeist.  I'm kind of excited about that because the first one scared me.  Then again I was about the same age as Carol Anne when I saw it, had the same console television as her and was convinced I would get sucked into the damn thing.

Here's the fabulous birthday card I made for Miss Stacy!  I'm still learning how to color hair.  Unfortunately, I didn't have all the Copic markers to make the dark blonde that I wanted to.  Michael's had a limited selection and didn't have any in the E50's.  So I will be ordering some online soon along with a the colors for redheads and brunetttes.

The stamp came from Simply Betty Stamps.  It's a digital stamp from their Merkids line and it's on sale right now for $2, along with the rest of the Merkids.  I got the Christmas and Halloween stamps too.  

The sandy colored paper was from Core'dinations.  I couldn't find the actual name of it.  What I can tell you is I bought it from Joann's, it's kind of a sand color and it's glitzy.  

I bought the DCWV Linen Closet matstack cardstock pack that come in size 4.5 x 6.5 inches.  The pack comes with 72 pieces, some matte with texture, some shiny and some glittery.  For this card, I chose a matte blue with texture to place over the top of the sandy cardstock.  Then I chose a lighter blue glittery piece from the same pack and cut it into an oval shape with my Creative Memories oval cutter.   

Next I placed my Copic colored mermaid in the oval.  I adhered her with 3D stamps.  

I made the Happy Birthday tag with all three of the same paper, layered.  I used the boxy crazy scissors for the outside of the tag in hopes it would resemble a sand castle.  Nailed it!  

I found the My Mind's Eye "The Sweetest Thing" enamel dots at Michaels.  I placed them around the mermaid's head to look like bubbles.  

 I used some seashells for the bottom.  You can get these at most craft stores.  I just used regular Scotch glue.  

And to add some elegance, I adhered the Recollections Adhesive Faux pearls.  

Warning: Do not attempt to send this card in the mail! 

The sentiment comes from Fiskars "Make a Wish" quotes.

Stacy, the mermaid come to life!

Thanks for stopping by!  I loved making this card and I love the person I made it for!  

Whozits and whatzits galore, 

Jules

Creating a Shadow Box Garden

Happy lazy Sunday to everybody!  I hope you're all enjoying your day.  It's a beautiful day here in Iowa.  The sun is showing its face here and there and the furnace hasn't kicked on too much today.  And for me, it's the best Sunday ever...a Sunday with no plans!

Last August two of my favorite squirrelfriends, Jennifer and her daughter Miranda, went to the Brucemore's Arts and Garden show.  Brucemore is a a mansion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Every year they host an event where artists and garden vendors set up to sell their products.  We met a vendor called In the Country Garden and Gifts where I found a beautiful flapjack plant.

I fell in love with it, and the cost for the arrangement wasn't too terrible, so I purchased it.  We noticed they had a sign up page for classes on succulents in the Spring of 2013 so we signed up.  

I was so excited when I finally got the email with all the Spring classes.  I thought the shadow box gardens looked like the most fun.  

Jennifer, Miranda and I visited the country yesterday for the shadow box class.  And even though our allergies were kicking our asses, we had so much fun.  I highly recommend taking a succulent class of some sort.  

We got to choose from different size boxes (I chose the biggest, of course) and we also got to choose as many plants as we wanted to put in the shadow box.  

They had different sized drift wood, rocks and plant pots.  We were instructed to arrange our wood and plant pots first.  Here we are starting out!    

After you've arranged the wood and pots, then you add your plants.  In my shadow box, I used some pots to hold the plants.  I also placed a piece of drift wood across the box,  creating a bed to put my plant in.

Once your plants are placed, you can then add accessories such as pea gravel, mushrooms, moss, etc.  The shop had cute little ladybugs, flowers and butterflies for us to choose.  

Helping Miranda hot glue a butterfly accessory.  

Miranda & I helping each other with the pea gravel.  Or P Rock as we called it.  

Miranda and her finished products.  She ended up making another small garden.

Jennifer's finished product.

My finished product, minus a butterfly that I added on last minute.

It was great to see everyone's shadow boxes.  I think all of us in the class were being inspired by one another.  Once you start, it's hard to stop.  You just want to keep adding more.  

My shadow box will be hanging on my dining room wall, arranged with some family photos. And it will look fabulous!  

See ya in the garden,

Jules