My new favorite crafting tool

This year for my birthday I got the amazing Cricut Explore Air. This thing is amazing.  It cuts and writes on pretty much any material an average user needs.  You want to personalize your drinking cup? Make a greeting card? T-shirt? Earrings? You name it, this thing can probably do it.  Needless to say,  everyone is getting personalized gifts for Christmas this year.  Hopefully I'll get around soon to making a post showing some projects I've done so far.  If you see a good deal on one of these,  GET IT! they're so much fun!

Butcher Paper Cave

Sorry it's been so long between posts! It's Halloween, my favorite! So I wanted to show you guys how I made my garage into a spooky cave. This is great because you can even get kids to help with some of it. Here's the before picture.

Supplies: 

Brown package paper-dollar tree (probably about 3 or 4 rolls, I bought way too many)

trash bags

sturdy clear tape

scissors

spray paint (black, brown, maybe gold and glitter if you're feeling ambitious)

Instructions:

1. Cut the trash bags up and tape them to the surface.

2. Rip pieces of brown paper off the roll. Size and shape don't really matter, and crumple them up tight. If you don't do some as tight, that's ok. This is the best step to get kids in on. It's actually pretty difficult to mess this step up. Too big? Rip some off. Too small? Don't throw it away! We'll use those too. 

3. Take the larger pieces and open them up and tape the edges down on the inside, like a bubble (or in this case, something slightly resembling a rock). 

4. Before you tape up the whole piece, take some smaller pieces and stuff them in it to keep it looking full. 

5. Once you have all the paper on and sturdy, take your spray paint and just kind of hit the low lying areas ever so gently (It could be possible to overdo this, it's just for highlights, so go easy)

6. If you're feeling extra ambitious, you could put some lights around it, or even take clumps of grass and set them in there.

 Have some fun with it! (I have one of those lights that has ghosts and bats flying through it when it gets dark)

New Beginnings

      Hello, and welcome to my strange little crafting blog. I thought my first post would just be about myself, what I do, and what I'm working with.
My name is Kellye McDonald, and I am part of a big family that always has something going on. I love to make all sorts of stuff, whether it is weird, cute, yummy, big, shiny, original, you name it. Almost always I come from a budget of at or below free, and stay as near that as possible.
So since this is a craft blog, and I try to work first with what I have,  I should tell you a little about some of the things I keep on hand.
This is my basic sewing machine. I got it on clearance. That box behind it has all my needles and threads.

Next is one of my more specialty items. It's my projector. I LOVE this thing, and I spent under $200 for it.

I keep all my small craft items in a SUPER handy rolling craft organizer. Before I had this thing, my stuff was everywhere.

In it I have:

•  hot glue guns with LOTS of glue sticks, 
• school glue
• several boxes of crayons (I picked up a pack of I think 16 boxes several years ago),
•  a box with my pens, pencils, map pencils, sharpies, washable markers, highlighters, and general writing utensils. (My specialty pens, like glitter pens, chalk markers, and glitter markers are in individualized elastic bands inside the lid.) 
• tape- washi tape, scotch tape, duck tape, electrical tape, painters tape, scrapbook tape runners, and packing tape
• scissors- both regular and specialty cutting
• ribbon
• paper- notebook, computer, tissue, construction, and specialty scrapbook (Y'all, that stuff goes on sale SO often, many times for HALF off!)
• wooden skewers (they're seriously cheap and you'd be surprised what you can do with them)
• paint-spray, fabric, glitter, acrylic
• paintbrushes 
• stencils- fancy letters, basic letters, shapes/designs
• yarn
• fishing line (it sounds random, it's not. I LOVE that stuff.)
• cotton balls
• office supplies- ruler, stapler, staples, hole punch
• rubber bands
• SHINIES- stick on shinies, loose shinies, strands of shiny beads and pearls, teeny tiny shiny beads (I love shiny!)
• Small random leftovers from previous projects that I might reuse

I'm always looking for stuff that I could use on sale, clearance, pawn shops, garage sales; you know, free or close to it.
That's all for now, please share and subscribe.