Favorite Things FRIDAY!

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things"...

1. Crafting with my mom. Mama Baula is one, very crafty lady, but way too humble to admit it! Today, she helped me prepare mini books that are made out of paper lunch bags.

My dining table has been an extension of my sweatshop craft room these days...

Lunch paper sacks just begging to be embellished! :)

A baby girl brag book...

2. Dim Sum lunch breaks. I took my dad out for an early Father's Day lunch at one of our favorite dim sum restaurants in Las Vegas...

3. Saving moolah! After lunch I wanted to use a couple of coupons that expire tomorrow at a local craft store. People that know me know that I am cheap, frugal, broke obsessed with coupons. All of you out there that craft know that making pretty things can cost a pretty penny, and I like to keep as many of those pretty pennies in my pretty little pocket! Today, I took advantage of Joann's paper sale (5 for $1... score) and bought a bunch of card stock for future projects. I also bought a few fabric remnants and a scoring blade for my dad. (Yes, my dad! He wants to get in on this craftiness, too, and who am I to stop him?!) With the sale and my coupons I spent $53.45 and saved $105.16! Isn't that crazy? If you haven't jumped on the coupon train yet, I highly suggest that you do. Chugga chugga, Choo choo!

Happy Friday to you!

Minding Our Business 2

Ok, so I'm already procrastinating my blogging duties; sorry everyone! Last week business progress consisted of learning a little bit about tax laws for small businesses. What we really learned was that we had a lot more to learn, and I mean a lot. We met an enrolled agent named Cindy McCleister who had come to speak to the Etsy group we belong to. She was very straight forward and knowledgable. I'd recommend her to any small business owner. Cindy gave us all a very broad overview and then answered as many questions as she could in the short time she was there. We need to do a bunch more research on the tax front so we don't end up like Willy Nelson, only without the whole being world famous and generally awesome thing. Tomorrow we are meeting with our lawyer friend Mike to pick his brain and get some more advice. Thanks in advance for reading this and continuing to bear with us as we change and fine tune our blog. More is soon to come, have a good night world.

Reduce, Reuse, UPcycle...

It's true, today was the last day of school with kids, so you know what that means?! 3 whole months of creating in my sweatshop craft room! Well, after my National Boards Exam, that is... (It's on Monday morning, so pleeeease send good vibes, thanks!)

Lately, I've been obsessed with upcycling. What the h is upcycling, you may ask? It's simply the process of converting an industrial nutrient (material) into something of similar or greater value, in its second life. Since I'm a coffee addict, it's been easy collecting Starbucks coffee sleeves to make pretty little mini albums:

Here are a few photos from a birthday mini album that I'm planning on adding to our Etsy site really soon:

And this is an album that I made for my bf, Andrew:

They took me about an hour or so to make each mini album, and it's easy to add journaling tags and notes in the pockets. Aren't they fun? You should try to make one!

I challenge you to begin looking at used/useless items and transforming them into something better, prettier, and charming!Click here for a tutorial that you can follow. Happy crafting!

Free at last, Free at last....

... Well, at least one of us is. And only partially. So, maybe that was not the most appropriate title after all. Hmmm.... will strive to improve my blog titling skills.

What was I referring to? Gracie's last day of school is tomorrow! She is free of fourth graders for 3 whole months. But, she still has to study for her National Boards exam so cross your fingers for her. Good luck Gracie - have a great last day tomorrow!

For the other two Paper Dolls, its business as usual. No 3 months off for us, suckers. But, there is still something about summer in Vegas that makes you feel free. And hot! So, its that time again -lets ramp up the sweat shop. The Harvest Festival is coming up in September and we would really like to participate. There is a lot of work involved in even registering - you have to have a photo or sketch of your display, descriptions of your product, photos of you making your crafts, oh, and a $500 fee. Sheesh! But, we're going to make it happen. We'd love to hear from any other crafters who have participated in the Harvest Festival - let us know how it went, any tips you might have, dos and donts, etc? If you don't make crafts yourself but have attended the event before, tell us what you love the most about it and what your favorite crafts to shop for are. Are you buying gifts for fall holidays or Christmas or are you just out shopping for things you love with your favorite friend?

Finally, a big thank you to all of our new followers! We appreciate you baring with us while we figure out the technical side of blogging. Have a great Thursday tomorrow, we know Gracie will. Keep crafting

Minding Our Business

Hi, soon to be loyal blog-reader-friends, I'm going to introduce you to another regular segment on our blog. It's going to deal with the steps we're taking and progress we're making in opening our own brick-and-mortar scrapbook supplies etc. shop. This highly anticipated event will hopefully take place a year from now and be appropriately and charmingly, if we do say so ourselves, called: Paper Dolls. This week, the progress we've made is in our blog. Now this is still definitely a work in progress; we're planning lots of changes and improvements. I don't think we'll continue to have Spanish captions for example, fine language though it is. So keep checking back with us and live vicariously through the many successes and failures we're bound to experience along the way to realizing one of our dreams. You are hereby given an invitation to share in our journey and a save-the-date card to our Grand Opening on July 1st, 2012. Talk to you soon and see you there!