Polyvore Addicts Anonymous

Hi, my name is Samantha, and I'm a Polyvore addict.

*waits for fellow addicts to say "Hi"*

It is my new favorite past time. If I don't have anything to do, I will usually try to find a reason to play on it. I mainly play on it for "Glee"-related purposes (two of my new favorite blogs, "What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear?" and "Glee Dork" both sponsor "Glee"-related fashion challenges regularly, WHEEEE), but I am now going back through the archives of "What Claudia Wore" to find descriptions of the fabulous early-90's fashions of the Baby-Sitters Club members (a book series I read RELIGIOUSLY as a pre-teen) and see if I can translate it to modern fashion. So far, I'm actually making some pretty cute sets! Go fig, Ann M. Martin and her ghostwriters were ahead of their time!

Below are links to two collections I've created, one for "Glee" and one for "BSC". So fun it should be illegal! It feeds that shopping/fashion craving when I'm not feeling so fashionable (nor can I afford to shop), and at the same time it's also helping re-ignite my desire to take better care of myself... I've fallen into an "ugly" slump again, where I don't care about my hair or doing my makeup or looking cute. It usually relates to stress, unfortunately, but I feel the stress alleviating again and I'm noticing that I want to be cute again, too. Yay!

Glee goes to prom!


The Timeless Fashions of the Baby-Sitters Club Series

Wedding Wednesday

When I posted about my sister's wedding a couple Wednesdays ago, I realized that, hey, I've been involved in a lot of weddings, including my own, and there has been DIY elements in most of them. Granted, a fair amount of them I made the jewelry and that's the end of my involvement, but mine was a collaboration of several crafty people to make it happen.

There was a fair amount of DIY in my wedding, so I'm not going to BOMBARD anyone with it all at once. Instead, I'll just focus on a section of DIY projects that were under the same "umbrella" of crafting for that area. So this week: Invites!

I am VERY fortunate in that I have an acquaintance who is a fantastic graphic designer and photographer (Kristin Cofer), so she took our engagement portraits, and then made a lovely Save-The-Date postcard design, which we printed via overnightprints.com on her recommendation.

My ex-stepmom (and mother of my siblings) D'Lin helped my then-18-year-old sister organize my bridal shower, as Sami was my maid-of-honor. They made the invitation for my bridal shower, and it was super-cute:

I love the bride in the middle and the fold-out/cut-out effects. So cute!


Finally, my mom, the scrapbooking/card-making queen, made our wedding invites. All 70+ of them. OY. I tried to help, but this was before I started making cards myself, and at one point my mom just told me to stop and go do something else (nicely). xD She found those adorable circle stickers in the middle of the hearts, they came 12 in a set and each sticker was different, so each invite was different, too! =) The inside was the info printed on decorated vellum.

(Certain parts blurred, obviously, for safety from internet stalkers)

So while I'm not about to put our invite-related goods up against, say, Kenzie Kate, or Hello!Lucky, but considering the invites were NOT an area of the budget we wanted to spend a ton of money on, they beyond served their purpose while looking really cute and meeting the general decorative theme of my wedding (which, yes, was pink and flowers. Not as tacky and young as it sounds, I promise - and will prove later with photographs). Doing it ourselves met our basic needs for a lot less money than if we'd gone through a professional; there's nothing wrong with that, naturally, and if we'd had the money to throw at it, we would have, but it was an easy area to cut the costs and still be happy with the final product. =)

Yay, Weddings! Next time: Favorite wedding websites for cribbing ideas from!

Mother's Day!

So for El Dia De Los Madres, I made cards! SHOCKER. Seriously, though, who doesn't like receiving cards in the mail? ;D

These are the cards I made, from top to bottom: my mom, my paternal grandmother, and my maternal grandmother. My favorite is the one for my mom, and while I like the idea behind the last one, I need to work it out better. Meh. Will continue to play with that one.

My mom loved her card, which made me happy, esp. because she's the one who got me started crafting cards! She does fantastic scrapbook pages, and she shows me all sorts of neat new techniques to try. We couldn't be together this past mother's day, but this upcoming weekend we'll be having a "crafty day" together to make up for it. Can't wait!