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| Trust your talents, trust your life and trust that your thoughts will lead you to joy. |
| Tuesday, November 6, 2007 |
Hi ! It is 10:53am in Flint, Michigan. I have had a difficult evening and a difficult morning. I turned to prayer and was inspired to pick up an old issue of Country Market Place. I turned to an article by Tera Leigh, "Trust Your Talent". I began to read and as I read this wonderful article I realized trust was an issue I needed to learn more about not only in relationship to my talents but also in relationship to my life as a whole.
Than after my prayer and after reading, "Trust Your Talents" I felt a new hope. May I share a few of the text from this wonderful article. Maybe these words will responate with you as they have with me.
Tera Leigh said to, Reaquaint yourself with Trust. She reminds us to "trust in the process". She goes on to say, "You have to trust that no matter how many times you have to start over, somewhere inside of you is the answer." Of course she is referring to the creative process. But isn't life full of creative opportunities. Each and every day we literally create our life by the thoughts we think. Our thoughts do create the life we live. What we think about comes about.
To continue on with Tara Leigh's words, "You have to believe that you will ultimately get there, which is where trust comes in. With each attempt, you learn. You discard what doesn't work and replace it with what does. You do not lose anything: You gain experience and practice. As part of the journey, you will have some things that don't work, but success comes when you concentrate on what does work and move on from there".
"The worst thing to do is to give up. You have to have faith in your own ability. When you get stuck and the voice of insecurity arises, the only thing that can pull you forward is trust."
Even though this article was speaking to the artistic creative process. I do believe her words were given to me today to remember that trust, hope and faith work hand and hand to give our life direction and meaning. My daughter Christy, when she was little she would ask me the following question, "mommy why don't I have any artistic talents" I looked at her with love and said, "your talents are greater than mine you have people talent". My words to her were not words of comfort but words of truth. I trusted that what the spirit shared with me was what was true for her. She is a gifted speaker, teacher and people are attracted to her. She lives a live of service to others.
The American Hertage Dictionary defination of Talent is: Natural endowment or ability of a superior quality. Our God has endowed each person with talents go forth with trust and use your talents today in a way that will bless others. We are each upon this planet to live life in such a way that what we do touches others in a special unselfish manner. Trust your talents, trust your life and trust that your thoughts will lead you to joy, good works and endow your life with superior quality. |
posted by Rochelle Beach @ 11:05 AM   |
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| Cinna-Minnies and Friends FREE Holiday Specials E-Book |
| Friday, November 2, 2007 |
Click Banner To Download The FREE E-book
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| posted by Rochelle Beach @ 9:59 PM |
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| How to Make Artificial Snow For Snowman Crafts |
| Wednesday, October 17, 2007 |
Need most generally inspires creativity at least that has always been my experience. Yesterday I had a need for artifical snow to adorn two of the snowmen crafts for an order I was working on.
I reached over to the shelf where I keep my snowtex but to my surprise it was not there. I remembered that it had dried out and I through it away, fully intending to purchase another jar during my next shopping trip to Jo Ann's. Since a new jar was not sitting on the shelf you guessed it I forgot to make that purchase. My thoughts quickly turned to "how to make artifical snow.
Here I sat with an order that I promised would go out the next day and no snowtex . For some strange reason I remembered someone telling me the easiest way to trim Styrofoam was to take two pieces of Styrofoam and rub them together. I had to do that for a project I was working on last year.
A picture of a small pile of styrofoam particles soon appeared in my mind. The particles were the direct byproduct of rubbing the styrofoam pieces together as I was shaping the styrofoam for one of my projects.
Hmmmm thoughts of mixing glue, paint and styrofoam particles together filled my mind. Only a true dyed in the wool crafter understands these ah hah moments. So that is what I did. I mixed glue, Acrylic paint and styrofoam particles together. The finished product looked just like artifical snow.
This mixture was light not heavy, that appealed to me right away. Since I use a lot of this stuff on my snowmen crafts around this time of the year. The fact that it will not add a lot of extra weight to any of my snowmen decorations, is a shipping plus for me.
Remember I took supplies from my craft stash and used what I had on hand to create the artifical snow. Some of the recipes on line called for sugar, some used sawdust, and some used sand. I had sugar on had but worried about using sugar. If I want to ad some sparkle it seems to me that fine white glitter and or mica flakes would be a great product to sprinkle on the wet artifical snow. Both options will give whatever desired effect you want and lots of sparkle. My simple recipe for how to make artifical snow is below. Have fun!
Cinna-Minnies Quick and Easy Fake Snow Recipe
SUPPLIES
2 large round white styrofoam balls
1 ounce of a two oz. jar of Acrylic Paint I used
what I had on hand Americana Bleached Sand
2 oz. white craft glue I used Titebond All Purpose Glue
Step 1: This is the hardest part. Rub the two styrofoam balls together.
You want to rub them in such way to produce a fine mess of styrofoam rubbings you will need about 1/2 cup.
As you can see the styrofoam balls are releasing the fine mess of styrofoam powder/particles.
I have about all I need to mix with the paint and glue now and still have a lot of the styrofoam balls left to make another batch at another time. I like making small batches of the fake snow. Making smaller batches keeps the fake snow fresh and easy to work with.
Step 2: measure the glue and arcrylic paint and mix them together in a container that you can keep closed to keep the mixture from drying out. I used a tupperware storage
container.
Step 3: Add the styrofoam rubbings a tablespoon at a time and mix all 3 ingredients together. Keep adding the styrofoam rubbings until the mixture is the consistency of applesauce. Your mixture should look similar to the picture below. The color of your mixture may different according to the color of acrylic paint that you choose to use.
Last night after I posted this info to my Cinna-Minnies Blog. I decided to apply the fake snow to one of our round cinnamon blanks (this is what John makes with the left over cinnamon dough after a day of cutting out the cinnamon ornaments) I wanted to test how long it would take the fake snow to dry and show you how the fake snow looks when it is dry. As you can see in the picture below the wet mix which is the consistency of applesauce, is to the left. The fake snow that I applied to the round cinnamon ornament has dried hard.
Hopefully the addition of this picture will give you an idea what it will look like when you apply it to your own country craft and primitive country decor creations. One final note, the thicker you apply the fake snow the longer it will take to dry. Patience is a good friend when it comes to the drying time. It does dry rock hard.
That is it. You now have made your own light weight fake snow to adorn all of your winter craft projects.
Some other things to consider. It is always a good idea to experiment to see what will work for your particular project. My items are small so something light and just a small amount is sufficient the primitive country crafts that I do with my cinnamon modeling clay.
If I had sawdust at hand I may have used sawdust instead of the styrofoam particles. I plan to use different colors of acrylic paint and very fine glitter.
Have fun I hope my recipe for artifical snow works as great for you as it worked for me.
All rights reserved Copyright © 2007 by Rochelle Beach
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| posted by Rochelle Beach @ 9:27 PM |
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| How we got our first computer and our Cinna-Minnies website continued part 2 |
| Tuesday, October 16, 2007 |
How we got our first computer and our Cinna-Minnies website continued part 2
After I made the decision to sell our Cinnamon Clay Ornaments , Cinnamon Modeling Clay Mix kits and Handmade Dolls on the web, my next decision was to find a webhost and someone to create my website . I used google as my search engine of choice to find Primitive Country Crafts websites. Each time I found a website which appealed to me I bookmarked it. The first thing I looked for at each site was who was hosting their site and who created their graphics . Eighty percent of the websites that I bookmarked were all created and maintained by http://www.theolddrawinboard.com/ .
The next thing I noticed, many of the gals that had websites at the old drawin board were also women whose products looked familar to me. It quickly became apparent to me that many of them sold thier patterns at quilt shops. These were gals whose patterns I had admired form a distance. Now I was going to be in a community of websites with women who are at the top of thier profession. It was very important to me for my website to be housed within community of other designers that I admired and that my website graphics would compliment my product line and finally that I could trust the person who would be maintaining my website.
I sent Jennie an email requesting information. Within a few hours I received a email form Jennie. I was very impressed with the care and concern that was shown to me by Jennie and Tammy. It will be 8 years since I made the decision to hire the old drawin board gals. Jennie and I work very well together. She is a generous person and does many of my updates the same day. Our working relationship has turned into a friendship which I am most grateful for.
Having a website has allowed us to ship our country crafts and primitive country decor cinnamon collectibles to many households across the United States and overseas. It is such fun to view my stats program to discover where my website visitors are coming from. It is truly a small world.
During these past 8 years, I have learned many things about maintaining a website, producing products for resale, search engine optimization work, designing and marketing. I hope to share many of my simple but useful and prohitable discoveries with you in future postings . I love being on the web. Running a home based business is full of many adventures and mine is still Scent-sational ! |
| posted by Rochelle Beach @ 5:03 PM |
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| How we got our first computer n' our Cinna-Minnies website part 1 / 2 |
| Wednesday, October 3, 2007 |
Eight years ago, soon after we became empty nesters we decided it was time to bring a computer into our home. QVC (one of our favorite places to shop) had a computer as todays special value the price was unbeatable and easy payments sealed the deal for me. I told John I was ordering the computer mostly for him. After all I did not know anything about computers not even how to turn one on.
The day the computer came I was so excited. I called John at work and told him to hurry home so he could set our computer up. He was nearly as excited as I was. If I remember correctly we got take out that night. John and Joe our son in law (these two are so good looking) worked together and had the computer up and running within an hour.
Here it sat on top of my desk a computer all set up ready to go and all I could think of was, "how do I turn this thing on, and what am I going to do with it. John showed me how to turn it on and Joe showed us how to get on to the world wide web.
John and I made an agreement. I would work on the computer during the day while he was at work. When he arrived home we would eat dinner, than he took his time at the computer, that was purchased mostly for him. You know what is coming next.......it was not long until I told John we each needed our own computer.
I found a whole new world the ' information highway'. Being a curious person and always seeking knowledge here was a gold mine of all sorts of information just for the asking......well asking my good searching buddy, Google. As I become more familiar with the computer John got less and less computer time. We both realized that he needed his own computer. We became a two computer household a few years later. Today three computers grace our home, his, mine and one for the grandchildren when they visit.
Craft shows was our choosen way to sell Cinna-Minnies. The summer shows were hot, dirty and sometimes as all crafters know who do shows slow with very little monetary reward. Some shows were the exception. The fall and winter shows were the best. Just imagine setting your wares up at around 7 am and not sitting down until about 1/2 hour before the show ended. Crowds and crowds of people were lined up, two rows side by side, each of them holding the Cinna-Minnies of their choice. It was a fun and exciting time but very hard work.
John did all of the heavy work, setting our display up and taking it down, packing everything up driving up home and all of the duties working the craft show curcuit. Once I realized that other people were selling their crafts on -line I told John that I was thinking very seriously about selling our cinnamon ornaments, dolls, and country prim home decor items on the web. He thought that was a great idea. Craft shows were taking a lot of our time and all of the travel, setting up show fees etc. We were ready for a change.
Once I decided I wanted a website it was time to do some research. I am known in our family for being the research queen . Google became my best friend as I used their search engine to search out all of the websites that sold craft related items and in particular handmade crafts. I typed search words that would bring up products that I was interested in. Such as primitive, country, dolls, etc. I clicked on the Google searches that were brought up and book marked each website that appealed to me.
The handcrafted items that others were creating were amazing and they were selling them on a website, working from home and possibly not doing craft shows anymore. I could go to their websites anytime I wanted to. I did not have to wait for a craft show. The wheels of inspiration began to turn in my head bigtime. The web offered me a way to sell our handcrafted cinnamon ornaments, dolls, and country prim items without doing craft shows. Could I sell Cinna-Minnies on line, you bet I could.
Part Two Coming Soon. |
| posted by Rochelle Beach @ 3:45 AM |
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| Every Blog Needs A Gread Header, Right? |
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| Every blog needs a great header right ? This past Sunday I played with paint shop pro to create the blog header. The doll graphic on my blog header was created by Tammy Sherman of http://www.theolddrawinboard.com/. I created the body of the header and choose the colors for my blog. Than Neenee of http://www.kklprimitives.com/ set up my blog for me. She did a great job, thanks Neenee. |
| posted by Rochelle Beach @ 2:29 AM |
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| The Beginning Of Cinna-Minnies Is The Result Of Me Falling In Love With A Man… |
| Saturday, September 29, 2007 |
A gingerbread man that is . . . at a Relief Society Homemaking meeting. One of the craft projects involved decorating some little gingerbread men that were made from cinnamon. That little guy set my mind into a creative frenzy! I soon found myself covered in sweet smelling spicy cinnamon dust and loved every creative minute.
Twenty - one years later I’m still in a creative frenzy working up new ways to design dolls, ornaments and home decor items made from the cinnamon clay that I worked so hard to develop from a simple cinnamon dough recipe. I learned all to soon that the original cinnamon dough recipe was too primitive in nature to work well for permanent ornamentation — it crumbled, cracked and curled up when dry.So I did a little kitchen experimentation with various ingredients until I came up with my own secret recipe for a cinnamon clay that would roll out smoothly, mold well, would dry rock hard and be smooth in texture and appearance, and wouldn’t crack or curl up. It took several months of experimenting, but I finally accomplished my task and now have a very pliable, highly-scented cinnamon clay to bring all of my creations to life, and those Cinna-Minnie creations last for years!For Years many of our customers asked us for our cinnamon clay recipe, so back to my kitchen to conduct more experiments. The final result is the cinnamon clay mix we sell in kits, single packages, and by the pound. Our cinnamon clay is one of our top sellers and for good reason it is the best. Click here to be taken to our cinnamon clay page http://www.cinna-minnies.com/cinnamonclay.html
A blog will allow me the freedom to test new product lines and designs. It will also give me a voice to share items of interest to my mailing list members and a place to archive my newsletters, share my interest , show off my family and just hang loose. All sales of Cinna-Minnies will still be conducted at our website http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
I feel very blessed to share the talents that my Father In Heaven has blest me with especially to know that my talents have blessed the lives of others. One of my favorite newsletter enteries can be foung at this link . . .
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| posted by Rochelle Beach @ 10:30 AM |
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