lucky me...

Lynn has just about sucked the last drops of life out of his little red Acura Integra. It's been a good car, an excellent car. A million years ago (or maybe ten) when Lynn was a car salesman he sold the car to his parents for his sister to drive. M drove it for three or four years and then once she was ready for a new(er) car, her (then) boyfriend drove it. The boyfriend banged it up a bit at some point. Then further down the line M and the boyfriend broke up and she had no use for the little red Integra any longer so Lynn adopted it. There was a bit of body damage and the paint was starting to fade, but it still had a cold A/C and lots of life left in it. Lynn's been driving it for at least two years, maybe even three now. The poor thing is on its last legs and has begun to aggrevate Lynn with its mounting list of ailments. He's retiring the little red Integra on Saturday. On Friday, though, he's flying to Austin to pick up my new (to me) car:



Isn't it pretty? I love it. How awesome is my husband that he's the one who needs a new car and instead, he gets me a new one! He's very awesome if I do say so myself.

! ! !

The fall issue of Cloth Paper Scissors arrived yesterday and wow, I would venture to say it's the best issue to date. Or at least the most timely (for me) to date.

I've been dreaming about and thinking up birdhouses, houses in general really, a lot lately and this issue has two articles featuring houses of sorts. I've been cooking up ideas for different types of 2d and 3d artdolls to work on and this issue has articles on tiny little doll pins, nicho assemblages, and a handful of fiber projects. Hog heaven I tell you.

Of everything jammed into this spectacular issue, my favorite article is one on ART MONEY. I am completely fascinated by this endeavor. It's now on my to-do list: make some art money.

so, the bird seed cookies...

Yeah, I should have tested this recipe before I sent it off for the recipe card swap. I will say this, I did not use the EXACT suet recommended in the recipe and that might make a world of difference, I don't know. I did use the recommended bird seed, or at least I thought I did. That is until we made it home and relized there were HUGE peanuts in the mix. Huge peanuts don't help a cookie stay together. My recommendation is to use a millet mix, something with only SMALL seeds! Also, I added the two egg yolks left over to the dough otherwise, I don't think we could've ever managed to get the dough combined.

We rolled the dough out to the recommended 1/4 inch thickness and tried cutting cookies...curse the peanuts!! When the cutting out of the cookies was going south, Lynn took the boys to the pool while I tried to salvage the cookies. I think the dough should probably be rolled to 1/2 inch thickness for stability's sake because after I baked the first batch, two of the six cookies baked apart along "fault lines." The cookies that did survive were strung up with jute and promptly fell apart on the way to be hung in the trees.

I cannot say the project was a total bust though. The boys had a good time mixing and rolling the dough and then crumbling the broken cookies into small chunks for the birds to enjoy. I think from now on we'll stick to pinecone bird feeders or the super cute fruit garlands and birdhouse feeders I saw on Country Style today.

what a day...

What a day indeed! Lynn took off for Houston again this morning. Logan had class and my new trainer, Caleb, is on me like white on rice to load him up in his stroller and walk him around the UNT campus and surrounding neighborhoods while Logan is in class. After class Logan was "STARVING TO DEATH EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY HAD BREAKFAST AND IT'S NOT LUNCHTIME YET AND ALSO I'M THIRSTY" so we picked up breakfast tacos and headed to a park to find a shady picnic table upon which we could enjoy our tacos and waters. Upon our arrival to the park the hunger pangs miraculously subsided and mad dash playing commenced. Then we ate our tacos and drank our waters. It just so happens the park we went to is right next door to the main library. Can't pass up a trip to the library. Nope. Logan got his own library card today! He wishes it had his face on it though so he could stick it in the clear pocket of his awesome Spiderman wallet. We checked out a stack of books, signed a petition to get rid of the Unicard in Denton County, and picked up spikey seed pods. We made one last quick stop by the post office to mail off most the ATCs from the Fairy Tales and Fables swap and then headed home.

Phew. Tomorrow I'll post reviews of the wild bird seed cookies. I'll say this, they're mixed. Now I'm off to fall into my coma.

month of softies: mythical creatures

Remember my dismembered mermaid from last month? Well, she's finally complete. I still want to make a stand for her, but for all intents and purposes she, the doll, is acabado. For now, anyway.



She didn't turn out exactly as I had originally envisioned her, but I can always go back to her when the supplies I really wanted to use turn up. Her hair is insane, I need to find something less furry and in a different color. What I really want is some nice slubby handspun that is the right scale for her little head. I think I'll also remake her pouch...it's huge...I'm pretty sure if she loaded it up with the day's shiny trinkets and treasures she'd just sink straight to the bottom with the size/scale it is at the moment. Aside from all that, I love her!

See more contributions to this month's theme here.

love it...

This is so cool.

another a/c bullet dodged...

After Logan's class yesterday my partners in crime and I drove down to the dealership to drop my jeep off for the a/c backing up into the floorboards. While the folks at the dealership are always delightful, it is not among my favorite places to visit because it typically means many, many dollars being sucked out of our pockets. Well not yesterday! A line was clogged, it took a few minutes to rectify and NO CHARGE!! The only out of pocket we paid was for the rental car. Talk about a pleasant surprise.

Seeing as a fortune was not spent on vehicle repairs, I decided it would be okay to splurge on some paper and whatnots! Well, once again, I was disappointed to find "the world's largest scrapbooking store" was really lacking in cool papers and supplies. At least for me anyway. I did come away with a nice stack of paper (some pictured below), a couple new markers and a 3/4 inch dot punch for less than $25.

five down...

My carved stamp recipe cards are finished and shipped off to Moki! I went about this swap totally backwards...drew and carved the stamp first with no idea as to what my recipe would be. Once the stamp was carved (which was weeks ago) I figured the recipe needed to be bird related (but not cooked bird related). Then this weekend I finally sat down and searched around for a good bird feeder recipe. This is what I found: Wild Bird Seed Cookies (third recipe down). We're going to make a trip over to our local Wild Birds Unlimited tomorrow to get the stuff to make a batch for our purple martins. A mess will be made, pictures will be taken, hopefully fun will be had by all.

and the envelope is finished...

almost...

Backside view:



Frontside view:



The front needs a little something more. I just can't decide what it is exactly. Now I'm off to finish my recipe cards for Moki's swap and get them in the mail tomorrow!

the bremen town musicians...

by the Brothers Grimm is the fairy tale I went with for my ATCs for the swap. Here's what I finally came up with design-wise for my cards:



I started out with the image of the critters stacked up on each other peering into the robbers' windows. Only when I started sketching them, none of my sketches were balanced with all the animals facing the same way. So I alternated them. And I liked the outcome. Then I carved a stamp from the image.



I stamped kraft paper and colored in the critters with my beloved PhotoTwin markers and ran them through the Xyron machine. With the main characters out of the way, I thought it might be cool to do some kind of marquee poster treatment to use for the background. I farted around with different fonts, landed on a grouping I liked, did a xylene transfer onto high rag content paper, did a walnut ink wash over the transfer and it didn't work the way I wanted it to...too busy with the animals layered on top. Back to the drawing board. So I went searching through the Library of Congress image archives to find a simple (public domain) black and white photo of a country home. Found one, printed it on olive green vellum and backed it with chartreuse cardstock. The animals were mounted on the vellum, so far so good, but I still wanted to use the xylene transfers because they turned out so nice. What about an accordian style fold? Then the hunt for my bookbinding tape began...never found it, but remembered I had a sheet of Nostaligiques wooden ruler stickers. They worked in a pinch. The bottom of the "accordian" is my info card. They didn't turn out quite like I'd have liked them to, but that's what I get for waiting until the last minute to work on them!

ahhhh...

My new favorite person on the planet is our A/C guy. He was an hour early, spent about half an hour fixing the problem and the final bill was less than $100. Love it. Now if only the truck a/c repair is as easy and cheap. Fingers crossed.

Okay, now for a couple fun summer time projects to join in on:

The first is Moki's Good Neighbor's Club. Moki is making it super easy for all of us to have a fun-packed summer with our little ones. She's even illustrating it for us! So far there are two issues. In issue one Moki gives us instructions for making a fairy crown, a fairy observation journal and a handful of book titles to look for on your next library trip. In issue two it's all about bugs and nature. She gives us instructions for toilet paper tube binoculars (of which we have already made three sets), a bug observatory, a nature hike checklist and another list of suggested reading.

Secondly is another ATC swap being hosted by Lain and her friend, Carlene. From Lain's blog: Each participant will create five ATCs (please, stick to the standard size of 2-1/2 by 3-1/2) and send them to the coordinators by August 7. Use the theme "GET SMART GIRLS" but work it anyway you want to! Follow the muse... have fun!
Please also include a SASE with two $.39 cent stamps. (International participants -- contact us for info).
In exchange for your cards, you will receive five ATCs in return.
Got any questions? Let us know! Sign ups are open until 6/30, so tell a friend --- or two!

Sounds like fun, right? I think so!

hinges of hell...

those would be the first three words out of your mouth as you stepped onto the second story of our house right now...or perhaps you might have the strength for six: "holy shit, it's hot up here!" So there you have it, my excuse for not blogging all week. Our desktop is upstairs and all the laptops are farmed out at the moment.

The A/C guy is coming this afternoon and I am so hoping it will be a relatively cheap fix because not only is the upstairs a/c ill, but the a/c in my jeep is also backing up into the floorboards leaving lots of water that I have to vacuum out daily so as not to have a black mold farm on wheels! Sigh, the joys of home and car ownership...

I've been working on projects as I can downstairs. I finished my ATCs for the Fairy Tale swap...will post pictures this evening. Oh, by the way, to all my Fairy Tale swappers: I'm going to move the ship date from the 19th to the 23rd to allow some extra mail time for those mailing from overseas and for those (like MYSELF) who needed a few extra days to get everything together. My little mermaid now has hair. All she lacks are her arms, some shiny trinkets and maybe a little pouch for her shiny trinkets.

ahem...

I volunteered to step in for Claire over at A Month of Softies while she and her family are busy welcoming their new addition to the world and then adjusting to life with a new baby added to the fray.

The theme for June is Mythical Creatures which works out well for me since I already have a little mermaid in the works. At the same time, when I finally landed on the theme for the month I had quite a few ideas pop into my mind...and (you may want to brace yourself) I wrote them down...with sketches. It's novel, I know. So with these new ideas I'm hoping for a fruitful "Month of Softies" myself. I hope you all will jump in on the theme too. I can't wait to see what everyone creates for the topic!

busy bee...

First off, thanks to everyone for sharing your war stories and for the encouraging words as well. I hadn't done a show in almost four years and had sort of forgotten about the gamble. I was quickly reminded. Live and learn, though, live and learn.

* * * * *

Now that I've recovered from the sunburn I got on Friday while decoupaging my display screens and my bruised ego from the fair on Saturday, I have been taking pictures of things to post on my site for sale. So far, I've managed to get the new lampwork and sterling pendants photographed, marked and uploaded to the jewelry page.



I've taken photos of all the notecards but still need to upload them to the paper/stationery page. Then I need to go through the boxes and probably retake some photos before posting the rest of the things. But that's all going to have to wait because we've got fun family plans coming up the rest of the week and through the weekend. Sunday Logan turns five! FIVE. Where does the time go? I'm not sure how much computer time I'll have the next few days, but if I can I'll post some updates on the festivities.

four down, one to go...

So, Dog Days of Summer turned out to be a lesson in how not to pick a selling venue. If compliments like "your things are so beautiful, so cute, so whimsical, so imaginative, etcetera." or "love your set-up" came with $10 bills attached I would have made a freaking fortune, but instead not one single thing sold all day.




This is just a gratuitous pic of my dressed up business cards because I think they're cute and they make me happy.

There were plenty of women who stopped by once and then again with their extremely obtuse husbands hinting* around at what they wanted. Lots of totally adorable little girls stopping by to admire my things. The little girls were all so cute, so impressed that I made everything on the tables. They asked lots of questions: wanting to know how old I was when I knew I wanted to make art; how did I know that this color and that would look nice together; how did I know that the glass beads I made would look so nice with the silver and polka dot bows, etcetera. At the very end of the day as I was packing up my booth one lovely woman stopped back by to purchase a necklace that she'd admired earlier in the day. Thank the stars above for her because I actually turned a profit of $3 whole dollars! (*I say hinting only because none of them actually picked up the items they wanted and said, "here, I want this, pay the nice lady.")

All was not lost on the day though. I took tons of pictures of dogs. There were tiny dogs, giant dogs, dogs dressed like parrots and crabs, gypsies and brides.







Logan and Caleb had a fun day roaming around...even using a port-a-potty (blech) for the first time was "so awesome" because no flushing was required and the urinal was attached to the toilet. Yeah.

three down, two to go...

I finally finished my Project Spectrum postcard for May and I didn't take a single picture of it. Crap. Well, I'll say this, it's breezy looking and green. I even thought about taking a picture, but then got sidetracked worrying if I should send it as a postcard or stick it in an envelope. I stuck it in an envelope.

As for the two to go, I made glass beads and sterling charms for pendants yesterday. Today I'm going to work on assembling them and sewing up some new Mommy's Little Sanity Savers and Doorknob Love Notes. After that's finished then I'm going to do my price tags and do some last minute prep work and then it'll be time for the show. Thank goodness it's only a one day gig!

Back to the grindstone for me now.