wee artist at work...

No surface goes untouched by this child. If she can reach it, she will draw on it. I've just about given up trying to clean up after her. Sometimes I'll be scrubbing one part of a wall and she'll have already found a different pencil/crayon/marker and is drawing on the wall right next to me.



The focus she has while drawing these spirals is amazing. It may not look like it here, but she stops and thinks about where each one of these things is going to be placed on the page. And she FILLS the page! Never just a tiny drawing in the middle of the page, always all over the entire page (or desk top/door/wall).



Luckily, most of the surfaces she chooses to be embellished are washable...even the monitor...FYI pencil wipes right off an LCD screen with a diaper wipe.

fungi on the move...

These are my finished mushrooms for Sonya's handmade mushroom swap. I have to say for all the trouble I had trying to come up with a design I was happy with it was well worth it in the end.

The details on these 'shrooms: I cut the bases out on Sawyer and then sanded them all while Logan was working on his birdhouse. They are painted with acrylics and then burnished with steel wool. That steel wool burnishing is my new favorite finish! Gives the wood a warm, worn, sort of well-loved feel. The mushrooms are made of wool felt with perle cotton embroidery. The little "halo" around each mushroom's head is hand knotted jute that I stitched on with sewing thread. Each "halo" has at least twelve double overhand knots...well, I think one might have eleven and another has thirteen. After I started knotting the fifth and sixth ones my hands itched like never before...awful! The sacrifices we make for our art...heh.



As far as the packaging goes I would've LOVED to have found some small styrofoam or pulp boxes to saranwrap these guys into complete with produce stickers and everything, but I had no luck. The produce manager at my Kroger had no idea where I could find empty ones and suggested buying the mushrooms that were on sale and using their boxes instead. We enjoy mushrooms around here, but not six boxes in a month or less! Anyway, I ended up revisiting the "bags" I made to house my Christmas ornaments and I think they turned out well.



For the bag bases above I used plain brown cardstock and my Scor-Pal (worth every penny!) to score the edges of the bag base for ease in folding. I used paper from Basic Grey for the bag and the scalloped closure (I used my Cricut machine to cut three-inch scalloped circles that were then folded in half). The tags are shipping tags I dyed a couple years ago stamped with the little mushroom stamp I made last week. I stuffed the mushrooms into the boxes with some shredded kraft paper and tied them up with some more jute string.

I am thinking about writing up a little pattern for the mushrooms and maybe doing a small embroidery pattern as a freebie to go along with the 6-7-8 giveaway that's coming up soon. I haven't written a pattern in forever and it's high time I got back on that horse!

Alright, you all have a great weekend!!

for post 675 i brag on my boy...

Last Wednesday was Logan's fourth six weeks awards assembly. It's a typical elementary school award ceremony: ribbons for honor roll, plastic bracelets for perfect attendance, certificates for excellence in special areas and at the end the school counselor gives a lecture on good character.

So far this year Logan has been on the honor roll every six weeks (twice on the straight A honor roll and twice on the A/B honor roll) and he's had perfect attendance all year too! At Wednesday's assembly he received his ribbon for being on the straight A honor roll and his bracelet for perfect attendance as well. But best of all he received his certificate of completion for speech therapy!



We were very lucky to have a fantastic speech pathologist in Mrs. C. She combines auditory AND visual cues with her methods and I think this is the reason Logan progressed so quickly through the program. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met, loves her job, loves the kids she works with and I am totally bummed Caleb won't be able to see her next year (our school districts were rezoned for next year - DAMMIT).

Way to go, Logan! We're all so proud of you!!

mushroom debut number two...

So here's what I finally decided on for my mushrooms for Sonya's handmade mushroom swap. I am still embroidering and assembling his brothers and sisters at the moment and then I need to do the packaging tonight so I can get them out in tomorrow's mail.

While I'm thinking about it, I am coming up on blog post number 678. 6-7-8...seems like a good reason for a give-away right? So when it comes time for post 678 I will be giving away one of these little mushroom dudes. Stay tuned!

bird business...

First, my birds arrived today from Regina's Birds of Change Exchange! Will post pictures tomorrow.

And second:



Logan is building a birdhouse from scratch to complete requirement 5 "build something useful" toward his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts. I googled suggested birdhouse dimensions for the types of birds we have around the house. House finches like a six inch by six inch space in which to nest...or so says the first website I clicked on anyway. Armed with this information we took our lumber purchased for 51¢ off the cull cart at the Home Depot and laid out the measurements. The website said to be sure to drill holes under the eaves for ventilation. It didn't say how many so we decided on an evenly spaced row of quarter inch holes. Hopefully it does the trick for the birds, but either way it will be aesthetically pleasing. We'll drill larger holes in the bottom and lay down a layer of screen for drainage and more ventilation.



He was plugging right along until the batteries (that I hadn't charged in who knows how long) promptly lost juice after the second side was cut. I used the scroll saw for a little while...that is until I broke the blade. I would like to add that this was the FIRST blade I have broken so far...pardon me while I pat myself on the back.



I'll continue documenting the process tomorrow after Logan gets home from school. We have to make a run to the HD to peruse roofing options. We were originally going to use one of our old Florida license plates (they have turtles on them!) but the birdhouse wouldn't have been "useful" if we went that route so it's back to the drawing board.

so today is a much better mushroom kind of day...

I've warmed up to my little mushroom stamp and now he'll be gracing the splash page of my site and the top of this blog for awhile...can't really say how long considering I just replaced Christmas banners and such. Ahem.

In unrelated news: This morning I was downstairs folding socks (groan) and watching The Mentalist (love it!) on dvr when Molly came strolling down the stairs with my camera around her neck (dangling mere inches from the floor, I might add - yikes), a baby doll on her hip and a Target bag full of art supplies in her other hand. I imagine this must be exactly what she sees when she looks at me. Is this a good thing? I hope so. Regardless, she was perfectly pleased with herself shouting, "look at me, momma!" with each step she took. I wish I'd had the other camera handy at the time. It would've been a great capture!

Back to work for me...will post some pics this evening if all goes to plan!

mushroom-like...

As time has permitted I've been working on my mushrooms for KnitSonya's Handmade Mushroom Swap and so far I'm not loving them. At all. I knitted stumps and felted them...thought they looked good, set them aside, started working on caps. Tried to decide how to attach them together without them looking all bride-of-frankensteiny. Not happening. Made a different style of cap and still not happy. Cut to me gnashing teeth and encouraging the kids to maim and maul my sucky mushroom wannabes. Ugh.

So. I put all the mushroom guts away (out of sight, out of mind and all that business) and decided to think about packing for the mushrooms instead. With the little mushrooms from Fantasia in mind I came up with the drawing and subsequent carved stamp you see at the top of this post. While I find him totally adorable, I'm not in love with him either. Though he does make me much happier when he has some color. I think I'll bust out my watercolors tomorrow and see what becomes of him.

Bottom line: I just don't think today was a mushroom kind of day!

happy heart day...

As Valentine's Day go around here, this one was uneventful! No kitchen fires or broken feet! Although I did run over Caleb with the cart at Target, but that was short lived trauma so it doesn't really count. Ha. We went to a little friend's birthday party this morning; to Home Depot, Target and Barnes and Noble this afternoon and wrapped it all up with supper at Frilly's Cajun Kitchen (yum).

me...

and my new necklace. It, along with this ring, was a Valentine's Day gift from Lynn's parents. They just up and decided that this year they wanted to give us girls a Valentine gift. Who am I to decline such an offer? I'm a lucky girl and I know it.

Since Molly's been around I haven't worn a chain regularly...just a necklace from time to time when dressing up for something. Needless to say, she is fascinated by my new pendant. Can't keep her grubby little mitts off of it! We'll be working on that in the days to come.

I better get back to work...just thought I'd pop in and say hello. I've got mushrooms in the making, jewelry for the show being sketched and sourced, Valentine ATCs in the works and the boys Valentine treat bag drawings to turn into stickers

circus mice...

have them perform your name too: Bobinsky's Circus.

sigh and swoon...

It is absolutely ridiculous how happy an newly organized closet makes me and continuing my love affair with elfa is super easy when it's 30% off. This particular installation came with the added benefit of some much needed motivation to clean and organize my studio space (again). Here's the finished room, well, almost finished room...there are boxes of crap that need to go to Catholic Charities and the kids' art teachers. Oh, and there is still art to be framed and hung. But you can see the floor! And you can see my table top! The brave of heart can go here to see some of the before.

so i wander over to see what calamity kim is up to...

and she's just posted this video she stumbled upon:



Like Kim, I am loving this video and song! Do wander over to his website and flip through his gallery...

Thanks for the link, Kim!

While I'm thinking about it, check out this group too: Pinback. They remind me a bit of Modest Mouse and I am completely smitten with them at the moment.