Slow Going

Six days into NaNoWriMo, and I've yet to hit my stride.

For progress updates: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/135555

Miss Carrie's Wedding

One of my fellow booksellers is getting married in a few weeks, and she asked if I would make the jewelery for her wedding.

This is what I've come up with: a three-strand necklace (pearls, sterling silver and seed beads) on 49 strand Beadalon, with matching bracelet and earrings (pearls and glass with sterling bead caps).


I may need to fine-tune the length once she tries it on with her dress, but that'll be a piece of cake.

And yes, that pun was completely intentional.

the zutter strikes back

I needed a finite project for the evening, and this is what I came up with:










And, if you can believe it, I cleaned up my cardstock scraps and put everything away when I finished. The only evidence of my activity is the finished product. Excellent!

Hope & Joy

Artist Trading Card #2. I should really call these things fun w/ rubber stamps.

My first Artist Trading Card

I had a few minutes to do a little something creative today. I just rediscovered my ATC blanks yesterday and decided I would play around w/ some ink and stamps. I probably needed to let it dry in between items so the inks wouldn't have soaked into each other so much, but overall I like it.

The Importance of Being Native

Of the handful of people that have checked out the humble blog here, most of you know how I love to get up on the soapbox about using native plants in the garden. A customer lingering in the gardening section? Same thing: blah blah native plants blah.

I'll be the first to admit that I have been ridiculously lazy about the garden this year. In fact, I have done no gardening at all... and I desperately need to weed all of the beds in both the front and back yards. However, with nothing but neglect and last year's mulch, I present to you the native plants in the front garden (most of which were half dead and on clearance at the end of last summer).

Blackberry lily (with daisies in the background).

Double purple coneflowers.

Some spindly variety of black eyed susans.

The view from the front walk. There's althea in front of the windows, as well as a mounding sunflower and a cup plant. They should all start blooming in the next week or so.

crafting night 06.26.09

We bitched and kvetched and complained. We ate. We drank. Most importantly, we were able to get together and be creative in the company of friends.




(We are chock-full of awesomeness.)

Credits: beaded box by Arafel, diagonal scarf by Catheniale, assorted earrings by Zillah. Click on the photos if you want to see our mad skills in greater detail.

Breaking out the Zutter!

I finally used my Zutter machine and made some journals!

The covers are actually old buy campaign signs. They get placed on the shelves so they're sticking out and catch people's attention. Mostly they get bumped into and fall onto the floor, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, these were going to get thrown away and I thought they would make good journal covers. My original plan was to gesso or decoupage them and reuse them that way. But they're kind of cute as they are, you know?

It took a little bit of time to get the holes punched exactly where I wanted them, but once I figured that out, it was smooth sailing. I economized on the paper, so the pages are a little bit short (hence the half hole at the bottom)... but I thought it made more sense to get as many pages with as little waste as possible. I was able to get 4 pages per sheet of copier paper with minimal trimming. The wires are 1/2" in diameter, and work nicely with the overall size. Bending in the wires was super easy, and it only took a few minutes to assemble all of the journals once I had the paper trimmed and holes punched.

I think next time I'm going to put in some pockets and different papers. Oh, the ideas swimming around in my head right now...

A pretty picture for a quiet Sunday

I know, I didn't make the flower... but I will take credit for saving it from certain death on the clearance shelf at Home Depot last year.

Paper Tearing as an Art Form

I decorated these journals last year and just wanted to post them here as proof that I do occasionally get inspired to craft things. When I worked at the bookstore I was addicted to stationery. I have more journals than I will ever fill in my lifetime. Several of them were plain so I used images from a calendar and an other-wise ruined Japanese Art book to spice them up a bit. I really like how they turned out.