Right here in black and white

I haven't been doing many craft projects lately. I may possibly have short circuited my creativity. The things that I have shown you recently were made a couple weeks ago and I have one more left.
I went for a different look on the quilled necklaces and decided to go with black and white.

The center doesn't show up real well but there are black loops there. I tried taking the picture several different ways and just could not get it to show up any better. This one also has a crocheted chain but rather than using the nylon I used a cotton thread.

Special Order

Last weekend I had to work on a special order. One of the sales reps that comes in to see us on a regular basis had bought a few of my things that I had sitting on my table at work. She asked if I could do something special for her granddaughter's birthday. But of course I can.
Anyway she said she wanted something with flowers and peace signs and the whole hippie, flower power kind of thing.

I sure hope she likes it.

More

It's getting really close now. Only 2 more days left to work on finishing up projects for the craft show this weekend. Are you sick of hearing about it yet?
I did a little work last night on a few things

I completed 5 of these. Pretty much like the other ones I did but these have a Halloween theme to them. I tried to get a clearer pictures but it's dark and dingy in the basement. The weather is cold and damp here and I'm praying it gets better by the weekend.

I have a table sitting in my basement holding boxes loaded and ready to go

Remember I said the pumpkins didn't look finished? Well I added a silk sunflower to them and now they are good to go.

My friend Debbie is a lifesaver. She was in Pittsburgh last weekend and did some shopping for me. She found me the flowers and buttons and ribbon.

My reading and commenting is going to be very limited over the next few days. I'll be making a last ditch effort and finishing up a few more things. Come next Monday I'm going to sit in front of my computer all day long (I took the day off) and catch up with all of you.

Weekend report.

Even with all the running around that we ended up doing over the weekend, I was able to finish up quite a few projects.
The accordion folded flowers are now all in pots. I made 5 of these. I still want to do 5 more with a Halloween theme to them

The quilled flowers are also in pots. I made 5 of these

I took some scrap pieces of wood plannking that Wade had left over from doing the basement and glues on some scrapbook paper, a few quilled pieces and stapled a piece of twine to them. I have 3 of these

I also finished up the last 3 sunflowers in the cans. 

 

I got a 5 more cards made too. For some reason after doing the quilling with the bigger strips of paper I'm having a hard time getting myself to work on the regular ones for cards and more necklaces. I think I'll work on some of those tonight. Only 11 more days to go.

Here a mess, there a mess

Everywhere a mess mess

I tried. I really did try to keep the mess down. At first I was very good about putting things away as I went along. Somewhere along the line things went terribly wrong. The above messes aren't even all of them. I couldn't take it any longer and had to clean some of them up last night.

I thought these were finished. Now that I have them together they just look like they need something else but I don't know what.

Fail

I hate to admit it but I failed to meet my goal for the weekend. It wasn't of epic proportions, and I knew going in to it that I had set my sights a little high so I'm not completely disappointed. So if I failed, then why am I posting? Because I made the rule and I can break it if I want to. Plus, what I did manage to get done is worth blogging about I think.
Saturday I was doing good but my momentum was gone by today. I also ran in to problems with supplies. There are a few things I needed and didn't want to make the trip to the store. One last obstacle was drying time. I'm still waiting on a few things to dry before everything can be put together.
I have lots of parts and it's just a matter of final assembly. Oh well, I'll catch myself up. I always do.

I made 5 sets of each of these flowers. So that was 15 quilled flowers and 15 accordion folded flowers. They still need leaves and then they will be going in to pots.

I made 5 quilled pumpkins, 5 trees and 5 fences made with my cricut. These will be going on to the wooden bases like I did with the dogs and cats.

And there are 10 pots waiting to be filled. Did I ever tell you how cheap I am? I'm sure that I did. But anyway, have you ever seen how expensive Styrofoam is? Well I have 10 pots and getting enough for each of them could have gotten pricey. Instead I bought a cheap can of the spray foam insulation and filled the pots 1/2 full with them. These are one of the things I'm waiting on to dry. 

The original goal for the weekend
15 accordion flowers (done)
15 quilled flowers (done)
5 pumpkins (done)
5 trees (done)
assemble all (fail)
All in all I would say it was still a very successful weekend.

Mission accomplished

With the help of encouraging blog pals and a trusty canine watching over me I met my first goal. I set out to finish, by today, 5 cats and 2 frames.

The first frame.

This one is finished but it was still drying when I took the picture

check out the little mice that I put with the cats.

The tail is the narrowest piece of paper I could cut. Looking at the picture it appears that the cat has been gnawing on that mouses tail. It may be time for a new blade in my paper cutter.
So now it's on to the next goal. I set a pretty high one for the weekend. I may be expecting a little much out of myself but I'll certainly try.

Tee Bee Tee Em

Did I confuse you? Tee Bee Tee Em or T.B.T.M stands for Too Bad Tomorrow's Monday. I was just talking about time yesterday and here I am wondering what happened to my weekend tonight. It sure did fly by fast.
I did get a little bit of crafting time in though.

Back on day 3 of my vacation I showed you picture frames that I had painted. I finally finished them on Saturday after we got done doing all our running around for the day. I have 2 frames finished but only took a picture of one of them.

Before settling on the above picture I had a little fun. I framed my flip flopped foot.

I tried to frame Duke but he wasn't in to it.

I got a little side tracked making origami bows.

My blog friend Helen did a tutorial on these. I thought they were really cute and now I'm in the midst of a bow obsession.
I also managed to finish off 3 Scotty dogs, 1 Westie, got 4 more cans ready for flowers, edited some pictures to use for cards, and started a 3rd frame.
Now it's time for me to go get ready for my kicking and screaming tantrum tomorrow morning. Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend

Day 6 -Bummer

Can you believe I'm up to day 6 already? It's a good thing I got off to a good start because I sure have gone down hill since Tuesday.
This morning I took the quilling stuff out on the deck and sat down to do some work. Wasn't in to it so I went to the shed and got a shovel. I've been wanting to dig up the flower bed on the side of my house and this morning was a good time to do it.
This first picture is going to need some explanation

See those roots right there at the corner of the house, right above the green arrow. That was a tree or something that has been growing right where the yellow arrow is pointing to.  I started to dig up the flower bed and all I wanted to do was to get my braided hibiscus in the ground. Yeah, I know, I should have done that a long time ago. So I dig up the spot I want to plant it but then I decide to dig up all the way to the end and pull out anything and everything that is growing there. That included that tree thing. I didn't realize how thick of a trunk it had on it. The roots ran under that piece of wood landscape timber (red circle in the picture)  Where it's at now is as far as I could get with it. I'm sure Wade will just go out and chop it off right where it's at and be done with it. His solution in the past and it keeps growing back which is why it was so darn big.

So finished that project and headed inside for a shower. Next order of business was Duke's appointment with the groomer.

He looks so much better and he's pretty happy about losing all that hair he had on him. Just for fun I turned the above picture into a painting.

While Duke was at the groomer I did manage to put together three Scottie dogs. 

Duke's says there is no such thing as a Scottie dog. He says it's a Westie with a negative attitude. He's so goofy.

Only two more days before it's back to work. I hope I can get a little more finished before Monday. Hope everyone is off to a good start on their weekend.

Day 5 - losing momentum

Oh my I'm getting tired. Oh wait, that's not right. What I mean to say is I'm getting tires. More precisely I got tires this morning.

No, those are not the tires I bought. When I went to pick the car up these were sitting behind it. I asked the guy if they were the ones he took off my car. His reply was "Yep, I would say you got your money's worth out of those two" I told him I had to take a picture of them to show Wade.
While I was waiting for the car, I walked down to the store I work at. I needed to pick up my check and do my weekly order. Um, yeah, I do silly things like that and don't get paid to do it. It was either that or go back to work and run out of everything because no one else will do the order for me. So anyway, while I'm there the owner sees me. Seems someone took a cake order and there's only one other person that can do cakes. They can't get a hold of that one other person. He asked me if I would punch in and do the cake. I had time to kill and that would mean that I would also get paid for doing my order so sure, I'll suck up an hour of payroll.

Oh, you want to know what I got done in the craft department today don't you? Well, not much.
I put together 3 more of the sunflowers. That would be the ones I did all the parts for the other day.
I finished one more Westie
Then I did some playing around and figured out how I wanted to do a cat.

I was thinking of Hobbes when I did this one but I don't believe his stripes go in that direction. Ah well, this was just my test anyway. I'll be doing some in various colors. Now what to put next to a cat? I was thinking another bowl and maybe a fish skeleton :)

Day 4 - YIKES, it's half over

Holy smokes I can't believe how fast my vacation is slipping by. At least for a change I have done something more than sit in front of the computer.
Today I didn't really do very much in the way of crafting though. Today was mother daughter day. I played around a little in the morning while I was waiting for Amanda to get here. We were planning on going to Pymatuning Deer Park today but when we were almost there it started pouring so we did lunch and shopping instead.
As for my progress

• 1 more necklace with the nylon chain finished
• 1 Duke completed and another one started
• a little more progress on the frames
• started quilling some fall leaves to use on cards.

Do you remember the little Westie that I did the other day? Well I'm calling that one the thrown together prototype.
Here is what I'll be selling

I started with a wood circle that I covered with green felt. I glued on a paper picket fence that I cut with my cricut. To finish it off there was dog bowl and bone and the star of the show, a Westie. 

Believe it or not I'm not even going to say that I'm not happy with this because I am, I really am. How could anyone not think this is cute?

Progress report - Day 1

I guess I can't put this off any longer. It's time for my daily progress report
My additions since yesterday are
One of these (not entirely happy with it) I don't know what's all over it in the picture but I can't see it on the real thing.

3 of these (not entirely happy with these either)

You may think I didn't do too bad for just one day. If you knew the whole truth you would change your mind. I had all the flowers done and the cans covered, I just had to put them together.
After I got these done I did a little experiment and came up with this

The idea really came from Cheryl who did a black and a white scottie dog a while back.

So I'm blaming my progress, or lack there of on the grumpy mood that I put myself in today. Tomorrow morning Wade will go off to work, the house will be quiet and I'm going to get busy.

On the fringe

I ordered a new toy and I spent part of my weekend playing with it.
This is what it looks like.

You run a strip of paper through it and this is what you get

I had lots of fun out on the deck. I had my stuff, or junk as Wade calls it, spread all over the entire table

Here's a close up some of the flowers I made with the fringed strips of paper.

I could just cut the strips by hand like my blog pal Cheryl (check out her fringed flowers) but I don't have the patience and my cuts are very inconsistent.

Before I go, I wanted to mention that my little toy came from Quilling Superstore. I was very impressed by how fast I got my order. I placed my order on July 20th and received it on the 23rd. If you ever need quilling supplies, I would  recommend this web site. No, they didn't pay me to say this and I didn't get any cool free products for giving them a thumbs up. Just a shout out to say that there are still some businesses out there that do good.

All that glitters is not gold

Even though it may look like gold don't let it fool you.

Another little item that is preparing to go to the craft show with me. It will eventually be on a chain. The quilled flower is made with strips of brown paper bag. It's coated with glue then I painted it with a gold metallic paint. I also painted the wood disc that it's glued to gold. I glued the blue gem to the middle but I'm not sure if I like it or not. I've made some others but left off the gem.
Not bad for a brown paper bag.

The plan

Do you remember a couple weeks ago when I said that I had something coming up that was both exciting and scary? I thought about keeping it a secret until it really happened but it turns out that I have nothing else to blog about.
Well the plan involved some of this

This is about all I've been doing in my spare time lately. These will all eventually end up in a can like I did with the spring flowers, The smaller ones I have another idea for but not quite sure how I want to do them. So why am I making all these?
Because I'm planning on doing a craft show with a friend of mine in September. I have no idea if I'll be able to put together enough stuff or not but I guess I'll find out.
Aside from the quilling I thought I might take along some of my photography too. I'll be doing it in the form of either fridge magnets or cards or both.
The picture above I'm pretty sure will be going along only it will look like this.

Any way, if I don't spend as much time commenting in the next couple months you'll know that I'm frantically trying to put stuff together.
Wish me luck. I think I'm going to need it :)

I think I'll start with "SOLD"

Sold is the subject for the day. Sold what you say? Sold this I reply.
But first a little of the work in progress.

And now the flower, almost finished

and finally the necklace that I sold

I took the advice of a mad snapper about wearing one of my necklaces to work. I actually wore two different ones. Of course on different days, not at the same time. Everyone said how nice but nothing much else. THEN, a couple weeks later one of the girls asked me if I could make a sunflower. I ran home, made one, went back to work and said yes I can make a sunflower. I took her in the necklace to show her and she bought it. Yeah me.

What I'm working on

Do you want to see what I've been working on lately? Too bad, I'm showing you anyway. You may recall the quilled necklaces I showed you before. I enjoyed doing those but came up with a new idea. Instead of doing the whole thing paper I decided to use a wood disc and glue the quilling to that.
Here's a picture of one of the older ones and the latest.

The first time I showed you the purple one it wasn't on a chain. Now I've put that one on a silver chain. The round one that I did before I put on a black cord and that one went to my friend Debbie.

I don't know about you but I like the idea of the wood disc a whole lot better. My biggest problem is I'm not real good at the jewelery part of it. I had no problem attaching the jump rings and the clasp to the chain. My original plan was to  just put a ring in the wood disc for the chain. Blan B went in to effect when I discovered that the hole was drilled too far away from the edge to do that. My problem came in when I had to wire the wood bead to the disc. I made that first little loop in the piece of wire, slid the wire through the bead then through the hole in the disc. Now to wrap the wire under the bead to hold it in place. I realized how uncoordinated I can be some times when I was doing this.

This final picture is the one I'm working on now. The beak does seem to be a little out of proportion but it's staying since it's already glued on.

The rest of the night I'm going to spend catching up on my emails, working on my necklace and a few little odds and ends that need taken care of. I'll catch up on all of your blogs tomorrow.

After the mushrooms

When you make a dinner that requires a can of mushrooms and you purchase canned ones rather than fresh, what do you do with the can?
Well this is what I did with it.
First I covered it with some scrapbook paper then glued on some images of old seed catalog covers that I got from The Smithsonian Institution Libraries.  I brushed on some mod podge, used a little stain to make it look old and then sprayed it with some clear acrylic sealer. I even let it dry in between each step.

This looked like it needed a flower growing in it but not having a green thumb I knew I wouldn't keep anything alive for very long. Fake works better for me. If you are going to have fake flowers you may as well have fake dirt too. I cut a circle from cardboard to fit just inside the can and covered it with my fake dirt.

 Can you guess what my fake dirt is? Instead of dumping out the coffee grounds after I made my coffee, I dried them out and then mixed them with glue. I spread that on the cardboard circle and let it dry. Wallah! Fake dirt. Yeah I know I missed a few spots but this was pretty much an experiment to see if it would work any way.
Now all I need is a flower growing in my mushroom can. Another jumbo quilled flower with a cute little flower button glued to the center.

I may not have a green thumb but I think this would qualify as a green craft project.