Madi and I dropped our first toy for The Toy Society!
The Toy Society is a craft/street art project spreading love throughout the streets of the world. If you’d like to know more, you can visit them here. Or you if you just want to browse the photo gallery of all the great toys that have been “dropped” check out their flickr gallery here.
Thanks again to Little Messy Missy for turning me on to this fun project!
I opted to make 2 different styles of bookmarks for the swap I recently participated in. The first one is probably my favorite, but that may be because of my love for the tin flower embelishment I used on the tip. It fits nicely over the corner of your page.
For the second, I was going for a somewhat earthy feel. I used fiber paper as well as fiber strings as some of the components. I thought the rub-ons directly on the fiber papers gave a nice effect.
And here they are together:
I look at these and I see two different personalities, if bookmarks can have personalities. They were very fun to make. In fact, I think I will make some more!
Today I finished up my bookmarks for a bookmark swap hosted by my friend Missy at Little Messy Missy. I even remembered to mail them!
I don’t want to spoil the fun when she gets the package, so no full pictures for a couple of days, but here are some teaser sneak-peeks of the 2 book marks.
I’ve observed many, many swaps, but never had the nerve to actually participate in one, so this is my first, and I’m excited!
I put together a package of cards to send to my Aunt. She mentioned wanting some Christmas cards she could send out, so I made her a little bundle of 10 Christmas cards with envelopes, along with 6 Any occasion cards and 6 tags.
Here’s a sampling of the Christmas cards:
The eyelets are Making Memories, as are the eyelet letters and woven labels. The white ribbon with red edging is Martha Stewart. The other ribbon is bulk. All the patterned paper was from various stash. I mounted all the card fronts on Basil Cardstock.
Now I need to get to work on her actual Birthday card to accompany the package.
I know it may seem like I’ve stopped creating, but I really haven’t. It has slowed down quite a bit. Life has thrown some unexpected hurdles in my way – but in doing so has inspired a new project I’ll be working on.
Years ago my Aunt gave me a nice Creative Memories Album that she had started for my Dad. She had done a number of pages already which included some pictures of him when he was younger and also some treasures like pictures of my great-grandparents. The intention was that I would pick up where it left off and put together pages of his later life, grandkids, his horses, etc. I never got around to doing that. Now that his time here has come to a close I’m feeling inspired to get moving with that project. I’m still in the organizing phase of it all, but it is moving along.
I also worked on some more Pysanky! I used patterns for these 3 new eggs. I’m getting a better feel for the colors and applying the wax. This is such a relaxing hobby. So here are the latest 3 eggs. Maybe I’ll get brave again for the next one and work on an original design again. We’ll see.
Next Tuesday marks the end of the school year for my kids. We had an extended year due to lots of snow days that needed to be made up. With everything that’s been going on, I didn’t get as much time to work on their Teacher’s cards as I’d have liked, but I think they turned out well in spite of it. I put these all together last night using only things I had in stash already.
The papers used are from Basil (the card itself), My Mind’s Eye, DCWV, and Making Memories.
Embelishments include flowers from Prima and Petaloo, ribbon, Making Memories brads and charms, Me and My Big Ideas icons sticker, and Basic Grey chipboard letters ink’d with Tsukikek pigment ink in Coffee Bean.
I dug out one of my old D.O.T.S. stamps for the “just for you sentiment” and because I’m such a great stamper (laugh) I went over the image again with a matching pen. Maybe one day I can enlist one of my stamping friends to tutor me. :)
I surprised my friend Holly this morning by calling her and asking if I could take her to breakfast or lunch for her birthday. Breakfast it is! She told me about this great little place near her house, which I had never been to, and we decided to meet there. If anyone lives near Sultan, Washington and has not eaten at the Sultan Bakery, you are missing out. It’s located just off of Highway 2 on the north side of the street and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it. It’s one of those charming ma and pop shops that are all (sadly) disappearing. This little place was fabulous! The food was so very good, so obviously fresh and portions were big enough to feed 3! Even in this poor economy it would seem people can’t stay away from this place. There was a consistent flow of people the entire time we were there. I’m glad we got seats! Don’t let the name fool you. It’s more than just a bakery, they have more breakfast choices than you can decide on, and (if I remember right) I’m pretty sure I saw sandwiches for the lunch crowd too. I will definitely be eating there again.
This is Holly’s birthday card.
A good friend of mine has been making Ukrainian Easter Eggs known as Pysanky. I have always loved these eggs. My Grandparents had a few over the years that they had brought back from various vacations. I’ve never known anyone who has made these beauties and so the thought never occurred to me to attempt to make any myself. The art form itself is over 2000 years old and has been passed down from generation to generation. After a bit of information gathering from Jennifer, a bit of browsing around, and getting more inspiration from Jennifer’s sister Melissa’s eggs - I ordered a kit from Ukrainian Gift Shop. It arrived about 3 days later – talk about fast, and I didn’t even expedite the shipping! I sat down the next day, sketched out a design and gave it a shot.
After dipping the egg into the second color dye I dropped it while applying the next layer of wax… oops. It’s a pretty good crack, actually, but it managed to hold together while I finished it. I’m not sure how long it will last in the long run though. When I mentioned this to Jen, she let me know she had cracked her first too! I guess dropping your first egg is some kind of rite-of-passage or something.
So here it is. My first attempt at making one of these eggs.
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It’s not great, but I call it a good first attempt. The design only barely resembles the one I sketched out and the colors aren’t what I’d pick if I did it again, but I learned a lot! I think I’ll be sticking to the designs that came with my kit for the next couple of eggs to get more comfortable with it.
