Take A Walk On The Wild Side

Three buttons merged into one necklace. Tiger print. What more could you want to know about this? The fact that you could own it, because you can.

Czech It Out

Another one of my favs. I'm not completely sure that there is another soul out there who can love and care for this necklace as well as I can, so I'm not sure if I can really part with it. We shall see. The point is though, this pink piece is a combination of buttons and a charm from the Czech Republic. I bought it from a man with a glass eye. Ask my cousin Mary, she was there. She too bought some loot from the one-eyed Czech. You could kinda tell he had some wild stories to tell, but there was that whole GIGANTIC language barrier. Cousin Mary and I went on a whirlwind tour of the C.R. by visiting Prague, Brno and Olomouc (which is pronounced more like O-lo-moutz). We searched high and low for antiques and wonders the likes of which we'd only seen in catalogs and movie sets. We found Heaven when we found the one eyed man's shop in Olomouc. We loved it so much, we came back and shopped there again. And somehow because of the crazy conversion rate, we each thought we were buying way out of our price range amounts of stuff. But later we realized that we'd each spent somewhere around $20 for arm fulls of former Soviet stuff. That's just a little travel story to bulk up this post. You see I'm finding it harder and harder to come up with new ways of describing these necklaces. I love them all, I made them all, but eventually one's proverbial well runs dry. And thus you hear about the one eyed man.

I don't know why I like this picture so much, but I think the quality is really good. Note the texture of the button! Wee!

Do I Spy A Wren?

I've never tried my hand at bird watching, so I really don't know. What is that bird? Some kind of wren or sparrow? It's too colorful to be a finch, or so I think and I think its head is too big. Like I said, I don't know what kind of bird this is, but I do know that I like this one a lot. Our dear feathered friend is applied to an old wooden nickel, sealed and on a chain. And for added flair, I attached a piece of old jewelry from my bag of tricks. I'm not sure where I picked up that little cloisonne collection, but it has been given a new life here.

Oh and one more desk item...

Last but not least in this desk upgrade: the ink blotter. My friends, there comes a time when something that you love, something that you find very pretty and perfectly appropriate, something that someone you love gave you must go. It is old, it is dirty, it looks tired, it is worn out.

That's the story of this ink blotter. Stained from years of both use and storage -- poor thing was even used as a makeup tray (ultimate death to all white-fabric-based products) at one point and endured moving trucks, storage units and one accidental Modge Podge spill.

You see, the trouble is, I still wanted an ink blotter. I still liked the overall size and dimensions of ye olde ink blotter and, well, I'm cheap. So I decided to upgrade. I have a small stash of fabric (Have you ever heard the slogan, "She who dies with the most fabric wins?" because I try to avoid that) and I dug around for the right pieces to help me. I found the pink quickly and decided that was a great frame piece but i wanted something extra special for the center panel. At one point in my mother's industrious career as a fabric collector -- she is going for a hoarding title -- she worked at one of Dallas' high-end furniture and interior decorating stores. And she asked the designers if she could have the outdated, unused or leftover fabric sample books. They are a treasure-trove of fabulous pieces of fabric. The trick is finding projects that can accommodate upholstery-thick fabric that is less than two square feet.

My friends I'd been eyeballing this sample for years before this project came about and I finally had a chance to use these whimsical frogs and Lilly-pad fabric for something.

The assembly was super easy. I painted the old blotter with white primer a few times, For the flat parts, I stretched the fabric and used duck tape to secure it in place. I cut a few small pieces of bunting for the padded part, wrapped that in fabric and glued the whole thing together with hot glue. It's not a piece that can withstand being used as a Frisbee or anything like that, but in its place, it's just fine.

Lilly Explosion: Watch for Falling Pink & Green

I mentioned in my post from last May (just before I went to Denmark and the Czech Republic) that I had a new look ready to come right out at ya... And here it is. I decided that the red and gold were lovely and warm, but I was ready to express the Lilly side of life. One day early on in the Spring, I was feeling a little down and I decided to go to my favorite place ever to cheer myself up -- the paper store! This time it was Swoozie's in Preston Center and I found out there that Lilly P now does wrapping paper, paper plates, napkins and plastic cups! Pens and letterhead and picture frames and post it notes. I perhaps went overboard and bought it all, but as the Lilly ad posted on my office wall says, "Too much is never enough."

I got home with my Lilly treasures and decided to give this area of my home a makeover, pink and green and girly. I started with the backdrop. That's definitely wrapping paper on foam board and it makes a great place to pin up treasured post cards. The one of the airplane was sent to me by my most frequent pen pal, a well-traveled Naval Officer. Every time I see that plane I think of where it's going today and how much I'd like to hop on board, assuming that its flying me to Paris or Tahiti or Switzerland or Brazil. Plus the blue sky looks so crisp and inviting.

Next I decided that the lamp needed some doing over to look extra spunky. I spent a while getting the dimensions correct, but I finally was able to cut the right sized paper to cover the original design. And since I'm not sure if this Lilly theme will last forever (come January I might be awfully tired of all the pinks and greens), I decided to make sure that all the updating could eventually be removed without leaving a trace. I used a two-sided tape to attach the paper to the lamp, which, in case you didn't notice, has all kinds of corners and crevices. And from my old bag of tricks, I found the dingle balls to hang from the lamp shade. I feel like Lilly would approve. So useless, so cute, so ridiculous, so Lilly.

And just as a useless hint/trick -- The cord couldn't be hidden with this lamp, you can clearly see where the plug is and there's just no room for it to hide. I used the box that the frame came in with two slits cut in the back as makeshift cord storage. I carefully wound the unneeded bit and curled it into the box, which sits at the bottom of the books stack.

I surrounded the rest of the area with various other Lilly accessories and traded out the doodads so that they'd match, too.

The Eggcellent Easter (Or the End of Egg Posts)

A little late perhaps to be debuting my Spring Easter decorations, but I'm such a lagger when it comes to blogging. I sure hope you'll forgive me. Above (and in a few shots below) is the arrangement I did (with all flowers grown by my mommy) and the Easter Egg wreath I made for our family's Easter lunch. We decided to do things super laid-back and casual. We grilled hamburgers (in the rain, as the weather didn't cooperate with our plans), baked french fries and had an All-American chocolate cake instead of typical Henry-family over-the-top feasts of fancy-pants foods.
I don't know why we decided to go super laid back, but it worked out really well for everyone. Did I mention the Bloody Mary's? With spicy Cajun salt on the rim? Oh my goodness. It was a great holiday.
And I got to do the centerpiece! I showed you a week ago my technique for draining the eggs shown here. I dyed them all with kiddie egg dye and high-end paint supplies. Then I thought they weren't quite showy enough so I rolled them in rubber cement and added super-fine glitter. Awesome. It made such a mess but it was great! You know how when you play with rubber cement it gets on your hands and rubs into those little balls of rubber cement? Well, add in tons of glitter and you have a genuine mess on your hands. Thankfully my nose didn't itch or anything like that and the mess was completely containable. I took a cardboard box and cut out a 9" circle and then inside of that I cut a 7" circle and used the 2" ring as the starting point for my wreath. Then I took a piece of fancy tissue paper (made by Papyrus and purchased at Central Market, which is generally way to fancy for me for craft supplies, but with tissue paper, you can see the quality) and cut it into strips, wrapping the strips around the cardboard ring and then letting the extra stick out of the ring like grass. When the wreath was completely covered, I glued the glittery eggs in a haphazard way to look casual and springy.
The arrangement was simple enough -- I took what mom had grown and picked and put it in a mint julep silver cup.

Below is a much better picture to get a straightforward view of the whole project.


And below this is the cake I made. Dyed the vanilla icing green and covered it with coconut flakes and some little Easter peanut M&Ms.

Egg Treatment, Part One

I got a little photo happy with my Easter project and today's post only shows the beginnings of it all. Above is a collection of empty eggs soaking in the sink. What a challenge to get the egg out of the eggshells. But I devised a way that worked for me. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. And then you watch a "how to" video by Martha Stewart and find out that there is a fairly easy and seriously more sanitary way to de-egg an eggshell and, wait, oh the corniness, I felt like I had egg on my face! No that's too lame of line to actually use...
What I did was stab the eggs with a steak knife, cut little holes from that stabbing, holes just big enough to fit a drinking straw through. Then I just blew the egg out of the shell as though I was blowing bubbles in my milk. I ended up with a bowl full of 18 eggs. Waste not, want not -- I cooked myself two casseroles. I decided that given my intimacy with the eggs that I better just keep the casseroles for me own personal consumption. Maybe that still sounds gross. It was just the best way I could think of.


This is how I rigged two kabob skewers and a plastic mixing bowl into being a decent place to let egg drain out of the eggshell.

Two casseroles in the fridge. Meals for weeks!

Six little glasses of egg dye. With Easter rabbit spoons to boot!

And alas, a bird's eye view of the mess once my eggs got their dye jobs. Amazingly enough, the whole mess was a snap to clean up and no permanent damage was made to anything at all. Not even my dish rags show any signs of being mixed up with this mess. Oh and I decided that just plain old egg dye wasn't good enough for me. So I mixed the standard-issue egg dye with high-end art supply to come up with some interesting combinations. You'll have to stay tuned to see how it all turns out.

Let's pretend, a lesson in Paint By Numbers

Let's just say that you developed an interest in paint by numbers. Why? Well, it looks relaxing and that mid-century modern concept, that by using a little map and some stalls of paint you too can be Van Gogh! So you research paint by numbers -- completed retro versions are pricey -- yikes no good for this little crafter. And the modern ones, well they are as trendy as Dream Catchers and similarly themed at that -- think a western coyote howling at the moon or an eagle soaring through the Utah skies or something. Bad bad bad.

So what's a crafter to do? Well, after a wee bit of internet searching I found that there's a software (we a 15 day trial period) available for download that turns your photos in paint by numbers kits. Score! After downloading it and playing around for a while, I gleaned all the info I thought I needed to start the project in earnest. *Key hint* you must use a really simple photo. I tried some complex pictures and then just some normal ones and we're talking a really difficult paint by numbers painting.

And then there's the fun part (I say that knowing that I haven't even cut the wood for the canvases much less painted these; I'm at a purely digital point thus far)... I had to make a computerized catalogue of every paint color that I own and mixes I was willing to make to cover for the colors that I don't own. I ended up with a home-made pallet of 54 colors, a real rainbow span at that. It took forever! Sitting there with all my tubes of paint evaluating the exact shades to create a digipallet. Geez louise.

Anyhoo, so once I got the yuck work out of the way, I had a blast creating a collection of patterns. I have 10 patterns but I wanted to show off this lovely pattern because it involves a 1970's version of my dad. Ha! So Mr. Moustaches and his pup are lounging and you can see the various versions -- the final colored in pattern (a pallet with lots of pinks and purples), the pattern with and then without numbers, then the original picture in all its glory. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this one... it's an exciting new collection.

Two More Loves

Here are two more of the thoroughly freeing and completely enjoyable Valentines that I made from available (household) materials. These two feature some snippets from a recent Anthropolgie catalogue. I guess there's not too much artistic merit to these other than the fact that I really enjoyed just making things, third grade style. In fact, I've always been a huge fan of the collage. I usually try to come up with really elaborate plots and fancy materials, but just sitting down with a box of markers, a pad of paper, a few catalogues and some glitter -- ultimate crafting enjoyment!
The one at the top was pretty abstract. It involved finger painting and buttons! And glitter and hearts that I made by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out a heart, just like elementary school students do! In keeping with yesterday's theme of using cliche love sentiments, this one's inside said, "Valentine, you're as cute as a button."
And the bottom one, that's for my mom. When I was a little girl, she used to sing me a song with those lyrics. I thought it was fitting for the heart with a little heart missing.
Oh and sorry that the pictures were fuzzy. I'm starting to think that I might need a new camera...

My Funny Valentine

Well, a holiday can't breeze past this crafter. You know I have to do something to mark these occasions. And this year I wanted to make Valentines completely out of things I already owned. No spending! Not one dime, which reminds me I've added a new label to my label arsenal "Recession? Not Bad For Crafters" because these tight times can be a boon for the creative types. Now if only "homemade" had sounded less shoddy during the era of excess. Skinny wallets mean creative stretching must go on and I'm such a fan! Not to jump atop a fav soap box, but I've always said more credit should go to the creative spender than to the overspender...
And since I used my own paper, glitter and googley eyes, I wasn't going to spoil the "no shopping" spree by purchasing some custom-sized envelopes. I had to make my own out of packing tape and pottery barn catalogues. I even owned the stamps I used to mail these puppies. I'm really proud of this one. It's a joke. And here's the punchline, on the inside it says, "Valentine, you're one hot mama."
Where, you must be asking, did I find such a cartoon character? Well, that's easy. You know those annoying weekly inserts that you get in the mail? Well, I'm zoned with some Mexican meat market whose mascot is that dude. Every week his jocular smile beckons me to buy pound after pound of meats with which I am not familiar. The pictures of cow brains and pigs feet are usually the first postal item to get File 13'ed. Well, not last week. Last week Señior Sausage was cold-cut right out of his advertisement and used as the star of my star Valentine.
Also, if any of my readers are in need of their own Mexican meat merchant men, drop me a line. I can collect one a week from the circular. I'll even throw in a pair of googley eyes... Aww, I'm so sweet.

Cuff Links, the Homemade Version

So I got this shirt years ago at a Gap Outlet in Freeport, Maine. And it came with buttons as cuff links. Well, wouldn't you know, immediately one set (four are needed for the shirt, two per cuff) died in the dryer. And then I lost a second set. And well, then the shirt disappeared into the back of the closet or was only used when the sleeves could be rolled up three or four times each to avoid showing off the missing cuff links. I pulled out the bead kit, found 16 identical pearls (let's admit they are knockoffs) and a nice colored embroidery thread to sew them into cuff links. It was pretty easy as a process and I'm prepared to say this is a big upgrade from the original.

Day Off Correspondence

To add to the recent collection of calligraphy posts, here's what I did this morning for some letters I needed to send. I tell you what, I've gotten pretty good at the standard, "Dallas, Texas 752.." because I use it so frequently! And I decided to really roll out the personalized pink stationery that I bought from vistaprint.com (which is cheap yet high quality... I can't say enough good stuff about using them though I'd advise going for the "linen" paper option so that the paper feels really high quality).

Thanks to several practice sessions, I've really gotten comfortable using the colored ink. At first I had a really hard time switching from black to blue or red or gold (the three colors I own besides black) because I felt like you could see differences in color as the amount of ink left in the quill started to dwindle. And that's true -- you can see the color difference, but I've gotten better at knowing when to refill the quill, which is, like, constantly. If I were to write a sentence with my quill with colored ink, it would look like this,

"Geez, d(refill)o you thin(refill)k that t(refill)he So(refill)x have (refill) what it(refill) takes t(refill) to make (refill) it to the (refill) Series (refill) this ye(refill)ar?"

Clearly, it's not an efficient way to write a lengthy amount, but it's all right for addresses... if you are in a patient mood. Luckily for my lady friends to whom the envelopes are addressed, I was in a patient mood this morning.

But now I'm not, I only have so many hours to shop on my day off! Goodness gracious folks, I hope this post will sustain you through the weekend and my trip to NYC.

Welcome to the Church Wreath

What are you supposed to give a friend when that friend decides to become Catholic? My mom pretty much nabbed the "large book collection" gift category, and I'd already given him a rosary... And well, Catholic gifts are pretty much aimed at the blue-haired grannies set or 6-year-olds who are receiving first Holy Communion. And since my friend who became Catholic last Saturday was a 33-year-old guy's guy, the options were limited indeed.

So I crafted him a wreath of holy cards covered in glitter. Yeah, that's right. It's a pretty ridiculous item and will likely not be hung on a wall anytime soon, but I'd been itching to use the gluegun and I haven't played with glitter since Christmas. So here it is, wrapped in tissue paper and in a cardboard box, ready to be shipped up to Tennessee where Jason lives.

Don't Scowl at SCAW

Presenting Susan's craft...

I've literally been blogging for months about Susan (aka Dj Jazzy) and her visit to Dallas. Well, over the weekend, she came, we ate and shopped like champs, and now she's gone again (So sad!). And if we didn't have time to craft together, I at least had time to whip up a Dallas-visit souvenir for Susan.

She was quite smitten with my calligraphy skills and wanted me to make something for her using my bottle of ink and old-school quill. So, I wrote out her monogram (about 1 bellion times, to quote the Adelphia girl) and made a frame for it. We decided it's about the preppiest thing ever, which is fitting because Susan is in love with all things preppy!

The frame was a super cheap Ikea purchase covered in fabric (watch how you do those inside corners! That part can be really tricky) and then covered in a couple of thick layers of modge podge (low gloss, I believe it's called the "matte finish"). And, I lied when I said Susan didn't craft--she assembled the finished pieces. We were both pretty pleased with how it turned out. She has promised to put the frame above her kitchen sink (an upgrade from the original planned location of above the commode... Thanks Susan). Perhaps she'll even send in a picture when it's installed??