I WON SOMETHING!!!!!

Quick post here. I am so excited! I entered a giveaway on Margot Potter's The Impatient Crafter blog and mine was randomly chosen to win a sample pack of Friendly Plastic products.

I follow Margot's blog and love her writing style and her "think outside the box" approach to her art. She is definitely one of the bloggers I follow that I would love to meet in person. Here's a pic of one of her experiments with Friendly Plastic.

Thanks Margot!

'til later

Wearing Dinner Linens and Stuff

I tell you it sure takes me forever to get a new post up. It's not actually the posting it's the picture taking that I can't seem to fit in. I should be ashamed. I have a great camera, and a nice MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles courtesy of my employer at my disposal. I think maybe I'm just lazy.

In the last post I mentioned making a skirt out of dinner napkins and promised a pic. Well, since that post, I've ripped it apart and remade it. I just didn't like the elastic waist, so I stitched in some darts and put in a side zipper. The fit is much more to my liking, even it was a little bit more work. Here are some pics. Ignore the wrinkles. I don't know why they show up looking so bad in this pic, because they don't in reality look that bad.


I also shot a close up of the bracelets I have one. The blue one is one of the very first I ever made when I was just starting to string beads. The other is made up of some of the very first polymer clay beads I made. I didn't have very many colors yet, so I just used some white Sculpey and add artist's chalk to marble in some color. Both of these remain 2 of my favorite pieces and will never be gifted nor sold.

And speaking of selling ... A couple in our town recently opened a new gift shop called Teabeary's featuring local artists and craftspeople. It's on a consignment type basis, which I like, and you have to be approved to display there, which I also think is a good thing. Jeff and Sue Neal, who also own the Seldon Renaker Inn Bed and Breakfast, are very active in the community and are part of a growing number of people interested in reviving our downtown. Here are a couple pics of my display as it first appeared. Sue has since updated, rearranged and purchased some new display pieces for us.








Lots going on at work and at home, so this may be the last post for awhile, not that I've been on any kind of regular schedule anyway :)

'til later.

Can you say "Blog Neglect"?

It's been too long! But, things have been really busy lately. Baseball season started,
and with that comes all the parent volunteer work like designing the media guide, a project that, in the past at least for basketball, I've paid to do!
A few years back I was contacted by the high school basketball boosters to see if I'd be interested in a freelance job designing their media guide. Sure! I love kids, sports, and design and layout. No brainer. It was a paying gig for a couple years until #3 son actually started high school. Then, a parent volunteer, unpaid, labor of love type of deal. Well guess what? The baseball boosters saw it, loved it, and knew that #3 son was also on the baseball team, so another unpaid, parent volunteer, labor of love project. And I don't mind, but it does take up most of my spare time for a few weeks.

I did, however, manage to make myself a new necklace/bracelet set for the baseball teams trip to Florida. Polymer turquoise and polymer jade with a silver plate (purchased) pendant. I love it, and I'll try to have a pic sometime soon to share.
I've also been thrifting a little. In this day and time, I'll bet a lot of us have, right? I've bought sandals, new boots, and a small piece of plaid fabric that ended up as a skirt for work (total cost - less than $2 and 1 hour of my time).

This week I scored 6 gorgeous table napkins in turquoise blue and green. Yes! What did I do with them, you might ask, because as anyone who knows me knows, I barely manage to get food on the table for us to eat, much less table linens and all that frou-frou. Well I did what any respectable cheapskate would do. I took 2 of them and made a summer skirt. Yes, ladies and gents, this chick will be wearing table linens to work this summer. Scarlett O'Hara has nothing on me! The total cost of the skirt will about $1 and less than an hour of my time. I'll try to get a pic up later.

And speaking of later, 'til then.

Lazy Lounging FB Addict

I'm currently propped up in bed with my laptop and wireless device (actually company owned), browsing Facebook and "talking" to people I haven't seen nor heard from in a couple decades.

How cool is that, really? I signed up for Facebook at the urging of one of my coworkers, but basically let it go for a few months, thinking I didn't have the time to bother with one more social anything. Then, in a Eureka moment, I realized the potential for marketing our company which, like so many others, is being very conservative with ad dollars and riding out the recession storm. Marketing communicators, in a non-existant ad budget world, find ways to get the word out for nothing. Enter Facebook, stage center! But because I do nothing without researching the ins and outs first, I really looked at FB, browsed pages, and in the process, started building my own set of friends and photos for my personal page.

And now, I'm addicted. I mean, I have to monitor my company's page, and to do that, I have to have my account open. And I don't stay on FB all day. If I did that, I would never get anything else done. But, I do check it several times a day, everyday. So maybe I'm not addicted, just dedicated. That sounds better. We'll call it that.

Through FB, I've made a couple really cool connections. The one I talked about in the last post, and I recently designed this jewelry for a friend on FB. I think it turned out quite nice, and she was tickled with it.


'til later.

So I'm a little behind in my blog posts ...

I know, I know. I'm a terrible blogger. Can't keep up. Story of my life. So forget that it's been a month and half and just read on like there's not been a huge gap, will ya? Okay.

The holidays went by in a blur of paper, and ornaments, and family, and food. Everyone seemed to enjoy everything and the homemade gifts were a hit for the most part. The girls really liked their purses, I know, and the little girls were okay with the dolls. It's sad that the expectation for what a toy does overrides the imagining of what it could do. Oh well.

The rubberband guns were a huge hit with the little boys and the big boys. There were styrofoam cups everywhere, purchased by yours truly as targets to avoid the idea that a brother or sister could be a target. Aren't I smart? Bennett got one for his birthday in early January and he loves his too. Too bad I didn't get a photo. Joe did a great job making them. Maybe later.

The new year started off with a business trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gone for a week. Exhausting. More fun this year than last now that I know a little bit more about the biz. I also attended a conference where the speaker was Ken Schmidt, the marketing guru behind the great Harley Davidson turnaround in the mid 80s. He was fantastic, and well, very good looking which was a nice little bonus. He's next to me, and I'm in the brown jacket. The beautiful lady in the periwinkle suit is my friend and my boss, the president of THIEL Loudspeakers. I think the other two just stepped into the photo =c)!

I made it home on January 12, but my luggage decided to extend it's stay at Chicago O'Hare until January 15. It arrived home just after I bought all new makeup and a new curling iron. I was relieved to see all my polyclay jewelry still in there, along with my most favorite pair of boots.

I'm currently working on more technical artsy things. Web design is a relatively new endeavor for me and I'm building two sites right now. I'll post links when I get them up and running.

One is for a fellow jewelry artist who makes these amazing bracelets, pendants, and such out of old silverware. Trust me, there is a barter deal going on here. I love her bracelets!

Hers will be an e-commerce site, so a bit more complex, but fun to do, and more importantly, a fun lady to know.

'til later.

Pickin' and Grinnin'

Okay. It's been awhile since I've posted. I know. I've been busy with custom orders for Christmas. Apparently lots of people wait until the last minute to order. I've done it. You probably have, too. Thank goodness I started early. I'm in good shape. Well, almost good shape. I still need to shop for one boy (not saying which), and of course nothing's wrapped.

Thanksgiving being so late this year really messed with my getting the Christmas spirit. I normally don't put my tree up right after Thanksgiving, but with two boys working and the other swapping weekends with his dad and playing ball, I had to do it. I don't know how many more years I'll be lucky enough to get the three of them together to share this Christmas ritual, so I took advantage of the one day over the long weekend that they all could be here. So the tree's up, but nothing else is decorated. The storage boxes are still here in the family room. We may get up Christmas morning tripping all over them. I won't care and neither will they!

Last Sunday I had the distinct pleasure of traveling to Nashville, TN with some folks from work for a dinner, a tour and a meeting with the CEO of Gibson Guitars. Woo woo! Pretty high falutin' for an amateur picker like me. On Monday, we toured the Gibson Custom Shop and I saw enough Gibson Les Pauls to make my eyes bug out. I would kill to own a regular Gibson flat top, and to see these iconic custom instruments being made was just awesome. Apparently a lot of folks want them as a custom order today might get you a guitar in hand 18 months from now! What a waiting period!

My boss, and the owner of the company where I spend my days, asked me to design and make a doll for the Gibson owner's daughter. "Would you do it?" she asked on the Wednesday afternoon before the Sunday night we were going. Now let's see ... do I want to design and make a custom doll for the daughter of the multi-millionaire owner of an international manufacturer of the world renowned Les Paul hardbody guitar? It took me about a half a millisecond to say, "Heck yeah!".

And so I did. And here she is. And the owner and his wife were duly impressed. Best of all, my boss thinks I'm freakin' awesome.

Man I hope she doesn't find out the truth!

'til later.

Handmade/Homemade Christmas

So I've been trying to write a new post for days and I can never find the time, or else I cannot access the blog from my home dial up connection. Yes, you read that right ... dial up. I live in a rural area where not everyone has access to DSL! It's a small price to pay, however, for the peace and quiet at my house after a day in the "big city" working!

Joe and I are working feverishly to make this Christmas a semi-homemade one. Not the Sandra Lee kind, but we decided that, where possible, we're going to make the gifts we give to the kids and grandkids. So far, I've made 3 purses, all different styles and fabrics, and checkbook covers, another small purse for a very small little gal. This photo is the backpack purse I just finished. I made it from a tutorial on Pink Penguin's blog. The tutorial is very well written with one exception. There is a drawstring for the body of the bag, and I couldn't find a place in the tute that indicates how long to cut it! Common sense will help you when you get to that point, and I figured it out with no problem. I love the bag and ended up made a checkbook cover to match.

Joe's doing some woodworking for the grandsons. He's making each of them a rubber band gun and we'll include some sort of targets. (If you're thinking bad thoughts about giving boys guns, so be it, but as a child this was one of my favorite homemade toys, and so far, I've not turned into a serial killer!)

I also made this t-shirt using a store purchased (on clearance, mind you) t-shirt and Soft Scrub as a bleaching agent. I read this somewhere on the web, but for the life of me can't remember where! I filled an empty glue bottle with the (white pasty kind) Soft Scrub, put cardboard inside the shirt to prevent bleeding to the back, and painted away. I let the shirt sit for a couple hours and then rinsed with clear water and then laundered it as usual. Ideally, you should let it sit until the Soft Scrub dries, but I was so anxious, I couldn't wait! :o)

'til later.