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.

Crafting ADD

A while ago, before being bitten by the polymer clay bug, I painted. I painted gourds, like this one. I painted boxes. I painted checkbook covers. I painted on fabric, on wood, on glass, on light bulbs ... on just about anything I could think of. I think I've mentioned before that I have what Christy at dragonflylane calls, craft ADD. I discover some new thing and wear it out for awhile, until the next new thing comes along.

So what does that say about me? That I constantly need a challenge? Probably. That I have a short attention span? Maybe. That I'm just a tad this side of bipolar, manic-deprssive, OCD, ADD and a bunch of other syndromes and labels that could fund a nice timeshare for analyst for years to come? Oh, yeah. That's me.

Many years ago, when I made the decision to leave the corporate world to be a full time stay at home mom, I asked my mom if she and Dad (translated to everyone I knew) would think that I had just wasted a ton of money on an expensive higher education that was going be wasted when I chose to spend my days cutting peaches into tiny (and, yes equally sized, OCD remember?) portions, and raising what turned out to be 3 little fellows who cared nothing about marketing plans and sales analysis. And she said, "Just because you aren't working and earning a living using it, your education is not wasted. No matter where you go or what you do, no one can ever take your degree and your education away from you." And of course, she was right as she was most of the time. Fast forward a few years and a divorce later, and the degree got me in a few doors that otherwise would have been closed tight to me.

And my craft ADD is just the same. Oh, I've tossed aside the stuff I've tried that I just didn't enjoy, but the sewing, painting, beading, crocheting and clay work will always be there. I can pull one out whenever the mood hits and create away. The skills may bet a little rusty, but the basic learnin' is still there.

I recently got the urge to paint some light bulbs. I love Snowmen and Santas, and I love Christmas ornaments. I dug into my stash of burned out bulbs and created this little guy, and a couple more. I love that it combines crochet and paint, and keeps another incandescent from the land fill.

I have found that I really don't like maintaining my etsy shoppe. I'm still going to do it even though I haven't sold a single thing I've listed. My sales have come from bidding on alchemy requests, but it's cheap to put stuff up there and I keep hoping I'll be able to make a few bucks to support my crafting habit!

'til later.

He loves me, he loves my art

You're probably thinking this is gonna be a post about Joe, and it's true, he does love me and my art, but this is about another special man in my life ... Bennett.

Bennett is 6 years old, going on 30. He is my sister's youngest child who, says she, is more like me than my own boys. He's the smartest, sweetest, most wonderful child, and I am not one bit prejudiced. Just ask anyone who knows him. They'll tell ya that too.

Anyway, he called me with a special request. He loves his 1st grade teacher this year. Apparently Mrs. Carr is the bees knees to Bennett and he decided that she absolutely must have a picture painted by ... you guessed it ... me. He asked, and of course I cannot tell him no, even though I hadn't picked up a paintbrush in I don't even know how long.

And then there's the fact that, at least in my imagination, teachers probably have entire rooms in their basement, garage, storage buildings devoted to stuff kids have given them over their careers.

Talk about performance anxiety!

So I decided to paint a holiday/seasonal type of thing that Mrs. Carr could display for only part of the year if she so chooses. And here is the finished product.

If you can't see it, the mailbox has the family name on it.

I gave it to my sister and then ... heard nothing! I finally had to ask how Bennett liked it (that's more important to me). By all accounts, he did and Mrs. Carr did, too.

So all's good in Bennett's world. And that makes me extremely happy! And still his favorite. I think. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

'til later.