Of Sage and Sepia

Rescued Canvas Family

2012-02-08T07:52:00.000-05:00

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

- Scott Adams

When I read Robyn Thayer's post about "embracing the suck" and what we can learn from making bad art, I knew exactly what she was talking about. These sad little canvases have been on a shelf in my studio for over a year , mocking me every time I see them. I had such high hopes; I even bought little display stands for them. Somewhere between the concept and the execution the canvases veered off the track, firmly into suck territory!

It's rather embarrassing to share these, but there's no way to move forward without "embracing the suck" and there's plenty of that here! Anyway, not quite sure what happened to these - clearly the colors don't work, the wavy texture doesn't work, the black swirls don't work, the red heart is wobbly, but other than that, these are great - HA !

I couldn't throw them out. After rescuing some artist papers with a wash of gesso, I decided it was time to stage a canvas rescue. With just a couple of coats of gesso over the backgrounds, the canvases are already look so much better!

Starting with the formerly blue one, I washed the red heart with some gesso to tone it down more. I added a rosette made with Tim Holtz tape with a pearl center. I glued on a piece of text to some artist paper, stamped and embossed "love" and added a bit of lace. One key hole and a bit of ribbon on top and, eureka! - this is more like what I had planned.

On to the next one - the scary purple one! Again washed some gesso over the heart, then added a postage stamp, key hole charm and a jewel for some bling. I pleated some more of the TH tape around one of the outside edges of the heart. The birdie is one of the resist canvases I blogged about earlier - love how the color wash makes the resist pop. I rubbed some Tattered Rose Distress Ink around the edges to add a bit of color.

And the last one - more gesso, edges again rubbed with Tattered Rose DI. I used a white gel pen to tone down the black stamped swirls and added a mirrored heart for some bling. Layered on some stamped, DI'd flowers, a word cut from some artist paper and some ribbon on top.

Good lesson learned here - sometimes things just need some time to mellow and can be rescued from their formerly sucky state. Of course sometimes things should go directly to the trash - no stopping, no collecting $200, no grace period. Here's hoping I learn which ones go in each category!

Goodbye, My Friend

2012-02-05T08:27:00.000-05:00

I lost an old friend recently. We were an unlikely pair. I moved into an apartment in her farm house at 19, recently graduated from high school, newly married and ready to start college. She was 47, never married, a former egg farmer and an eccentric Yankee.

Barbara was a one-of-a kind woman. She was handier around machinery than most men, made frugality an art-form, was a tidy hoarder, hated change, had a great, if slightly odd, sense of humor, could eat more than a farm hand , had very definite ideas about things, and would try most anything once. She loved anything with a motor! I can still see her riding the neighbor's snow mobile- her 6 foot frame crammed into the seat, legs bent to her chin, hair flying and a look of absolute joy on her face.

She had a wonderful old Yankee way of talking. She talked about having "gumption" - a trait she valued highly. When I'd obsess about some minor imperfection, she'd offer this insight: "Dear, it'll never be seen on a trotting horse".

My oldest son and daughter were born while I lived in her house. Carpenter Son followed her around the farm; she called him "Boy" and talked to him as if he were a grown-up. She was the one who scooped him up when he ran out into the busy road. She ate all of their cooking creations, even when I warned her not to!

I worked on dragging her into the current century. Once while we were on a road trip I decided to go through the drive-up window at McDonald's. As I pulled up to the window, she remarked ,"Dear, you're driving really close to the building" - she had never been through a drive-up window and never had fast food. It didn't take long for her to become very fond of french fries! We worked on updating her wardrobe so it would only be a couple of decades out of style. While she didn't really care how old her clothes were, she was very concerned about how they fit. I started making some dresses for her and honestly, I doubt The Queen Mother had as many fittings!

She taught me so many things - how to make the best-ever creamed corn, how to identify spots to harvest fiddlehead ferns, how to enjoy an entire Cadbury chocolate bar on the drive home from work at midnight, how being kind looks, what it really means to turn the other cheek, and how to dust yourself off and move on.

I think I began my fascination with ~~old and shabby~~ vintage things while I lived with her. We'd spend hours going through old family photos - she knew how everyone was related, down to the "second cousin, twice-removed". There were several outbuildings on the farm, full of stuff she knew would be useful someday. I never knew that people repaired metal pails until she unearthed several and was not amused at my suggestion to just throw them out and get new ones. This great window-turned-mirror was from one of her chicken coops. She did not understand why on earth I'd put it in my house! I love it, not only for the great arched shape, but because it reminds me of her.

What really made her special was her kindness, her sense of humor and her reluctance to ever say anything bad about anyone. She gave life to the word "humility" and lived to help others. She embraced me with all my faults, was a kind and loyal friend for decades, and I'll miss her.

More Background Experiments

2012-02-02T08:23:00.002-05:00

Here's another page from my 2012 calendars, continuing my focus on interesting backgrounds. This one isn't a new technique - all you Tim Holtz lovers will recognize it! The background is easy - smoosh Distress Inks - think 3 colors may be the maximum that works - directly on a craft sheet, then spritz with water. For this piece I used Lettuce, Broken China and Denim. Drop a piece of card stock onto the wet ink and lift off. The spritzed ink makes am interesting background. If you end up with some blank spots, you can repeat the process BUT be sure to completely dry it first, otherwise you'll just end up with muddy colors. ( You know how I know this!). Here's a link to Tim's video on this and some other easy DI background techniques.

Added a dictionary page, stamped with a TH splatter stamp, I love this stamp- it adds just a bit of interest and color. The pleated piece at the bottom is left over from the seaside page I posted earlier. These days I use my sewing machine mainly to sew paper.

Isn't the birdcage sweet! First time I tried the Prima resist canvas pieces and they are so cool. The cut-outs are white and when you spray them with a color wash, the canvas soaks up the color and reveals the white resist pattern. New obsession! There are available here online and probably in your local craft store ( although I haven't seem them at either Michael's or Joanne's).

I stamped the branch onto Grunge Paper, cut it out and inked it with Vintage Photo ink. The cardinals came from a great Snow and Graham paper.

Love experimenting with new techniques and stuff I have in my stash but never used before. That's why we collect all of it - you never know where inspiration may lead and what supplies you'll need when you get there!

12 Months of Christmas Project - January

2012-01-30T15:45:00.001-05:00

I love making things for Christmas. I don't love making everything in a three week panic mode, so I was motivated to join in on the project dreamed up by Aileen of Aileen's Musings. She has put out a challenge to make something for Christmas every month and share our creations at the project site.

January's color suggestion is white - perfect for the project I had in mind - a white torn fabric wreath.

I started with a sad little thrifted wreath. Since it was so puny I wrapped some batting around it to fatten it up. The white batting also ensured that any gaps in the fabric won't be obvious. If your wreath is not white and you don't need to fatten it up, I'd suggest spray-painting it white so the wreath color won't be obvious.

I used a bottom-weight white fabric remnant (about half a yard) as I wanted some substance to the strips. Tear the fabric in strips about an inch wide. I made mine about 8 inches long, but yours may need to be longer or shorter depending on how fat your wreath is. Better to start with longer strips and then cut them smaller if you need to.

This couldn't be simpler - take on strip and tie in on the wreath. I double knotted the strips and kept alternating where the knot fell on the wreath - some towards the inside, some near the outer edge to make it fuller. If you like a more organized look, place all the knots lined up, but that kind of control makes me nervous!

Make sure your fabric strips are are close together as possible so there aren't any gaps. Once all the strips are tied on , trim so the ends are fairly even, but embrace the chaos - no measuring!

Since this is a Christmas wreath, a little glitter is in order. I randomly brushed a bit of glue and sprinkled on some silver glitter.

Tie on a strip of fabric to make a hanging loop and you're finished.

One Christmas project done - I feel so noble!

Another Pottery Barn Knock-Off

2012-01-25T16:17:00.000-05:00

I love these numbered jars from Pottery Barn. It dawned on me that I already HAD jars so making these would be easy and {gasp} require no new supplies!

Here's what I used:

Black acrylic paint, cosmetic sponge, stencil, tape and glue to secure stencil to glass. Really simple project - decide where you want the numbers, tape on the stencil and sponge on black paint. I tried some repositionable glue to help keep the stencil flat, but it didn't stick very well. Taping kept the stencil secure and I just held down any areas that wouldn't stay flat.

The paint on the PB ones looks a bit scrubbed up. My stencils didn't have smooth lines and the cosmetic brush left a nice texture, so I didn't do any additional distressing. If your stencil had really clean edges and your painting isn't textured, you could dab off some paint with a paper towel and scratch it up a bit with something sharp.

Here are my knock-offs:

The jars are Burken jars from Ikea. They come in many sizes and have silicone inside the lids so there is a pretty decent seal. I use them for all kinds of storage.

Isn't the little guy - "1/2" cute? I smile every time I see it! Love my new PB-inspired jar upgrade.

A Little Decorating Magic

2012-01-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

I like our flat screen TV but not how it dominates the living room. Here it is shortly after moving in with too much TV and too much blank wall.

I moved the ladder shelf out to make room for the Christmas tree and decided to start all over on the TV wall once the tree (sadly!) was gone.

For starters, the big leather chair went into the corner. Then added in a printer tray I had filled with shells and a frame with photos. This frame idea is all over Pinterest and is so easy - staple some wire to the back of a picture frame and pin on photos. I used tiny clothespins to secure the pictures to the wire.

The corner looks so much more inviting now:

Now to the problem of what to do around the TV . For starters The Captain helped hang a thrifted $3.00 shelf over the TV. A few vintage and beachy items on the shelf magically shifted the focus from the big black box.

I made ATCs a couple of years ago for an alphabet challenge on Next Generation Stampers that have have been sitting in a box ever since. They found a new home in a 7 Gypsies display box, and one of my vintage drawer knobs made the perfect hook. Has anyone decorated one of these boxes? Making the ATCs was the easy part - gluing them in was a bear! I tried most of my stash of various adhesives without success. Finally used some tacky glue - painted on both the box and the ATC with better luck, but still some edges going wild and free - grr! Anyway, hung that to the right of the TV.

Now the TV is no longer king of the living room and pictures and artwork have found fun new homes.

Cleaning out the Inbox and the Mailbox

2012-01-18T08:19:00.000-05:00

" You can't invent things like time, Violet said. You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can't invent more time."

-- Lemony Snicket

A New Year means being hit by the organization bug. I decided I needed some strategies for taming the volume of stuff that just wastes time.

First huge time-drain - junk emails. I get emails on three devices (cray-cray, I know) and while I've synched two to eliminate duplicates, I still ~~spend~~ waste too much time deleting emails I never even open. Since the first rule of organizing clutter, even e-clutter, is to stem the influx, I attacked my email and ruthlessly hit that "unsubscribe me" option!

Next on the chopping block was the updates from some of my online art groups - the ones on which I like to "lurk" but not participate. I know how to access these groups if I want to check on something, but I don't need daily updates.

(Here)

Then, on to snail mail. We must be on the master-list for catalog mailings! It takes a few minutes, but I tracked down customer service on several and unsubscribed from the paper catalogs. Check out this site: https://www.catalogchoice.org/ to unsubscribe from catalogs, junk mail, and be-still-my-heart, PHONE BOOKS. We get several huge phone books a year and believe me, I have enough phone book pages for altered art to last a life-time! Who even uses a phone book anymore?? I love that Tech Zombies lists phone books as "a technology that doesn't know it's dead". Then there are the these frightening numbers: 615 MILLION phone books printed last year, accounting for up to 30% of trash. Can't you just see archeologists several hundred years from now wondering what those strange yellow layers found in their dig represent? Another "unsubscribe me, please".

( Jim Krasinski has nothing to do with this post, but he's just so cute!)

Finally, cleaning up Facebook. Confession - I've unsubscribed from nearly every application so I only get real news from my FB friends- no game updates, no info about sites visited, no nothing but actual status updates and pictures.

So what am I doing with all my extra time now? Pinning things on Pinterest, of course!

Thrifted Finds

2012-01-15T16:31:00.000-05:00

I'm seeing that word all over blog land - "thrifted". I'm not usually a fan of made-up words or turning adjectives/nouns into verbs, but it's grown on me as it's much easier to say "thrifted finds" than "things I found at the thrift store". ( This may be the slippery slope into total language decay, but I digress).

Don't you just love finding treasures at thrift stores? Here are some of my recent scores.

Two pairs of new Gap pants and a new Liz Claiborne sweater : $15.00

Four sweet little cache pots from Williams Sonoma. These will be replacing my plastic yogurt cups for mixing paints. I like using less plastic, even the recycled kind. Plus these are so much prettier.

Sweet tea set! I really wanted if for the cups that will fit under my espresso maker, but the teapot is a nice extra.

And this week's super-find - drum roll, please:

Thirty-six pieces of Roger Williams silver in pristine condition: $6.00! Check out the sweet butter knives!

Have you found any treasures lately?

Altered Backgrounds

2012-01-11T19:27:00.000-05:00

I've been playing around with making backgrounds lately. I love the complex backgrounds that make pieces so much more interesting, but I'm a bit afraid of them myself. All that color, print, design and writing make me nervous!

There was an article in Somerset Studio recently about altering scrapbook paper by painting over it with a wash of gesso. I have lots that I never use - some "duds" that were included in a package of paper, some too loud, too bright,or just too-too for my taste. I took out some of those papers and decided to focus my 2012 calendars on making more creative backgrounds.

Here's a piece of artist paper from SS that started out too busy for me. I didn't take a totally "before" picture, but here it is with just a swipe of watered-down gesso and the circles over-stamped with more gesso.

Just painting over patterned paper with gesso may be all you need for some of your stash. I love how it mutes colors, unifies designs and adds some depth and texture. You can stamp-off into the gesso - no ink, just stamp to remove some of the gesso and create great patterns. Use fun things like bubble wrap, shelf liner in addition to real stamps.

Here's the finished calendar page I made with this gesso-improved paper:

I added some white-gel pen details around some of the printed design, then a text page painted with more gesso and stamped. The letters were swiped with some yellow pigment ink from one of those wheels of little wedge-shaped pads - some of the neighboring green and orange pads leaked on it - I like the mixture- and then clear embossed to finish them.

Here's another :

You can see the blue marbled pattern - really pretty, but busy! Again, a wash of gesso (I don't really measure - just add some water to dilute the gesso but not so much that it's watery.). The gesso allows the background to peek through but not take over. Some gesso stamped stars, post cancellations and a bit of over-stamped ephemera - and a real sea star - give this page an ocean vibe.

This page was a real challenge. It started out as a dark red toile print on an ecru background. I painted on some dark red paint around the edges and then a wash of gesso that transformed the print into something from a bad day at the crime lab! It took 2 layers of diluted gesso to tone it down. Then I over stamped the text with gesso, stamped some yellow dots with a rolled up piece of shelf liner and added some pencil-eraser gesso dots.

This was a fun exercise for me - stretching outside what's comfortable. Bring on those wildly decorated papers - you don't scare me anymore!

Dismantling Christmas

2012-01-07T09:44:00.001-05:00

By now, most normal people have stashed all their Christmas decorations. Not me. I like to extend the season as long as possible. Sadly, the tree has to go this weekend. It's just not possible to exhale in the same room without inducing a shower of pine needles.

I put decorations away in stages. That might be like slowly ripping off a bandaid - just prolonging the pain! A week or so after Christmas I pack away all the overtly Christmas-y things like Santas and card displays.

Then I'm down to what I consider "winter decorations"- still festive, but not in the category of needing an intervention. Candles, red garlands and twinkly lights meet my definition of "winter decorations" that justifies keeping them around longer. There's a house I drive by that has what I call the "pile it on" approach to seasonal decorations. They just keep adding stuff for the next holiday season to the existing scheme, so the fall scarecrow sits near the snowman who's now holding a big Valentine heart! Thankfully I have daughters who would step in if I start to go down that road.

Twinkly little white lights and window candles - that's another story. They are not going anywhere until it stops getting dark at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Paper Inspiration

2012-01-02T20:15:00.000-05:00

{here}

I love the Cake Wrecks blog. Most days they feature just that - cake decorating gone horribly wrong. But on Sunday they showcase the most professionally decorated cakes with details that knock your socks off. Case in point - the cake above, done by Brooklyn Cakes . Check out the with beautiful blue background, light branches and perfect little cardinals.

I knew this looked familiar. Look what's hanging in my studio - the paper that inspired this cake from Snow & Graham Letterpress!

Snow and Graham has other beautiful papers, like this:

and this:

and more little birdies! ( I think I must be in a bird phase).

There are lots of other paper goodies - cards, calendars and other drool-worthy items.

And no, I'm not on their payroll !

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T11:01:00.000-05:00

This page I made for my (late!) 2012 calendars is my New Year's resolution. Fits the bill quite nicely, don't you think?

Happy New Year to you and may it be filled with doing what makes you happy.

Recycling Wrapping Paper

2011-12-28T14:17:00.000-05:00

Does this look familiar? Are we really throwing all this paper away? Is there a better way?

As many of you know, I have a thing about paper and love using nice paper and doo-dads to make packages look special. Now for the crazy part - I also recycle everything and never considered the volume of wrapping paper to be a problem because I was recycling it all - that's good, right? Turns out not so much.

The Captain read something about wrapping paper not being recyclable. WHAT?? I did some Internet research and found that many cities don't accept wrapping paper in their recycling program because most of it isn't actually recyclable. Cheap wrapping paper is so thin it doesn't have fibers suitable for recycling. The heavier kind is often laminated and glittered - and then there's the pesky tape stuck to it. Also, the dye process most commonly used is "beater dye" in which the dye is actually in the pulp of the paper, not just printed on top and the process used to remove ink doesn't work well on beater dyed paper.

As is all that isn't enough, consider these scary statistics : wrapping paper and shopping bags account for 4 million pounds of trash a year . We spend $2.6 billion per year on gift wrap.

OK, so clearly I need to change my gift wrap obsession. There are many alternatives - paper that is actually recyclable like this great wrapping done by Montana Daughter - white tissue, twine, recycled tags and gum tree pods:

There are other options, of course : craft paper (plain or dolled up with bits of paper, ribbons, buttons), newspaper ( stamped, inked, or otherwise dolled up), comics, and the gift wrapped in a gift , like a box wrapped in a scarf. I need to get more creative and less wasteful!

But for this year, since I already bought and wrapped everything, I needed to do something with the leftovers. I saw on idea on Martha (of course!) about shredding wrapping paper to make filler for packages. This is a win-win - uses up the paper we already bought AND means we're not buying shredded paper for packing !

So, here is some of the leftover paper , ready to be shredded. I ironed it a bit (I recognize that is, as my daughters would say, "cray-cray"!). As you can see, most of it is the kind I now recognize as non-recyclable!

But look at this - colorful packing filler!

Once it's all shredded, you can't tell it Christmas paper so it works for any box that needs some extra padding. We have the cross-cut kind of shredder that makes smaller pieces. This would be even better with just the straight cut shredder.

Here's to recycling and making better choices. (But I do have a stash to use up first....)

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright

2011-12-24T12:38:00.001-05:00

Magnets - Another Quick and Easy Gift Idea

2011-12-21T13:33:00.001-05:00

These magnets are all over blog land and with good reason - quick, easy, inexpensive and look like the ones you find in chi-chi gift stores. The glass mimics a magnifying glass, making the images even more impressive and the technique is very forgiving.

You make these from supplies you probably have - artist papers, glue and glass marbles. I found the glass pieces at The Dollar Tree - Michaels, Joanne's and Hobby Lobby were all out of the clear ones. Apparently everyone else already made their magnets!

There really isn't much to this project. Select papers with an element you want to emphasize. Look at your stash of papers with an eye towards small details. I also stamped some - green lady at the bottom and script above it. I found that heavier weight (scrapbook style) works better than thinner paper like wrapping paper which tended to wrinkle more. Papers printed on both sides have the added bonus of making the back of the magnet look better if these things matter to you. Check your stash of previously stamped images or bits of paper - here's a perfect time to use them.

Then cut out the circles of areas you've selected. I thought this would be easy, using my 1 inch paper punch. It would have been, except the glass pieces were and inch and a half! So I just drew around the glass piece and cut the circles out by hand.

Now spread glue onto the flat side of your glass piece. I like using Aleen's Paper Glaze with its narrow tip applicator that you can use to smooch the glue all over. You want to completely cover the glass. Then lay your cut-out circle (face down) onto the glue and slide it around to cover it with glue and to push out any little air bubbles. (I did get a few with some small bubbles - sort of makes it look like hand-blown glass, so not to worry!). Once dried, trim away any paper that extends over the edge. Oh, and try not to get glue on the front of the glass - it is very had to remove. (Don't ask me how I know this!)

Glue a magnet to the back and you're finished.

You could make these tonight, but you probably should just have a glass of eggnog and file this away for next year or a less-crazy gift-giving future event!

Stairs - The Final Installment!

2011-12-19T21:16:00.002-05:00

The never-ending stair project is finally finished ! I love how it (finally) all came together. I also love that is is D.O.N.E. Not going to lie, this was one looong project. I won't be changing it up anytime soon!

First, just to recap - here's the "before" - dark wood, white carpeting and cabin-in-the-woods end caps.

Two coats of primer and three coats of paint later, no more dark wood. Unfortunately it took awhile for me to find this magic tool:

This little gizmo makes painting the banisters orders of magnitude easier than using a brush. It fits in between the banisters, the pad hold plenty of paint and produces a smooth finish- all for less than $3.00!

I painted the stairs and risers a clean semi-gloss white. The board that runs down the side of the stairs ( I now know this is called a "skirt board") is Sherwin Williams Sea Spray (941) - a greenish, blue that changes depending on the light.

I had originally thought I would get a runner at Lowe's - economical, convenient and ~~boring~~ practical. The Captain would have none of it. He thought that after spending weeks sanding, filling holes, priming and painting I should find a runner I loved. Bless his pointed head - we started shopping for runners. California Daughter thought we should investigate Carpet Liquidators. Trust me, shopping there is not for the faint of heart! It's in a huge warehouse, rugs piled everywhere and basically a self-help affair. But we found a beautiful wool runner for a fraction of the cost of man-made fiber ones at the rug stores. Yes, it was much more expensive than Lowe's, but it's just what I was envisioning.

The Captain did the installation - my hands are not strong enough to pull and staple, so I did the supervising. We rented the stapler and "knee kicker" - a handy tool that grips the carpet and when braced on your knee, pushes it tight into the space between the tread and the riser. The staples are very narrow and long.

A couple of favorite extra touches completed the transformation. The baseboard on the landing was pitiful - two narrow pieces of wood butted end-to-end.

We found a piece of moulding in the attic, and armed with a $15.00 mitre box and saw, gussied up the landing. I love it!

The caps on the newel posts were rough as well .( And here, covered in sanding dust)

Check out the new ones!

Loving my new stairs and loving that they are finished! (Well, nearly - there's a section of the runner that will go on the landing once it's bound.)

Quick and Easy Stamped Coasters

2011-12-15T21:53:00.000-05:00

The Captain's office staff makes his job easier, so I like to ~~bribe them~~ show my appreciation by making something for them. This year I was stumped ; I've made notebooks, tags, ornaments - now what? Coasters! Quick, easy and useful - what's not to like?

I use these unglazed tiles from Home Depot. They come 9 to a pack and cost about 65 cents a tile.

First, wipe off the stone dust with a damp paper towel and allow to dry completely. Here they are all wiped down and drying.

Then, stamp onto tile. I use StazOn black ink for the main image and red for a spot of color. Since the tiles are natural stone the surface is uneven, so images with clean lines and not much detail seem to work best. The exception is an all-over script stamp - since we're going for design, not legibility, it works! For some reason I had problems with the black ink on my clear stamps. Red rubber ones inked fine with the black StazOn (a brand-new pad), but the clear ones didn't. No problem with the red StazOn - anyone have any ideas?

You need to use a fair amount of pressure to stamp the uneven surface. Sometimes it works easier to place the tile on the stamp instead of stamping onto the tile. I suggest buying a few extra tiles for the occasional "oops". Actually, some of those "oops" can be fixed by a strategically placed accent image!

Here's are the tiles all stamped.

Next some feet to protect furniture. I cut little squares out of sticky-back felt. I have used small felt furniture pad circles, but they are a bit too fat . The sticky-back felt is much thinner and the coasters don't look like they're perched on stilts!

Then a couple of light sprays of clear acrylic to protect the stamped image and coasters are done.

A few of the stamped designs:

Happy Stamping!

Nutella Nirvana

2011-12-12T18:11:00.001-05:00

We found this humungous jar of Nutella on our last trip to NYC. No, we did not buy $65.00 worth of Nutella goodness! In fact, I try NOT to buy Nutella at all because of my very favorite, seriously simple go-to Nutella recipe:

1 cup coffee

1 jar Nutella

1 spoon

But for some reason I recently bought 2 jars and have so far resisted the call of the Nutella. Luckily The Captain's office is having a cookie swap and I found a great cookie recipe from Erin's Food Files:

NUTELLA COOKIES

Ingredients:

½ cup unsaltedbutter, at room temperature

½ cup granulatedsugar

½ cup firmly packedlight brown sugar

½ cup Nutella orother hazelnut chocolate spread

1 egg

½ tsp. Frangelico(if you have it, if not vanilla will work just fine)

1 ½ cups flour ( I use white wheat flour)

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

1/3 cup minichocolate chips (I chopped some semi-sweet Trader Joe's baking pieces)

Directions:

Preheat oven to350F.

Cream butter with anelectric mixer about 1 minute until smooth. Add in both sugars. Beat on highspeed about 3 minutes until light & fluffy, scraping down the sides of thebowl as needed.

With the mixer onlow, add the egg and Frangelico (or vanilla). Then add the Nutella and mixwell.

In a small bowlwhisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add dry ingredients to wetingredients, and mix on low speed until incorporated. Increase the speed tomedium and mix just until the dough is smooth. Fold in chocolate chips.

Using a small icecream scoop (or a teaspoon) form the dough into balls and place on greasedcookie sheet. (To prevent cookies from spreading too much, I stuck the cookieson the cookie sheets in the freezer for about 10 minutes before baking).

Bake 6-7 minutes until the tops just start to crack. (or7-8 if baking from freezer). Let cookies cool about 5 minutes and transfer to arack to cool completely.

************************

These make great little cookies, but I still had some Nutella left over, so I made cookie sandwiches - spread Nutella on one cookie and top with another. Now I have cookies for the swap and the Nutella is gone!

Making Christmas Trees From Books

2011-12-06T19:07:00.001-05:00

On the principle that you can never have too many Christmas trees, here's a tree made out of a discarded book. These are all over blog land and Pinterest; even Martha has a few versions. This book project requires no page cutting, just folding, so it's lots easier and much less messy than my book pumpkins!

I made mine from a discarded book, but you can use a phone book, a substantial magazine (like Martha's or Real Simple - they have a rigid spine so the book won't flop over) or even part of a book.

Start by removing the covers from your book. If using part of a book, remove the spine, count how many pages you want to use and cut down the spine to separate them from the rest of the book.

Now, start folding:

Now you need to get rid of the little triangle that hangs down. Score it against the book, then flip it inside so the bottom of the page has a straight edge.

See the little tip flipped inside?

Here's how a finished page looks:

Once all your pages are folded, open the book and press the pages open so the tree fans out nicely. I glued the first and last page so it would stay open.

There are several options for coloring - spray paint, ink each page similar to the pumpkin technique or apply glitter. I don't use much glitter, but if any occasion calls for sparklies, it's Christmas! I just ran a glue stick randomly over the folded edges and then sprinkled on some glitter. You could also leave the pages uncolored or un-sparkled - the tree looks cool au natural as well.

I stuck a small ornament into the spine as a topper. The "trunk" of my tree is a little bowl made by the best uncle in the world.

Happy folding!

Trot Trot to Boston

2011-12-05T07:50:00.001-05:00

Source

Yesterday was bright, sunny and relatively balmy (by New England standards), so The Captain and I headed to Boston for some holiday shopping and gawking. We live only an hour away, making a trip to the city a fun and easy day trip.

Newbury Street is the best for window shopping, treat buying and people watching. And now that Anthropologie moved there, it is complete, although I do miss the massive wooden doors on their store on Boylston!

Hundreds of vintage sewing machines - each one beautiful!

Vintage - inspired hat shop. The Captain made a "surprise" gift purchase here!

Lunch at The Met Bar. Love the little pan of fries! Details, details, it's always in the details!

And speaking of details, love this idea of an open weave drum shade around the chandelier. Tones down the foufou- ness of the gold fixture and diffuses the light - beautiful!

A few more fun window displays:

And some "I don't care that I'm acting like a tourist" shots:

Enjoy your holiday shopping!

Back to the Stair Project !

2011-12-01T18:21:00.001-05:00

Filling Holes and Priming

(My Life is SO Exciting!)

I've probably walked up and down our stairs hundreds of times and never noticed all the little holes, gaps, and dings. Guess there is truth in the saying, "You see what you look for". And I was obsessed with finding and filling every little hole.

I made several passes at finding all the holes, each time thinking I'd finally found the last one. In the end I was hearing voices - my old Yankee friend, BB, who would respond to my obsessing about some minor imperfection with , "It'll never be seen on a trotting horse", and my latent OCD tendencies saying, "What, you're not going to fill that millimicron hole??" I finally just had to declare it done, even though I'm sure there are still some I missed.

I try to use the wood filler very sparingly for each hole/gap - removing as much extra as possible before it dried to limit the amount of sanding that needs to be done. I did go over every hole with a sander once the filler had dried to make sure the surface was smooth. Then wiped it down with a tack cloth to remove any dust left behind (and to get the OCD devil off my back!).

A word of caution about wood filler - despite the label that identifies some filler as "stainable", I've never had good luck staining it. In my experience, the filler takes on a little color, just enough so that it looks dirty but in no way matches the rest of the stained wood. I haven't tried the pre-colored fillers - maybe they work better, but since they only seem to come in small tubes, wouldn't be very practical for this big project. My stairs are getting painted, so I wasn't worried about the lovely orange filler color. If I were going to re-stain the wood, I would NOT fill the holes. I'd rather have holes and gaps than orange spots, but that's just me.

Holes filled; time to move on to staining. First step was to tape so I didn't get paint on the newly painted walls. I like the new Scotch Blue Tape - Advanced Delicate Surface; it's specifically for newly painted walls. No seepage underneath and no lifting of wall paint.

It took two coats of primer (and multiple cans of Diet Coke) to cover the stairs and all 59 spindles. It's beginning to look like I might actually finish these this year!

Confession - yes, I left the carpet cushion on and painted around it. OCD gods be damned!

Tomato Tower Trees

2011-11-28T12:13:00.001-05:00

Boston Daughter has joined the addicted-to-Pinterest and found a picture of porch pot Christmas trees made with tomato towers. After Thanksgiving, we made a pair for the front door.

In sunny 60 degree weather and fortified with some amended eggnog, we gathered the rest of our supplies: glue gun, pot, rope, tomato tower, spray paint, duct tape, weights, twine and artificial garlands.

We wanted our trees to look expensive, but not actually be expensive! So we used 2 plastic pots we saved from some garden shop purchase and hot-glued on a piece of plastic rope to add texture and a touch o'class. Spray with some gold paint picked up at a tag sale, and our cheapo pots look pretty spiffy!

Next, get the towers ready. For making trees, we'll be using the towers upside down - the circular ringed top becomes the bottom. Bend the wires at the narrow end together and secure with duct tape. We hid the silver color by wrapping it with florist tape.

Then the fun starts - wrapping with garlands. We needed more garlands than we anticipated, so best to buy extras and return the ones you don't need. In order to make the trees nice and full, we used 6 -seven 9 ft. garlands. We snagged them at Michael's Black Friday madness for $1.99 each.

Start by straightening out the garland, and then pulling out each branch so the garland is nice and full. Then push it all to one side so when you wrap the tower all the bushiness of the garland will be on the outside of the tower. Your prepared garland will look something like this:

Starting at the top of the tree, secure one end of the garland to the tip of your "tree" form and wrap securely around the wire form. We twisted the wire branches around the form every few inches to keep the garland from sliding down. Here's the tree, partially wrapped and beginning to look like a tree already! Continue wrapping, securing the garland as you wind it all the way down. Then stand back, find any bare spots and fluff out the garland until all the bare spots are filled and the tree is nice and full.

Turns out our pots were a bit narrow, so we couldn't jam the bottom of the tower into the pot. We rigged up a base ( the old cookie rack seen above) to help secure the tree to the pot. If your pot is wider, you'll be able to just jam the base into it.

We added some weights to our pot so the trees wouldn't blow away. You could use sand, rocks or whatever - we used some weights. Because our tree base was just sitting on the top of the pot, we threaded twine through the holes in the weights and then threaded the twine through the tree base so the tree was tied directly to the weights. Let me know if you think of an easier way !

Once the trees were secured to the pots, we added some pine cones that we got for 37 cents at Michael's! We split the cones apart, then made some stems for the individual cones by twisting on some thin florist wires. Place the cones where you want, adjust as needed, then wrap the wire around the garlands to secure.

Add some twinkly white lights we already had on hand and our tomato tower trees are complete! Here's a closer look:

At less than $25.00 per tree we now have a dressed up front door for the holidays.

The Stair DIY - The Sanding (Almost as scary as The Shining!)

2011-11-19T16:50:00.001-05:00

Carpet gone - check. Now for sanding. Here's the starting point:

My plan is to paint the stairs, but because the stairs are heavily varnished I'm concerned about making sure the paint will stick. I don't need to sand off all the varnish, but at least scrub it up enough to give the paint something to grip. Armed with my trusty little mouse sander, glasses and a face mask, let the sanding commence!

This was very slow-going - my poor little mouse wasn't built for such a big job! Time to drag out the small circular sander which worked much better on larger areas. One complaint - the little bag that's supposed to trap the dust is really mostly decorative!

Welcome to the East Coast Dust Bowl. It is unbelievable how far the dust travels and how it clings to everything. Once the stairs are done, I'm going to be doing some serious dusting!

It took several passes to get through the layers of varnish and at this point, things were definitely looking pretty shabby!

Sanding the spindles was a bear! I tried hand-sanding them, but since I wanted to finish the stairs this decade, I needed a faster way. Then I remembered my mouse sander had a small attachment that fit between the spindles. It still took hours, but it saved my hands and did a much better job.

Just in case the sanding wasn't enough (and because I live to complexify every project), I wiped down every square inch of stairs with a chemical sander. This is really a weak version of a stripper, so I wore gloves. There wasn't much odor, but I opened the windows for extra ventilation. I'm sure the chemical sander wouldn't be enough on its own, even though the label makes it sound like it would. I just wanted some extra gripping power! It dried to a whitish finish which can be painted over.

Next step - filling a bazillion holes. I know you're giddy with anticipation!

Coastal Wreath

2011-11-16T09:49:00.001-05:00

OK, so I'm supposed to be painting the stairs, but I'm finding all sorts of very important ~~projects~~ distractions. I was inspired by a bittersweet and rose hip wreath from Design Sponge and took a ride up the coast yesterday to find supplies. I so love roadside gardening! The coast is beautiful in the fall - golden marshes, yellow rose leaves with big red rose hips and lots, lots lots of bittersweet. I know bittersweet is considered a bad-boy, being terrible invasive and crowding out native trees and shrubs, but it's so dang pretty!

Here's my harvest: rose branches with bright red hips , spindle that California Daughter spotted when she was home last year, some fluffy bush branches (technical name!), bittersweet, and milk weed pods. I gave the pods a light spray of white paint so they would show up better but still look relatively natural..

Tied everybody together with twine and then a frayed bow made from an old fabric remnant. Love my door embellishment! With a change of ribbon and maybe some green or red branches added in later, this will work until spring.

Are you a roadside forager?

My Big Fat Scary DIY Project - The Stairs!

2011-11-14T19:15:00.001-05:00

There was one more big project on my list for the downstairs - redoing the staircase. Now I ask you, who puts white carpeting on stairs?? Clearly people who like vacuuming and steaming carpeting lots more than I. Oh, and those would also be people who don't carry bowls of steaming lattes upstairs.

The first problem with this project was The Captain. He gets all weirded out by the path of disaster that comes with any home-improvement project. I knew that if I brought up ripping up the carpeting and painting the stairway he would have gone to the crazy place. He loves the end result, but not the ripped up, everything is out of place, paint and tools strewn all over part. Kids and friends were in on my plan, but sworn to secrecy. My plan was to get to the point of no return - carpeting ripped out- before he got home from work. I believe in the saying "It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission"!

So here are the stairs in all their dingy glory:

I have a few stairs, then a landing, then the full flight up to the second floor, plus the railing that goes all along the upstairs hall. Because the stairs aren't completely carpeted, I knew the treads were in pretty good shape (although dinged up and covered with multiple coats of heavy varnish). What I didn't know was what was under the carpeted landing - finished floor boards or trash? As you can see, the stair way it totally open to the living areas - both up and down, guaranteeing a major dust bowl once the sanding began.

Off to the Google for researching other DIY stair projects. Wow, there are some seriously talented women doing great stair renovations and blogging about it. Check out Thrifty Decor Chick for great details about her stair reno. Look at the amazing job done at Southern Hospitality - she ripped up carpeting and found rough-cut wood stairs, all kinds of gaposis issues and ended up with a stairway that will knock your socks off! I decided that if she could do this fantastic reno, I should be able to paint my stairs! These blogs have lots of practical info so I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to do:

Rip up old carpet and all the nails and staples that held it down
Sand varnished stairs enough so they would take some paint
Fill any holes in the wood (after removing carpeting, turns out there are LOTS of holes)
Prime
Paint
Install new runner

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? HA!

Step 1 - Removing the old runner

I started pulling up the carpeting on the first stair, made easier because I had previously pulled up the white carpeting from the dining room (don't get me started about white carpeting in the DINING room!). This is just brute force work, pulling the runner free of all the nails and staples - actually went pretty quickly. I suggest wearing leather gloves as those little nails are very sharp! As the piece of runner became too large to handle, I used a carpet knife to cut it loose. (Another benefit to this was that The Captain could hardly ask me to put it back)!

Here are the lower stairs, sans runner:

Now to remove all the nails and staples! I used a pry bar to get behind the wooden strips (full of nails) and pry them away from the treads and risers, trying not to gouge the wood as I removed them. Then I pulled out all the staples - I found prying them up with a small screwdriver and then pulling them out with vise grips worked pretty well. As with all projects involving the potential for flying projectiles, I wore glasses!

Repeat for landing and top stairs!

So far, so good -- treads and risers look good, carpeting off without too much trouble, and wonder of wonders, landing boards are finished pine, perfect for painting!

Stay tuned for next steps.

Pottery Barn- Inspired Pillows

2011-11-11T15:32:00.001-05:00

The PB Inspiration

Love these PB sweater pillows ! Knocking off PB accessories has become somewhat of an obsession and these look pretty easy.

My knock-offs

Thrifted the sweaters - all the thrift stores have rows of sweaters, so finding some that work is easy. I had planned to make all red ones, but I couldn't find two shades that matched. Non-matchings reds is a bridge too far for me, so I went with two off-white sweaters and one red for accent. I like to mix up the texture, so chose three different knit patterns.

First, I washed and dried the sweaters to make sure they could take it! Mine are all cotton, but you could use wool or any blend - just follow the care instructions inside the sweater.

Then on to cutting the sweater. I tried to place the sweater on one side seam, leaving only 3 sides to sew, but that's not crucial. (You might not be as lazy!) I cut around the pillow form, leaving about a half-inch for a seam allowance. Then turn the sweater inside out, so the right sides are together,

I recommend using some kind of tape to stabilize the seams. The cut edge of sweater knit is very stretchy and some twill tape / hem binding or even some ribbon will keep the square pillow from morphing into something weird. ( I know this because pillow # 1 "grew" as I sewed, hence the twill tape for the others)! Pin the tape along the seam edge and sew through the tape - use about a half inch seam allowance. Leave an opening for the pillow form - about 4-5 inches, depending on the size of your form. My off-white ones are 16x16, the red 14x14.

I zig-zagged the cut edges to prevent any fraying . As you can imagine, cut sweater fabric unravels pretty easily.

Turn the pillow cover right-side out again, gently pushing the corners out from inside. I fold the pillow form in half and slip it into the cover. Push the form into the corners, and straighten it inside the cover - sometimes a good whack or two helps to get it settled into the cover! Slip stitch the opening closed with matching thread.

Pillow is done, but no need to stop there! I sewed two large brown buttons from my stash in the middle of one of the off-white ones. On the other, I made some flowers by coiling a piece of the sweater fabric. The other flowers are made from the ties from the packaging on a set of sheets from Anthropologie - this is why I don't throw anything away! The posies are just slip-stitched onto the pillow. So far, the red one is sans embellishment - think the cables are enough.

Depending on the sweater you select, there are lots of ways to finish off these pillows. On the pillow in the center, I used the hemmed edge for the top and just did a rough pick- stitch every half inch or so to hold it together. If you use a cardigan, you could have button trim without the hassle of adding them. You could cut parts from different sweaters - add the button half of a cardigan to a plain color sweater.

Now if I can just figure out how to keep the cat off these !

Rant Warning !! Crime Against Nature

2011-11-04T16:57:00.000-04:00

Supermarket floral arrangements aren't usually on the tasteful end of things, what with the plastic embellishments, garish ribbons and odd assortment of colors. But look at what I found today:

Really? What on earth were they thinking? Take a perfectly good rose and turn it into this hideous specimen! There is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

Sadly, this artificial coloring of perfectly good blossoms isn't limited to tacky supermarket bouquets. Bona fide horticulturists have jumped on the trend. While I admit I don't "get" orchids, this one is just freaky:

Take a perfectly acceptable white orchid, add blue dye, and voila, spawn of the devil is born. But look on the bright side - the fine print warns us not to expect blue flowers in new blossoms.

Remember floral fiddler-arounders, just because you can, doesn't mean you should!! Enough said.

Ladies Who Lunch

2011-10-28T21:30:00.001-04:00

That's my good friend, the lovely GB on the left. She and I go way back - we used to work together and although we don't see each other as often as we'd like, we're able to pick right up where we left off whenever we get together. I love the saying, "Good friends are a gift we give ourselves". I'm so grateful for my good friends - strong, smart and beautiful women who just keep getting better and better.

And no, we didn't call each other last night to coordinate our outfits. We laughed as we sat down and realized we were channeling each other!

We met at the Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton, Massachusetts. Today was a sunny fall day (pretty chilly after last night's untimely snow!), and the fall colors and decorations were just beautiful.

The restaurant, in an old farmhouse, overlooks the orchards and gardens. It's an intimate setting, with dark wood paneling, great lighting and nature-inspired accents.

The menu features local food with an emphasis on creative presentation and helpfully suggests which Nashoba wines complement the food. We had the Apple Cranberry wine - yummy! The little cup is their autumn squash bisque with a swirled heart of sour cream and a granola garnish. I never thought of granola as a soup garnish, but it's perfect for squash soup. We both scraped the cup clean!

Desert wasn't too shabby, either. We shared this fudgey chocolate cake- Bananas Foster- sorbet- pear nectar melange of goodness!

We bought some of our lunch wine,and an apple and a peach brandy - all fruity, so all healthy!

Isn't this cute? Its tag said it's a wine holder, but it makes a great spot for little pumpkins. Some clever person could totally do a knock-off for lots less than the $450 price on this one.

I love burlap and we could definitely make this topper - I think the tree is silk-screened, but a big stamp or even a free-hand painting of a tree wouldn't be hard. Note to self- add to growing list of winter projects!

Spending time with a good friend in a beautiful setting with a good glass of vino - priceless!

Reimagined Pumpkin

2011-10-18T12:20:00.000-04:00

Decorating for fall means pumpkins - real ones and fake. This is what happnes when a book becomes part of the decorating scheme.

I saw the idea on Crafting Mom (she has a great tutorial) and decided to add to my pumpkin collection. I have no problem cutting up books - ones I don't want to read and are headed for the landfill anyway.

Here's how to transform a book into a fun fall pumpkin decoration:
Start by making a template of a pumpkin shape. Keep the bottom flat so the pumpkin won't be wobbly. Then, if using a hardcover book, carefully cut off the covers. Open up the book in the middle and using a craft knife, cut around the template. You can only cut through a few pages at a time - leave the top of the spine as pictured (more on that later). Once you finish one half, flip the template and do the second half.

Here's the book, all cut out. Trim off as much of the stray bits as you can, but don't get too crazy about some added texture! Now check out that piece of spine left at the top - I think this will work as a stem!

Once you've cut all the pages, you're ready to add some color. CM has a couple of options - ink the edges with an ink pad or plunge the edges of the book into a bowl of diluted acrylic paint. Warning - CM says this method is very slow to dry! I wanted more color than just inking the edges, so I used Distress Ink to add more color on the pages. Let me tell you - this method is very time-consuming! I caught up on this season's Law & Order UK and was only about a quarter through! OK, change of plans - went to direct-to-paper with a cheapo orange ink pad - quicker, plus better coverage.

Once all the pages are colored, hot glue the spine and hold together for a couple of minutes to set the glue.

I bent the top spine before it had hardened to give it a stem shape, then painted with some brown, green and tan acrylic paints. It's rough, which I think makes it look more realistic. Now for the tendrils - twist some brown (or dark green) wire around a pencil, then wrap around the base of the spine.

Now start opening up your pumpkin book, gently pushing into the spine to separate the pages. Keep working it until the book is open and fluffy.

Behold the book transformed!

If you're intrigued by using books in your art, check out this book:

The Captain gave it to me last year and I've been drooling over the fantastic creations ever since. Books are used to make everything from jewelry to sculptures . You'll be looking at your stack of books with new eyes!

Restoration Hardware Megalog

2011-10-10T22:30:00.000-04:00

Pity the poor post-person. Not only is the PO making rumblings about closing sites and cutting hours and services, the carriers had to deliver the new catalog, weighing in at 3.2 pounds with 616 pages! Clearly this is a new RH - not the company that sold "authentic reproduction" of light fixtures, furniture hardware and paint and stain to replicate antique finishes. A few years ago RH went down another path - adding unique gift items. Then the stores started disappearing altogether.

Behold the new Restoration Hardware. No replacement for antique lamp fixtures, no supplies for refinishing wood, no patch kits for old plumbing. This is a "new and evolving way to furnish our homes", according to Chairman Gary Friedman.

There is a slightly creepy photo of Mr. Friedman on the second page, along with some grandiose comparisons to Teddy Roosevelt, but shameless self-promotion aside, who wouldn't want to just move into any one of the amazing rooms?

First, there are the colors - muted neutral naturals. It's the first thing you notice when flipping through (OK, the second, after you've recovered from sticker shock). Restful wall colors with neutral colored accessories - clearly Mr. Friedman doesn't believe in the "every room needs a pop of color" theory.

The style of furnishings is a mixture of industrial and architectural elements meet vintage. Steam punk on steroids, if you will. There are no little tchotchkes. Size clearly matters here. The French tower clock is 5 feet in diameter (and costs $ 1195 and as noted in the description, is "non-operational"). The 1595 scrolled map of Florence is 12 feet long (and fantastic):

I can resist the Copenhagen chair ( $1865):

And the 8 foot tall Eiffel tower study model ($1745):

But can we talk about the linens? Belgian linen that you can almost feel in the photos - soft, faded colors that look like my fantasy of life in an old French chateau. Never mind that outfitting your bed with these beauties could set you back a grand or so - fantasies involving French chateaus don't come cheaply!

And just look at these birdcage chandeliers ( $2525) :

This we might be able to knock-off. Find a vintage (or a new one shabbied- up), add some twinkly white lights and we could make this for orders of magnitude less. I'm adding it to my project list!

I know that this catalog is the embodiment of conspicuous consumerism; that no one needs to spend over a grand on a clock that doesn't tell time, or a map that covers an entire wall, or a model of the Eiffel tower the size of Big Foot. I know that kind of money could feed an entire village of starving children. But, for a woman who is happy to shop thrift stores, this is heady stuff and I'm smitten!

New DIY Cabinet Knobs

2011-10-04T20:03:00.001-04:00

Now that the kitchen has been repainted, the cabinet knobs were looking worse than ever.

Who wouldn't just love these 80s faux-gold (that's reverting to its original silver color in spots (alchemists, take note). I have lots of cabinets - 42 knobs' worth! White knobs on white cabinets = lots of white; clearly some color was in order. Plus, I changed out the color of the lighting in the kitchen from gold to silver, so the fading gold on the knobs had to go.   Nice knobs are pricey- even the cheap $5.00 kind would set me back $200!!   Since my dream is to replace the cabinets someday, I didn't want to drop serious money for place-holder knobs.

I've checked out some ideas online and some folks are doing some pretty creative things - check them out here and here and here.   Clearly I could do something to buff up mine.

First step: Pop out the button. This was essential to my plan of doing two colors because I live to complexify any project!   The popping thing wasn't as easy as it sounds! I tried prying out the button with no luck, but soaking the knob in hot water did the trick. Think it expanded the metal just enough to release the plastic button. ( I told you these were some high-quality hardware)! This one ( a spare test- subject) has some chips from my attempts to dislodge it prior to heating it.

Next I scrubbed them to remove any grime.

Then some spray primer - I like Kilz best. Word of caution - I thought perching the knobs in skewers stuck into florist foam was a good idea. Not so much - the foam shed little bits of grit that stuck on the knobs - maybe because it was an old piece? I had better luck perching the knobs on an old cookie rack - no sticking!

Then the buttons got a spray coat of Rust-Oleum Hammered Silver and the knob bases Rust-Oleum Hammered Black. These hammered paints cover minor scratches and can be painted over rust. The finish looks almost like a combination of some light glossy and slightly darker matte colors. I like that it's not really shiny and has a slight texture to it.

Then I sprayed on a coat of clear matte finish, although I don't know that it was really necessary.

Some of the buttons snapped back in easily, some did not, so they got glued in.

This project wasn't difficult, but I'm not going to lie, it was pretty tedious what with all those steps! But I love my new knobs and how they've dragged my cabinets into the current decade.

Shelf Love

2011-09-28T15:30:00.001-04:00

We just repainted the kitchen/dining room/upstairs hall. We took out a useless cupboard and I decided to replace it with some shelves. I thought about just 3 separate shelves, but then found this little beauty at one of my favorite spots for finding vintage goodies - Flukes and Finds in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

I want to keep the kitchen light, so the black had to go. The gold trim didn't do it for me either. I also thought about taking off the back to open it up more, but was afraid that removing the back might make the little unit unstable. So, I decided to spray paint it white and thought I could just spray the fabric back and all would be fine. Let me tell you that spray painting old fabric is a BAD idea - every little thread and pill (that were not that obvious to start with) became "frosted" once the spray paint hit them.

Initiate Plan B - pull off the fabric carefully without removing the back and then spray it again. I assumed the backing was plywood. But, look what I found:

A mirror! Sweet! A mirror with some spots and a few scratches; the kind of mirror that makes a shabby chic-ster go weak in the knees. My little shelf came with a bonus!

Lots of digging out little threads, some serious sanding, more white spray paint and then some sanding to shabby it up a bit and my shelf fits in perfectly in its new home.

Love my new mirrored display space. Bow to the power of spray paint and mirror magic!

Mother-Daughter Days in California

2011-09-19T18:16:00.000-04:00

Spent a few glorious days in Southern California. One of the wonders of being a parent is seeing your children grow into happy, successful adults who ask you to come and visit - yippee!

Here we are - CA daughter (holding the all-important morning joe) at Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic store. I do so love me some Rachel Ashwell and did inquire about just moving in! All that vintage white and pink fabric and worn to a patina furniture - what's not to like? Check out the lamp shades - old crinolines! What a fun idea - maybe a smaller tutu shade for a little girl's room?

I'm standing at the Palisades Park , next to these fantastic Australian tea trees (yes, these are the trees that produce tea tree oil). Their gnarled roots grow on top of the soil, making great root sculptures.

The Santa Monica Farmer's Market is just like our local one, that is, if our local one were on steroids! Established in 1981, it has over 100 vendors, is open twice a week, and offers all kinds of unusual produce along with the usual suspects. We found some fresh French fageolet (try saying THAT 3 times!) beans and turned them into a yummy salad with a recipe from The Splendid Table. The dragon fruit flesh looks like a dark pink kiwi and tastes like a very mild combo of kiwi and mango. We got a lesson in selecting the best okra from a savvy shopper and made oven baked okra as a treat for southern- born son-in-law.

I love, love, love plam trees and desert plants. In late summer (this is less painful for me to say than "early fall") trees and flowers are in full-on bloom, with no sign of winding down - what's not to like? From left, artichokes going to seed, palms, century plant blossom, and a succulent easily 2 feet wide.

Consistently warm temperatures without humidity or radical highs and lows, no ice or snow, gorgeous trees and flowers, and a perfectly good alernative to the East Coast ocean - a girl could get used to this!
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(Trying out the collage-making capability on Picnik, thanks to CA daughter sharing the link. It's quick, fun, free [upgrade available for not too much $$] and easier than scrolling through all those pictures!)

Too Much of a Good Thing is Too Much

2011-09-08T21:59:00.000-04:00

I used to have this saying over my shelf of cookbooks: " My collection of cookbooks far exceeds my ability to cook". Now I'm pretty certain my collection of cookbooks exceeds at least my shelf space! (After taking this picture, I found six more stashed somewhere else - a sure sign of too many)!

We're painting the kitchen and that means moving everything out of the way. When I moved the cookbooks , I was a bit amazed at size of the stack! Really, I haven't opened some of these in years. I've saved some because of one or two recipes, and honestly there are several in pristine condition because I've never used any of the recipes.

With so many great food blogs and recipe sites, I usually get new recipe ideas on-line. ( A few of my favorites are on my blog list to the right of this post). If the recipe is a keeper, I send it to my recipe notebook on OneNote. Judging by the cookbook section at Barnes and Noble, the internet hasn't replaced print books, but I have read that e-cookbook sales are through the roof. That makes sense - my dream kitchen would include a computer in the counter top, protected for spills (I'm a pretty messy cook).

Here is the stack after some serious purging. Much more manageable! I only kept the ones I actually use - what a concept!

I also had a stack of cooking magazines that got the boot. I tore out the recipes I want to try, filed them in a folder, and the magazines went into the donate pile. I'm going to make a recipe from that folder every week - if it's a keeper it'll be scanned into OneNote. Maybe it makes sense to look into online versions of these magazines and save recipes directly from the site - skip the paper, save a tree and all that!

While this clean-out was prompted by a kitchen re-do, I've been doing some general decluttering. I love going to estate sales, and I am amazed at how much stuff some people accumulate. Sometimes it's just sad - I went to one sale that would have done a gift shop proud. The old woman who lived there had over two hundred collectible dolls and enough brand-new Christmas decorations to start up her own store. These are not hoarders of TV fame - these were clean, normal homes with just too much stuff. Whenever I go to a sale like that, I come home and throw something away, just to be sure I don't go the the Dark Side!

I'm trying to follow the "if one comes into the house, one like it goes out". (This rule applies to everything except shoes, of course).

Thrifted Cloth Napkins

2011-09-05T20:29:00.000-04:00

"It is better to have looked and tossed than never to have looked at all."

~~ The Salvage Sisters

I always look at the linens at second hand stores, but afraid I've not been very adventurous in thinking "what else could I do with that fabric?" Last week I found one lonely drape panel in a great print and it dawned on me that my search for new cloth napkins was over!

First step is to wash and dry the fabric before doing any cutting. Best to find out early about nasty habits like shrinking, fading, needing too much maintenance (like ironing).

My panel washed and dried fine, so off to cutting out the napkins. I measured the napkins we have and decided to make mine about 12 inches x 15inches. You can make them smaller or larger, depending on your preference and how much fabric you have. Remember to allow an extra 1/2 inch all around for the hem.

I made a pattern so I didn't need to measure each one individually. Not being very good at precise measurements, this assured all the napkins would be (nearly) the same size! Be sure to cut along the straight edge of the fabric (near the side hems) so your napkins edges are on the straight grain of the fabric. I didn't take out the hemmed edges in case the fabric had worn a bit along that crease.

Next, make the hemmed edge - start by turning the right side of the fabric in about 1/4 inch, then turn it in another 1/4 inch so you have a neat edge with no fabric to unravel. Sew this hemmed edge about 1/4 inch from the edge of the hem. I don't usually pin the hem, but if you're worried about it, pin it to make sure everything stays together as you sew. I sew the two opposite edges first, then the other two edges. This gives a nice little criss-cross in the corner and is much easier than mitering the corner.

This is a simple sewing project, no special skills required. It's a quick and easy and by using thrifted fabric, pretty darn cheap. You could, of course, make these out of new fabric (I assume that's what normal people do)! Either way, they'd make great gifts - add a floppy bow and a tag and you've got a thoughtful gift. However, I am keeping mine!

As I was putting my new napkins away, these old standbys looked like they could use some spiffing up. I used some acrylic paint to add some pattern and color. The stamping worked better when I spread out a thin layer of paint on a paper plate and stamped into it, rather than applying the paint to the stamp with a brush. Let the acrylic paint dry completely for a day or so, then iron (set the iron as hot as your fabric can tolerate) to permanently set the paint and make it washable.

What have you made out of thrifted fabric?

A Couple of Quick Projects

2011-08-25T16:57:00.000-04:00

It's been ages since I spent much time in my studio. Summer seems to go by so quickly - gardening, sailing, room re-do, company and then, there's all that beach-watching!

I took a trip to Ikea recently and picked up these plain white magazine holders for The Captain's growing collection of sailing magazines. Clearly they needed some help!

I painted the boxes blue, then used pieces of an old nautical chart on the front and inside back. I added a small circle tag, smudged on some colored chalk and stamped random numbers/signs.

I came across this fun tassle idea while blog-hopping at Quick Fix Momma. Since we are a family that embraces the Mimosa, it wasn't hard to find the corks.

For the ones on the left, I used pages from a very old French novel. The pages were extremely fragile, so I used newer pages for the one on the right. You could rub some Distress Ink on the edges if your pages are too new.

First step is to cut 4-5 pages in half and trim off the bottom edge and one side edge ( the parts with no text). Then hot-glue the top edges of the stack of pages to secure. I cheated on one and just stapled it to the cork - worked fine.

Next, hot glue (or staple!) the stack around the cork. Then, cut the pages into about 1/4 wide strips, making the "fringe"- no need to be OCD about it - just eye-ball and cut away . I wrapped these with black wire to cover the top of the paper stack. The one on the right above was wrapped with ribbon instead.

Insert a screw eye into the top of the cork and thread ribbon, twine or more wire through it for a hanger. I only had some gold-colored screw eyes so I scrubbed them with an emery board to tone down the bling! Notice that the wider ribbon on the larger one covers the screw eye completely.

Here's the larger one, dolling up my old button lamp! I don't dare use the more fragile ones here as someone (ahem) who uses this light might not be considerate of the delicate fringe! I may cut off a bit of the length after I live with it awhile.

Can We Just Move In?

2011-08-19T19:29:00.000-04:00

The Captain and I decided on an impromptu get-away this week and he found an inn in northern New Hampshire that looked promising. The Adair Country Inn in Bethlehem, NH delivered on every promise!

The Inn was the private home built for Dorothy Adair and where she lived with her husband for decades. In 1992 it was converted to an inn with 9 quest rooms the care of owners Nick & Betsy Young and innkeepers Ilja and Brad Chapman. The Chapmans are the perfect inn keepers- friendly, knowledgeable, professional , and interested in their guests without being intrusive.

We stayed in this room - the Huntington. Attention to detail makes this Inn special - fresh flowers, beautiful linens, ribbon-tied towels, and a personalized welcome sign. The special tradition of warm cookies on the bed at turn-down is quite a treat!

The view of Mount Washington from our room:

Dorothy was a fashionista of her day, with a thing for hats. They are displayed throughout the house with this fun group on the stair- landing perched on little stands. Note all the books - one of the largest private libraries of the day.

The gardens were designed by the Olmsted brothers, designers of the gardens in Central Park.

Fortunately the weather was spectacular, so we were able to eat out on the terrace, overlooking some of the gardens.

Again, attention to details make all the difference- who could resist this sweet cup?

These popovers were the best I've ever had. I tried to squeeze the secret out of Brad Chapman, the Popover King! Turns out he has a few tricks - not over-mixing the batter , in fact, leaving it pretty lumpy (I've been doing mine in the blender!), refrigerating the batter overnight, and baking the popovers in heavy Pyrex cups sprayed with Pam. Since I had to chisel my last batch out of the "non-stick" pan, I've thrown it away and am on the hunt for the heavy glass cups. I also took home their cookbook, so I hope to be turning out some of these beauties soon.

We're already planning a return visit - maybe for fall foliage time.

(In the interest of full-disclosure, the Adair did not pay me for nor solicit this glowing review !)

Thrift-Store Makeover

2011-08-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

I found this book on one of my afternoons at Barnes and Noble. I've been known to buy clothes at thrift- stores just for the button, and have made some Martha-inspired pillows from shirts , but that's been the extent of it for me. This fun book shows how to make all kinds of "new" clothes and accessories out of thrift- store finds.

I must admit, some of these projects seemed like too much work for me, but I liked the idea of turning a T-shirt into a scarf. Off to the thrift store to find on that would work. (Do you have any idea of how many really ugly T-shirts there are out there? LOTS)!! Anyway,I finally found this blue striped Lands' End one that I thought would work well with jeans:

To make the scarf, you cut the T-shirt apart under the sleeves/armholes so you end up with just the bottom "tube" of the shirt (sorry, I deleted that photo!) . Then, start cutting narrow strips about 1/4 inch from the side seams on the unfinished edge. Don't cut the hemmed edge!

And, voila, a fun scarf for pennies.

A couple of hints in case you want to give this a go:

The bigger the shirt, the wider the scarf! My shirt was a 2X and as I was cutting the fringe, I realized the whole thing too wide, so I had to take off a few inches from the width - not a big deal if you like the print, but something to keep in mind.
It's a bit tricky to cut the fringe evenly. I pinned the shirt together so it wouldn't shift all over. Use really sharp scissors and take your time. Keep in mind that the cut edges will curl, making your fringe narrower.
Depending on the size of your shirt and how long you want your scarf, you can cut the shirt off closer to the armholes or further down. I 'd cut the next one so I only ended up with a "tube" around 10-12 inches .

Not Hermes, but fun!

Presentation is Everything

2011-08-09T18:10:00.000-04:00

Rachel Meeks, of Small Notebook for a Simple Home , recently posted this picture under the heading "perception" and asked her readers what they saw first in looking at this picture. Many saw the fruit, others the nice arrangement of wine, books and food, but many, me included, saw the mismatched plastic and wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of arranging a lovely tray using odds and ends of plastic containers.

Rachel's point, and I agree, was that things don't have to be perfect to be lovely. I think making this tray perfect doesn't mean it has to be expensive, perfectly matched and in pristine condition - it means putting in the effort to bring beauty into what we do everyday. Think how much nicer this tray would look with even mismatched china or pottery - hey, I'm even good with a chip or two - replacing plastic containers. Honestly, I can't imagine going to all the work of carefully arranging this tray and thinking that containers great for holding last night's leftovers would be just the thing!

So, look what I found wandering around our local farmer's market today. The owner of this stand understands that presentation is everything. When I asked him if it was OK to take pictures, he said, " You wouldn't believe how many people take pictures here". Of course they do - it's just lovely! I don't think it took much more time to set up than the stand next to his - the one featuring vegetables dumped into bright orange laundry baskets!

Love this huge metal bowl.

Assorted baskets make great containers.

The broccoli looks like a flower arrangement in this little basket.

Attention to detail can make all the difference - slate sign, carefully printed in peach-colored chalk!

Tongue in Cheek's Corey Amaro said it best in her posting today" "Snippets of beauty in ordinary places is a key to my happiness". And mine.

Gray is the New Blonde

2011-08-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

I talked about going gray earlier this year and promised that if I was brave enough, I'd give an update on my progress. Here's the saga:

Started with a new hairdresser - one who didn't recoil in horror when I dropped the G-word. In fact, she was pretty enthusiastic, recommending a cut and of course, products. I try not to get twirled into the product-purchasing as I already have options for all kinds of actual or potential problems - frizz, fly-aways, curls (too many or too few), and the out-right "hair having a ~~moment~~ lifetime" event.

My last color was in October and by May the blonde was gone. I kept my hair cut fairly short to avoid having an obvious divide. I'm not going to lie, for awhile I felt like I should wear a sign, " Not being lazy. Intentionally looking like this". It's amazing how stylish an old Red Sox hat looks when it's covering several shades of growing-out hair!

It's been a long time since I saw my natural hair color and I was surprised at how dark it is. I was also surprised at how gray it is! I'd been thinking that I had "some" gray on top, but the rest was mostly not gray. Not so much - turns out the gray is pretty evenly distributed and really lots more than I imagined.

So, for better or worse, here's the new look:

I'm going to try to grow this out a bit longer and see what the curls do. I'm pretty sure I can do the Carol King look, maybe aiming for a bit less exuberance, but then again, may just let it rip as I've been known to do !

Is this color a keeper? Who knows - it works for me for now. One of my daughters pronounced it "more sophisticated" so I'm riding that train for now.

Coastal Decor

2011-07-15T21:00:00.000-04:00

I'm redoing our guest room, the former man-cave of our youngest son. Since many of our guests don't live near the ocean, I decided to give the room a full-on beach-y feel. I'm not usually a fan of "theme" rooms, but since we live very close to the ocean, we have the ~~street~~ beach-cred to pull it off.

I found lots of inspiration at one of my favorite blogs, Completely Coastal. This site is full of wonderful beach decor and ideas for using all those shells and beach treasures. Then flipped through the Pottery Barn catalog for more ideas. It's no secret that I love their ideas, but not their prices! Like many crafty-types, I look at their stuff and my first thought is, "How cool is that" and my second is, "I can totally make that!"

I've seen these bottles in very pricey catalogs - these are from Wisteria. These shells are soldered on and that's beyond my capabilities, but I thought I could recreate this look. I started out by gluing paper "caps" onto the bottle tops to avoid having the "solder" drip into the bottle. I used grout for the solder and was glad I had the little top on - it gave a firm platform and did prevent droppings inside the bottle. I swirled it onto the bottle top, and frankly, it looked pretty rough. Once it dried a bit, I was able to pat it smooth and make it follow the contours of the bottle.

I painted the grout dark blue - thought the black was too harsh for my color scheme and then glued on the shells. I couldn't resist adding a tag to one and wrapped one with twine.

Love my free shell bottles!

Next a Pottery Barn knock-off based on these lanterns from PB. Boston Daughter bought this lantern for me and now it have been PB-ized:

I saw this somewhere and can't remember which chi-chi catalog. This one was easy - wrapped a glass cylinder with burlap and then tied on some muslin-stamped ribbon I made. Some sand, a candle, shells and done.

Stay turned for the big reveal!

File Folder Tote

2011-07-09T20:02:00.000-04:00

New accordion file folder from the thrift store - nice enough, but I'm constitutionally unable to leave things "unfiddled around with". I needed something that would appeal to Boston Daughter and her more urban decor so this folder needed a serious do-over.

First I needed to find some paper - no large sheets of anything to be had locally, so I consulted my stash and found two coordinating sheets of paper. I had planned to use just one color/pattern, but these worked with BD's chic black and white theme, so decided to try the two together.

Then, always the "what glue do I use " dilemma. I've had too many problems with paper bubbling, not sticking, glue cracking, etc. so I'm always on the hunt for the P.E.R.F.E.C.T. adhesive. I read an article about glue (and yes, I'm aware of how pitiful that sounds!) and had a eureka moment : There is no such things a one-glue-for -everything. I now have a shelf of adhesives of many types - glues, tacky, glossy, quick-drying, slow-drying, glue runners, glue dots - OK, you get the idea. One of my go-to glues is Yes Paste - available at Michael's and online. It is a water-based glue, advertised as permanent, non-curling, non-cracking, non-bubbling and so far, it's been all of that. The only problem I have with it is that the paste is very thick, making it hard to spread. I have successfully watered it down a little, but adding water increases the chance of the dreaded bubbles, so I try not to add much, just enough so I can spread it more easily. Once the paper was glued down, I used alligator clamps along all the edges to be sure the folded over edge stayed stuck down.

Here is the new folder, sporting its new cover and some tags.

The top was tricky as I couldn't remove the hardware (well, I COULD remove it, but putting it back would be problematic). I pieced the flap and then cut carefully around the hardware. I glued a strip of the dark base paper to cover the seam. I made a few tags for decoration - the red one was from a pair of converse sneakers that I covered with red pigment ink and then embossed with UTEE several times to get it really thick and glossy. The other one is a vellum tag with a Chinese coin and the red safety pin from an old Gap tag.

Added some stamped labels to the files

And made little feet by cutting the shank from some opaque round buttons.

BD loves her new organizer !

Walking the Line with Garden Ornaments

2011-06-28T21:21:00.000-04:00

I've always been skeptical about garden ornaments. Maybe I've seen too many florescent whirlies, plywood cut-outs showing gardening grannies' underwear and {gasp}, the garden g-nome! Then there's the "no sucess like excess" approach of a neighbor - at last count there were 47 "decorations" in one small garden.

It's a slippery slope - too many doo-dads, or tacky doo-dads and POOF- you're in line with the crazy cat-ladies, and your once -lovely garden looks like sale-day at Big Lots. But I went on a pocket garden tour recently and was struck by how the creative use of interesting ornaments really punched up the garden's impact. I loved the use of "found" stuff - parts of old machinery, little piles of glass or pottery, beautiful ceramics (although even tasteful little statues of bunnies seem perilously close to going over the edge- just my opinion)!

I looked around my gardens and decided to embrace the decoration:

Terra cotta AND numbers - what's not to love?

My tea-cup garden. I saw something similar in a garden last year and made my version using old stair spindles and thrift-store cups.

These are all pieces from a broken cast-iron chiminea.

Terrarium, minus the glass sides

A final word about the gnome . When your two-year old granddaughter gives you a little-bitty gnome, you put in where you can see it every day and everytime you see it you smile!

A Gem of a Book

2011-06-16T23:25:00.000-04:00

I just discovered this wonderful garden book by Katherine S. White. It is a complilation of columns on gardening that she wrote for the New Yorker between the 1950s and 1970s. The book is a combination of gardening advice, grammar and language policing, and strong opinions, all written with a writer's appreciation for words. I found myself trying to pace my reading to make it last.

Mrs. White reviewed garden catalogs and gardening books with a critical eye for every detail - photography or art work (she much preferred carefully drawn sketches to poor color photographs), the quality of the paper used to print the catalog, the font, and of course, the actual seeds and plants for sale. How could I not love this book? Here is a woman with opinions about everything and it was fun to recognize how many opinions we share; font matters, enough with the bigger and bigger blossoms, and that some flowers , like gladiolas, are just plain hideous : "The sad truth is that I have never been able to really like these showy, impersonal, unfragrant blooms" . "Hideous" is my more succinct opinion! And this gem " Last summer I grew a packet of mixed seed of some of Park's California Giant Zinnias ....soft harmonizing colors with all the jarring oranges, purples, and magentas screened out". Amen!

I love her digressions on the writing in garden catalogs. In discussing the variety of snapdragons listed in the Burpee's catalog, she has this little rant: " 'Snaps" is Burpee's word, not mine. I detest the cozy flower abbreviations. "Mums" is probably the most repellent of the lot, unless it is "Glads", but 1959 gave us "Dels" for the lordly delphinium". Guess she might agree with one on my "detest" list - "veggies" for the perfectly acceptable, grown-up word it replaces.

The columns written in the 50s show that the gardening world was not immune from the frenzy to "modernize" everything. She laments not being able to find "earthenware" flower pots as all plants came potted in ugly plastic pots- many decorated with pink stripes. Thankfully we can easily find terra cotta pots so we can rescue our nursery plants from their sad plastic cases. And we're spared the pink stripes.

Her winter routine for caring for houseplants by checking them several times a day for water or to move them to better lighting or temperature or humidity made me rethink my delusion that moving one Peace Lily to catch some sun qualifies me as a plant-whisperer!

I love her review of old garden books and now I'm on the search for one she recommended, Gardening on Main Street, by Mrs. Buckner Hollingsworth (it was the 50s after all - no informal FIRST names !). Hope it's another gem.

Chickens!

2011-06-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

I made this page for last year's family calendar, not expecting that we'd have some hens of our own. The Captain has talked about getting chickens, but I was most certainly not interested. I knew a family that had an egg business, which meant they really had a chicken business. All I remember was the ~~pungent odor~~ stench and being pecked by some aggressive old biddies. No chickens for me! But our local farmers' markets have beautiful blue eggs which I happily buy at over $5.00 a dozen. So it came about that I agreed to have a few chickens, but only if they laid those lovely blue/green eggs and did not wander all over the lawn.

The Captain and our son built this chicken ark out of scrap lumber and chicken wire, then painted it with a mixture of all the off-white/yellow paint dibbles left over from other projects. There was some pressure to get this done - our granddaughter is coming to visit next month and she is expecting chickens!!

We found three chickens on Craigslist - two Aracaunas that lay those lovely blue/green eggs and one Polish hen that lays smaller brown eggs. That's the Polish hen above - we named her Lady Gaga for obvious reasons! The Aracaunas are Thelma and Louise. Here's a picture of what those ladies look like because for some reason I don't have a picture of our pair.

We got our birds last Wednesday and as of this morning and they have settled in nicely. (Well, there was that one instance of Lady Gaga literally flying the ~~coop~~ ark and wandering about the lawn as pictured above). We're learning all kinds of things. I Googled "the best chicken feed" and went to the local feed store where the clerk was less than amused by being asked if the chicken feed had any other whole grains besides corn! Really, does she just think handing over a bag of nuggets with no label, no information is going to satisfy the Queen of Researching Information on "the Google"?? We're going to find the organic version - geesh, even our cat food lists all the nutritional information in great detail!

The hens have been very busy. Seven eggs in less than four days - not bad for "stressed" chickens!

The color of the inside of the shells is so pretty!

Bright yellow yolks, super-fresh from the ark to our breakfast! Eggs from the Aracuana hens have a slightly higher cholesterol content than most eggs because of their higher ratio of yolk to white. Since we don't really eat that many eggs, I'm not concerned and think the freshness and better quality feed will still make them better for us than commercially farmed ones. We already have people asking for blue eggs, so I don't expect us to go over our "eggs only on the weekend" rule.

Just a thought - never say never. Here I am with chickens in my back yard. What next?

Great Summer Salad

2011-06-01T22:14:00.000-04:00

I've been celebrating my release from my temp job at the cube-farm by recreating some of the great salads at our local Whole Foods - wannabee. Their salads are quite tasty, but I always think I can make a healthier (and less pricey) version. So far I've made the farro salad and the Greek pasta salad - both definite keepers!

I saw this recipe on Ezra Pound Cake. I love panzanella and the idea of making something similar with corn bread was too tempting. The EPC version is from Jamie and Boby Deen's book, "The Deen Bros. Get Fired Up".

Here is the recipe and some changes I made - minor for sure - hard to improve on the Brother's great recipe.

****************

Start with 1/2 to 1 corn bread - I used a basic corn bread recipe and added the kernels from a leftover grilled ear of corn. Cut corn bread into 1 inch cubes.

Next, prepare the vegetables:

2 cans black beans, drained

1-2 red peppers, diced. I used several baby multi-colored peppers.

1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions, white and green parts. I used fresh garlic and baby leeks from our farmer's market.

1/4 cup chopped basil. I'd like to try this with cilantro, but my son has the cilantro tastes like soap gene, so I stuck with basil.

Here are the vegetables ( minus the beans) getting acquainted with the dressing. To make the dressing, whisk together:

6 Tblsp olive oil

2 Tblsp red wine vinegar

1 Tsp salt

1 Tsp freshly ground pepper

Drizzle over vegetables and stir to coat well. I let the vegetables sit for a couple of hours to mingle the flavors.

Spread the cubed corn bread onto a cookie sheet and broil until golden. I sprayed the corn bread cubes with a bit of olive oil for additional crunch. Watch very carefully - I'm here to tell you they go from golden to blackened very quickly!

The recipe says to gently stir the corn bread cubes into the vegetables and toss to coat. Since cornbread is pretty fragile, I used the the cornbread cubes as a bed for the salad - arrange some of the cornbread on the plate and top with the vegetable mixture. This keeps the cornbread relatively intact, plus eliminates soggy cornbread should there be any leftovers. The Deen brothers do recommend adding the toasted cubes to the salad at the very last minute to preserve their toasted crunch.

This was yummy and makes a great summer meatless dinner - enjoy!

Artsy Lightbulbs!

2011-05-23T22:23:00.001-04:00

The Plumen 001

We've replaced most of our light bulbs with those ugly low-energy bulbs. They are fine if you can't actually see the bulb, but hideous in clear-shaded lights. Seems like they didn't need to be so UGLY - maybe if the bulbs were more attractive, more people would make the switch. People are actually hoarding the incandescent bulbs so they don't run out when the old- style bulbs will no longer be available. Well, check out these beauties, coming soon to a store near you! No more excuses!

Hold the shades- these naked bulbs are an instant art installation.

Available here soon.

A bit less artsy option is available from GE. It's not as attractive as the Plumen, but orders of magnitude nice than the current coil style.

We got lots of mileage out of Mr. Edison's design - high time to embrace function with some sassy style.

My Reasons to Celebrate Mother's Day

2011-05-08T10:38:00.000-04:00

These are my qualifications for celebrating Mother's Day (except The Captain; he's reason for other celebrations). I marvel at my good fortune every day. I did not realize that one of the best parts of being a mother is having great adult children in your life. They are all smart, funny, kind, and if I may brag (it's Mother's Day - guess it's legal), pretty darn good - looking to boot!

When they were little, they always asked how I knew the answer to things they asked. I told them it was because I was a smart woman, hoping that thought would carry me through the years when they wondered how I found my way home at night! Now I'm happy to learn so many things from them. I've seen them become responsible adults, carry on difficult conversations with grace and style, grab life and go at it full-on, love and support each other, and still take time to call home to talk to their mother. Plus, having three daughters guarantees that I won't be wandering around town in some embarrasing outfit or with unfortunate grooming mishaps. This is an important benefit, not necessarily obvious when they are toddlers! Two sons - the oldest and youngest of the group- mean I have all kinds of technical and DIY advice.

Sometimes I look back and wish I had done some things differently. There are plenty of days I wish I could get a "do-over ", and I am grateful that they all love me despite some rocky times.

I know how lucky I am to have such great kids and I thank the universe for them every day. Happy Mother's Day to me because of all of you.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T18:29:00.000-04:00

From the movie Chocolat, my personal favorite Easter message:

"I think we can't go around...
measuring our goodness by what we don't do.
By what we deny ourselves...
what we resist and who we exclude.
I think we've got to measure goodness...
by what we embrace...
what we create...
and who we include."

Spring - Daffodils, Peepers and Tag Sales!

2011-04-17T17:44:00.000-04:00

One sure sign of spring around here is the return of tag sales. The Captain and I have a Saturday morning ritual - coffee mugs filled and sometimes with a treat in hand, we head out to check out a few local tag sales. We started this season with a bang.

Check out this great dresser! I'm going to redo DC son's former man-cave and think this dresser will be perfect. Who knows - I may not even repaint it - although it is hard for me to resist! The dresser has a great distressed blue finish and since I plan to turn the MC into a beachy- themed spare bedroom, the blue is perfect. I LOVE the mirror - the great arch shape with three sections and the swirls on top and bottom. Not sure what's up with the casters - I like my furniture to be stationary, so they'll be coming off.

The shells on the lamp will work with the theme , but I may tone down the blue just a bit. Not sure what to do about a shade yet. Vladimir is checking out the tag sales finds, too!

No tag sale day can really be considered successful if it doesn't include some art supplies. Here's the day's haul - some stickers, a brand-new embossing gun, glitter, and some fun stamps. This bag of treats has two flamingo stamps- I was going to just buy them as The Captain has an unnatural fascination with flamingos. Since the whole bag of goodies was only $3.00 seemed silly to leave the rest behind. I love the man with the top hat holding the sign. He's got the creepy, weird thing going.

The panini press obviously isn't an art supply although it is heavy enough to use as a book press !

Cookbook Rediscovered

2011-04-13T19:57:00.001-04:00

I bought this book for the first time just before my first child was born and taught myself how to make bread with this little book. It has everything from very basic bread, muffins and quick breads to more elaborate offerings. I actually made the bagels from this book, and believe me, while they were yummy, making bagels is wayyyy to much work!

I used it so much the pages starting falling out and at one point put it down on a hot burner so it sported the swirly design of an electric stove unit singed onto the back cover. Sometime over the decades I lost the book.

California Daughter was looking for my soda bread recipe for St. Patrick's Day. It came from this book, so I went online to see if I could track one down. The first one I found was pricey - $40.00! If you look carefully, you can see that it cost all of $1.99 brandie-new back-in-the-day! More careful searching and I located it for not much more than the original price and bought two - one for CD and a replacement for me. I plan to make some yummy lemon bread this weekend, but no bagels!

Somewhat related - heard this on the news tonight. Turns out the US spends the least amount of time cooking of all the countries in a recent study. We also spend the least amount of time eating - probably because of all the eating in the car or wolfing down take-out in front of the TV. ( I have done my share of both). Bet we could at least win the "who eats the most" category! Here's to baking and enjoying leisurely meals.

Succulents on the Half- Shell

2011-04-04T19:57:00.000-04:00

Spring is planting time and I've been searching for small succulents to plant in this shell planter I found at a great estate sale last fall. I found some at Home Depot and finally got this project done.

I used some white spray paint to give the shell a brighter, cleaner look. Because there are no drainage holes in the planter, I put a layer of charcoal in the bottom so it doesn't end up smelling like a swamp! Next, a layer of small pebbles for drainage and then filled it with cactus soil. After plopping in my little plants, I sprinkled some aquarium gravel to finish it off.

Once the weather gets warmer the shell will head outside for some real sun. I'm wondering how the no-drainage thing will work when we get some serious rain.

Watercolor Crayon Backgroounds

2011-03-27T20:48:00.000-04:00

Check out the article by Caroline Rondel in the March issue of Somerset Studio. She uses watercolor crayons to make some interesting backgrounds.   I have a box of these that I've never used, so decided to give it a try.

She explains the technique - either on dry or wet watercolor paper, color with the crayons and then "paint " the crayoned section to create a watercolor image.   I had better luck on dry paper- it was hard to get much color down on wet paper. I also did better with a very light touch with the crayons.. If I pressed too hard with the crayons, the hard line of color was difficult to "wash" with water, leaving a distinct color line.

It takes lots of water to disperse the color!   After painting the colored areas with water, I stood them up, shook them around and generally tried to get some little rivulets of color to drizzle down the page.

Caroline recommends blending only two colors to avoid getting the dreaded "mud" wash.   On some I used three colors, but made sure the first colors were totally dried before adding a third - no mud involved!

Some of the backgrounds:

I made a quick birthday card with one and a tag with another.

These backgrounds would make great journal pages . I'm going to try it on some text paper too.

Meyer Lemons + New Tool = Lemon Madeleines

2011-03-20T19:14:00.000-04:00

"Ok, here's the Thanksgiving menu so far: apple pie, pumpkin pie, blueberry tart, and ice-cream roll. What am I missing? ...Cake! We need cake."

- Debra Messing as Grace

I've shared many obsessions here - paper, stamping, shabby-chic do-overs, but not one of my most favorite - food. How could I have neglected this most favorite preoccupation?

Enter Meyer lemons - new to me. I've read about them, of course - no fan of Martha can escape her love affair with Meyer lemons, but I've never had or even seen them. Last week I found little bags of them at our grocery store - so cute! While lots of people like citrus- flavored entrees, I'm not one of them. I want my lemons sweetened and baked with sugar into some tasty sweet - lilke Madeleines. These lemons are less tart than the regular ones - perfect for desert!

I found a recipe over at Martha's (of course) - these are just a vehicle to deliver lots of butter, eggs and sugar, flavored with lemon and just enough flour to hold it all together. They are not on anyone's diet - there is probably a lower fat version that I should check out, but no amount of butter and eggs would be spared for my lovely little lemons.

When I got to the part about lemon zest, I remembered the new microplaner I brought home from Montana. Thank you, thank you fellow shopper at World Market in Bozeman who told me to buy it! Is it wrong to love a kitchen tool? This thing is amazing - it makes very fine zest - nothing like the chunks I get with my old cheese grater.

Aren't they lovely?

Vase Facelift

2011-03-06T18:51:00.000-05:00

Boston daughter got this vase for me awhile ago. I love the shape, but the blue doesn't really work anymore, so what to do but give it a new life with some paper ! I glued on various off-white pieces of torn papers - text, music, and pieces from a shopping bag. It still needed something, so I gave it a swipe of some gold shoe polish that I bought at the cobblers. I didn't plan to actually polish shoes with it, but couldn't resist the old gold color. Here is the new version of my vase:

Remember those flowers we made out of tissues in grammar school? I'd forgotten about them until I recently made some out of tissue paper for my granddaughter's 3rd birthday. Then I remembered that I had seen some out here in blog land made of sewing patterns. I dug out an old pattern and made these flowers. Next time I'll iron the paper so it's a bit neater and maybe try some Distress Ink on the edges.

PS - Love the new, improved Blogger picture upload, but still fooling around with text and layout!!

It"s Award Season!

2011-02-22T20:05:00.017-05:00

Whooeee, it's time for all those la-dee-dah dresses (and more than a few dogs), for seriously tailored suits on leading men, and the little golden statue given to the winners. Turns out I got an award of my own - from the seriously creative Terri Lightfoot. Check out her blog for some serious creative inspiration! I'm thrilled that she passed this award on to me!

The rules for this award - reveal 8 facts about myself and tag 8 other FABULOUSLY stylish bloggers. So, here goes:

1. I love discovering treasures at thrift stores. I have unlimited patience for pawing through old stuff in hopes of a "find". Somehow new things just don't have the same personality.

2. Based on the day, I consider chocolate either a food group or a pleasant alternative to therapy.

3. I'd like to be nicer than necessary, but I don't always succeed.

4. My wardrobe is a blend of thrift store finds with the occasional pricey splurge.

5. My first thought when I see something I like is " I think I can make that". Sometimes those thoughts are really more like fantasies, but I'm usually willing to give it a go. Fortunately I believe in the saying, "embrace imperfection".

6. I have a thing about small plates. I have enough to serve lunch to a small nation.

7. I love collecting supplies for my art almost as much as actually using them.

8. I never met a button I didn't like.

And now, passing on the "Stylish Blogger Award" to these lovely blogs:

Femme Curieuse's stylish, cheeky observations

The Printed Thought - sophisticated and socially responsible

Faded Charm - Shabby chic lovelies

The Teacup Pages - Artsy, Victorian and literary

The Vintage Moth - Vintage images to download

Nice and Easy Antiques - Cottage charm

Centsational Girl - DIY with style

Fleamarket Style - Great ideas and photos

I'm always amazed at the wonderfully creative people out there and glad that they're sharing their talents!

Now a word about the big kahuna of awards - T.H.E. Oscars. Watching them is one of my guilty pleasures. It's people -watching on a grand scale and there is a seriously high potential for something crazy to happen. I usually watch it on mute, though . Sadly, many of these folks aren't all that articulate without a memorized script written by good writers. Guess that's why they call it acting.

The Power of Paint and Vintage Knobs

2011-02-10T18:58:00.006-05:00

We've had this large piece of furniture for a long time, changing it as our tastes and needs changed. I can't find a good picture of the original - it was honey- colored pine with a row of small drawers ( like 6 inches deep) along the back edge - very colonial. Several years ago Carpenter Son removed the small drawers, stripped the top and painted the dresser off white. I added some funky twig hardware and the dresser moved from colonial to cottage - yippee!. Lately it's been in our family room, holding an antique, ginormous TV.

We stepped into the 21st century and got a flat screen TV for Christmas. Normal people would just go out and buy something new to hold the TV, but I always think "what do we have that might work"? I'm not a fan of "entertainment centers", or at least the ones that don't require a second mortgage, so decided to give the dresser a new look.

I re-sanded the top and put on a couple of new coats of Butcher's wax. The wax doesn't protect like polyurethane, but I like its soft shine. Sage green on the base and white on the drawers give it a bit more punch. I used the vintage knobs I found at a salvage store. I love the look of a dresser re-do I saw in a Stamptington magazine - they used all mis -matched knobs, but since this dresser has lots of knobs, decided to use a combination of matching/mis-matched knobs so it wouldn't be too busy.

I learned two things doing this project. I have painted lots of furniture and like the matte look of flat paint, but not how impossible it is to clean. Well, news to me, there is a flat enamel finish - who knew; not me, obviously!! Love it - flat finish, but a hard surface so finger prints wipe off.

My California daughter told me about this great blog, Centsational Girl. She describes conditioners to add to paint that extend drying time and reduce visible brush strokes. Floetrol is the one for latex paint; Panetrol for oil based paint. This is made for me - my Carpenter Son used to say it looked like I painted with a broom! I'm somewhat better that that now, but next time I'm going to try the conditioner.

Indulged

2011-02-07T17:04:00.010-05:00

Despite my best efforts at embracing winter with love, I came perilously close to pitching a major nuttie a couple of weeks ago. Back-to-back snow storms, close to zero temperatures and darkened ski lights (covered with snow) nearly sent me over. The Captain became concerned and found a great weekend get-away at the Biltmore in Coral Gables. He had these lovely flowers sent to our room - what a guy!!

Afternoon tea

Breakfast by the pool. Sun, warm breezes and great food. Afternoon by the pool with waiters delivering drinks and cool towels - a girl could really get used to all that pampering!

We took a trip out to Miami Beach to people -watch and check out some of the art deco neighborhoods. I also drove up to see my good friend Shiela for some art fun and catching up.

What a wonderful weekend - thank you, thank you to The Captain!

Rescued Treasures

2011-02-01T15:39:00.009-05:00

One of my favorite haunts is an architectural salvage. Northeast Salvage is full of treasures - from tiny vintage hardware fittings to huge fireplace surrounds. There are hundreds of doors and window frames of all kinds. One time there was the whole inside of a church - pews, sacristy, altar, and even a confessional booth. Shoppers in search of absolution for excessive retail expenses could duck in after making their purchases! I love wandering around, soaking in all the history (and dust!). It is a joy to see such exquisite craftsmanship and to know it's not ending up in some landfill. It is also dangerous - my mind was just whirling with ideas for making things.

Today I was on a mission to find replacement knobs for a dresser I'm refinishing. I recently came across a dresser re-do that featured mismatched knobs - light bulb moment! I needed fourteen knobs and decided to do some matching/mismatching. The small white porcelain ones will go on the top drawers and the two flower -shaped ones on the side doors.

These beauties will be on lower drawers. There were boxes and boxes of these -all kinds of shapes and designs. They did, of course, have some nice plain ones, but who could resist the fancy ones? I'll be scrubbing them up a bit and may swipe on / wipe off some white paint to highlight the decorations and make them work with the rest of the dresser.

Word of caution - this is not thrift-store shopping! Apparently salvaging doo-dads is expensive. While I had spent a good ten minutes earlier in the day trying to pry the cap off a jar of face cream so I could get the last few pennies worth of cream out, I happily dropped some serious money for these treasures. I rationalized it by reminding myself I was re- purposing the dresser and not buying a new one, so the pricey knobs were really a bargain!

Really, Pottery Barn?

2011-01-21T12:17:00.008-05:00

First let me say that I love Pottery Barn - all the furniture, all the chi-chi decorating accents and all the lovely linens. Then came these little stacks of old books - aren't they sweet? Now to the crazy part - each stack of 4 books costs $30.00. What?? For a stack of books with the covers riped off and tied with a piece of twine?? So that means that the bowl of books above costs over $200.00, not counting the lovely wooden trough. Here's my version. I looked in our bookcases and found four books that would be headed to the donation pile. I looked for ones with deckle edges or colored pages to add interest. I used a box cutter to get the covers off without tearing the pages.

So here's to you Pottery Barn. I love that you have wonderfully creative designers and that occasionally I can make my own version of your (sometimes) wildly overpriced doo-dads.

Bit by the New Year Reorganizing Bug

2011-01-15T18:18:00.013-05:00

All of my online art groups are talking about ways to store all the stuff we accumulate. I like to be able to see as much of my stash as possible, have it reasonably accessible and have storage that is what The Captain claims to be - both decorative and useful. I decided to use my vintage window frame to store and display some of my wood mounted stamps. I love being able to see them and may rotate others through the installation.

The windows in my studio have been bare since I moved in. I'm not a fan of fussy curtains, but even by my standards, these windows looked forlorn. Curtain rods from the thrift store + ribbon = instant window treatments. Again, like having the ribbon out where I can see it and hopefully be inspired to use it.

Boston Daughter found this great shelf unit and I love it. I hung it on the wall and now have a place to show off some great vintage finds.

I found this jewelry organizer at Michael's for 40% off. It has all these pockets on both sides, so lots of storage for all those little doo-dads that I had jammed into another box. No more annoying digging through the box trying to locate on tiny item!

All this organizing made me realize that not only do I love creating something with my stuff, I also just love my stuff. Now that I can see it all, I also realize I am Queen of Quite a Lot. The Queen needs to get busy making things!

Hair- The Continuing Saga

2011-01-10T13:06:00.010-05:00

"Why do you think you can control your life when you can't even control your hair"?

I envy people with normal hair - you know, the straight kind that looks good even in the midst of a hurricane. My hair is the kind that's always having a party. Any kind of weather, any movement of air within 20 miles of my hair - it's party time! I've given up trying to get the "normal " kind. I did have it straightened for California Daughter's wedding and loved it until my darling granddaughter came up to me and asked "what's your name"?

Color, now that's a different story. I have spent lots of time and money on the color part. That's me, about seven years old, with very dark and very straight hair. (My family has a weird curly hair gene - straight hair till puberty, then , BAM! - here comes the curly wild stuff! ). I've been light brown, dark brown, red (which seems to be the official hair color if you're over 50) and most recently, blond.

I've decided to try a new color - the one that's hiding underneath the blond - the gray color. I'm pretty sure my blond hair isn't fooling anyone into thinking I'm 20 years younger. I don't want to look older, but looking one's age isn't really a bad thing, either. Look how the fantastic Helen Mirren pulls it off! Of course, she'd look great with green hair, purple hair or no hair and most of us aren't that lucky, but still - she looks smoking hot with GRAY hair!

Graying baby boomers have taken on turning gray with some attitude and of course, support groups, web sites and books. One of my favorite is "Going Gray, Looking Great" with some brave souls posting before, during and after pictures. I figure right now I have at least 4 colors going - some gray, lots very dark , dark blond and light blond highlights. I feel like I should wear a sign: " Not being lazy - growing out gray hair" because, trust me, at this stage, the look is serious shlumpadinka!

As if the whole color thing isn't enough to consider, length is apparently a serious topic - serious enough for the New York Times to weigh in on whether middle-aged women can have long hair. When I told my hairdresser I was going to stop coloring my hair, he thought it was a bad ideal. Of course he did - his driveway is full of man-toys paid for by foils and highlights. Then he told me that if I did go gray, I would have to keep it really short because " you can't have long hair if it's gray". Oh really - is that a Federal law or just a city ordinance? I'll take my chances - not that I plan on having it really long, but I've grown accustomed to my wild curly hair and want it back. Right now I'm in the process of cutting it shorter and shorter so I don't have too much of the Great Divide going on!

There is a serious sisterhood of women who have let their hair go gray. I often compliment a woman with great gray hair, and every one of them has said they were glad they did it and commiserated with me over growing-out process. Best of all, every one of them looked fantastic. Here's to fantastic gray hair - long, short or whatever we want it to be.

Bits and Birds

2011-01-05T12:02:00.017-05:00

New sign for my studio door!

The background is the inky layers techniques from Bernie Berlin's book, "Artist Trading card Workshop". It starts by gluing small scraps of paper - some old and some new to vary the way the scraps absorb ink. Then I randomly applied die-based ink for some color and over that, a wash of yellow oxide glaze. Next, dabbed on just a little pigment ink . Bernie then adds some iridescent ink, but I omitted it as I thought it might be too much for the vintage look I wanted. I'm going to try this technique again, but maybe wash some diluted acrylic paint to unify it more. I hate to cover up all those wonderful paper bits, though!

Once that was done, I was stuck! I liked the collage as it was and it seemed busy enough without adding more. Charging on, I stamped on the birdcages and added a couple of birds cut from corrugated cardboard and used fabric leaves for wings. I stamped the words on scraps of the perforations from a journal .

I love the crown hook and now it has found a home and a job!

New Year's Day, Resolutions, and Let's Try Again!

2011-01-01T18:03:00.005-05:00

(Or, I Can't Believe It's Another Year Since I Haven't Become A Better Person!)

New Year's Day - the day for thinking anything is possible. How wonderful is that? No matter that we didn't quite meet up to last NYD's expectations; we have another chance.

I think this page made for the family and friends calendar is my resolution. It covers all the bases quite nicely - just be a better you, whatever that means - kinder, more patient, more giving, less critical , a more creative artist - oh, and (of course) thinner, and while we're at it, develop killer arms like Michelle Obama!

Here's a more lofty take on this idea from Martin Luther King:

" If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep the streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well".

Here's to a Happy New Year. May it bring out the best version of us all.

Tags are Finished !

2010-12-28T14:38:00.004-05:00

I did it ! This year I made all 12 Tim tags - well, tags based on Tim's fantastic talent and unlimited supplies . Mine were a challenge - create the look with stuff I already have. It's amazing what you can come up with if you're willing to lay awake at night thinking about it!

The tag on the left (really number 11) was to feature custom made rubber stamps using one of the TH dies. I used a Crescendoh stamp, clear embossed onto a dictionary page, then rubbed with Distress ink. The original tag featured yet another die cut, but I just stamped out a tree, painted a bit with Pearl-Ex and added some white ink snow.

Tag 10 on the right featured embossed plastic packaging. I couldn't figure out how to replicate that look, so I eliminated that step. I love my snow man! He's an old foam stamp with the sections all separate - perfect for this tag. I love how well grunge paper distresses - the edges on his hat sanded off so nicely. I'll be using the technique of edging the tag with a white paint dauber before covering with Distress Ink in future projects for sure. In one tag I added chalk to deepen the background color - warning - the chalk doesn't resist the ink!Tag 9 on the left showcased a beautiful rosette made with - you guessed it - a TH die. I didn't think I could hand accordion- fold a small strip of paper, so just gave up and made a flower out of some paint-splattered paper, rubber with Vintage Photo ink. I used an old hand-crimper to give the edges some texture.

On the right, Tag 12. An old Christmas card, edges daubed with white acrylic paint, was pressed into service for the background. I cut the ornament out of grunge paper and stuck on the gold letters. I did use crackle paint over the inked ornament, but not much crackling happened.

Now I need to dig out from under all the stuff spread around in my studio. I cleared a path, so at least I can walk around without stepping on something or tripping - progress!

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-24T08:36:00.004-05:00

Hope your holidays are magical, filled with love, family and friends. A few treats and some eggnog would be good, too!

A Few More Tags

2010-12-22T19:28:00.004-05:00

Not much "me" time for making tags! I won't finish them before Christmas, but still having fun playing with these. I cut the reindeer from a template and made the horns from a glittery swirl. No embossing gizmo for the trees, so just stamped them with a mixture of Distress Inks. Finally got to use my new splatter stamp on a tag! Loving the tissue tape !

This one is a study in make-do! No wood grain embossing folder, to dug out a piece of wood grained paper for the background. This was supposed to be the poinsettia tag - I tried making one that ended up looking like a mutant botanical specimen! I decided a red leather flower was a more workable option.

This is the "extreme masking" tag - only no extreme mask. I made a simple tree mask instead. I was amazed at how easy the soft wire twirls - I have several colors but never used it because I thought it would be hard to bend. That's the fun of these tags - trying out all the stuff you bought but never knew how to use! I added the glitter snow on the bottom like TH did on the variation he showed. The photo corners are pieces from an old book study on faux metal we did on NGS.

Four tags to go. A big part of the fun is figuring out how to approximate the look without taking out a loan for new supplies!

Quick Altered Journals

2010-12-21T19:47:00.006-05:00

I found these great little journals at Michael's - and the stamps, cups and rub-ons to match! The journals are perfectly fine as is - quite cute, actually. But I thought maybe a little altering might be in order.

I added an eyeglass stamp I had made at Casey Rubber Stamps in New York City. If you're in the city, check it out - a most interesting and unusual shop, littered with rubber shavings, catalogs piled to the ceiling and an owner who is definitely one-of-a-kind. He makes stamps while you wait - fine quality wood -mounted stamps. You could spend hours browsing his stash of catalogs! Don't ask him to make unmounted or clear stamps - he will have none of those new-fangled "lazy" stamps! Finished this one with a few red dots stamped with a pencil eraser and red acrylic paint. I love the fancy little chair, especially with it's new coat of teal Perfect Pearls. I made little dots with some of the Perfect Pearls and stamped the top corner with a Tim Holtz stamp.

Isn't this birdcage cute! I stamped the birds (another TH stamp), and then used a Cresendoh music and stitch stamp. I love the bits of music and faux stitching! I added a ring of keys to the Discover journal and used my go-to stamp - Christine Adolph's Shore Cliff Trim. The stars work for so many different styles. The wiggly lines behind the eyeglasses above are from the same stamp. This one got the pencil-stamp dot treatment with gold paint.

I stamped another candelabra on this one and then used my new TH splatter stamp. I'm splatter stamping everything....

These quick and easy little books are heading to The Captain's office staff. They take good care of him, so it was fun to make something special for them.

Tim Holtz-esque Tags 4 & 5

2010-12-13T17:15:00.004-05:00

It's getting pretty crazy with these tags! I read this hysterical post by a woman who sends her husband out with a "Tim's tags" list and he goes from store to store trying to find all the right stuff . He even texts her with questions about potential purchases. More power to 'em, but I'm going old-school - making it up as I go along. Tag 3 is all about inked and stamped facets, but no facets here. I glued some background paper I made onto the back of some clear buttons for faux facets. No Santa- themed paper, so I used the one Santa stamp I have - one of TH's collage stamps, inked very carefully just to get Santa. I clear embossed and colored it lightly so it is really just a hint of an image. This tag has considerably less bling than Tim's, but lots more than I'm used to!

I love this one! Tag 5 is was all about enamel numbers. No metal numbers, so I stamped the numbers with embossing ink onto card stock and used several layers of embossing powders - white, clear and UTEE. The nails are black Enamel Accents - one of two tag-related purchases. I love how shiny it is and it's a good stand-in for brads - much easier! I did have a holly stamp, but no green stickles for the leaves, so I painted them with green glossy accents. Tim's tag has embellished metal flowers ; I used some red leather flowers - the large one was sanded to distress it a bit and the smaller one was embossed with gold. Same Santa stamp as above - I like how the dab of white paint makes Santa's beard and hair pop! I did use real brads along the bottom - embossed with gold and whacked with a hammer to distress. I like the effect of dragging a white paint dauber along the edges and then rubbing with Distress Ink - wiping the ink off the edges makes a nice light edge.

I'm hanging these on the trees as ornaments. I'd be very sad if I put them on packages and they ended up in the pile of wrapping paper trash!

I'm having fun trying to figure out how to make these lovely tags without adding too much to my stash of stuff. The splatter stamp ( my other tag-related purchase) arrived and I L.O.V.E. it - it's just perfect for a little extra around edges - I'm splatter stamping everything in sight!

Tags a la Tim Holtz - 2 and 3

2010-12-07T16:18:00.013-05:00

Tim Holtz is in full-on Christmas mode with this year's tags. For those who don't know about Tim, every year he debuts the 12 Tags of Christmas - tags that have more steps than a program ! Not only are the tags fantastic, Tim also gives lots of tips about other ways to use his techniques (and products!).

I'm doing the tags this year. I've also decided not to run out and buy every product he uses, but to try, for the most part, to improvise with what I have. I have LOTS of stuff - so much that it makes "normal" people gasp when they see my room bursting with supplies!

(I did tag 1 and posted that on the Facebook site. I decided I'd rather share them here so I can tell you all about my interpretation of the tag techniques).

Tag 2 above - Tim makes a custom stamp pad for this so the pine needles are green and the cone brown, hard to do with one stamp pad! I "painted" the tag with a brush dipped in distress ink instead - think it's much quicker. Distress inks stay wet for quite awhile, so you can finish painting and still have wet ink to hold the embossing powder.

Tim uses a great speckle stamp around the border - I spritzed on some ink from a toothbrush. I've ordered that stamp (despite good intentions noted above) because I think it's one I'll use often. I'll try not to rationalize a purchase for each tag, but he uses such cool stuff...

Tag 3 - my favorite so far. Tim uses a die cut for the little birdie - I found a template online and reduced it to fit. This is the first time I've used Grunge paper (from my stash) . I stamped it with a sheet music stamp and sprayed it with red glimmer mist. The Grunge paper really gets saturated with color. The flower is made with tissue tape, crimped onto a small card stock circle - super easy and it looks so cool. The tape is really easy to use; it's just tacky enough to stick but lifts easily if you want to reposition it. I've had the tissue tape for awhile and just wasn't sure what to do with it - now I know!

I need to get going - I'm already 3 tags behind!

Christmas - An Excuse to Gild Everything

2010-12-03T19:18:00.006-05:00

As you've probably noticed if you spend any time here, my style is more grunge than glitz - art, house and wardrobe. But it's Christmas time, and I had a can of gold spray paint I bought in a box of stuff at a tag sale. Armed and dangerous, I started looking around for things to paint. If I had a mantle, this is how I'd decorate it. I don't, so this this table is a good stand-in. An old mirror at the back doubles the viewing pleasure.

I salvaged some of the small fall pumpkins and gourds and gave them a spray of gold. Then some leaves and tree branches got the glitz treatment. I found gumballs that I had stashed away and sprayed them, too. The pine cone candles were next. I had three stray candles for the flower pot and now they match.

I found these gourds at the farmers' market and knew immediately that they would make perfect pears. Of course, perfect gold pears. I love the long, arched stems.

I made a set of these trees as a gift a few years ago and have wanted a set for myself. They are made from Styrofoam cones. First job is to paint the cones - trust me, it takes LOTS of paint to cover all those tiny little holes in Styrofoam! I was at a Michael's in Boston and found that they had paper mache cones. Wish I had found them before I started - they'd be much easier to paint! Once the cone is painted, hot glue on rough jute twine, starting at the bottom of the cone and winding it around the cone. Cut it off at the top and glue the end down. Repeat until the cone is covered how you like it- just make sure the twine is in a criss-cross pattern. I don't glue the whole piece of twine - just the bottom and top and maybe a smidge in the middle if it's looking loose. Brush gold paint over the twine - no need to cover completely, just brush over the top. Repeat all of these steps for the star toppers. I had trouble finding Styrofoam ones, so used some small wooden stars on the smallest tree and a paper star on the middle one. Hot glue the star to the top of the tree and you're done.

It's beginning to look like Christmas around here!