• Blog - Crafts - Creativity

    Building a card stash

    As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been sending more cards. This, in turn, depletes my stash. Over the past week, I’ve been having fun creating some new designs using some scraps as well as previously created card bases.

    I have an index card box full of precut layering pieces for cards. This comes in handy for quick card making. I also have a wooden cigar box filled with mini collages for cards or journal pages. Doing some of the mindless prep work ahead of time leaves more time for the creative process and doesn’t interrupt the flow of ideas.

    I am also starting to pre-make some sentiment pieces. I grabbed my tag and mason jar punches to start. The mason jar is so darn cute. The punch itself is a bit finicky. It jams almost every single time. UGH!!!!

    I am willing to put up with it though because…look how cute this is!!!! After I stamped the pale seafoam green I realized that it was beginning to look like an old-fashioned blue mason. I used a cosmetic sponge to shade in two colors of blue dye-based ink. Then rubbed the top of the jar on a gray pigment ink pad to act as the zinc lid.

    I used foam tape to lift it off the page so I could add some sticker flowers to the jar. So fun!

    I can 100% guarantee that you’ll be seeing more cards and postcards. They are really quite addictive to create.

  • Around home - Blog - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: 2020 garden edition

    Hello! I totally missed last Tuesday. I had intentions of posting but alas, it never happened. Unfortunately, that has happened more often than I’d like to admit. Instead of dwelling on failures… let us move on to something more celebratory.

    I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the lot of you for all the birthday wishes. It amazes me how much a tiny gesture, a word from a friend, Facebook friend, or even a casual acquaintance can put a smile on my face on my birthday…especially during this crazy time. So, thank you!

    I received a text from a friend and former coworker the morning of my birthday telling me she may or may not have left something on my steps out front.

    Clearly she did…a fun little basket of goodies for me.

    Now fast forward to Friday of last week… Mr. G came home a bit early and tilled the garden for me. The forecast said a rainy weekend ahead so we were in a time crunch. While he tilled, I mowed the lawn…except for the patch of creeping charlie…ugh…allergies stink.

    The shed garden or big garden is fully planted.

    Like the new top on the gate that Mr. G installed last weekend? Much better than the crummy one I bashed together last year after a deer jumped the short gate.  The crabapple trees were stunning this year.

    So much so that I had to use the smaller one as a backdrop to my trio of containers on the deck.

    I’m so excited that everything seems to be sprouting.

    It was a super busy day. I had taken a walk before I started work for the day too since all the sitting I do isn’t doing my body any good.

    Check this out!! Almost 20,000 steps in one day! That is just crazy to me. Remarkably I was hardly sore at all on Saturday morning. I even got up at 6am and went for a walk to loosen up…which I think really helped too. Now if only I could do that every day!!

    I can’t remember if I had mentioned this in a previous post but this year I am taking a cue from my MIL who always had lovely, prolific gardens. Both veggie and flower.  I am keeping a record of what and when I planted, harvest dates, etc.

    I’ve added the potential first harvest dates to my calendar so I’m aware of those as they come. I am hopeful this will help me in the long run. I plan to note what did and didn’t work. Throw out any old seeds that didn’t germinate or that we didn’t like the product. Every stinking year I forget the kind of green beans that we like vs don’t like. I hate the green beans that are “fuzzy”..ick. It’s a texture thing. I feel as if they get stuck in my throat. Gross.

    After all the seeds have sprouted I’ll share another overview of the garden. Right now it’s a little boring if I’m honest. I still have a few containers I want to plant but I simply ran out of time and energy. And then the rain came…we got over 5inches. Not sure how much more than 5 because that’s all our rain gauge holds.

    Just a little bit of coffee before starting the day…13 days left of distance learning for the school year.

    What are you doing today?
  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Butterflies everywhere

    I’ve been sending so many more cards and little care packages since the stay-at-home order began. I had to order more stamps and really needed to make some new cards to replenish my stash.

    These are my favorite type of cards. Little bits of scraps, snippets from magazines and whatever else finds its way into my scrap bin.

    In 2015, I wrote an article for Sew Somerset describing my process for mini-collages such as these. I now see them all over YouTube in the junk journal community. They call them clusters.

    Without even realizing it, most of my recent creations featured butterflies.

    collage postcard collection

    Even most of these collage postcards I made for my MIL.

    One even found its way onto one of the tags I made from the off cuts of the postcards.

    Maybe I just have mom on my mind. She was nuts about butterflies. They always make me think of her.