A Crafty Yarn

Living on a mountain creates challenges for a gardener.  For the most part I just roll with it and find an alternative way to do things or adjust my expectations.  However, part of our land is on the side of said mountain and losing that space for growing was NOT an option!  The land on the outside of the back fence drops steeply.  It was full of very tall growth, 8-12 feet high.   For several years now, I have been cutting the plants down and stacking them in what I hoped would eventually be a terraced area in which to garden.  This season I was determined to finish with the area.  I finally got everything terraced, piled the newest cuttings on top of the old, and covered the whole bunch with plastic sheeting so that it can break down over the next year.  

Every once in a while one of the hens goes broody.  They sit on their eggs and are determined to have babies. They get VERY cranky and will peck at you and raise a fuss if you try to move them or "their" eggs.   There's a pretty involved process to go through to get them past this but once they've been broody, it's likely to happen again.  One of my blue laced girls has been broody several times and I couldn't stand to disappoint her again so I bought some fertilized eggs for her to hatch.   Every day waiting for that tiny peep peep peep of chicks has been agony!   The wait ended this week!  I came home from work the other day and when I opened up the door to check on her THIS is what I saw! Do you see it??  That tiny baby right next to her momma!  It didn't take long for the others to hatch and now the coop is full of feathers and baby chirps! 

I've begun taking a look at my massive amount of craft supplies with a critical eye.  I realized that I've fallen into that trap that so many crafters do... buying more and more things that never get used because they're being saved for just the right project.   So... the name of my game for the next little while is going to be utilizing all of the things that I've been holding onto for years!  I'm still in love with this metal foil technique!  I thought I'd try a few new things this time around so I used dried botanicals under the foil and colored parts of it with alcohol ink.   The pressed leaves are the first of my saved items to be used... I've have cigar boxes full of them that I have had for years!  The ginkgo leaf I found on a sidewalk in St. Paul, MN in 2003.  Jeesh!  Use that shit already!  Am I right??   The lower right hand shows a stalk of dried rice that I grew in my garden last year....

The ladies at work have been wanting to try their hand at a craft while we are still on night shift and have some down time.  After quite a bit of internal debate I decided that cross stitch was probably our best bet.  I demonstrated the process and walked them through the basics and they ran with it!   I'm really impressed with the quality of even their first projects!  They have both gone on to do several more...I think they might be ringers because these two "non-crafty girls" rocked this! 

Everything is in the ground!!!     I'm hopeful that the weather cooperates this year!  I was happy to see that almost all of the medicinal herbs that I planted last year are still thriving :-)

A while back I saw this totally badass tutorial on how to use metal foil tape in mixed media projects. It worked on my mind for a while and finally I just had to try it.  I am SO glad that I did!  I have a love for boxes and tins so I decided to start there rather than a card.  This is how it turned out:  Freakin cool, right!?!   I enjoyed the process so much that I can’t seem to stop making things using this technique!     I was really wanting to do an aviation themed box for our living room since we have a really cool plane picture and a full sized propeller on the wall.  I used the Silhouette Cameo to  make the layers of this propeller:   I added some metal embellishments...   I made the plane on the Silhouette as well.  Do you see that copper dome in the corner?  That's a penny that I shaped in the doming block that I got as a Christmas gift.     The end results: ...

My friend Meg sells boutique. clothing .  She often donates a percentage of her sales to a local charitable interest and she treats her customers with a special gift each month...So yeah, she's fantastic!  Because she was at Katie's babyshower  and enjoyed the body scrub/moisturizer party favor, she ordered several of them to give as her customer appreciation gifts. I wanted them to be somewhat special so I made these custom cardstock boxes to package them in.