The Eyes Have It?

Well, in this case the eyes don't! I had eye surgery on my left eye yesterday and thought I'd be okay to read and so on today but it's not to be. My new left eye vision doesn't go with my right eye in glasses so I'm dizzy and not focusing well. I get the other eye fixed in two weeks. Hopefully I won't be out of service that long but I am letting you know I won't be doing much in the way of artwork or blogging for at least a few days. The surgery I had was for cataracts and to put in a prescription lens so I can do away with glasses and contacts. Still hoping it's all worth it.

Weekly Inchy

The theme for this week's inchy is rose. I used a square with a bit of handmade lace (a sampler used to learn honiton bobbin lace) glued onto it. The rose was a button I had; I snipped off the shank before gluing it on.

Anyone can join in by going to Inchy by Inch and leaving a link to the inchy you make for the theme. Have some fun and try it.

Fires

I know several of my blog pals live in Australia. I sure hope none of you are near the fires and especially that you weren't in one. This fire is worse than even the ones in California where a lot of my family had to evacuate and my uncle's house burned down. Take care. I'm praying for you and yours and that the weather changes too.

I tried going to individual blogs but I'm not sure just who all live in Australia so I may have missed some but I am not forgetting you right now.

November BJP Page

Done at last! It's done at last! Hooray, I finished my November page. Between getting ready for Christmas, making a long visit to family in California and then some of the blahs, this page took me forever!! Somehow it managed to get a little off-kilter too.

The big orange bead is from the little bit of jewelry I have left of my mothers. I added seven cube beads that my son gave me (remember I am trying to use some gifted or handmade beads on these pieces) which stand for the number of children my mother had. One died as an infant but he was never forgotten. The small flowers add up to the number in our family as we grew up. The star and large flower were gifted to me by Julia of Mixed Media when we swapped ATC's .

Now I am going on to my next piece but it's going

to be the red one passing over red-orange for the

time being. I have a reason and you will find out

what it is when I have completed the red piece. Ooooh, don't let the suspense get to you. It's not that big a deal but it is a story so I'll put it with the piece.

The second picture here shows the first quarter done. I think it's following the color wheel pretty well so far. I hope I can find enough colors to make it all the way around without having to fudge too much. Now I can take a few evenings and go blogging through the BJP blogs without feeling too guilty. I feel a little as I am doing some pretty small pages and still managed to get pretty far behind.

Snowflakes

This week's inchy theme is winter. The blog's author lives in Great Britain and got her share of the white stuff this weekend so she thought it would make a good theme.

I made a beaded snowflake with directions I found at Bead Gypsy . I used a square cut from a box of facial tissues (recycling where I can!) and edged it with a silver Krylon pen. I used a white gel pen to make the small snowflakes after gluing the beaded snowflake to the surface.

If you'd like to try your hand at making an inchy stop by Inchy by Inch blog and see what's up.

Boy, I think I am on a roll this week! It feels good to be back creating this or that again.

I Did It!

I did it. I have had this blog for over a year and have never dared change my header until now. All I've done is add a picture and hope to play around with Photoshop Elements and make a banner that reflects what I do more but in the meantime I've got something a little better than a blue rectangle!

The picture in the header and these on this post were taken in San Diego while I was visiting my son this past Christmas trip to California. My son got me to go on the Spruce Street suspension bridge which was really scary for me. If the bridge had started swinging when I got on it I would never have crossed to the other side of it but it was sturdy even though it was very narrow and high off the ground. It was over a pretty canyon by Balboa Park.

I had a great short visit with my son in San Diego. He took me to Rancho's restaurant which has mexican style food for everyone - meat eaters, vegetarians and even vegans. I had avocado enchiladas which were very good. The picture of my son and I was taken at the restaurant.

Then he drove me around his neighborhood which is where we came across this bridge. We also stopped for a few minutes at Balboa Park. I grew up in San Diego and visited the park a lot as a kid. It was fun to see streets my parents would mention in stories about their growing up years and just to see where my son currently lives.

The plus is that I was able to change the look of my blog because of my visit.

Weather

I've just added the weather pixie to my blog. Now you and I can see what the weather is like here where I live (like I can't look out the door- hah!). You can get one too by clicking on it.

New Blog Thingy

I came across this on another blog - Bluebird Hill . It looked interesting and I rather liked the results even if the actual colors wouldn't be my selection. Give it a try and let me know if the results fit you. I know I do like optimism and try for the others.

Your rainbow is shaded yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are a joyful person. You appreciate optimism. You're good at getting people to like you.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

Inchy Once More

I am back everyone - hopefully for good. I have done the inchy for the week for the group on the blog Inchy by Inch. The theme for this week was buttons. This is my humorous take on the subject. I fully intended to raid my button box but this is what turned up instead. Done with prismacolor colored pencils. Hope it made you smile!


For those who have left me messages wondering where I was, I truly feel blessed that you were interested enough to wonder about me. I just was so busy leading up to Christmas and then visited so long with family that I guess I was worn out. I wasn't feeling like art or blogging - just resting. Thankyou so much for your concern; it helped, really, to get me back into the loop again.

Now, that I am back to doing inchies, I hope to get caught up on my Bead Journal Pages also. I have actually been sewing down some beads in the last couple of days. Not only that but I ripped out some knitted socks, relaxed the yarn and rewound it ready to knit some socks that will match up in size this time. I am on the move!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year Everyone!!

I haven't been around much lately. Been sidetracked by any number of things but I am planning to get back to blogging, beading and drawing, making inchies and perhaps some painting this year. I have seen some new goals on some of the blogs I visit and hope you all attain what you'd like to try and learn and do this new year. Ready for a toast (it's pomegranate sparkling cider in case you were wondering)? To all the world: May peace win out when we are feeling at odds with one another, may generosity win out when we see those who have little, may joy reign in spite of a dismal economy and may everyone have a wonderful new year!!!!

I'm hoping to get by to see everyone's blogs very soon. I'm back online (my daughter's modem went out while I was visiting) and the holidays are almost over so it's time to get back to my usual routine. See you soon!

I participated in an inchy exchange over on the Inchybyinch blog for Christmas. Twelve of us signed up which turned out to be a good number. Don't these make up a wonderful little set? Click on the picture to make it bigger and you'll see the creativity involved and some humor too. I'm really happy about having joined in.

Snow!

Hey everyone! I know a lot of you live in snowy areas but look what we got here in sunny, northern Arizona! This is the first time in seven years that it snowed all day. We've only had a few other snow days and they ended and melted off by about 10a.m. but not today. It snowed all day and now that it's night time it's turned to rain. Our big dog Sarah had fun running in it during part of the day but doesn't want to go outside now that it's dark and rainy. Look at that palm tree - and I thought I'd even throw in a pic of me out in the snow. We were only in the mid 30's so it was cold but not freezing! Lol, I even got a pun in there.

Well we thoroughly enjoyed watching all that white come down. It is such a rare occasion for us I wanted to share it with all of you.

Christmas Cards

I've got my cards done and mailed. I took part in a card exchange this year and sent the original of this colored pencil drawn card to the person I was trading with (it was a group trade but each person was given one person in the group for which to make a card. That way we could go to their blog to see what they might like and make a card accordingly - a neat way to do a trade. No one knew who would be making theirs).

I liked the card so much that I decided to make prints of the kitty and glue them onto cards I made with Elements which I am learning how to use. Originally these were all going to be red cards with green envelopes but I goofed so many times on my layout of the words I ran out of red cardstock. So now I have red cards with green envelopes and green cards with red envelopes and the recipients won't know it was due to mistakes. The envelopes are handmade out of Dick Blick construction paper. It is actually a nice 80 pound weight craft paper and I don't think they call it construction paper anymore. The colors and feel of it are great. I recommend everyone try it for crafting. I think you'll like it.


Hope you are all busy getting ready for your holidays be they Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanzaa. It's good to celebrate something especially when times are not so good.

Thanksgiving

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone but I wanted to share with you a bit of mine. My granddaughters love to do some arts and crafts with me when they visit. Usually I'm too busy to join them but I almost always have something planned that they can do especially with their mom to help.

The girls drew and made some turkeys for decorations. I don't do well with decorating so I am always glad when they come up with some pictures or other decorations. The youngest (age 7) drew here family as turkeys and we taped it to the sliding doors in the dining room. I love her unique take on the turkey feathers. The next in line made this paper plate turkey and used a sprig off the Chinese elm for it's feathery tail.

My daughter found a square tablecloth at a Bed and Bath shop by her house that would actually fit my square table. I'd suggested that coloring some leaves in fabric crayons would make a great tablecloth so she also dug up her fabric crayons and brought them with her. The 3 girls drew most of the leaves (with cookie cutters my daughter also brought) but my grandson actually joined in and did one along with almost everyone else. I think only my husband and my daughter's didn't. We've even got Happy Thanksgiving on it

after first ironing one message backwards. You see, with these crayons you first color on paper and then turn them over to iron onto the tablecloth so printing is backwards unless you take that into account. My daughter spent a whole afternoon ironing the leaves on as we got them colored. Didn't it turn out great?

We had a great Thanksgiving even though it rained for more than one day. We go for months with no rain, my family shows up to visit and bam, rain! The older kids had fun playing out in it though and they haven't had a lot of rain in southern California where they live either. My daughter surprised me with a couple of pumpkin pies so I didn't have to bake them, just one apple pie but I waited till Friday to do that. We had the usual turkey and stuffing routine but I also made a mushroom pot pie for the two vegans (my son and his girlfriend) along with leaving the butter out

of the corn so they could feast too.

Then during the weekend my son and the older grandkids helped my husband move the goat shed, their rock pile for climbing on (very heavy - our son moved them with our daughters help) and put up some fencing for them. We moved the goats because their hay attracts the rabbits and the cars were by the goats and the rabbits then climbed into the car engine to eat the copper wires. Big job but it needed doing.

My daughter decided it was time for me to get started on painting my kitchen. I had the paint;

it was a matter of getting to it. She got up into the corner where I would have found it difficult to get into so she really helped a lot. Doesn't the yellow look so much better than that icky mobile home wallpaper stuff? Oh, yeah, that gray haired woman is me. Boy the time has flown. We were reminiscing about painting her bedroom when we moved to Minnesota during her senior year of high school. I was only four years older at that time than she is now!

Anyhow, that's how my Thanksgiving weekend went. I enjoyed it a lot. Hope yours was as good.

A New Inchy

This week's theme from Inchy by Inch is Trees. I can do trees. I didn't have a tree stamp and especially not one small enough to do an inchy but I did have a tiny 3-leaf sprig stamp so I stamped it all over the top of my inchy for the tree top. Then I took a fine tip pen and added a few more leaves and a trunk. Colored the whole picture with watercolor pencils and wet it down. I edged the square with a wet watercolor pencil and felt it was done.

Hope you enjoy this little tidbit and wish some more people would join in. You can draw, stamp, paint, quilt, embroider or bead an inchy. They cover all the art stuff you can think of so don't be shy - come on!