Memorial Day

Have you tried these yet? I've seen them all over the web so I had to try them. Just pop some chocolate chips into some clean raspberries and you have a delicious treat! I saw them with a mixture of white and dark chips but I only had the dark on hand. Bet it's yummy with white chocolate too!

I want to give thanks today to the men and women who died while serving our country in the military and a shout out to those who serve today. I'm so proud of my Marine nephew, Andy.  Thanks for all you do!!! Thanks to my dad, too, who served in the Navy during the Korean War. I love you, Dad!

Bathing Beauties

Are you heading to the beach for the Memorial Day weekend? Make sure you cover up! This is how I would be dressed if I were going to the beach:

I'm not much of a beachgoer myself.  I live very close the the Gulf of Mexico but rarely see it. I'm so fair skinned but maybe if it was fashionable to dress like this now I would do it more often.

I found these adorable Mack Sennett postcards at an antique mall and wanted to show them off. Mack Sennet made slapstick films in the early 20th century and many of his films featured these Sennet Bathing Beauties.

I bought a great picture frame at Target a couple years ago that is two layers of glass and you can frame anything you want in it. I just love it. I decided to display my Sennett Bathing Beauties in it. I carefully measured and laid them on the first glass piece. Then I put the back piece of glass on hoping it didn't make the postcards move out of place.

Now I have a cute piece of art to hang. I have to decorate those boring apartment walls afterall. I wish I had some big cabbage rose covered wallpaper on those walls instead. Someday!

This and That

I finished sewing all the big mitered squares for my quilt. I think I'm done with the hard parts of this quilt. I should say the parts I was afraid of because I put off that mitering for so long. The rest is just straight sewing. I think!! It wasn't actually that hard but it always seems like it at first when you have no experience. I had to sew the side strips on and leave a quarter inch at the end.

Then I had to fold it with the center part wrong sides together but the outside edges right sides together.

Then I used my quilting ruler and drew a line at a 45 degree angle.

Then I stitched on that line and repeated the process for all 16 corners. I think they came out looking pretty good.

I'm afraid to look but I don't think I cut out the next pieces that I need to attach the squares together. That means I have to clean all my collaging stuff off my table. I don't actually eat at my table, do you? It is my creating space, not my eating space.

Speaking of collaging, I went to a thrift store today to find some old books. I didn't find the kind I was looking for but I found this cool old encyclopedia dictionary.

It's from 1941 and someone sewed on this fabric cover and made a new spine out of cardboard because the original broke off at some point. What sold me on this book were the illustrations in the middle.

Well worth $1.99! Can't wait to use them in a collage.

I am the crafty teacher at school and have been playing with collage with ten girls. I showed them the altered book I made (started) for my Artful Pages class. That was the part taught by Lenna Young Andrews.  I got the kids some old books to alter and they went to town. They weren't interested in much instruction. They just wanted to start decorating their books. Some of them turned out really cute. I didn't get pictures of all of them but here are a few. The girls are between 9 and 11 years old.   

Two covers

Some sticker love!

How's this painted spread?

Yea, I can't even paint this well!

Ok, maybe she should have been teaching me.  

I tried to talk her out of using this picture. ( I wanted it really bad! That gown is to die for! )

    Lastly, I joined a swap. I have never been a part of one so this will be a learning experience. It is for Karla Nathan's Bird Song Tag Swap. I have to make seven tags and send them in. I will then get seven back made into a book. Here are some examples from a swap she did with a Dorothy theme. This photo is from her blog. Her blog is one of my mostest favorites! My tags must have a bird on them. I have an idea already and will share at some point.

Enough for one day. I hope you are having a great weekend!

Round To-its

My parents are very creative people and all us kids are too in one way or another. My father always had a million projects going on in his garage and workshop.  He always had some imperfect antiques that he was going to make nicer by refinishing or re-purposing. (Is that a word?) One time a long time ago I asked him about a pile of interesting but unidentifiable items. I asked him what they were and he told me they were Round To-its. Of course I then asked "What is a Round to-it?" He told me they were things he was going to make when he got around to it.  Oh! I definitely learned from him how to collect round to-its. I have a couple projects that keep getting put off so I thought I would show them to you. Maybe it will light a fire under my... I mean hopefully I will get them done soon since I am showing them to you.  First are these adorable chairs. I have two of them.

 I've had these for years and never finished them. I stripped the old ugly paint off of them and they had some ugly wood nailed over the seat. I took a class to learn how to cane chairs just for these. Unfortunately, I wove the cane too tightly and it broke the wood. I gave up on the caning idea but then didn't know how to cover the seats. I asked a friend who does woodwork and he cut out some new wood seats for me but that is all the further I got. I have always seen them in my mind with a soft buttery yellow color and some pretty fabric cushions. My next round to-it is a lamp that used to be covered with lace and fringe. It was old looking and I was tired of it so I ripped it off and almost threw away the whole thing. I'm glad I didn't but now I need a new covering.

I would love to order some new fabric but I think I will try to find something in my stash to cover it with. I just bought a car and am afraid to spend any money until I get used to having a car payment again. So hopefully you will see these again but not looking like round to-its anymore. Do you have any round to-its?

Mother's Day

I decided to make a little book for my mom for Mother's Day. I got the idea of the book from Mary Green in her Collage Basics class. Aren't those letters for "MOM" cute"? They were on an advertisement for Mary Kay cosmetics that came in the mail.  Too pretty for the recycling bin. Anyhow, this is how the book started out:

You can buy these at the dollar store. It is a hard book with hard pages and it had the perfect amount of pages for what I needed. Next, I covered all the pages with scrap book paper. I actually put gesso on them first but I'm not sure if I needed to because I glued all the paper in and didn't end up doing any painted backgrounds. I covered the papers with photos of my sisters, my one brother and me. Then I decorated them with stamps, stickers and punched out paper. I used a doily as a stencil on a couple of them.  I also covered each page with a layer of matte gel medium. Then I put a little note on the back page.

I had my hand in my mouth a lot. I later replaced the hand with cake!

My youngest sister obviously came after the invention of color film.

Happy Mother's Day!