HOW GREEN IS MY SHOP

The Etsy Blogger Carnival choices this time focus on Earth Day, which is coming up on April 22. One of the questions we bloggers might chose to answer is, "What is green in your shop?"

Well, that's easy enough. Virtually everything in my shop is "green". My art materials are what I find at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores, and other people's junk piles, and I use those found/recycled materials to make...

Coffee Pot People





Tea Kettle Characters





China Blossoms



Mega Blossoms





And Button Stack Jewelry





Most of what I've put in this post isn't in my shop right now, either because I've already sold it, or because I don't have it listed yet, but this is a pretty good representation of my art. I say "pretty good" because (standard disclaimer here) I'm ADD, and, well, showing more than the tip of the art iceberg would probably be way more than you want to see or know!

IT'S SPRING--MEGA BLOSSOMS ARE BLOOMING!

I've been making Mega Blossoms, during this first week of really good weather.

It's easiest for me if I can work on them outside, where I can set up the big tables and spread out the china. Then, when everything has been arranged, and rearranged, and stacked, unstacked, and restacked, I can start gluing. The warmth of the sun sets up the glue more quickly, which means fewer times back to the table to see if anything has slid off-center.

I'm just going to upload some of my favorites, with an apology for the less-than-awesome photography. Until I get the back assemblies on them, I can't put them on their stems and show them in the garden, so they get the flat-on-the-table treatment.

THAT'S A DANDELION?!?

True confession: I don't really mind dandelions. They're pretty, in my humble opinion.

But some are prettier than others.

Years ago, my parents moved to Pullman, Washington. In due course, we went to visit. I remember riding through town with Mama, going I-don't-remember-where. What I do remember is the huge, bright, yellow flowers growing at the bases of the telephone poles along the street. They were the size of chrysanthemums, but didn't look quite like them. Gorgeous, though, just gorgeous.

"What are those flowers?" I asked Mom.

"Those," she said ruefully, "Are the dandelions."

Whoa, baby! I'd never seen anything like them before, and haven't since.

However, I hd a similar moment on the trip through Arizona. The highways are lined, in many places, and for many miles, with blankets of pale yellow flowers. I worked hard at getting photos, but they're not much for highway shoulders there, and we weren't able to stop. This is the best I could do:



We did, finally, stop to go through an antique mall. There were the same yellow flowers there, massed around the side of the building. The sun was a glare that threatened all my shots with overexposure, but I did get this:


I picked one blossom to carry into the RV, and shot a close-up there. Let me tell you, I don't care if it IS a dandelion. I'm going to plant its poor little wilted head in the boulevard area out front:



savesave

FRIDAY FENCE POST #16

I've got the most wonderful fences this week! They run along the side of I-5 in California, and the amazing thing to me is that I was able to get these photos from my passenger seat in the RV, speeding along at something like 55-60 miles per hour! I was praying every second that at least one or two would turn out, so you can imagine my delight when I saw them on the computer screen. Yes!!

No further ado, as I need to get to bed. It's after ten now, and I think Bob wants to leave around five tomorrow morning, and I still need to get the dishes done. We're finally back in Oregon, and should be home by around noon tomorrow.

Fences!

EASY FABRIC FLOWER PINS

(These are so easy to make, I'm not even going to put up directions. But if you need more to go on than the photos, feel free to ask in a comment or email me!)

Remember the Cuff Bracelets I've been working on? ( Cuff Bracelets) Well, I was working on them one day, when it occurred to me that fabric flowers would look good on them. I did several that way, and had a row of the flowers lying on the counter, waiting to be attached to the bracelets. Suddenly, they seemed to present themselves to me as complete in themselves, not just as components for something else. Pins!, I thought. They could be pins, too!

And now they are, several dozen of them. Here are some of the ones I've finished while on this Arizona trip:

On another note, this is our last afternoon here. We'll leave for Oregon early tomorrow morning, something I have rather mixed feelings about. It's warm here. I'm outside every day. I even have what is for me a tan--something that approaches a color other people start out with. (I am such a white woman!) I love it. Of course, when summer hits, it will be miserable hot, but not yet.

It's still cold and rainy back home. As much as I miss the people there, friends and family, I do not miss being cold. I keep reminding myself that the spring flowers will probably be blooming like crazy. I should play Dorothy, and click my ruby flip-flops together three times, intoning, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like ho...."

Prickly Pears and Bracelets

Well, I managed two mishaps getting these photos, both entirely my fault.

First, I was woefully careless with my body while taking the pictures. The result of that was several minutes spent picking a virtual hairbrush of cactus spines out of my knee. Prickly pears may be beautiful, but they are terribly unfriendly.

Second, when I transferred the pictures from my camera to the laptop, I renamed them, and then deleted them from the camera card. Imagine my dismay when the transferred photos would not open! I'd forgotten to add the .jpg suffix to the new file names. Thank goodness, all I had to do was rename them, adding the suffix on. Presto!
Good as new, and a lesson learned, to boot.

These are photos of the white bracelets I've been talking about. Although they closely resemble each other, they are not identical. I rarely have multiples of the vintage buttons I use in them, but tried hard to find five of each, and when I couldn't, I used similar buttons. Same thing with the beads. But since I went through such difficulties getting the photos at all, I'm going to put more than one of them up here, free for nothing gratis!

Friday Fence Post #16

And now, a Friday Fence Post, posted, as has been my terrible habit of late, days later, but dated as though I did it on time. Bad Ani! Bad! (Honestly, I had the pictures, but by the time Bob and I got home from our afternoon cruise of Canyon Lake, we were both exhausted, and I completely spaced out both my internet to-dos--a Blog Carnival post for my http://www.etsy.com team, Etsy Bloggers, and the Friday Fence Post I'd been planning. Having to walk four blocks to get to an internet connection in a busy laundromat doesn't help, either.)

Without further excuses, some fences I've found interesting: