Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Rainbow Fairies

Something popped up in my Pinterest feed that caught my eye a couple of weeks ago.  Well, lots of things actually catch my eye in my feed, but this one seemed to be calling my name.  So I added a few things to my shopping list for my next trip to Michael's - rainbow yarn and some felt to match.  I was certain that I had the rest of the ingredients and a pompom maker as I had seen it when we were doing some reorganization in the den last Fall.  But of course when I wanted to use it, I couldn't find it and gave up after 3 days and decided on another trip to Michael's.  

 

They had a two-pack and a four-pack.  I opted for the two-pack and used the smaller one of these on my pompoms.  (At least I had a coupon.)  I purposely made loosey goosey pompoms because I wanted the floppiness of them and I also wanted to make sure that I only used the one skein of yarn.  I probably have enough yarn left over for one more.  

 

I cut a square of each of the felt pieces and ironed them to a piece of freezer paper.  (You iron the waxed side to the felt.)  Then I was able to trace a punched butterfly onto the paper side of each of the pieces and cut that out.  I used pinking shears to cut out a circle about the size of a penny from the scraps.


There are a few steps missing here.  I had two packages of wooden peg dolls that I asked HWNSNBP to cut down for me and then I painted the bottom portion of them to match the felt as closely as possible.  Paint pens from my stash came in handy for this, plus two other acrylic paint colors that I had on hand.


After I glued the butterfly wings to the back and the little caps to the heads I then added some white satin ribbon loops to the back.  Then each of the tops were glued to a pompom.  All the gluing was done with my glue gun.







I was blessed with two wonderful grandsons who have no interest in fairies so I will keep these entirely to myself.  Right now I'm continuing to enjoy them on this tray, but I will most likely make them into a garland for my craft room.  

The source of my inspiration came from Raising Up Rubies - a blog post of hers from 2014.  She also has a pretty cool Etsy shop by the same name.  

Sunday, March 28, 2021

The100DayProject - Week 8

I'm officially past the halfway mark with numbers 50-56.  Just hoping I don't run out of ideas before the 100th day.  I'd really like to avoid dipping into Christmas items.  Fingers crossed.



This on is based on one of my photographs.  The blue is actually more purple IRL.


 

I hadn't planned for these stems to be off-center.  It just kind of happened and I kind of like it.




HWNSNBP was able to get us a watermelon at Costco last week and it was surprisingly good for this time of year.  No luck this week though.  Not one to be found.


I believe I mentioned that I was going to share my "swatching".  Well here it is.  The type of pen is followed by a small scribble of each color.  Some, like the Stabilo's and Staedtler's have numbers and they come in open stock in Michael's so I can take my card with me when I shop to see if I have a specific color already.  Some of them are not easily discernible by the cap color.  I've been mulling over whether to purchase a set of Arteza pens because they have a lot more colors, however, some of the reviews haven't been very good saying they didn't have much ink and a few were already dried out in the set.  So I've pretty much talked myself out of it..............for now.


Michaels has these plastic storage boxes meant for photos that perfectly fit the 4 x 6 index cards I use.  You can see that I traced the key tag and do my sketches and color auditioning on these.  The only issue that I have with this is that the inks behave differently on different paper so I have to remember to use a very light touch with the key tags so there isn't too much bleeding in some cases.  






Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Jingle Belles - The Holly & The Ivy

I bet you can guess from the title that this Jingle Belle challenge involves holly and ivy.  Well, it doesn't have to be both holly and ivy and it can also be other seasonal foliage.  I found a booklet of vintage style postcards in my stash and there were four of this particular motif.  What I decided to do was try a little paper tole.  That involved determining what the layers in the design were and a lot of fussy cutting.  Since I wanted more layers than I had cards, I was able to use some of the lower layers for the upper pieces as they would be covered.  


I used some of glimmer paint to highlight all the dots on the red base.  

I mounted the finished panel on a gold foil card base.  I bought a pack of those gold cards on clearance one year and still have a bunch of them.  The only thing I don't like about them is that they are very curled and hard to uncurl.  I've had them under heavy objects on a shelf for quite some time without very good results.  So I try and do a lot of hand manipulating to get them flattened before use.  If anyone knows a better way please share.  

It's not easy to see all the layers in the photos - but I tried.



When I gave up trying to photograph it and sat down across the table from it, I could see the layers better.  I hope you can see how I had used a stylus to burnish the petals and leaves from underneath before gluing them on to give them an embossed feeling.  


I'm going to see if I can sneak in another simpler card before the cut-off, but won't promise anything.  The weather today is perfect for some seed sowing in our raised box and we have to do a trial run to a find a new place I have an appointment at soon in between HWNSNBP's meetings today.  But I will be checking out all the other fantastic foliage cards at the Jingle Belles when I get the chance and you can too by clicking here.  

Monday, March 22, 2021

Kirby

When I woke up yesterday and came downstairs HWNSNBP told me that he thought there was something wrong with Kirby and I could soon see that he was right.  The last couple of years Kirby had taken to sometimes sleeping/resting on the bottom of his cage rather than on one of the perches because sometimes he would fall off.  Yesterday was a little different though.  He couldn't get himself up the side and was walking in circles, often losing his balance as his leg would go through the bars on the bottom.  I took him out of the cage and he made no attempt to nip at me and let me stroke him without a fuss.  He closed his eyes off and on and I found a basket with a dishtowel to put him in so I could watch him while I ate breakfast.  He periodically got up and walked around in the basket but didn't attempt to jump out.  I held him as much as I could all day.  Towards the evening he was starting to have tremors or it could have been seizures, but he wasn't eating and I knew it wouldn't be long.    It was very hard putting him back in the cage last night because I was certain that he would be gone in the morning.  Well, as HWNSNBP told our daughter, he must have wanted to say good bye once more because he waited until I came downstairs this morning and picked him up.  It was a matter of a few minutes when he took his last breath and his little head rested for the last time on my fingers.  



My sister had given each of my kids a cockatiel when they were pre-teens.  She thought that they were both males but they weren't.  Kirby was Rachel's bird and the male of the pair.  When they were a couple of years old Pepper, the female, started laying eggs on the bottom of the cage a couple of times each month.  We would remove them because there was no way that she could incubate them on the grate.  After I did a little investigating, we decided to get a roosting box for the side of the cage and sure enough, she laid four eggs in there and began to incubate them.  


I really didn't think that they would hatch, but one evening when Rachel was at band practice and Chris was watching tv I heard a peeping noise.  The first egg had hatched.  And within the next day or so two of the others did also.  The fourth egg failed to hatch.  I don't have any pictures of the babies as I was told that it would not be good for their developing eyesight to use a flash. This was all before digital cameras.  They grew pretty fast and after the first two weeks we had to separate the babies into a cage of their own so that we/I could hand feed them from that point on.  The reasoning behind that is so they become easier to handle and aren't afraid of human touch.  It was an almost round-the-clock job keeping them fed.  I was lucky at the time that I was substituting and could come home at lunchtime to feed them.  


I fed them with a syringe and had to be careful to get it in their mouths at the right angle or they could choke.  I had visited a woman nearby who raised cockatiels to learn how to do this correctly.  She had told me how to prepare their food and what kind of schedule that they needed to be on.  


It was all going well until they began to fly.  The first time one of them took off, he went splat right into the wall and I thought for sure that he injured himself but he didn't.  I couldn't keep them uncovered after that point.  Eventually they graduated to the same pellets that we feed their parents.  We had people lined up to take them but they backed out and we were left with all five of them.  


We kept the females in one cage and the males in the other.  The females were the first to pass on.  And then it was my little Pidge - my heart broke when he died because he was so imprinted on me.  He would snuggle under my chin when I was watching tv, loved to be handled, and he was a talker.  I cried for days after he died.  


Kirby, the dad, was the last of the brood.  All the while that he and Pidge were together in the same cage Kirby was learning how to talk from his son Pidge.  But, he wouldn't talk to us, he would stand on the top of the cage and face the wall and talk under his breath - so low that you could barely hear him.  Then when Pidge died he talked a little more, but gradually he stopped.  He did continue to mimic our whistles and at one point could do a few bars of Happy Birthday.  But mostly he was an echo to our whistling.  Kirby wasn't as cuddly but could be affectionate when he wanted to be.  Especially when his crest feathers were being replaced.  The feathers have a coating to them when they're new and when you stroke them, the coating will gently fall off.  Cockatiels are considered very dusty birds because of this constant feather regrowth.  

I will miss sharing a Cheez It with him every day.  I will miss his whistles, and watching him sunbathe at the top of the cage.  I'll miss his tickling my ear(s) when he sat on my shoulder.  I'll miss his narcissistic love of himself in shiny objects.  I won't miss his screaming when he was upset or when those certain commercials with horses, hawks, football whistles, basketball sneakers, or screaming children got him going.  But I'll no longer have to tell him that it's okay and he's safe because he's forever safe now.  

Thank you for all of your love Kirby.  You'll be forever in our hearts.  Fly free with your family now.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

The100DayProject - Week 7

I got some sweet comments on my last post about these tags.  Sunshine asked if I will be displaying them when I'm finished and yes, I plan to.  Right now I have them on a metal shower curtain hook.  It is comfortable fitting the first 50 of them.  I will have to use a second hook for the next 50 as they are completed.  At the end I plan on adding back the metal rings that these tags came with and making a garland with them, perhaps on a length of ball chain or something like that, and then hang it in my craft room.  (Or maybe on my gypsy rod - we shall see.)

Full disclaimer here that besides using some of my own photos as inspiration for these, I also check on the DMC site for free embroidery patterns, and royalty free image sites.  I do try to put my own spin on the patterns to "make them my own".  


There was a photo of a chicken on Facebook that inspired this one.  



Had to have a rainbow on St. Patrick's Day.


I saw some pysanky eggs in a photo that had chickens like these.




I have swatched all my fine line pens onto 4 x 6 index cards so I know the colors that I have to work with.  I have also traced the key tag onto the same size index card - it can fit 10 - and use that to audition my drawings and color choices.  I'll share those in my post next week.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Looking for a Little Color This Week

It's been a busy week here full of appointments and still experiencing cooler weather.  Finding the color inside instead of outside for the time being.  Like this flowering Iron Cross Oxalis that I treated myself to on our last trip to the Great Swamp Nursery.  I must say that the blooms were quite unexpected as none of them were flowering at the garden center.  I basically bought the plant for the "four-leaf-clover" leaves.  I'm just loving this color though. 




Finding color in the grilling pan with some yellow and orange peppers to go with some salmon steaks.


HWNSNBP did pick up a bunch of daffodils at the grocery store and they added some cheeriness.


And here is a little rainbowmaker at work at school.  He does love doing art projects at school and at home.  Crossing my fingers that we'll get to see him this weekend.


Well, not much color here, but these turkeys came around on St. Patrick's Day.  There were a lot more of them to either side of the picture.  Here is their conversation as I heard it in my head......

"Keep looking girls. I'm pretty sure there's some Irish soda bread crumbs around here. Those leprechauns are lucky. They get to be a holiday mascot and don't have to worry about people eating them. No one's having leprechaun for dinner tonight! Can't find any crumbs? How about that pot of gold? I'll treat you all to a Shamrock shake if you find that pot of gold. "


For the record, I did have a Shamrock shake without finding the pot of gold.

Sunday, March 14, 2021

The100DayProject - Week 6

Another eclectic group of key tags for my 100DayProject.   


It's hard to decide sometimes if all of the tag needs to be filled in.  I thought this would be too busy if I added a background..... and you'd miss the cactus spines.






I was going for a field of poppies but it might look more like tulips.


And here's the second 20 days (days 21-40) all together.