Wear Red Day - Finished Projects - Tangles - And a Treat

I know it's Groundhog Day but it's also Wear Red Day for Heart Health Month and we're wearing red for this little Heart Warrior who will be 9 mos. old in a couple of weeks.  He's pretty much always in motion these days as you can see it was hard to get him to stay still for his photo.  He had his 6 mo. heart check-up and is holding his own on that front.  He is a little joy!

And it was a joy to receive as a gift from my friend Sabrina this needle felting kit to make these little blue tits last Christmas (2022).  I was half-way through with them last spring and then misplaced the box for a while.  Luckily I was able to put my hands on it earlier in January and got them done.  I've never done needle felting but it really was fun.  You really have to be careful with those needles though.  I might have to do a little more work on those masks and eyes.

Sabrina sent me this beautiful little wooden puzzle this year.  I love the birds - we share that love.  The pieces to this puzzle are very distinctively shaped making it a little more challenging than it may look, but I totally enjoyed the challenge.  It was fun to do during this gray month.

I gave myself two other challenges to participate in.  One lasting just for the month, and the second one is going to go on for 100 days (but it's not the 100 Day Project - that will be starting on 2/18 this year and I'm still trying to come up with a plan for that). 

Last year I had done the 7F5R Fragment of Your Imagination Challenge with similar substrate in pink.  I used the blue tags this time.  

It's good to have these handy when doing original tiles to get some ideas for patterns.

This 100 Days of Tangles is run by a FB group and involves a different tangle for each day.  What's the difference you might ask?  Fragments are the little pieces of tangles that when put together create a larger form.  So you may see, in the small tiles below, fragments that come together in a grid to make a larger tangle.  In any case, I'm doing these on a slightly larger square base of 2 3/4".  I have purchased these tags on the rings through Temu.  I know some people have had bad experiences with them, but so far, I have not, but I have mostly ordered craft-related items and little gadget type things.  I also only use my laptop for ordering things from online sources and only use Paypal for payments hoping that there won't be any issues.  

I have bought a couple of their Lego-like kits, both for GS1 and myself.  This is one that I put together during January - a little cockatiel with wings that move.  Let me tell you that they are a bit challenging with all those little pieces, but fun nonetheless.

And one last thing to share tonight - there's a place nearby called Paris Bistro that has baked goods as well as sandwiches and salads.  Each season they have some specialties and I had to try this one - the Cookie Butter Latte Creme Filled Donut.  It was delicious!

So tomorrow - February 3rd - is Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day and we'll be visiting the little ice cream shop we did last year but it will be for the last time as they're retiring soon.  I'm looking forward to the apple crisp again!

Jingle Belles - Something Old.....Something New and a PSA

This fortnight the Jingle Belles have challenged us to use something old and something new.  I procrastinated going into the stamp cave because it's been such a mess even more lately as HWNSNBP has been trying to help with the purging of lots of accumulated stuff on the shelves we have in the hallway up there to make room for me moving unused stamps out there freeing up some space next to my craft table.  We have a significant amount of books that we no longer feel the need to have around and have donated them, but I drew the line at my collection of Christmas craft books that I have a series of and anything else art related that has actual patterns in them because the internet is good for searching but you don't always find patterns for what you see.  Anyway..... let me get to what I actually did for this challenge.  

I was lucky to have been gifted the Unity Advent Stamps both last year and this year and thought that I could pull something together with those and also used a new-to-me die and some old paper.  I stamped the images that I chose from each set, colored them with alcohol markers and fussy cut them to pop up in the openings on the stamp frame die.  The cancellation stamp was also from one of the Advent sets.

I've got to make more time to get up there to reorganize things before my surgery next month, so I can get to things more easily once I'm able to get back to working up there.  Looks like there'll be a lot of boxes for donations in the next few weeks.  It's a good thing.

Oh, and my title for this post did include a PSA.  While putting our Christmas decorations away we usually take the batteries out of things that have batteries in them and there was a set of lights on one of the little trees that I had that we emptied.  It was a lucky thing that when I took them out of the device I put them on the rubber cutting matt I have on the dining room table and not directly on the wooden tabletop.  It was later that evening, when I was working on my laptop and HWNSNBP was already upstairs when I heard this loud pop and hiss.  It was loud enough to make me jump and for a minute I couldn't figure out what it was until I looked a little past my laptop and saw this.......

One of the batteries had had a little explosion and was leaking onto the matt.  So I was luck in that it was on the matt and lucky that it happened when I was awake.  If we had left it in the light set it would have been even more of a mess.  

Now I'm off to see what else is old and new with the Jingle Belles.  You can too by clicking here.

**Edited - don't know why the link at JB only allowed a partial view of my card this time, but the whole thing is visible here.

Happy Birthday Chickadee!

 

Sharing Their Creativity and Things I Worked on Before the Holidays

I completed another temperature spiral for 2023.  I originally bought larger beads to use on this but they were so irratic in size that I didn't feel comfortable using them although the colors were more intense.  There is size difference in these smaller seed beads but it isn't as noticeable as the larger ones.  2022's spiral colors were not differentiated enough so I revamped the color chart for 2023.  There are still some that are pretty close in color next to each other, but my choices were limited. For this one I attached the beads a little differently so that they would lay flat on their sides and I used the high temperature on the outer side of the line and the low on the inside.  The seasons are set off by the color of the base spiral - blue for winter, green for spring, pink for summer, and a light orange for fall.  Oh, and I did purchase a better cloth for the base this time.

I received some beautiful handmade cards this year.

This sparkling beauty from Lauren, one of the Jingle Belles.  

An sweet ice skating rabbit from Sabrina.

This vintage lovely from LeAnne.

Some gorgeous snowflakes and snowflowers from Sunshine.

This textural beauty from some friends in Maryland.

This stunner from Stephanie, our other Jingle Belle.

And this very special one came with a school photo from GS1.

Sabrina made me this beautiful ornament using glass microscope slides and a beautiful stamped bird motif.  I'll be keeping this out year-round.

My friend J made this cute little gnome in a toque who looked quite at home in the lemon tree with the little bell gnomes that I had made.

My cousing B sent me this darling little wooden matryoshka ornament, also happy in the lemon tree.

And J found another little gnome ornament to add to my collection.

I had some ideas about creating some trees with some of the things that I had lying around (and a few purchased additions).  

This first one is not done - only because 1) I ran out of tags, 2) I ran out of time, and 3) I couldn't figure out what to do with the top.  I'm thinking now that I might add some little greens and some jute to the top with a little wooden star to cover up that top.  What I had done was wrapped a styrofoam cone with brown paper and then used straight pins to attach the kraft colored tags in layers around it.  There are 100 tags on this now.  The cone was taller to start with, but early on I realized that it needed to be much shorter and sliced some of the bottom off.  

This one started with another styrofoam cone and I used the saved seams from old jeans I had cut up for a project a few years ago.  I did see something similar on Pinterest. Again, the top to this is not complete to my satisfaction, but may just need a little round piece of denim on top to finish it off.  The cones that had in my stash did not have pointed tops to start off with - something I didn't think about until I got almost there.

This one was a Dollar Tree idea I found on IG.  It started as a fuzzy white duster that I trimmed in a cone shape.  I took off the handle at the bottom and HWNSNBP supplied the birch base he had in his stash of scraps.  I just wrapped a set of battery-operated fairy lights around it.

  

I also came across a fun account on IG that had free felt patterns for advent and I printed off a couple of them.  The one that I did finish was this little European robin.  I actually did two of them and gifted one.  Check out @whatacurlylife for the free patterns - and she currently has a cute Valentine bear up for grabs now.

I've got some tangle projects that I'm working on this month and I'm debating whether to do another temperature spiral for 2024.  Oh, and I'll be showing off a little needle felting project that I finished soon.  Trying to catch up already.

Jingle Belles - Wrap It Up!

Well, I haven't wrapped up my posts about December yet but our Jingle Belles hostesses are looking for a different kind of Wrap Up for this first Jingle Belle Challenge of 2024.   We're to use wrapping paper in our creations.  It can be fresh or repurposed and I went for the latter having rescued some favorite paper from being recycled or tossed.  I paired both of these cards with this new dala horse die that I found in my stash.  The first uses the geometric version and the second uses the traditional "kurbits" style and floral elements (yes, I admit I had to look that up).  Mostly you'll see dala horses in red, but they can be of other colors.  Green dala horses were carried by Norsemen to ward off evil according to legend.

Our hostess Lauren had a great hint about using wrapping paper.  She suggests first backing it with plain cardstock that you run through the Xyron before you fussy cut around it.  I wasn't fussy cutting the paper, but I thought this would also help when using the thinner wrapping paper as a background.  I cut a piece of cardstock to the size I needed for the snowflake background panel and used my roll of extra-wide double sided tape to make it stickable.  After I stuck it to the wrapping paper, I trimmed around the edge and it worked so well, much better than trying to add that tape to the back of the wrapping paper by itself (which I did with the floral paper and almost lost it).  Next time I will try to remember to use my Xyron instead of the tape.   

I have some other papers saved but I won't be getting to it before the cut-off for this challenge so I'll hope that they will fit in somewhere down the road in 2024.  This is a good start though.  Now I'm off to check out the other wrapping paper wonders on the Jingle Belles blog.  You can too by clicking here.

Christmas and End of December 2023

Well, Christmas didn't quite go as planned this year, but when I think back, it's not the first time that there's been a hiccup or two.  We were to celebrate Christmas Eve Eve with both our kids, their spouses, and the grandsons.  Our traditional dinner turned into just four of us and the baby because our DIL was not feeling well and didn't come, and GS2 wound up in the emergency room after he took a header into the bathroom and split his eyelid just below the brow needing stitches.  So he and his parents spent the better part of the day going from Urgent Care to one hospital and then the next because they were told that he would need to be knocked out to stitch up and would need a pediatric anesthiesiologist and plastic surgeon to take care of him.  We were left in charge of Beckham and it took all four of us to keep him busy in the unfamiliar surroundings.  He was a champ though, as was his brother (5 stitches) and GS1 in rolling with the flow.

Papa held Beckham while I fed him his squash his mommy had left for him.

  

He was our centerpiece on the table when we ate.  I didn't even use the holiday dishes or table linens.

After dinner, Chris, Ryan, and I played a game called Go Oink! while Papa gave the baby his bottle.  It's a game like Go Fish, except that you aren't allowed to ask for the animal card by name - you have to make the sound that the animal makes.  It was fun and most of the animal sounds were discernible except for bear and lion which we couldn't tell apart. 

I was hoping to get all the cousins together for the annual Christmas picture, but this was as good as we could get.  

We went to our son's house on Christmas Day - their last Christmas in their house before they move.  I had made a last minute gift for them that I had given it to him to take home on Christmas Eve Eve - a watercolor of their house that I did using a technique I learned on Amanda Evanston's site that I subscribe to.  You need a reverse image picture of the house, a plastic sleeve, and some inexpensive watercolor paper along with a black paint pen.  It has to be the thin paper to absorb the outline of the paint pen.  You lay the plastic over the image and trace a little portion of the house outline at a time and while it's wet, fold it down onto the watercolor paper to transfer it.  The three pieces are hinged together with some painter's tape so they don't move around.  The lines are not meant to be exact, nor is the addition of the color.  When we visited them on Christmas Day my DIL asked me to sign and date it so she could get it framed.  I was glad that she liked it.  The paper makes it very bumpy, but under glass it will be better.

HWNSNBP made a TV stand for our daughter and SIL for their bedroom according to her specifications.  They couldn't fit that in their car when they left on Christmas Eve so we took it to them on Wednesday and brought GS2 back with us for a couple of days.

We were also able to pick up GS1 to come for the day on Thursday and had both boys together.  They had a blast.  We played Go Oink! again - this time Papa and Maverick were teammates (because of the age difference....they both needed each other!).  The boys pulled out all the cars, trucks, and Legos.  They built pillow forts on the couch and took turns burying each other under the pillows (and me later).

They found a roll of painter's tape on my art cart and had me wrap them up in tape so they could break free.  We went through almost a whole roll of tape.  They found the paint pens in the art cart too, and while that wouldn't have been my first choice for them to use, I let them as long as they kept their paper on the matt I put out.  GS2 came back to his picture to add to it on Friday - he was drawing red mountains.

Our annual New Year's get-together with our Table 7 friends was at the LBI residence so we headed to the condo early in afternoon and did a few errands after I prepared the appetizer I was bringing - cocktail meatballs - which consist of a package of frozen meatballs (52 in the pkg. I use), a bottle of Heinz chili sauce and an equal amount of grape jam.  Just heat until the meatballs are warm.  

On our way back from the errands we were around the corner from the condo and caught the sunset.  HWNSNBP pulled over so I could take some pictures.  (The condo would be to the left.)

And after our wonderful evening with friends, I was too lazy to get out of bed and open the blinds for the first sunrise of 2024, but you can see the orange hue.

Once we got packed up, we took a quick ride back to the island because I wanted to find the lobster trap Christmas tree in Barnegat Light (as taken through the windshield as it was dead ahead).  There are lights strung on it, but obviously not lit during the day.  Maybe next time.

I had a whole slew of appointments last week which is why it's taken me this long to say...........

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I'll be back to share the handmade cards and gifts that I got soon.