a banner day

who doesn't like to get packages in the mail... well, this gifty came all the way from palmer alaska
from fellow crafter lisabeth ... she decorated the jewelry box complete with pop-up armadillo... inside was a great jewelry pendant "inchie"...


lisabeth, who went to art school before she became an A-#1 R.N./F.N.P., made a linoleum print card...love the raven...thanks l.b....only 126 days until artfest, baby...

the day the package arrived, i was busy...i took these....


cardboard templates, beautiful papers and sparkly letters and made this...

it says"grateful"...i think it turned out fab...it is hung above our new xmas tree i picked up at
a&j antiques, where i have a booth, as many of you know... it's plastic and white and pre-lighted, and has glitter all over it...




for someone who really could take or leave xmas...i sure am having fun with the holiday spirit already...ho ho arrr...

grateful

i'm grateful for so much these days...morbid as it may seem to say, my mantra has lately been "every day above ground is a good day"...it gets to the heart of the gift here on earth...only so many days i will have... being an oncology/hospice nurse makes that perfectly clear to me...

i am grateful for my family and friends...you all make me who i am and you are my only wealth...

i am grateful for my healthy body that is going to carry me on the four mile turkey trot run this very very cold morning...gotta earn my extra slice of pie...

i am grateful for art/craft and how it is a vehicle for my heart's expression...i'm sure you all can relate to this as you are all creative people...

i am grateful for technology that allows me to talk with you and share my visions, humble as they may be...(i am currently not grateful for my digital camera however...broken...no pix for a bit here in blogspace..)

eat ... drink... and be merry....life is a gift....

inch by inch

been working on getting my "inchies" on...what kind of debauchery is that, you say? inchies are one of the latest new art swap...or maybe i'm getting in on the fun late in the game...either way, i'm having a blast working with paint techniques and working in simple assemblage accouterments, as well as working with what i call my "word salad," scrapping incomplete sentences, mixed with visually pleasing punctuation, creating grammatical tension...all that in one square inch...or at least that's what i'm shooting for.. this is in preparation for Artfest...whoopie!

sorry for the blurred pix, still learning the ins and outs of digital close-up snap shots...i love lumiere by jacquard ...iridescent, pearled paint...


tags are in the mail, compadres... tag! you're it!

swap update

Great news, crafters! craft pirate's tag swap has been linked up by Swapdex , a site dedicated to crafty swaps everywhere! so here's the skinny...the cut off date for our current swap is the 15th.... tags will be sent straight away and due back to me by 15 december... i will get the finished tags to you all swiftly for holiday use if you chose...simply email me your street address (don't leave it on the comments as that is public) at waters at frii dot com....i will email you with my address as well...let the tag-fastic fun begin!

swap-o-rama

wow, seems like an age since i was back bloggin'...so sorry to my three readers, but....iiiii'm baaaack....(snicker)

so, in case you didn't have enough to do around the beginning of the holidays, i am going to add to the chaos... join up for the tag swap! what's that, you say? this is how it works: the call for participants is made, i tally the number of us and send out that number of plain, manilla shipping tags to each of you...say 10 of us sign up you receive 10 tags...then you proceed to decorate, paint, alter, sew on, collage, glue found objects....all of them the same or each a unique work of craft and art... you send them all back to me and i'll organize them so that you each receive one of each of our tags.... you can use them on gifts or, as i'll be sending them back on a string for hanging them up, you can just enjoy them as a hanging piece of art.

so, who's in? here's the guidelines: on one side leave enough space for us ,if we wish,to write on them. Have a string of some sort in the hole so that we can hang them on the gift. send them all to me by 5 december...this is important for the swap to go smoothly...

here is my example:


collaged tissue paper, paint, old children's book cut out and magazine words, wire, plastic flowers and lace.

here are some other examples i gleaned from Somerset Magazine...



email me at: waters at frii dot com or just leave a comment if you wanna do this!

recently i took myself on a walk along the railroad tracks just off of trilby road...look at the rusty stuff i found.....yippee...

i love treasure hunting...aaarrr!