At our local stamp club annual party, we made holiday charms using microsope glass slides wrapping the glass with metal tape. Some of the gals created some beautiful charms, but mine left a lot to be desired. Thus, I came home, took mine apart and while looking for trinkets to redo the charm, I ran across these frames that I purchased a while back. They are much easier than wrapping with narrow tape. I made these three for friends I'm getting together with tomorrow night to celebrate the holiday with a "gals night out."

I've been tagged by Gayle Page-Robak and in turn have tagged seven others listed below:

Here are the simple rules for those tagged:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs or send them an e-mail.

Here are my random facts:

1) I cannot resist sweets, candy and especially chocolate. If it is in the house, I will eat until it is gone, and I can find a well hidden stash. Just ask my family.

2) I am of English decent and have never been to England.

3) I lived in Germany as a young bride.

4) Survivor is one of my favorite reality shows. The current sequence was filmed in China and being a lover of oriental, I've been glued to the TV screen to enjoy the episodes and to capture the scenery.

5) I am the poor middle child with an older sister and younger brother.

6) I made my first scrapbook as a teenager over 50 years ago and I still have it. No archival products back then so the pages are literally falling apart.

7) I cannot figure out the *#.*%*# TV remote control and yet have no problem with my computer. GO FIGURE!

I have tagged the following:

Brenda Marks www.brown-blue@yahoo.com
Brenda Moore www.novashingstar@yahoo.com
Char Maguire www.charsown@earthling.net
Daylene Strickland www.rndstrick@qconline.com
France Chevalier www.france@iinet.net.au
Heather Taylor www.hlmtaylor@gmail.com
Julie Kosolofski www.juliekosokuo@yahoo.com

For the past several weeks, I have been altering some odd shaped bottles that I had stashed away thinking some day they would come in handy.

I plan to fill the bottles with holiday treats and nuts.

My inspiration and label source came from Lisa Vollrath, Ten Two Studios.

As we get closer to Christmas, my pink plant will be covered with blooms and the white variety will have dropped all of its flowers.

To capture this photo, I placed my digital camera on the floor and shot upwards as the blooms hang down. I plan to make some cards using this shot.

My friend, Fern, lives in Oregon and has several horses on their ranch. I wanted to make her a journal for Christmas that would reflect her passion and I used horses for my theme. Over the entry to their ranch is a group of horsemen very similar to those on the cover of this journal.

Carolyn

For the past few days, Jim and I have been assembling three units to place on the lawn for the holidays. We should have called in a ten-year old because they seem to know how things go together and figure it out much quicker. However, we didn't give up even though I put the antlers backwards on one of the deer and Jim had to make a change.

At last we finished, set up the timer and waited for darkness to see the results.

Lights on .... lights off.

The third piece, a carriage, lighted and immediately went dark; however, the deer hung in there and I wanted you see how they turned out.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will bring the carriage back indoors to see if I stepped on a bulb or the unit blew a fuse.

Don't you just love challenges during the holidays?

Carolyn

I recently read a short Christmas story by Truman Capote and I quote, "It is fruitcake weather."


My grandmother and mother always had their fruitcakes made, wrapped in a cloth dipped in spirits, and stored in a cool place until Christmas. Because only Jim and I enjoy fruitcake, I no longer make them myself because the ones purchased are yummy and our family does not care for them.

Grandmother also had a Christmas cactus, as did my mother, so it was a given that I would have them in our home. Mine is in memory of my mother and when it blooms, I always think of her and the sacrifices she made to make my life better.

My white cactus blooms at Thanksgiving and again at Easter and my red Christmas cactus blooms closer to Christmas. I have never been able to figure out why they bloom at different times and the sequence never changes from year to year.

Attached is a picture of the white cactus in full bloom.

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on some charms for a small swap between six friends. In working with these tiny pieces of art, I have determined that I am totally out of my comfort zone. I did enjoy making the charms but turning them into an item that would hang properly was another whole thing.

I find that doing something frustrating takes the pleasure out of the fun part. Who would think that a tiny "O" ring could cause me so much trouble. My good friend, Inka, offered to come and help me but hubby had problems on the scheduled day so I had to cancel and thought to myself, "I can do this." I don't even think an expert could help me master the art for making a simple "O" ring. I am totally uncoordinated with six thumbs trying to hold wire and pliers.

For the swap, we were to make two charms for each participant. My first charm was created by stamping my image using green StazOn ink on a white zipper pull and enhancing the image with glitter and attaching a gold tree charm to the center. The reverse was also stamped and colored and I added an alphabet piece with the initial for each participant. The charms were coated with Diamond Glaze. These were fun to make!

The second charm started out as a gingerbread boy charm. The metal charm was concave so I filled the back side with liquid polymer clay, baked it and when cool colored it to match the front which I had also colored with alcohol ink pens. Then, I coated the charm with Diamond Glaze to prevent the inks from rubbing off.

It was the final step that did me in. Making them hang. The very positive aspect of this swap was knowing that jewlery is not something I want to do. I'm better off sticking with paper and inks and creating items that may be a challenge but not so frustrating.

I am also grateful that I did not sign up for a bead workshop in another group. Can you image . . . I would have turned into a maniac attempting to make wire and beads work together when I lack the ability to work with a single loop of wire.

I ordered some Helen Breil texture plates for some clay projects and decided to experiment using regular computer paper for backgrounds. This card is the result of my experiment.

I used a 24 lb. computer paper, spritz it with water, and ran the paper and plate through my Wizard machine. I really like the effect and see lots of possibilities and more experimenting. It is hard to find the time to do all that is planned because I need to concentrate on making our Christmas cards.

We ordered over 200 spring bulbs that had to go in the ground and last week was spent digging, resting, more resting and finally finishing. Luckily, we had some perfect fall days before Jack Frost arrived last night to harden the earth and take some of the pleasure out of yard work. When we first built our home I planted tulips and the local deer ate all of the flower tops before I could enjoy them. Now that more homes have been built around us I thought I'd give it one more try. Daffodils are not deer food so they survive but my tulips, roses and some of my other flowers draw the deer into the yard for midnight snacks.

Also this past week, I looked out while having my morning coffee and behold a circle of ghosts had taken over one flower bed. We have really special neighbors and they surprised us and made the Halloween decoration. Isn't it darling!

With no stamping, creating or having fun in the art arena, I have some catch up projects. I am making some charms....a challenge for me because I don't do jewelry so my imagination has been stretched to think of some other project that would resemble a charm but not involve solder or glass. I have a silver charm bracelet with special trinkets collected over a long period of time. They are small; do you know how hard it is to make a "small" charm? My creations will not be as tiny, but they will hang like an ornament so I'll call them charms.

Have a great week everyone.

A while back I pressed some flowers from our yard using the Wizard die/embossing unit with watercolor paper. Several didn't turn out as I envisioned but I kept them for other uses. As it turned out, they make terrific backgrounds for images printed on transparencies.

This is an example of one I put together this afternoon. I want to add an embellishment at the lower left....any ideas?

It was my turn to prepare a make'n take project for our monthly Friday Stamp Club and because I have a passion for oriental, they requested that I prepare an oriental project.

I created a three-panel card using a half sheet of red cardstock (8-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches). The black section was cut 4-1/4 by 8-1/2 inches (tall).

When the card is complete, the black panel fits inside of the folded red panel with a fold at THE TOP. The red card folds in the center with the fans folding over the black middle panel.

Therefore, when you look at the card, the black panel with the geisha girl holding the umbrella flips up to reveal the red panel with the bamboo.

If this isn't clear, just leave a comment and I'll attempt to explain it better on an individual basis.

After yesterday's cold, windy day, we have a sunny one. I took my morning walk and stopped to take a picture of a pair of geese swimming in the pond behind the house. Before long, we will have several, some making their way south and others we call year around residents who show up every fall and stay throughout the season. Thought you might enjoy them too.

WOW...what a week I've had. Helped Jim install a new garbage disposal and determined that neither of us is as limber as we used to be; OR, the area under the sink has gotten smaller and the units ten times heavier.

Had a birthday and received some beautiful cards from family and friends and also my very own purse-size digital camera. My 3-D experiments will look much differently when I upload them to my blog once I master all of the settings.

I found a solution (no, Jim gave me the solution) to feel younger. You deduct ten years from your actual age...believe me it works to eliminate depression. If you don't look in the mirror you will feel like a spring chicken. And, if you do see your reflection, it is probably your mother, not you.

I did several experiments playing in my sandbox this past week. I played around with the Martha Meyer layering Adirondack inks, as presented by Marion Davis in a class at Oriental Stamp Art. As with all of my experiments I do things just a little bit differently. Rather than leaves, I used a diecut of a flower to mask off an area of the card prior to adding color. I also added some LuminArte sprays along with the Ranger Colorwash sprays.

Because winter is on our doorstep, I did some caulking and need to finish putting the lawn and patio furniture away until spring. I'm still waiting for my tulip and daffodil bulbs to arrive and they will need to be planted before it freezes.

It is my turn to do a make'n take at stamp club next week so I've been experimenting to tweak an idea that surfaced moons ago. Will show it after we meet and the gals see my project.

Have one more swap to get mailed and then I'm caught up for October and I do need to get busy with my Xmas projects.

Can you believe it is the weekend already?

I recently showed our local stamp group how to create an origami pocket to embellish their cards or to use as a little packet to tuck in charms, tags or a special surprise for a friend or family member. The inspiration for this embellishment came from a class I attended at Cyberstampers taught by Wanda Hentges.

The following posts show a scanned image and the instructions. Hopefully, they are large enough for you to create one of your own.

You can't beat a pleasant fall day with falling leaves, cooler temperatures and the gorgeous fall colors. With this type of weather fall can last a very long time even though we had snow up on Bogus Mountain this week and it is expected in the high Sierras.

Today, I wore my "gardener's hat"again and decided to mix up some of my friend's magic potion. Miss Annette is another treasured friend who moderates one of my favorite Yahoo groups, Oriental Stamp Art. I gave her recipe to my daughter a month ago and she told me it worked well on her aphyd invested roses. With the extreme hot temperatures in Idaho, we didn't have a problem with aphyds but a little fertilizer before winter is a good thing; and, if there are bugs waiting to nest up for winter, I need to send them elsewhere. Here is Annette's magic for beautiful flowers:

"Mix together in a Miracle Grow-type container that you screwed to a garden hose to spray fertilizer:
1 beer, any kind, any price
1 cup ammonia, yes, ammonia. Lemon scented is fine or unscented works just as well.
1/2 cup liquid dish soap, any brand. I use Dawn. It makes great bubbles.
1/2 cup powdered (crystals) fertilizer, Miracle Grow-type or the store brand of the same thing.
1/2 cup clear corn syrup
Spray this mixture on the leaves, flowers, trunks of trees, limbs, branches and on the ground. According to legend, the soap helps the mixture stick to surfaces and drives away insects without killing them. The beer has whatever affect and effect, but I don't know its purpose. Perhaps it marries the ammonia and creates a chemical reaction."

* * *

This afternoon I spent preparing cards for our monthly Friday stamp club. This is a small group of five and we always make a card for each member. The theme this month is "end of summer" (beach or whatever). My passion is oriental art or flowers and I struggled a bit with my swap cards. I made one batch of cards but wasn't satisfied with the results so I made up a second set using some die cuts in the design. When I showed them to my art critic, Jim, he told me, "You should stick with your creative style. I like that much better."

I decided to take both sets to club and let the gals pick the card they would like to keep. Tomorrow I will upload the most popular and put the others aside to send out when I need a quick card.

I really dislike throwing things away and stash all kinds of papers, embellishments and bits and pieces from past projects.

Because it was raining, I decided to untie one of my boxes and found numerous stamped images that were just sitting there waiting to be made into something beautiful. There were four cards with the same oriental themed image from a stamp borrowed from a friend. I liked it so much that I later purchased this stamp and forgot all about these uncompleted cards.

I recently purchased some new Tria and Copic sketch pens and used them to color part of the images; pulled out some paper from my Far East stash and completed four cards. I feel like I accomplished something without a lot of effort.

Interesting analysis....you think you glue everything perfectly and how the cards turn out differently is beyond me. The uneven layers always jump out in a scan. I'll work on that some other rainy day.