On the 9th & 10th day of Christmas...

We received lovely gifts from Liisa and Heidi!

Day 9 belonged to Liisa... and she gifted us with a lovely paper dancing lady! The colors of the doll are rich and vibrant, as though she's dressed for a holiday party! Isn't she gorgeous?

Day 10 was Heidi's day, and she also chose to go with the song day "theme" and gave us a beaded leaping lord to decorate our tree! Because of the dimensional properties of this little lord, I couldn't get a decent scan of him, so perhaps if I can get the camera working again, I'll take a photo and update this blog post. This beaded ornament is truly lovely - beautiful!!!

BIG thank yous to both Liisa and Heidi for participating in this swap... I just love these gifts!

~Anne

On the 7th & 8th Day of Christmas...

Hello Everyone!

For the 7th day of our 12 day swap, we received a gift from Sherri! She packed her gift in an adorable little take-out style box. Inside the box was an awesome little book and a cool magnet!

Here's the book... I love the colors!

and the magnet! It was immediately stationed on my fridge!

On the 8th day, we received a gift package from Laura! And what an amazing package it was! She painted recycled tyvek envelopes and then decorated them with a cool vintage image...

I just love it when the packaging itself is a gift! Don't you?

Inside these cool envelopes was a bounty of FUN! Some cool postcards, fibers, sequin waste, and beads... plus... we got a fun cactus cowboy doll for a car antenna. I think I might have to host an altered cactus cowboy swap! haha! Also... we got a stash of colorful fabrics......

This has been such a fun swap. Today, we opened the last of our packages... so, I'll be back tomorrow to share more pictures of the goodies we received!

~Anne

On the 5th & 6th days of Christmas...

Day five belonged to Candice! And Candice treated us all to these nifty little ATC booklets! I just love these! Let's face it, when you swap ATCs you can never have too many ways to display them, it gets downright addictive swapping them that before you know it, your collection outgrows your albums! Not only is this little book a great gift... but an inspirational one! I love it!

The scan doesn't begin to reveal just how COOL these little booklets are. The flap opens up to reveal an accordion style booklet that have been corner punched to accomodate 10 ATCs. I just love this!

Day six belonged to Nancy... and Nancy gave us gorgeous art doll ornaments! Hopefully my camera will get to working soon, so that I can post pictures of them... I just love this little doll's hair! What a great addition to my holiday tree -- as one who grew up surrounded by boring Christmas trees... I am now committed to having trees with all unique and unusual ornaments! And... this one definitely fits in! A lovely, unique little lady!


Thanks Candice and Nancy, for such wonderful gifts! I love these little treasures!

On the 3rd & 4th Day of Christmas...

I'm really behind on these posts... and I'm sorry to the artists involved as well as those of you who follow my blog, but the last few days have been very hectic.

Day 3 of my 12 Days of Christmas swap belonged to Tanya! And she certainly delivered with her gift! Each of us received a lovely candle with the sparkle of glitter sprinkled on the top (I haven't burned the candle yet, but I bet it's really neat when the flicker of the flame reflects off the glitter!) and a box of matches! Tanya altered the matchboxes in a christmas theme... and kept the matches inside so that we can burn the candle! What a perfectly complete gift! I just love it.

I will post a picture of the candle and the matches just as soon as I get the camera working again! This one just doesn't work with the scanner!

Day 4 of the swap brought us a gift from Betsey! and all I can say is WOW! She gave us this amazing little metal ornament for our holiday tree!

It's simply adorable! Love it!

Thank you to both Tanya and Betsey for participating in this swap!

And just a tidbit... I have added a link to my now open CafePress store! Right now, I only have one image available on stuff in there... but, hey, it's a work in progress... if there are any pieces that I've created that you might like to purchase on a cafe press product, be sure to drop me a line and let me know... and I'll do what I can to get it up in cafe press!

Thanks for reading along. Tomorrow (I hope!) I will have days 5 & 6 posted!

~Anne

On The First (and the second) Day of Christmas...

In one of my yahoo groups, I'm hosting a 12 days of Christmas Swap. We started opening our gifts on Monday, the 17th... so the gifts will actually continue through Christmas. But, it's been fun so far!

On the first day, we opened our gift from Teresa... a really cool Jacob's Ladder!

This shows only a portion of the six paneled ladder, but is a good representation of how lovely each panel is!

I really love this... it reminds me of some of the fun toys my grandfather used to make out in his woodshop... and it's already supplied me and my two daughters with hours of enjoyment! Thank you Teresa!

Our Second day's gift came from Debbie, who made something that was nice as well as practical! A tissue pouch!



Even though the fabric is seasonal, THIS is going to be in my purse year round! I love it! Thank you Debbie!

So... those are the first 2 days of Christmas Gifts. Today marks our half-way point of our gift opening... so I do have 4 more gifts that I could show you... but I think I'll save the fun... and share 2 more gifts with you tomorrow!

Thank you to alll the lovely artists who participated in this swap... I can't remember a time when I've had as much fun!

~Anne

Back Online!

Wow... what a week! Last week, we finally took the computer in to the Geek Squad and we had our hard drive replaced (it was about to fail). When we got the computer back, and I loaded the OS, we found out that the network drivers were not included! So, while we did have a computer, we had no internet... so basically, we had an expensive deck of cards sitting on the desk!

*sigh* So, began the adventure of trying to get myself back online, which was quite a challenge for me, as I'm not the most computer literate person around. I think I finally exhausted the folks at Comcast, who finally sent someone out to help me... free of charge.

What I've learned from this adventure: 1) Just because you've purchased the service plan from Best Buy, does not mean that you'll get the service you think you will... this plan covers only the labor and the hardware, but not the software. 2) Create a back up disk often, and most importantly, you should have a back up disk of all necessary drivers! 3) Being persistant (if not just a bit frustrated) with Comcast might very well lead them to do things for you that they would otherwise not do (or charge you to do). 4) The freebie virus protection provided by Comcast is not all it should be. Do yourself a favor and invest in a reliable virus protection with frequent updating and keep your subscription up to date. This is probably the most important lesson I've learned.

So... now that I'm back online, I have some art to share with you...

This is one of a series of 4 "Pear" ATCs that I made for a recent Freestyle ATC swap on my yahoo group. I was really happy with how these turned out, each just a little bit different...

Also... my listings at etsy are doing quite well, be sure to visit my store to see my latest additions. Right now, I have several Teapot Cozies (I didn't make these, but they are hand-made by a friend of mine!), and a couple of domino ornaments!

~Anne

For Sale: Domino Ornaments!

Well, I had a few left-over domino ornaments after the artisan fair, so I've listed some of them at my etsy store. I will be adding a few more over the next few days as I find some spare time.

The most difficult part for me is the photography, because I'm not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination. Even with someone who KNOWS what they're doing with a camera... photographing dominos is no easy task... first, they're so small... and the images on them are even smaller! And because the dominos have a nice, glossy, glass-like finish on them, they reflect the light from the flash and it distorts the image even more. So, when you combine that with the fact that I am not much of a photographer... well, you get DISASTER! ha!

Anyways, visit my etsy store and judge for yourself... please let me know if you have any ideas on how to capture better images!

~Anne

Another UHU Review!

Hello Everyone:

As some of you may remember, I reviewed UHU's Creativ Fabric Glue some time ago. Well, I was given the opportunity to try another of their products last month...

This is UHU's Creativ Metal, Glass & Jewelry Glue. As you can see, it's a two part resin type adhesive. What I like about this particular formulation as opposed to say, another resin adhesive, is that the formula is a bit thicker for both the hardener and the resin. It makes it a lot easier to "eyeball" the measurements. Just squeeze a small amount of both tubes into the mixing pan (also included), side by side and then mix well.

I used this glue to help create my domino ornaments (as seen in my last blog entry and below). You'll have to forgive me, some of the images and details are difficult to discern, because we're dealing with dominos here, so everything is in a tiny size... not to mention the fact that I'm not the best photographer around!

I used the UHU Creativ Metal, Glass & Jewelry glue to adhere the tiny Australian Crystals, buttons, and spiral embellishments onto my Domino ornaments that I showcased at the Artisan Fair this past Saturday. I made about 75 ornaments total, and came home with about 30 remaining, so that's not too shabby!

One of the particular challenges that my domino embellishing presented is that you're applying the gems and embellishments to a shiny, smooth surface without much tooth... so it's important to select a very strong glue that will stay stuck to these types of surfaces.

The UHU Creativ Metal, Glass & Jewelry Glue is up to that challenge, as the embellishments seemed to become "one" with the ornament... as if they were molded together! These embellishments are NOT coming off without some significant effort to pry them off!

Another notable difference between UHU's Creativ Metal, Glass & Jewelry Glue and other 2 part resins, is that with many of the 2 part resin adhesives out there, you need to allow a couple of minutes for the resin to partially set before you adhere. With the UHU, there's no waiting time, it sets up right away, so that you can keep on arting! However, there is a downside to this benefit, because the quick drying time also means a quick drying time for the portion sitting on the mixing tray waiting to be used... so the unused portion would dry out before I was finished adhering all the embellishments... I strongly recommend having all of your embellishments ready to glue before mixing your glue to minimize waste!

Overall, I strongly recommend the UHU Creativ Metal, Glass & Jewelry Glue. A little bit of the glue goes a long way and after adhering embellishments to 75 dominos, I still have about three-fourths of the tubes left... so I have lots more left over for more charm making!

Thank you UHU, for allowing me to review your awesome product! To learn more about UHU, please visit Maria's UHU Project Blog. And thanks to everyone for reading along!

~Anne