Swarovski here, Swarovski there!

After much struggle, and much ripping out and redoing, this piece had come to the point in the photo above. I hung it on Matilda, my dressmaker's form, and looked at it for days and days and days. I then decided that the clean edge was just too clean and needed .... something. So I added this edging.

Neither the edging nor the lacey necklace have been tied off and knotted yet. I know better than that! Eventually I will have to call it done, because it is headed for a competition in March.

Art on the Cheap

When it's time to take down the Christmas decorations, the house always seems so blah and bland to me, especially with our long wet, gray winters here in the Pacific Northwest. So, I borrowed a theme from my Chinese hubby. When Christmas comes down, Chinese New Year decorations go up. Lots of red, black and gold come out. Years ago I bought a First Day of Issue stamp for Chinese New Year that was beautifully mounted and displayed, and it really needed some mates. Time for 'Design on a Dime'!

I quickly made the above two pictures to go with my other one. I already had the Chinese New Year stamps in the left pic. So I dug through my stash of art paper and found what I wanted to mount the stamps onto. A little bit of glue, some sparkle dots in the corner, and an inexpensive frame I already had (I buy frames on sale and just save them), and voila! Pic number one is done.

For the second pic, I dug through my really special papers from a bff who shares my 'paper passion' and I found the beautiful flying cranes on a gold background.  A little bit more paper for mounting, some red strips to frame the cranes, and sparkle dots in the corner, and pic number 2 is ready to pop into a frame.

And there you have it, easy art from my stash and no extra money spent!

Artist Trading Cards

For quite a while I was very active in an Artist Trading Card group, or ATCs as we called them. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this fun crafting adventuure, here is how it works. Person number 1 makes three identical backgrounds 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches in size, and puts a return address label on the back near the top. They then send these three cards to Person number 2, who does something identical to all three cards and then puts her return address label on the back. She then sends the three identical cards on to the third and final person. Person number 3 finishes the set of cards and puts her return address label on the back. She keeps one for herself and sends Person number 1 a copy and Person number 2 a copy.

It is always quite interesting to receive the completed cards (or homers as we call them)in the mail, because you just never know what another crafter will do to the set.

Take the above card for example. I received this set as Person number 3. The first person made the background and put on the eye. Person number 2 put on the puffy J. Then I had to figure out what the heck to do as Person number 3! So I put on the heart, the letter U, and did the writing after the J. Do you get it?