The winner of the Stitch A Wish Designs Wristlet Give-Away from this post is:

Commenter #11 was Shelli!

Congratulations Shelli!  We know you (or your daughter!) will love your new bag!

Thanks to Michelle at Stitch A Wish Designs for donating this beautiful custom designed creation!

If you think you’ve heard of Stitch A Wish Designs before, you probably have, right here on this blog.  I have mentioned my friend Michelle, the designer and owner of SWD, before, and have even done this featured blog post on her as well before too.

But, there is always much to share about her, and the beautiful things she makes!  She is always re-inventing the wheel, or coming up with new cool or beautiful things all her own, and I’m always so impressed,  I just need to let everyone know.    Not only because her creations are beautiful, and high quality, but because her… Continue reading

We had some family down a couple of weekends ago, and while they were here, the kids and I got to making pinwheels.  O.k., in the end, it was mostly me really working on them.  They needed to be fine tuned, to work properly.  Making this quick little craft was on my agenda, so I already had the supplies.   My niece and nephew each took one home.

Ours has served mostly as home decor, since then, being the time span between Memorial Day weekend, and the 4th of July.   But today we took them down to the sea shore to really test drive them!

I used to be pretty good at watercolor painting, back when my days consisted more of illustrating than photography.  Oh, I was never, ever nearly as good as I wanted to be.  But I am even further from my painting aspirations now!

My struggle with watercolor painting has never been about lack of brush control.  It’s seemed like it’s been more about too much of it! The style of my art has always been realism.  To create an image and make it as real as possible.  Before turning more and more to the art of photography, I had spent many years doing 100′s of large commissioned pencil portraits of people, using photos as… Continue reading

Please visit Home page once, prior to sections of blogs, for message. : ) Continue reading

Just a quick share of my fan pull for Spring & Easter.

These beads are so beautiful. They are heavy, like marbles, but smaller.

And just ….pretty.

With Palm Sunday almost upon us once again, we thought we would re-post this tutorial which we had in the Big Picture section last year, on how to make a nice cross for your home, with the blessed palms you bring home from mass on Palm Sunday.  We hope you find the instructions and photos helpful, and the craft enjoyable, in making a beautiful palm cross for the walls of your home.

First, take 3 sets of 2 palms each, and at least one good palm wisp.

In the area the… Continue reading

Sometimes, I like to plan arts and crafts for my kids.  I’ll have an idea, or see some great crafts project in a magazine or online, and we’ll do it.   But whether I plan arts and crafts or not,  it still happens in this house, and all over this house, every day.  The kids sure don’t need me, to come up with creative ideas.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say, that their wild imagination tends to venture further than mine does.

I try to keep the school room stocked with art supplies at all times, so that the kids can get creating any time it strikes their… Continue reading

So it was almost the end of January, when I put up our ‘winter themed’ fan pull.  Because, I had to make it first!  Next year, they will all be up right on time, because they’ll all already be made.   But for this little craft-session, I also made February’s. A LOVE theme of course.

We’ll look at the winter one first.  This one we’ll probably use maybe in late November, if it has snowed, and maybe the first week or so of December. But then we’ll be having our Christmas fan pull up for the rest of December.  The winter one here will go back up for the month of January, and maybe early March until it feels like spring.  Unless of course I make a… Continue reading

I already shared the beautiful Advent Calendar Michael’s mother gave us for Christmas, and mentioned in that thread there were a couple of other hand-made gifts she sent us as well.

One is this apron she made for {A}.  When {A} talked to Grandma on the phone on Christmas Day, {A} said, that Grandma said, that she was inspired by our gifts to them last year, including their aprons.   She rather enjoyed making gifts too!  We rather enjoyed receiving them, and they mean a lot to us.

She took an already made apron, and ‘made it her own’.  (And then gave it away. lol). She added the cute… Continue reading