Some Halloween Wishes

 Hope you're having fun this Halloween season.  These are some Halloween tags to help. 

I wish I had seen Vanessa's gold spiders and bugs before I did this tag.  They're amazing. 

Lot's of candy corn, carmeled apples, and chocolates to you this BOOtiful season.      Diane

Maybe no mystery at all......................

There's an old house in our neighborhood which has stood empty

and unloved for probably three years.  The other

evening at dusk I was walking Rascal past and happened to glance

over to see a light on in one of the upstairs

windows. I was pretty sure nobody had been there but

maybe I was wrong.  The next evening (earlier) I noticed

that one of the windows in back was standing open.

 

A dear friend, Ben and his wife had lived there happily for

many years and over the years had many pets which

they nurtured and loved but we lost him to cancer about 5 years ago

some other people bought it, tore it up, ruined the lawn

and left it. 

 

A while back a dog appeared there, it was homeless and we

finally captured it and found a good home

for it.  Until that time he hung around that house! and wouldn't leave.

Now there's a cat that lives around the house. 

 

 I'm just thinking - could the two things have anything to do

with each other?       Diane  

Memory Keeper.........

Just reopened my Etsy shop and have listed this.

The little memory keeper holds eight teeny-tiny books as well as two little wonky drawers for even tinier memories.  It was so much fun to make and it was good fortune to find the little topknot for it - one of those things in a junk store that no one knows quite what to do with it - but I did!  This piece is very dear to my heart.                 Diane

Roses

 A very colorful and fun lady came into my shop one day and among other things we were talking about painting.  I told her I had a hard time painting roses.  "Bring your brushes and paints tomorrow and I'll come in and show you how." 

So I did and we spent a couple wonderful hours the next day and she showed me how to make rosebuds.  This is them.  She taught me a lot of other things about painting and she enjoyed creating vignettes in the store and showed me a lot about that, too. I never saw her again. 

Isn't it funny how some things happen?                       Diane

Reincarnation

It's gone now
Several years ago I painted
this little bench
It served us well, it held a lot
of things up

I didn't change the color
although I wanted to for a long time.
Today, though, I decided to spray it
black. 
I decided to take a picture of the
little robin and nest so I could
save it forever

The black bench will be
wonderful on the porch,
the black will pop against
the light color

Diane
 

Introducing you................

............to Curlique, the new resident of my art room.  He keeps a sharp, beady eye on all the comings and goings. I picked him up on my recent trip to Billings - just couldn't go home without him.    Diane

Beginning your journal...............

A blogger asked me how to do a journal.

The most important thing is that you have to WANT to.  It's that easy.

The kind of book you use is strictly up to you.  You can go the Barnes and Nobel and buy an elegant Moleskine or you can make a book out of recycled cereal boxes or anything in between.  This summer I kept one that was a little  4"x6" spiral notebook that I got at the $1.00 store.  That and a pen and pencil are all I took with me on my trip to California.  The following shots are of it.

You may recognize the cover - a catalog cover from Victorian Greetings.  Somewhere I cut out the word summer and the drive-in movie ticket was from a Tim Holtz paper stash which you can order online.  I always use a little double faced tape for insurance on my paper and I've found out that I like UHU stic glue which I buy at the office supply store. 

The only thing I even glued in these pages was a picture from a restaurant we went to.  Then I decorated the bottom with a shelf of clay pots like they had under their windows.  I want to try the clay pot thing - maybe next year.  This helps me remember.

These pages have images mostly from the Graphics Fairy.  She has some wonderful things on her blog. 

On these pages I've cut out pretty paper the size of the page and glued them on and then embellished as I went.  You can do your pages however you want to. 

You really need the glue I mentioned - I've used other kinds and your things fall out - and it isn't taht expensive. Some little scissors (can't remember the name but they're in the paper craft section and they are yellow and black - very precise and sharp!)  Some good markers are nice, ZIG Memory System are the ones I like....so far, and you should have a white gel marker which is almost impossible to find.  A paper punch if you're making your own pages and some rings which you also can purchase at Walmart or an office supply store.  But all that said - you can use a pen and crayons for that matter - until you get the supplies you want. 

What to write on your page?  What's going on that you want to remember?  What's going on that you'd rather not remember but you need someone to talk about it and your journal is just waiting to listen, a beautiful thought you ran across, things that you love, the subjects are endless but if you find yourself staring at a blank page there are many Internet sites of journal prompts which will give you lots of ideas. 

Let me know how you're doing but mostly remember - this is yours, this is you, there's no right or wrong way to do it.  Sometimes a page just doesn't come out the way you want it to - glue something over it  - or glue a manila envelope over it and put some little things in it you want to keep.  It's endless.  Diane 





  

Very Un-spooky Place

The Halloween vignette in my art room changes often..........mostly the candy corn.  My potions are not for spells but things that I've captured during the summer and fall.  Among them are Autumn Whispers, Mermaids Tears, and Dragonfly Blessings.  Fairy Kisses and Hoot of Owls have joined the bottles.  The beautiful bottles are so much fun to make. 

K Mart had a big bag of skeletons for $3.99 and I only needed one so the other ones are give aways. I brought one to my 3 year old great grandson recently and he proceeded to have a little dance between it and a Power Ranger!! 

To me this is the best part of Halloween - visiting other blogs, seeing what others are creating and how they decorate.  Hope you're having fun, too.                     Diane