Took the Plunge: Selling Blog

I decided to start a selling blog today. There's a link to it on the left side of this posting. I'm featuring a couple of egg baskets that I made last month. I love egg baskets! The shape of them is just so unique and each one is an individual. I can never make them exactly alike, close but not exact. Both of the ones that I have listed turned out very differently, one's more compact and one is longer. Which one do I like better? It's like asking me if I love son #1 better than son #2. There's just room for both of them in my heart!

I am not limiting my selling blog to handwoven baskets, but I'm including other crafts that I like to do as well. I recently made several blackened beeswax candles with battery operated tea lights. I've listed these too.

Hope you are all having a good weekend.

~Ann

New Title Picture

I wanted to share a photo of this wonderful shelf with you today. I've changed my blog title picture so I can see this now. I saw this shelf in Country Sampler a few years ago, I loved the gals house, perfectly prim to my taste. My husband made this one for me based on the photograph. I only had to tell him how long I wanted it and to draw out the shape of the ends. The hooks were hand forged by a local blacksmith, they have a twisted shank, very unique. The only problem with them for my perfectionist woodworking husband was that they were all slightly different lengths. He is "working on" his prim style. Everything has to be just so and he doesn't understand my desire to rough up his perfectly made items!

A few of my favorite crocks make their home on the shelf. All those on the left are antiques, my favorite being the first one in. The marking on it says "C. Hart & Son, Sherburne". This is the town that I grew up in, so it's very special to me. The second one in I purchased at an auction. My husband's Aunt and Uncle were downsizing and auctioned off a lot of "stuff". That one's special because I always think of Aunt Rosie when I see it.

All the crocks/bowls on the right are new. The first one in on the right side is from the potters at Conner Prairie, a living history museum in Indiana. The second one from the right was made by the potter at Sauder Village, a living history museum here in Ohio. It is one of the first items fired in his new wood ash kiln a couple of years ago. The third one in is a birthday present from my friend Melissa at Farm Field Primitives.

Of course there has to be a star mixed in, this one was made from tobacco crate slats. Don't you love the doll chair? I was going to have my husband fix the back rung but decided that I like it the way it is. I purchased it at an auction for $2.00

Punchneedle Done!

I finally got this punch needle done. The pattern is in the August 2008 Create & Decorate. I started it in August, completed the rooster and then just left it. I included it in my Procrastinator's Challenge, one of the items that I wanted to finish up. I know what the problem was, I had to change floss colors so often for the pennies and I didn't want to do that! Am I wimpy or what? I can't believe that I don't have a frame waiting for this one, but none of the ones in my stash (which is getting low) seemed to work. We need garage sale weather! The background is still there, you can see where the tea staining ended. I've applied rubber cement to the background edges on the backside, but don't want to cut it off for any chance of fraying until I'm ready to frame it. I'm very happy with how this one turned out. I plan on it being in my kitchen. Speaking of Create & Decorate, how do you feel about that magazine? I let my subscription run out with the December issue. I've looked at them in Walmart since then, but haven't been tempted at all. I'm just disappointed with the projects. While they are neat, they just aren't my prim taste and don't even inspire any ideas that I could turn prim. I had subscribed for several years and got lots of neat ideas/projects from them, but as with most magazines I eventually grow tired of them.

We celebrated in school today with lots of goodies in honor of Fat Tuesday. The teachers lounge was overflowing with goodies and I ate way too much sugar. To top it off, the cafeteria was serving my favorite school lunch, creamed chicken sandwiches from Dairy Queen and cooked carrots. YUM! So not only did I eat all day, I also just had to eat lunch. I'll have to eat grapes and a yogurt for lunch tomorrow. ~Ann

Cross Stitch Pillow & A Redo

Isn't this a lovely green corduroy pillow? I purchased it this past summer at a garage sale for 50 cents. All 3 of my boys(2 little & 1 big - my sons & husband) told me it was really ugly! I told them just chill and wait. This afternoon I transformed it from this to this...the cross stitch in the middle is a freebie from online. I coffee stained the stitchery when complete. The strips around the stitchery are leftover from a quilt that I made for our bed. I used a log cabin pattern so I had lots of strips left and they are the perfect match to the colors in the cross stitch.

Now on the the Redo: This little shelf has been sitting in our basement for the almost 8 years we've lived in this house. My husband made it in shop class in high school. It was stained, which I didn't particularly like, so I asked if I could paint it. Why did I wait so long? He didn't care what I did with it! I painted it a dark charcoal and stained over that. I made the 3 miniature baskets, the top one is a Nantucket tea light holder, bottom right is a rib style egg basket and the other is a Shaker inspired design. Last March I bought a ton of handles, bases and wire from a gal that no longer wanted to weave. The base, handle & lid came together from her. I didn't have a pattern for this and had to think about how I wanted it for a while and I'm very happy with how it came out. Later on this Spring I'll stain the bottom 2 baskets, I usually only stain in the warmer months. I don' t like the smell and when I stain I usually do at least 24 at a time.

Have a great week. ~Ann

My Hide and Seek

Reading a couple of blogs, Logcabin primitives and Behind my Red Door, prompted me to join the hide and seek challenge. I started out tonight with one side of my kitchen. I would love to have a big board to cover my stove, but they are $$$. I have a small cutting board that I found at a garage sale for 10 cents! It's not very large, but for now I'm happy. I did hang a feed sack from the handle of the stove door to cover up some of the white. We purchased this stove for our first house 14 years ago, at that point in my life I wanted clean white appliances. As you can see from the microwave above the stove black is my choice now. It goes much better with my dark red cupboards. Found the feed sack at a garage sale for $1.00, there were 4 of them there, why oh why did I only purchase one of them????????????????????? As my mother would say, "live and learn". This is the outlet that feeds the undercounter lights. My mom has her lights set up so that she never unplugs them, you just touch a door hinge and they go on and off. She even had her dog trained to turn them on by licking the hinge! I don't have outside hinges to set this up like hers, so when mine are on I have to plug them in. I don't leave them on for long periods of time, they get so hot. At most they might be on a couple nights a week for no more than 1/2 hour at a time.

You can still see the cord behind the cutting boards, but it is much better.

I love old mashers. The box is Navy Blue from Olde Century paints. Our middle child made it his first year in 4-H woodworking. It's supposed to be a flower box, but Mom wanted it in the kitchen instead. I know these pictures aren't great, I tried with the flash and it just washed everything out so you'll have to be satisfied with the overall idea of what I did. I have a wooden plate in the back of the box and leaning on that is a recipe for "Johnny Cake" in my Grandmother's VERY distinct handwriting.

All I did was move the nail for the sign over and it covers the outlet. The sign is an end of a shipping crate that my parents gave me. I like it because it says "New York" on it. I grew up in upstate NY and it's a memory from home.

My real challenge is the other side of the kitchen. I have the phone, phone jack, outlet for my under the counter radio, disposal switch & outlet. I have to do some thinking for that side. I think I'll walk around the house and see what I can snatch from other rooms. I'd love to see what you do to hide your signs of 21st century life. ~Ann

Updates on My UFO's

I still haven't posted all my own projects from my Procrastinator's Challenge. Here's an update on my own projects that I completed, both of these are free patterns from http://www.rainbowgallery.com/freechartdownloads.cfm?ID=11. Both are Erica Michael's designs. I'm really drawn to the pineapple lately. Do you know that it was the symbol of hospitality in New England in colonial times? The frame on this one was an ugly peach color, glossy and just plain gross, but I loved the wide frame with the square opening. I knew I'd find a use for it. Not sure where it is going to end up. I'll have to play around with some different locales. My friend, Terry at http://www.bigcityprims.blogspot.com/ has a new term for this, "Tweakitis". She's been arranging and rearranging her prim goodies. Be sure to check out her blog.

I'd started the reindeer over Christmas Vacation, just needed to put on the backing and coffee stain it. It's always fun to put away holiday pieces throughout the year and then pull them out "brand new" when December rolls around.

Cathy, at http://www.tolentreasures.blogspot.com/ wants to have another Procrastinator's Challenge - she's posted about it on her blog - check it out. Maybe I'll do it again if there's enough interest, let me know, or Cathy - I'd be happy to pass the torch to her!

Tonight my project is figuring out how to cast off circular looms - I have made a scarf, but don't want to remove it the same way as a hat. I've been looking at youtube videos for help. If anyone knows a good video for me to watch on the internet, let me know. Thanks. ~Ann

Honest Abe

In honor of President's Day, I'm posting my newly framed Abe collection. Char inspired me to complete this project that I've had in the works for a while now. I bought the frame for 50 cents at a garage sale this summer, brought it home, painted it black and stained with pecan stain. I bought a book for $1.00 that was about Lincoln and had the nice photo of him in it. I bought the Gettysburg Address at Old World Wisconsin 2 1/2 years ago, with this project in mind. I used a brown craft wrapping paper for the background and I inked the edges with a brown ink pad. The feather came with the Gettysburg Address.

Decorating Idea

I thought I'd share with you a decoration that I have in my living room. We have 3 windows side by side in the front of the house. Above each window I glued 3 rusty stars. From the

photos you can see I used a large one in the center and smaller ones on the sides. I used hot

glue. When you want to remove them, heat with a hair dryer warming the glue and they

will come right off. I had to close the roman shades so the photo would come out right, but you can see the

spacing between the stars in this photo. All told this cost less than $15.00 and really

adds a neat look above the windows.

The Winner Is.......

Congratulations to our winners! JoAnne http://www.jo-anne-thecarterclan.blogspot.com/ is the winner of the Procrastinators Challenge. She completed a whopping 24 projects that were sitting waiting for her attention. Way to go JoAnne. The next 2 pictures are a couple more of her completed projects.
Love this platter JoAnne. I have stars in my kitchen and living room, they are so prim.

Nicola from http://www.clasheen.wordpress.com/ finished up these 2 purses to finish in 2nd place with a total of 7 completed projects. Please forgive me for having to tip your head 90 degrees to get a good look at these felted purses. I thought they were portrait - oops.

Cathy from http://www.tolentreasures.blogspot.com/ is the third place finisher with 6 completed projects. Cathy did a great job finishing her projects 2 weeks early because of a mission trip. Congratulations to all 3 of you.

I apologize for not posting more photos this week, but I just counted up and we had 10 basketball games in the last 6 days. Whew! I'm glad that our oldest one - 8th grade girls team is done. Now we just have our boys left and the JV/Varsity boys where our 11 year old is the manager/water boy. I had to go watch him on Friday and Saturday night "do his jobs" because I hadn't been to any yet. It's really important to the ball boy to have fans there! For those of you who have been reading my blog - this is the hot stone massage boy! Have a great week. ~Ann

Personalize a Candle

I'm always finding new uses for my scrapbooking supplies. I used number rub ons to give this candle a date. You can find the rub ons at most craft stores or scrapbook stores in the sticker section. All you do is cut out the letter/number that you want and rub it onto your surface with a popsicle stick. You will be able to tell when you've rubbed enough, as the sticker backing changes from opaque to clear. Just be careful not to rub to hard to cause an indentation to the candle. Because the rub on is very thin, once it is on, it is hard to tell that it's not part of the candle.

If you want to you can mix your antiquing medium with Candle and Soap painting medium to antique the candle. I didn't do that to this one, I don't want all my candles to look identical in color, so I left this one the cream color that it was. Here are the supplies needed....

The cost of this project is minimal. The candle was in a four pack that I purchased on clearance after Christmas and I already had the rub ons. I think this would also work well if you chose to use words (kindness, faith, love, etc) or even phrases on the candle. Pull out those scrapbooking supplies and make them prim!

~Ann