Eleven Days of Sharing with Friends, Day 4

Hello friends! Another group of photos in my collection...children with dolls. I hope you like them too!

And here are some adorable little girls for you. I love the way they are all standing in front of that old porch holding their dolls. I wonder what they did after this old photo was taken!

And here is the reverse of this photo, which I thought was charming...

Enjoy!

Eleven Days of Sharing with Friends, Day 3

I love to collect old photos of children on horses, so here are just a few...

I love the three kids on this pony! Hope you do too!

Enjoy!

Eleven days of Sharing with Friends, Day 2

Here are some beach photos of happy groups of people...

And here is one of them to add to your own collection...

Enjoy!

Eleven Days of Sharing with Friends, Day 1...

Good morning. Today is the beginning of "Eleven Days of Sharing"! Since I will likely not have much time to post during the next several days, I am going to share with you some old photos from my collection. Each day I will show you a group of vintage photos, and then provide you with a scan of one of them to use in your own art. Remember to just right click on the photo and save it as you wish. Please bear with me if these don't all get posted on consecutive days, though.

This is basically a continuation of an earlier post in which I showed you some of the types of photos that I like to collect. Hopefully you will not see any repetition in the days to come.

I love to collect photos of old autos...

So here is one for you...



Enjoy!

Stay tuned for my little surprise...

Some Easter inspiration...

Happy Saturday to all! I hope you are enjoying your weekend so far.

We've been having miserable weather since yesterday. Cold and rainy, with a promise that tomorrow will be the only halfway warm and clear day in the coming week. So imagine my joy when the new March Pottery Barn catalog arrived yesterday, bringing me a whisper of Spring with some Easter decor. Of course, I am too busy right now to think of Spring and Easter decorating, which will have to wait until after the trip and my dad's party. But still, how about these ideas from The Barn...

I love the mercury glass vase filled with

the faux cherry blossom branch and eggs...

How about this wonderful burlap Easter flag?

And don't you love the little bunny pillow underneath it?

My time is going to be short for the next few days, as I need to clean house and pack before we leave on the trip. Friends will be house- and pet-watching here while we are gone. While I am away I hope to still be able to post (that is, if we have WiFi at the campsites), so stay tuned for a little surprise.

Stay well, and thanks for coming by!



A girls' day out...

Good evening! I hope you all had a great day.

This morning I had an appointment to get my hair cut. Since my hairdresser is in the town that I used to work in, about 40 miles from here, my neighbor came along with me for a girls' day out. We then had a nice lunch and went over to Hobby Lobby (that one happens to be the closest one around here). The Hob Lob gift card that I received from my daughter for Christmas was burning a hole in my purse and had to be spent as quickly as possible. I thought I would share my finds with you.

Some papers from "My Mind's Eye". The line is called "Lost and Found".

They are all loaded with pretty pink glitter, which my photos do not

do justice to...

Look at the detail on this sheet. Don't you just love it?

I am yearning to do some more fabric collage,

so how about these pretty fabric flowers. I also

bought some ribbon glue, which I have never

tried before.

 The Tim Holtz line was all 30% off,

so I finally bought these two technique books,

along with these number plaques which I thought

would look good on an assemblage project.

I plan on making some nautical artwork for my

grandsons, so I bought this set of  buoys, which are

tied together with rope, and this little wooden boat

which is actually about 15 inches high.

I love the little drawer at the bottom of the boat.

 Not sure yet how I will incorporate these; I may

use one for one project and one for the other...

Well, I'm going to start getting busy with my trip and the final party preparations, so if my posts thin out a little, please know that I'm still thinking of you! 

"Scrappy" greeting cards and some basic attempt at creativity...

Hello good friends! It's a pretty rainy day outside (I guess that's better than snow!), so I thought I would stay in and use up some of the scraps on my work table, and then clean up altogether before my trip.

Do you ever stop and think about all the art supplies that you have on hand, and then go out and BUY greeting cards? I once heard someone say that after she got involved with art stamping, she calculated that the first card she ever made cost about $300.00. Think about it. You take a few instructional classes, buy a few rubber stamps, card stock, scrapbook papers, some how-to books, stamping ink, colored pencils, markers, special glues and a bunch of other stuff. You sit down to make that first card, which probably didn't come out all that great. What did it really cost after you bought all the materials? Certainly more than any card you could buy in Hallmark. Then, after spending an hour painstakingly planning a layout for something great, you create that first card for someone you know, and then you worry that the recipient will look at it and think: "My, oh my...is she so broke that she couldn't afford to buy a card and had to make one instead?"

Along comes a time when you start to spread your wings and dip into the beautiful world of mixed media. So now you start buying (if you're anything like me) tattered lace, old buttons, vintage photos, broken door knobs, tarnished drawer pulls, vintage ledger papers and so on. Away goes the desire to make greeting cards because the time that you have to spend on art is minimal and why waste it making cards that people might not like when you can create something that is so much more "sophisticated". Besides, you can always go to the dollar store and BUY a halfway decent card for a buck. Hmmm...

Well recently I decided that I am going to start making some cards and giving them to people again. Whenever I have a bunch of papers, laces, ribbons, glue, old photo copies, etc., left over from other projects on my table, I will make up a few generic card-fronts that will fit onto a folded piece of letter-sized card stock. Then, all I will have to do is put something on the inside for any given occasion. After all, you've already got a bunch of things all matched up from the REAL project that you just finished, so half the work is done.

I actually began this process last week by making a Valentine's Day card for Mr. Perch (a/k/a Hubby), and birthday cards for my daughter-in-law and brother-in-law. I think my daughter-in-law liked hers, but imagine my amazement when not only did my brother-in-law like his, but actually hung it on his kitchen cabinet! I guess most people do appreciate that you took the time to make something special for them, even if it is a small kind of special.

Following are two I made this morning.

This is one that I think I will give to my friend

for her birthday this week...

This is the inside of the card. I enjoyed dusting off

those postal rubber stamps!...

This is the one for my dad's birthday (90th).

He has a wonderful sense of humor about aging,

often saying: "If I knew that I was going to live this long,

I would have taken better care of myself."

And this is the inside...

Here are scans of the old photos that I used...



Go ahead. Have some fun, and make someone happy!

Summer in my heart but not in the air...

In the depths of winter I finally learned

that there was within me
an invincible summer.   ---ALBERT CAMUS

I can't resist sharing the back of the above photo with you...

Greetings from the frozen Perch! It was 17 degrees (F) out this morning when I left to go to my appointment at the specialist that I was referred to by my dentist. It seems that the toothache and cold sensitivity that is ever-present, though not intense, is the result of two back teeth with minor cracks in them. I will need a root canal in the one that the dentist feels is causing the pain, and then move on to a crown. The hope is that then the other tooth will only need a crown. I've never needed a root canal before, so don't know what to expect. I will take my aching teeth to Florida with me and have the work done right after I return home. I can't remember the last time I needed any real work done on my teeth, other than maintenance, so I guess my luck has run out!

Speaking of running out, I wish I could say that about Old Man Winter, who doesn't seem to want to let go of this state. By mid-February we usually start visiting the garden shops, but not this year. Instead of focusing on this dragged-out Winter, I am dreaming all things Summer. So, I bought my first garden magazine of the year, Flea Market Gardens. I buy it each Spring, and I can't say enough about the content of this publication. Again, all quality photos and ideas, with no funky advertisements. Following are a few glimpses that I have scanned for you. (For other garden "junque" inspiration, visit my Pinterest board "Great Stuff in Gardens.)

The cover...

A garden shed made of old windows. There is actually a man at my haunt, Vintage Village, that makes ones similar to this...

And here is the inside...

This one inspires me to do something this Spring with the rusty little trike that I've had for a number of years...

Who doesn't love an arbor? This makes me want to tear out the sickly old rose bushes by ours and replace them with some drop-dead, heart-stopping color...

Any of us could likely make a sign like this one, but will we?

 

Can you see yourself sitting at this table?

Or under this arbor?

And while the inside of my garden shed is not yet decorated (and our sink looks nothing like the one below), this one wants me to get to work on it very soon...

This is another shot of the same shed. Don't you just love the Roman shade?

Do you ever feel like you have more ideas than time or money?

Here is Miss Phoebe's reality: I have started some basil seeds in the sunny window of our downstairs guest room. In the middle of the four pots is a beautiful shiny-leafed wine red geranium plant that sat on our front porch all last Summer. It hung on out there almost until Christmas, so, not bearing to see such a brave little plant die, I cut it back and brought it inside and am keeping it alive for hopefully another season. (By the way, these are sitting on the little peeling white bench that I recently bought.) I will likely keep the basil plants as an "inside crop", and later purchase some new ones for outside. Can anyone have enough fresh basil?

And some summer bulbs just purchased at WalMart to start inside as a harbinger of the summer to come...

 

Stay warm and toasty!

Warm hearts and cold spam...

Hello friends! I hope you are well and having a great weekend.

Yesterday it snowed on and off for most of the afternoon, and this morning brings not only a cold day outside...

...but a cold feeling in my heart over a few comments that I have recently received on this blog. I actually get very few comments to begin with, but most of the ones that I receive are from kind friends that always have something positive to say.  However, over the past few days I have received some ridiculous comments from the Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms. Anonymous' of the world who profess to like this blog or its posts, and then go on to say why they like it. The funny part is that their stated reasons for liking it have nothing to do with the content of the post that they are commenting on. And the real kick was when one suggested that I lengthen my posts in content to better support the point I am trying to make...imagine that!!! How can I elaborate on a shared vintage photo or pictures of a jar of buttons? Of course, their real motive is to offer me an invitation to visit their website or blog or something else, with the link provided. Most of these charmers end up in my spam and don't make it to my viewed comments, but today I woke up to find that one indeed did. Needless to say, I deleted it. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind it if someone came right out and said that they didn't like my blog or something that I wrote about, and then expressed their reasons why, even if they did wish to remain anonymous. But please don't use my blog, or those of my friends, as a vehicle for pushing your own product. Especially when you are going to use some canned verbiage that makes no sense at all.

Any of you who blog know that it often takes considerable time to not only write a post, but to take pictures and post them. To have our time wasted unnecessarily gives us even less time to do what we really want to spend our time doing. So, spammers, take heed and don't network on our dime.

I am sorry to say that I will now moderate any comments that I receive, and to my good friends I apologize for this. I hope this is a better course than making my readers have to decipher those funny CAPTCHA words before they leave comments, as I hate doing that myself.

To my real and warm-hearted friends, please keep the comments coming! And to Anonymous out there...don't you have anything better to do than waste your time looking at a simple, humble, and non-controversial little blog like this???