A Bowtie Hoopla

Shh.... This is a Christmas present.

But it was easy and took about an hour. It may have been more, I was watching movies and refusing to be serious.

I am terribly sorry about the photos. My camera is on it's last legs.

A Friendship card

I left my day job. There were a number of reasons and none of them need concern us here. This is a place of joy. I can spend those hours now focused on making my life what I want it to be. I will be starting projects (like an NPO) and a new shop on etsy. This shop will be a healing shop of the ways I heal. Not all healing takes place in the body. 

All of that said (and it was important) I needed a card for a dear dear co-worker. I wanted her to know how much I valued her and our relationship. The base of the card is a recipe folder that I had found quite sometime ago at the dollar store. The sticker is from a set I have had for years now. Love the way it turned out. 
 

Easy Ornaments

Tis that time of year! The time when I make a million lists of things I want to make for Christmas. 


But this little craft is easy and looks amazing. I would use it for gift toppers as well. 
Lightly coat one side of a clothespin in glue. I use a tacky glue, but modge podge or school glue will work just as well. Then dust with glitter. 

When that is dry, just lightly coat with modge podge or fixative of some sort and add a little fob. 
It is pretty darned inexpensive and you could make many in an evening. Which makes it great for exchanges and extra stuff to have on hand.   

A new local store is always the best.

I have found a new local place to spend my crafting dimes.

The Artist's Palette Studio  in downtown Eugene is a lovely place. It is clearly owned by crafters and scrappers. They offer classes and crops. They are local. And let me just say that the owner I met was just lovely. 

Nothing is better for me than finding a local store to share my money with. If you are close to Eugene, please stop by (they are behind the Blockbuster on Willamette) and check them out. If you are not in Eugene, check out their website. 

 

My new passion

I adore making banners. I love making them out of paper, out of fabric, out of whatever I can get my hands on. They are surprisingly simple. 

For the banner pictured above, I just cut out the triangles in the prints and matching triangles in white cotton. I wanted it to be a bit heavier so it would hang the way I wanted. Then I stitched them. I made my own binding, with the ribbon. Love the look. Matches my kitchen just perfectly!

In other news, look here for big news in a week or so. Really big. Really awesome!

Also, I am taking over some of the admin responsibility for my husbands blog . 
 That means that his blog will be getting regular updates again for the first time in a year. It also means this blog will be too! Time to get excited, we are ready to make our dreams reality.

I am getting an insane number of page views for a blog that doesn't update.

Things have been tough for me. And I am moving forward as ever. I have a new craft blog... you can find it here Kristen gets crafy. 

I really don't know what else to say. But Thank you for all the support. 

 

 

Feminis alert.

I know that it doesn't seem like I am much of a feminist. But, oh boy howdy, I am. Some have called me a radical feminist and I am okay with that.
It comes from having been surrounded by strong women, watching some of them survive abusive relationships. It comes from being in an abusive friendship or two. It comes from watching on of my best friends destroyed by emotional abuse he simply wasn't strong enough to walk away from. It comes from seeing an acquaintance black and blue because she couldn't give her abuser what he wanted after her surgery.
So today, I start volunteering at with an action group to help strengthen access to health care for women (ALL HEALTH CARE). Today, I wrote letters to politicians asking why they behaved the way they did, against women.
And today I share a blog link with you. I hope you will read it. The author speaks of what happens when women have an emotional response. The shutting down, the quieting of our voices. It is a very good read. It gave me a better understanding of why I felt insignificant when my abusive friend would belittle me in front of others. I was crazy, or overreacting because "it is just a joke".
I know I will be making sure I don't say things like that to others. I know when others tell me I am over-reacting I will respond with "NO I am just reacting." My feelings, my words matter. And so do yours.