Wooden purses.

When I go to the craft store I always hit the clearance isle to see what treasures I can find. I found some nice wooden purse blanks a year or so ago at a good price so I bought several.



I use to love to do decoupage and collage projects when I was younger and making decorative boxes was always one of my favorite subjects. These purses are pretty much the same idea. So I spent this weekend painting decoupaging a couple of the blanks.

I really like the "Butterflies in the night sky" themed one best.

The paint finish is my favorite part, the colors are a pretty combination of pearl,teal,turquoise and purple. I used several painting techniques to give the painted surface lots of great texture.

To the surface I decoupaged really pretty water colored butterflies, moths and flowers along with 2 pretty B monograms. There is just the slightest touch of fairy dust on the cut outs to catch the light for a gentle sparkle.


The other purse is "I will always be a dreamer" themed purse. I love hot air balloons and I think the are a good way to symbolize my dreams.

The front side has the sun and it is for day dreams. The back has stars and the moon and it is about night dreams. I blinged it all up with 64 crystals.

These were fun projects that I enjoyed doing. Now what next? I think maybe some cabochons for some broaches I got the other day or maybe some candles; maybe both.

What's up?

So I've been neglecting my blog the last couple of weeks.
Why you may ask?

Well I have been busy with taking care of some unexpected health problems and getting ready for tomorrow's craft show.

I am feeling better and with a few life style changes and some time I will be all good. Turning 50 sucks, lol.

Tomorrow I am doing one of my favorite craft shows it is......
The Wabash Valley Herb Festival
It's a great festival on the banks of the Wabash river in Terre Haute, Indiana. It is filled with vendors selling herbs and flowers and garden related items and hand crafts. It's a jurried show and I like that because there are no buy and sell vendors there. It's a very popular annual event that people look forward to all year.
It has been raining here so much latley I was conserned that it would be raining but it looks like it's going to be a cool clear day....awesome.

Well it's getting late and I have to get up at 4:30 am to go set up, I will say good night!

Yummy These Smell So Good.

Last week end I had a mini soap making marathon. I made 8 beautiful batches of lovely smelling Olive oil and goats milk soap. Today I cut them all and put them on their racks to cure. I have to say the smell coming from the drying room is awesome.

Soap making is a addicting and useful craft. However it is not for the person who requires immediate gratification. Before this soap is ready to use it needs to cure "dry" for another 3 or so weeks. Sometimes I get lucky and they are ready a little sooner and I get to indulge a little early.

I will probably start listing them in my ArtFire and Etsy shop Mid May. These batches are on the small size so it is sometimes a good idea to reserve a few bars before my regulars scoop them all up. I posted a couple of photos so you can see how pretty they are, I really like the rustic look......

olive oil
________
Downy Fresh
Blushing Pink Hyacinth
Tuscan lace
Green Irish Tweed

Goats Milk
__________
Sage & Lemongrass
Black Vetyver Cafe` with cinnomon coffe scrub
Exotic Amazon Teakwood
Dusky Goddess

My Hubby will be out of town for the next three days so I will be enjoying many hours of guild free craft time. I will be teaching myself some new beadweaving stitches and also making some new beads and cabochons. I need to pour some new candles too and make a few pieces of jewelry. I have a craft show coming up on the 9th. We will be on vacation the week before so prep time is short. Housework will be low on my to do list for the next couple of days.

A wonderful craft show

Every spring my first Show of the season is The Brockton Red Barn Market. I have done it the last 3 years and every year it gets better. This year was very good Jose and I had a good time and made a good profit.

Brockton is a very small town in Rural Illinois so small if you blink you will miss it. There are no stop lights and the only business are a small cafe,bar and archery shop. Also there is a huge red barn that they use for horse shows and things like that. It's very cool and quaint. They also have antique sales there and every April they have the Big Red Barn Antique and Craft Show. This town is 25 miles from the nearest town so you would think there wouldn't be any business but that is not the case; at times there were so many customers I couldn't see across to the other booths.

I wish I had photos but the light wasn't good enough maybe next year...

Super Bowl Sunday

How do you spend this day? Is your family sporty?

My Son and Husband are sports guys so Super Bowl Sunday is an fun day for them. My Son and his wife and the babies will be coming over tonight for a little Super Bowl party .

Today I am going to do a little house work and a lot of cooking to get ready for tonight. My Hubby Jose has a weird menu made up filled with junk food and beer( ah well it's once a year). So I better get my bootie in gear. I need to start the chocolate and Carmel cupcakes for little Brenden. He's 2 1/2 and he calls them "baby birthday cakes"

I am having a Super Bowl Sale in my http://GingerbellsGifts.etsy.com shop
FREE SHIPPING!!! till midnight
add Super Bowl in the notes to seller and I will refund all shipping costs...

I'm having a Black Friday- Cyber Monday sale!!

I was thinking that I will be avoiding the Mall this Holiday season and I imagine I won't be the only one. I am busy all week with the Grandkiddos and my shops and craft shows. I just don't have the energy to deal with the crowds. So I will be doing the majority of my shopping on line. I have been seeing some great sales out there so I thought I would offer a big sale in my shops too.

SOOO here are my sales.....

Http://GingerbellsGifts.Etsy.com
FREE SHIPPING on any order
I think that's a pretty good deal if I do say so myself

Http://GingerbellsBathShop.etsy.com
Buy 3 get 1 FREE
FREE SHIPPING on any order totaling $50 or more
That's a great deal because I have a lot of gift sets at great prices so you could do a lot of your gift shopping in one place and save on shipping.

These sales start tonight 11/27 at midnight and run till midnight Monday 12/1

So have fun shopping and I hope you take advantage of my sales, I know I will be shopping cyber space looking for some great bargains.

A fun family day!

My Grandson Brenden is in love with trains. He has so many Thomas the Train things and they are some of his favorite things to play with. So we surprised his with a train trip.

My Daughter in law is ready to have our new Granddaughter any day so this was our last chance to give him a day that was all about him before his baby sister gets here.

We found a great railroad museum in French Lick Indiana which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from where we live. They have a bunch of old trains and they have a 20 mile trip on one of the old trains. Brenden was so excited to see all the real trains and was really happy when we told him we were going to ride it. He was having such a good time enjoying the ride he didn't even notice it was 2 hours long. He is only 2 years old and I can't believe how good he was. He was content to set in a seat with one of us and look out the window. We had a great day together.

Making Christmas ornaments when it's 90 degrees outside..

It can be hard to get in the mood for making Holiday items when it hot and humid outside; unless you live in Australia or any other country where it's summer during the holidays. So I have been cranking up the A.C. and watching Christmas movies while I work it's been fun.

These photos are some of the pieces I made Friday. They are boxes that are great for giving a special gift in and also make a great decoration. I made some last year that sold like crazy so I thought I would make some more this year; each one is different. I used glitter clay for the embellishment but unfortunately it doesn't photograph well.

Yesterday I worked on a new ornament design I am really happy with I am waiting for the finish to dry so I can take some photos of it. I am sure I will be making more today and I will post them when I am done.

I really enjoy making Christmas themed things. I buy ornaments all year around. When we go on vacations we always try to find a new ornament to remind us of our trip. Other then the ornaments we buy on vacation all of the others on my tree are hand made.

Well it's time to pop the White Christmas DVD in and get back to making some more holiday bling.

I've been busy

I haven't posted in a while because I have had a lot of things going on and I have been playing catch up.

This week end I officially opened another new web shop my URL is http://GingerbellsBathShop.Dawanda.com . Dawanda is a European based web mall much like Etsy in that it is for hand crafts. It has some nice features that Etsy doesn't that I like. For instance there is a section to make comments on individual items . I have often seen things on Etsy that I have wanted to tell the maker how much I liked it and why. I like that much better then the heart system on Etsy. I'll load a couple of items every day and see how it goes.

I have been back to work at my clay table this week end. I have been making a bead embroidered and polymer clay pendant that has been kicking my ass. I have been designing it as I go, at this point I don't know if I love it or hate it.... Tomorrow I will start on the 3 strand necklace I am making for it. With all the hours I have been putting into it I hope it comes out ok.

I haven't been able to work as much as I would like because of some problems with my back; some days are good and some are bad. I am learning to do what I can when I can. From what the Dr.s are saying is that I am going to need some rods put into my back to support my spine because it is deteriorating. Whoopee sounds like fun huh.

Well I am going to do what I can to help with the pain with out drugs. Step one is I have went back to Weight Watchers to see if I can get some of the lard off my butt and that will help. Also I am trying to find some way to strengthen the muscles in my back that support my spine. Maybe if I can make them stronger that will help relieve some of the pain. Who knows if these methods will work but I would like to try to do as much as I can with out surgery or to much drugs. We'll see what happens.

The new photos are 3 new soap scents...blushing jasmine-blue sugar-rice flower and shea.
Next are some cute little polymer clay bobby pins.
Last is a new bracelet.

Well it's almost time for Big Brother ....so I gotta go.

Craft show

Well yesterday's craft show went really well the weather couldn't have been better for an out side show; it was sunny and in the low 70's with a very slight breeze. I was able to keep all the sides up on my tent and enjoy the beautiful day and all of the people.

Attendance was awesome and sales were very good.

After the show we packed up and went to my Son and Daughter in laws house for dinner. My Son cooked me a very nice Mother's Day dinner and my Grandson Brenden gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. It was so sweet he is almost 2 and he brought the flowers to me and the bouquet was almost as big as him. He gave them to me and said "here Mamaw" I could have cried he was so sweet. We had a very nice evening together that topped off a lovely day.

Life is good..........

Wabash Valley Herb Faire 2008

This is a fun little festival that happens in our town every Mothers Day. It is a Herb and art themed festival on the Wabash River.

This will be the second time I have done this festival. The first time I sold very well and picked up a boutique spot for about a year that was profitable. I had to skip it last year because my tent top needed fixed.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the weather stays nice and I can keep my tent sides up and enjoy the crowd.

I have one more festival scheduled for the first weekend in June them I am done with festivals until the fall.

I have been having fun making bath soaks today. I made a nice peppermint/ chamomile salt foot soak that is great for tired feet. I also made a English rose milk and oatmeal soak. It is so nice for softening your skin and smells good too. I really enjoy making and using them. I think I am going to go use one of the foot soaks right now for my tired toes.

Chicago Bead Show

Well I had a great time at the bead show this past week end. I saw so many beautiful beads it was hard to choose. I decided to concentrate on gemstones because they seemed to be the best value at this show.

I am posting some photos of the ones I like best of the gem stones I bought. I love the tear dropped shaped ones. I made a wire wrapped bracelet and a pair of earrings from some of the earth toned ones I will post the photos of the set I made tomorrow.

I was good about not spending to much at the show and for the most part I was good but I did make one splurge. I bought a pair of hand made dolphin shaped beads they are beautiful. They are made in blue tones with dicroic glass accents. They were really expensive but I had to have them. I think they will make a beautiful pair of earrings. I will post them with the jewelry I made today.

This weekend

This week end is our wedding anniversary and our nephew Leonardo's birthday so we are taking a trip to Chicago. It will be a busy weekend.

We are going to drive up Friday late afternoon. We will be going to a coin show Saturday morning then in the afternoon we are going to a big family party at Jose's sister Martha's house. The Gonzalez family parties are always fun ; lots of laughing and food and we all play games together. The youngest person there will be my Grandson who is 20 months and the oldest will be my Father in law who just turned 86.

On Sunday we are going to a bead show at the Highland Park Art Center[yippee I am stoked]. Then we are going to take a drive around the lake to the in laws and spend the night visiting with them. On Monday morning we will be doing a little shopping at the Mexican stores in Jose's old neighborhood. We can't find a lot of the things he likes in poduck where we live so we always stock up when we come to the city. After shopping we will begin the 4 hour drive home with a lot of good memories and some fresh tamales...

We pay our house sitter with tamales :o) .....