A new month and new challenges!

Ah February morn! cool and rainy - a pot of Russian tea made in my pink and black cat teapot and drunk from my pink Victoria bone china mug - a wonderful day to stay inside and create!

I crafted the above necklace from a large silk flower that I purchased with several others at a thrift store. I took the flower apart and sprayed the petals with black cherry glimmer mist and then sewed them back together making sure to fold them over to the back leaving a place through which to pull the ribbons that I used as the necklace. I added some netting and attached a vintage heart pin on top. I created this necklace for the current Artz de Scrap challenge - to alter an artificial flower. You have until the end of February for this challenge! Have fun and try something outside the box - or should I say, outside the flower!

This layout is for the new Candy Shoppe Designs challenge - something for the single girls and primarily to use an arrow in your layout. So, do you think chocolate is better than a man? Sometimes I wonder......... Be sure to get us your layout or project by the 14th! We have a great prize!

The next two layouts are for the Scrapgal Manufacturer of the Month contest - this month is Little Yellow Bicycle, and both of my layouts are done with LYB Baby Safari girl papers. The above photo is of a house in New Providence, Green Turtle Cay, Abaco, The Bahamas, and the alphas are Thickers and the flowers are Prima.

On this layout of my niece, I also used die cuts from Pink Paislee and Jenni Bowlin, and some stickers from K&Co. The animals came from a set of African papers and embellishments that I purchased at a thrift store. You have until the end of February to post your LYB layouts and projects on Scrapgal! We offer a prize at the end of the month.

I am sewing the borders on to a watercolor-style quilt top that I made about 2 years ago. Hopefully I can finish it by the end of February so that we can use it on our bed - since it is queen-size, it is quite a bit of work! I meant to post the quilt I finished made of my mother's fabrics but that will have to wait until another day - it's so dark it would be hard to get a good photo of it.

 Tomorrow is the traditional day to celebrate Imbolc, Candlemas, or Brigid's Day (in the same way, it's Groundhog day). It is halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and symbolizes the end of winter and the beginning of spring.As always, I will light candles and say a prayer of thankfulness for my many blessings. When I lived in more northern climes, I always felt tired and depressed at this time year, longing for the return of the sun and the warmer weather. This little ceremony always cheered me and made me feel that winter would soon end. In Jacksonville the azaleas begin to bloom and even in Colorado we would begin to see crocuses and grape hyacinths by the end of February - their bright cheery blossoms blooming definitely through the snow. It's time to watch movies and read books that are set in warm sunny places. Hope you have a great day and think happy spring thoughts!

 thanks for reading and have a great week.

ttfn

Chris

Artz de Scraps and the holidays

A little announcement - I have been invited to be on the design team for http://artzdescrap.blogspot.com/ . It's a fun blog devoted to altering items (this month it is a matchbox - see above) and the DT is very international. I enjoy altering things and find myself going a tad overboard sometimes with the embellishments. LOL! I envisoned this matchbox as a box holding the crown headdress for a miniature princess so it had to be super frou frou with lots of pink and gold. Hope you can join us for the challenges.

Christmas was wonderful - it's always a joy to be with Brian. We went to see Sherlock Holmes on Christmas day (fun but it could use some better editing. I did love the visuals though - it is so arty - very steampunk!). Then we came home for lots of hors'doevres including yummy shrimp, and for dinner I did a standing rib roast (absolutely delicious and the leftovers made the most incredible vegetable soup for Sunday). Santa was very good to me this year - a set of Kolinsky sable watercolor brushes, lacy lingerie, a bottle of my favorite Gitana sherry (super dry and absolutely incredible over ice!!!!), some dark chocolate covered cherries, giftcards to Michaels and Starbucks, a fabulous metal Pottery Barn reindeer (from Brian as Sarasota has a PB store), a Lenox porcelain reindeer, and some new potholders for the kitchen which I really needed. And something really unusual - on Christmas eve day we had 3 mail deliveries (I know, unbelieveable!) - in the morning with my Scrapgal DT stuff (yay!), around noon with normal mail, and finally at 4:30pm with my January Sampler for DT work. Amazing! I have to compliment the postal service on great service! Of course, getting all that product was like a present too. I took down the tree etc on Dec 26, thoroughly cleaned the house, and put out white accent pieces. I always find the house seems bigger and more open when I take the holiday stuff down - sort of zen-like - less is more.

Hope you had a super holiday and have a wonderful new year. I am swamped with DT stuff right now (a fun swamped!) and work - but it's all good! It's cold here this morning - 39 degrees - that is COLD for south Florida! It's supposed to warm up the next couple of days and then be quite cold next week but I plan to make lots of soups and bread, and snuggle up on the couch under a little quilt and read. "I love it when a plan comes together" - anyone know where that quote comes from? Hint - it is from an 80s tv show that Brian used to love.

Thanks for reading and ttfn.