Gourds are next on my agenda

Wow, it seems like I've been gone for a long time. I visited our daughter's family in Minnesota, helped her in her classroom with an art project (she teaches 3rd grade - we did plaster masks on our faces) and came home sick. Then it was Christmas with my parents and a couple siblings and off to Mexico for a family vacation, beach-side. How fun to ditch the winter gear, wear sandals and soak up the warm Mazatlan sun!

Now back to teaching, trying to get my online shop up and running and sewing doll clothes for our grand daughter. I finished that project this afternoon(without a pattern or measurements - I wonder how good my memory will be?), and called her to tell her the clothes are on the way to her house. She was so engrossed in telling me something or other about Cinderella and her cousins, that I don't think she ever caught on that I sent a present her way. She is three and cute as can be!

I am excited about creating a new 'batch' of gourd mini-clocks. I ordered the clock inserts tonight and hope to start cleaning the gourds and leveling the bottoms a bit so they stand without going bottoms up! I can't decide whether to stain or paint them, maybe I'll do some of each. I'm going to add some naturals, like long pine needles, twine, copper and leather lacing to some of them. I love gourds; I think they are beautiful little sculptures. I'll post some photos when I get one finished up.

I hope the new year is off to a wonderful start for you and yours!

Contest Winner

Michelle is the winner of my wine charm giveaway. Congratulations, Michelle. I'll send the set of six your way as soon as I have a mailing address (unless we are gone, in which case I'll sent it when I get home again.)

We are spending some time over the holidays in Mazatlan with our daughters, son in law and one of our grand daughters. The other set of grand parents will babysit Haley, one year old. Her parents decided they would have more fun without her! Imagine that!

Merry Christmas!

Oops! Disaster slops all over!

Oh, my gosh! My ice cube ornament completely fell apart! I left it outside overnight - it was minus 18 degrees (F) and brought it in the next day to take it out of the container and marvel at its beauty. The whole thing burst water out every where! Only the very outside shell was frozen and the inner part was cold water. What a mess...funny, though!

Hopefully, my kids today will have better luck as they will get a warning! I sold a felted landscape today so that was fun...sales are fun and certainly day-brighteners. Hoping you are having a bright and sunny day, whatever your weather!

I'm slowly getting more and more etsy listings...check it out. And slowly my shopping cart on my website is coming into being...maybe in another week or so. Santa, if you are listening, it would be an awesome early Christmas present!

Tree Ornaments

Have any of you tried making tree ornaments that birds will appreciate next spring? I'm giving it a whirl with my art kids on Monday. We'll be stringing nuts (my husband was kind enough to drill holes in all of them- he's a peach!), cranberries, raisins, grapes and other edible things.

We'll tie those strings to a dogwood branch and stick the branch in the bottom of a milk carton. We'll tie the other end of the strings to another dogwood branch and set that on the top of the carton. Then we'll add water and little pieces of string and different colors of yarn as we fill up the carton. We'll set the whole business outside (it's been -18 degrees here - yikes!) until it freezes solid.

After it is a solid, pretty ice cube we'll tie some jute to the top branch and hang it in one of our bare trees. Hopefully, it'll be a pretty ornament to glisten through our long winter. The birds will start coming back after it has started melting and they can enjoy our little treats, and the strings will come in handy for their nest building.

I'll take a photo and post it - so you know if it works, or not!

PS What is your pet peeve during the holiday season? Mine is people who don't understand the concept of waiting in line, or else understand it and don't think it should apply to them!

May God bless your Saturday!

It's Holiday CONTEST time!

Good morning!

I'm having my first blog contest! It's an easy one, too...

1. Just become a "follower" of my blog by clicking "follow this blog" in the "followers" section. This enters you in the random drawing. If you are a current follower, thank you, and I'll enter your name, too.

2. Tell your blogosphere friends about this. (Thanks!)

3. Check back on Monday, December 22 to see who wins!

What's the prize you wonder? A set of 'wordy' wine charms, each charm is a different color or pattern or has a different word. There are 6 different charms in the set with random words like hot, LOL, wino, and others! A "WINO" set is photographed here.

Join me in the followers fun! Thanks!

Australia

We went to Australia, the movie, not the country (been there, done that!) over the weekend. We all really enjoyed the movie, but I wasn't expecting it to be about Aboriginal people...I thought it was a love story, without kids! Anyway, when we were there a few years ago, we learned a little bit about the past treatment of Aboriginal peoples by white society and the government. It makes me cringe to think how often people all around the world have been and still are, treated as less than human, by the rest of us. And how dare we consider our civilization and way of life as the be all and end all of civilization? We allow our babies to be killed before they are born - how civilized is that? I just don't get it.

I did get some art done this weekend - had 10 kids here to learn a little bit about Salvador Dali (we were at the SD museum in St. Petersburg two years ago - fantastic!). Each child did an acrylic painting of a dream or dreams that they could remember...it was fun!

Our youngest daughter came home, for maybe a month or so. She's been making art in Fargo and is now busy applying to MFA programs across the country. She makes beautiful pots, check her out at amyuthus.com. We both should have shopping carts on our websites in the next week or so. I'm excited for that.

I was fortunate enough to have an etsy mentor look at my etsy shop. She gave me a lot of good suggestions that I'm in the process of implementing. I hope to get a lot more listed throughout this week!

Happy Advent all - may God bless you this week!

Clock Fix & Photographing Art

Thanks to Cindy for her hint on finishing up polymer clay with Future Floor Finish! I'm busy today redoing all my clocks and wine charms to rid them of their sticky feeling - I'll be glad to have that project finished so I can confidently box them up and ship them off to happy new 'clock watchers'. I can say they make me happy, lined up on my work counter, when I turn off the lights at night and their little buttons glo in the dark!

My hubbie is working diligently to figure out our new camera and how best to use it to photograph art. He has stools and a ladder in the living room, with clamps to hold up the lights, a cloth draped down the front of the fireplace and across a low, Japanese-style table. I'm so thankful he'll mess around with it because I don't have the patience for it!

Two of my pottery students, a fifth grader and a third grader, had success yesterday centering their ball of clay on the pottery wheel - all by themselves. They were thrilled and so was I...it is such a feeling of accomplishment for all of us!

My felted wall hangings, madonna and child, and landscapes will continue showing downtown through the holidays so that was good news. I guess they don't have another artist scheduled yet - happy accident for me! I'm going to lend my curio cabinet to our daughter, Amy, so she can show her pottery there for a month or so (go to amyuthus.com to see some of her work). We are both in the process of getting shopping carts on our websites - hopefully, that work will be done in the next 10 days or so.

Thanksgiving was such a fun time - our daughters (3) were all home, along with our son-in-law and two granddaughters. My youngest sister, Julie, and her family also came, my parents and two other sisters/hubbies. We played Wii (Mario Cart was a fave), cards, 'Katie's game' (a word/drawing game, sort of like written 'telephone') and Chase the Ace - besides eating more than plenty all weekend! Such fun to have company!

I've posted my schedule of Sunday kids' classes for January through May on my website (www.jackiesart.com). I'll add a pottery class or two a bit later...

Happy day to all!