Around Here: Springtime Edition

What possibly could have kept me away from the blog for almost a month?

I promise I've kept busy, stayed creative, and had fun! 

For the first time ever, and with my mom's help, I've planted a little garden just outside our family room sliding doors.  It's hard to get a sense of it from the photo, but when I sit out under the patio table umbrella with my coffee in the morning, it feels a bit like a resort.  (I'm easily pleased!)

As for so many of you, the school year is drawing to a close for us.  My younger daughter "graduated" from preschool (complete with paper graduation cap!), and my older daughter has just one more week of kindergarten.  They are excited by all the possibilities of being in the same school together next year!

Feeling ambivalent about the end of the school year

Sunday school has drawn to a close, as well.  In addition to planning my final lesson, which has the fourth graders making flowing windsocks to remind them on Pentecost of the power of the Holy Spirit, I prepared sweet little gifties for my girls' teachers.  I used a Pinterest inspiration to create the packaging for some sweet springtime Skittles.

In an exciting development, I've created two series of Summer Craft Camp workshops, one for 1 to 3 year olds, and one for 4 to 7 year olds.  I advertised to my local MOMS group, as well as my women's circle at church, and have a little group coming together for each of the workshops.  All of our activities are being kid-tested and approved by my own two in-house crafting experts, and they are really helping me work out the kinks before we "go live."  I will share news of the workshops as they happen; the first two are at the end of this week!

A serious artist at work

Squoosh Art?  Rorschach Test Art?  Symmetrical Prints?  Call it whatever you like; it's fun!

I wrote my first guest blog post for a local "mommy blog" called Delaware County Moms.  I had the opportunity to attend the grand opening of a re-sale shop called Clothes Mentor, and write a review of our local store.  Now I'm pretty devoted to the idea of checking there first before I shop full-price at the mall!  Discovering that store came at a great time for me, as I'm really working on adopting a frugal lifestyle this year. 

Would you like a pair of shoes with that??

I am going to be working in the Vacation Bible School craft room at my church again this year, so our Craft Room Team held our first planning meeting.  We have some exciting ideas for the kids as they learn about Moses and the Israelites coming out of Egypt into the Promised Land.  Remember those matchbox mezuzahs from last year, and the foam sandal necklaces? To rival those, we'll be using cereal boxes and duct tape to make their own sandals; how cool is that?!

My first cereal box and duct tape prototype for VBS!

And finally, I've been positively delighted to watch the developments in a little birds' nest just beside my front door.  I saw the nest empty, then filled with four perfect blue robin's eggs, and then positively overcrowded with all the brothers and sisters vying for the worms their mommy has been faithfully bringing home for them. 

First came the beautiful blue eggs...



Then the silently squalling baby birds came on the scene!

Sadly, the nest sits about six inches from my mailbox, so the mommy robin has been quite disturbed by postal workers, as well as door and window openings throughout the day.  I almost think the babies have gotten used to my face peering down into their nest, and the flash of my camera catching their daily growth and development.  Very, very soon they will be flying away on their own, and I have to admit that I hope at least one of them will hang around and make their home in our yard for the long term!

We are doing some traveling in a couple of weeks, so my blogging consistency probably will not return until mid-July, but I promise I am not deserting the blogging world for good!

Enjoy these final weeks of springtime!

My Favorite Rejects

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Back in the year 2000, I bought my first copy of Somerset Studio magazine—the July/August “Tropical Paradise” issue. Before seeing that magazine, I had cut a few gift tags out of construction paper and made a few pretty Christmas cards with postage stamps using an idea from Better Homes and Gardens. But I had never imagined paper crafts as beautiful as what I saw in Somerset Studio. I became an avid reader, a subscriber, and even a contributor.

My very first submissions to Somerset Studio were accepted—two entries into the March/April 2003 Call to Creativity to make Boxes of Remembrance using Janet Hofacker’s techniques for making boxes and shrines. I was so proud and excited to see my work in a professional publication. I was hooked!

I submitted various pieces over the years; some were published, some were not. Somewhere around 2006 or 2007, though, month after month, effort after effort, resulted in rejection, and I got burned out on trying. I had found myself making things only to relate to a magazine theme rather than anything based on my own interests and ideas, and all that rejection took a toll on my creative self-esteem.

I thought I would use today’s post to share with you some of my “favorite rejects.” While there is plenty of my work that I can look at now and say, “Really? You sent that in for consideration?”, there are a few pieces that I really liked and wished I could share with a broader audience. Now is my chance!

This first photo shows a corner of the living room bookcase where I display some of the things I've made. The first "favorite reject" I will point out is Christmas piece in the back, with the decorated tags. It was inspired by Jennifer Hardy Williams' Canvas Prayer Board in Sharon Soneff's Faith Books and Spiritual Journaling.

Here are a few close ups of the tags:

My next "favorite reject" is a bird house. Maybe bird houses got a little overdone; I don't know. I still love them!

Here is the back side of the same piece:

Finally, for a Holiday Projects theme, I made a series of artist trading cards (ATCs), each one representing the theme of a Somerset Studio issue from the previous two years. I really enjoyed this project because it made me look back through two years of issues, which is always fun to do. I called it "An ATC Retrospective", and decorated a box from a regular set of playing cards for the ATCs to fit into. Here are the cards:

And a close-up:

So that's a little tour of some of my "favorite rejects." I get to take advantage of the self-publishing aspect of blogging, and show you a little bit of my art and craft style in the process!