Paper Art

Here is something fun that I have been doing with my son. He has been super interested in origami lately so I thought this would spark his interest too. I picked up this fun book on kirigami which is the art of folding paper into animals. I cant get over how cute these little things are! My favorite so far is the bunny. I think this is just amazing that someone came up with all these designs! Talk about patience.

Afternoon at LaBussola

I am very tired tonight, I spent the day downtown at the boutique making necklaces and meeting many wonderful people. The compliments and the friendships I made today are something that I will treasure. I had a really great time. I will be at the boutique next Friday as well. If you are in town doing some shopping make sure to stop by and say hello. There are many new pieces being added to the store daily by many local artists. Funny that I am so tired from doing what I do everyday, the only difference is the interaction with customers, which was very cool. Tomorrow I will be working on another custom choker and cleaning up my work area. I have a custom bag that I am working on for last months handbag giveaway winner and hope to make some progress on that as well. I have soooo many things I want to work on. There never seems like enough hours in the day. Early to bed tonight for sure;)

What a Halloween!

I had a very busy and interesting Halloween! Had a great time out with the kids and my husband. After returning home with the kids I rushed my daughter off to the ER at midnight with severe stomach pains and vomiting. Thought maybe it was food poisoning but after hrs the pain was much worse. Sat for over 7 hours with her (till 7am) at her bedside in the hosp. and returned home to get some much needed sleep. After many tests we found that she had a kidney stone and an ovarian cyst and there was nothing they could do. I guess it is something that will just pass on its own and need some follow up dr. visits. I have been playing super mom since, and she is now feeling much better. What a weekend!
There is something very special about being a mom and caring for your children when they are ill. As they get older I cherish the times that I can give them my full attention and pamper them. Someday very soon they will be grown and will move on to make families of their own so I do treasure these days. Speaking of "treasure"......

I returned to many e-mails and found that one of my small card cases is featured in a beautiful treasury that was created by Knme.
This is a very nice choice of color combination that she put together.
Thanks Knme!

Click on the photograph for a larger view

I will be working on another handbag this afternoon when I get some free time. Update coming soon.

A Day at the Ranch

Saturday morning we were visiting relatives and my daughter hurried out the front door as one of the ranch cats had a hummingbird in its mouth. The bird just hit the freshly cleaned windows and fell to the ground. The cat was thinking, breakfast-or toy. The cat dropped the bird and ran away. We watched as the bird lay there breathing heavy and kept our distance admiring how beautiful he was and how sad that he might be injured, guarding him, keeping the cats away. After about 20 minutes he started to move and was fully alert. He sat there - all of us watching, my daughter snapping photos and about 5 more minutes he flew away. Its reminds me a little of people - if you have ever had the wind knocked out of you or passed out briefly; we all come back to eventually. That was a really neat experience. We all feel like we had a part in saving him. ( Click on the photo to enlarge- he is so colorful!)

Later that evening as we were washing dishes after dinner out the windows was this amazing sight. First we saw about 4 deer out the back window and then on the front lawn we saw about 10 female deer followed by about 6 bucks... Wow! Where else can you witness something so amazing! Not many people get to witness this scene from there own home. My in laws have a very unique place out in the middle of a small town on property that has not been developed on. I am amazed at how much wildlife is around them.The kids love it. In the early morning I heard coyotes yipping for about an hour and then it was followed by a bunch of geese. Last year I saw a mountain lion which jumped a fence that was about 12 feet high and ran away but he hasn't been spotted since.
I posted all the pictures of the deer on the lawn on my flickr album if you are interested in seeing the rest of them. My Album

Crochet Messenger Bag

Yesterday was a day spent shopping, planning and preparing a nice birthday dinner for my daughter as well as a special cake, flowers from the garden and decorations. I was not able to get any work done but did get to share a special evening with family and celebrating with her. Late last night, I did some crochet on some granny squares I started for a messenger bag that I began making last winter. I am not sure if I will be selling the bag or keeping it for myself. I think I prefer to sew my bags out of fabric vs crocheting them. It is really time consuming to crochet and I don't do well to have to sit in one place for too long. I have been really wanting to learn to follow crochet patterns and thought this would be a good starter project for me.

Here is a photo of some progress pictures of the squares I am working on and a page from the pattern I am following in a book. I am using similar colors, only I decided to add black.
left to right; the squares I have been working on, close up of a single granny square, photograph of the pattern from the book.
If you are interested in this pattern, I found it in "Getting Started Crochet" by Judith L. Swartz. I was able to find this one at my local library but also bought one for my mother in law on Amazon.com for really cheap. There are a lot of really fun patterns in this book and they look great for beginners.

Almost There

Its been too long since I have worked on this. My goal is to get this finished this week sometime. This is my progress so far. I own the other black bag like this one and have been loving it! I have had so many compliments while carrying it around that I imagine that it will go to a home fairly quickly once it is listed, or I am hoping that it does:) Sales are slow right now, so I could use a little excitement.

Fabric Photo Album

I am just about finished with my moms birthday gift. I made this fabric album with about 8 of my favorite images that I took into photoshop and then printed them onto fabric transfer paper. Each page has its own special fabric and the outside is decorated with beads with a window cutout for the front. This is a photo of the first page and you can see that I used grommets and secured the pages with a ribbon.

I think it would be fun to custom make these for special events like weddings etc. I hope that she likes it. She doesn't read my blog regular so I am glad that I am able to share it here without ruining the surprise.

Fabric Album

Wow! I have 2 days to finish this and get it into the mail for my moms bday. I decided to make a small album of old photos of her as a little girl from fabric. I chose around 8 photos to work with and transfered them to fabric. This is what I have done so far. I think she will like it:)

Busy Busy!!

I am planning on doing what I can with the black flower bag today, but my schedule has been so full the last few days that I haven't had much time to work on anything for my shop. I am just about to make the liner and should be able to get it done today, hopefully.

I have a quilt meeting tonight and would like to bring my pet portrait to share and it is no where near done:0, but it is a start. I am working on the bleaching of the fabric now for the dog and will be applying that today.

Another project: I was inspired by my mother in law to try a traditional quilt for the fall, this will be my first. We are doing the same quilt and should be fun to see what each of us comes up with and share them when they are done. I picked out some fabrics yesterday and will be working on it in my spare time. Here is a a picture of the mini quilt I will be doing in this magazine.

I also started weight training again and will be adding that into my schedule as well. Yesterday was "Day One". It's lots of work, but I am excited about getting back into shape again and feeling good. It's been so long that I forgot how much I love it!!

Is it Friday Already?

Wow! Its seems like I have been in another world that last few days. It went by so fast. Now that my studio space is clean and organized, it's time to work on some new projects. Today I am planning on completing the black leather flower accented bag; I finished the flowers a while ago but never completed the bag. Its time to get it done. I started on my quilting group challenge project last night and I chose my "in laws" cute little dog for the focal point in this one.(see photo) and yesterday I gathered lots of tomatoes and some squash from the garden and topped all my plants and new blossoms so that the energy is directed to the fruit that has already been producing. It will be getting cold soon and green tomatoes aren't very appealing to me. Even with the late season we had this year I am still happy with what the garden has produced so far, but I will still be making changes to the garden for next year. I am always learning something new. I just don't have as much time for gardening as I use to.

The balloon Races are here! I will be getting up at 4am tomorrow and leaving for the field to watch them all take off with the kids. That means I should get to bed earlier, ouch I have been staying up till 1am the last 2 nights cleaning and organizing. I received some of my brochures last night so I was folding some of those last night and packaged them up for shipping off to family today. I am ready for a nap right now:)

Organizing My Work Space

I am not sure what got into me yesterday, but I feel that this was a much needed project. I have been struggling for a long time with the tiny space that I have to work in and I finally decided to do something about it and get organized to make better use of the space I have. Of course that also means making another table and finding room for it. Yesterday I made a trip to the hardware store and purchased some $1 scrap wood and added it on top of some wooden shipping crates that I found and painted it all last night. The crates are great because I can also store rubbermaid bins full of leather under them as well. Now comes the fun part, finding new homes for everything. So thats what I am up to this week so far. Its good because I will have a clean work space and a clear mind to work and I'll be organized. I am excited to have double the space to work with. It is going to make a huge difference.

Nice Weekend

The weekend went by quickly, but was it was so nice to take a day off and spend some time with family and visit some relatives I haven't seen in awhile. This praying Mantis was fun to take pictures of. They are so animated and not something I see very often. I would love to have these guys in my garden. I tried for a long time to get some pictures of the hummingbirds zipping around but they weren't very photogenic. We also had the chance to see some deer as we left on the driveway out. Time to get back to work. I am anxious to get this bag finished so I can get busy on other merchandise for my shop. I am planning on finishing up today so that when tomorrow hits, I am back into the normal flow of things. The weather seems to have cooled way down. It really feels like fall is here!! It's a nice change.

Above the City

It is a beautiful morning. I took a hike up on Peavine Mtn. I love it out here. Its so quiet and there is no development up here yet. You can see downtown Reno and also Mt. Rose from here. You find lots junk up here like the occasional beer bottles, broken tvs, shot gun shells etc. but it still is so beautiful! Every once in a while I see the mountain biker go by, but there is really no one around. There is so much development happening everywhere that is is nice to be able to get away only a mile away from your home. It is so desert up here.It is nice to get away even for an hour to clear the mind and get ready for the busy day.

New Mini Tri-Fold Brochure

Getting ready to go on a hike and thought I'd share this brochure that I have been working on this week. I finally have things the way I want them minus a few corrections but this is the general idea. This is just a mock-up that I made with copy paper, glued back to back, but the final will be professionally printed on a good paper stock. It measures 4x4 folded but when opened up it is 4x16. This will be going out to all my customers that order from me and any shops that carry my product. I am very excited about it. I will be starting a new bag this afternoon and I am going over ideas of color. I think I am going to attempt another bag like yesterdays bag only because I like it so much, but only I am going to choose some different colors. Maybe some reds.

New Mini Brochure in the works

I have been designing and working on a tri-fold mini brochure for my business this afternoon. Everything was going smooth until I had to search for some pictures and my computer is having some issues so that slowed things down. I am excited about being able to have a handout to give to my customers and be able to present myself more professionally. I will post it here when I am finished.

Progress Pics Coming soon

I have been without my camera for 2 days. The battery has been expanding and progressively getting worse to the point that I could not remove it. So, I went to Gordan's photo to get a new battery today. Now its brand new and currently charging. Also did some back to school shopping and picked up some flowers for my planter boxes (Red and Pink Nicotania), hit a garage sale down the street and did some cleaning up around the house.

I started working on an interesting bag last night. Its black with a silver and gold square pattern and has lots of metal silver hardware. Cant wait to share it.
Photos coming soon... as soon as my battery is ready.

Animated Gif

I made my first animated gif last night. I have been wanting to learn how to do it forever but could never figure it out. It finally made sense and it was so easy. There are lots of tutorials online and tips to get you going if you ever want to learn. I just took the pre-existing handbag giveaway graphic I made and added a simple layer with just text and used it for my 1st frame.

Reno Balloon Race Poster

Here is this years Balloon Race poster that my husband created. They are currently available for sale at Eagle Valley Frames in Reno and also during the Races and afterwards in their new gallery on Virginia Street, framed or unframed. Again I have to say that this is our donation and we don't make a penny from it:) We just love the races so much that it just seems like the right thing to do.

Lots of photo merging in this one and some different perspective from down on the ground looking up. The child sitting in the grass to the left is my little one:) Love the cow! Its one of my favorite balloons!

Here is a link to the site if you want to check it out. http://www.renoballoon.com/
Looks like this year they will be holding the first pajama party. Someone mentioned the guiness book of work records for the largest group of people together in pajamas???Dont actually know if that is true or not. There will be a contest. How funny! It will make for some great photos, no doubt.

Lots of Work!

I have been busy today with the final touches of my display. I found this small iron basket which is the perfect size for the table, not too big and filled it with all my business cards and artist bio handouts. I have about 60 keychains made so far, all of them are made from leather scraps and upholstery with small flowers and hearts and decorated with rivets and eyelets. I think I am just about finished. All I need to do now is finish some hand sewing on one of the bags and then mail them off by tomorrow morning. And just when I thought was finished, I am reminded of another event that I need to get ready for. Wow, I am going to need a break after all of this:) I am excited about it though, its good exposure for me and they are both very good causes. The event I am participating in next month is for a "not so silent " auction. The school is called "A Childs Voice" What they do is help children who are profoundly deaf and hearing-impaired optimize their listening, speech, language, academic skills and their self-confidence so that they can be successful in a mainstream educational setting and society in general and this is an annual event and this year they just happen to be auctioning off handbags, so its perfect for me. It feels good to be helping out where I can, especially for children - and get some nice exposure:)

Rafting on the Truckee River

Had a very exciting day on the river today. Started at about 10am. We didn't last 2 minutes in our boat before we got fully soaked. As you can see from the pictures, water was flying everywhere. We had water guns getting us from all directions and the water was cold. The kids had a blast! My favorite part was the scenery, so beautiful! And the couple with the dog in its own boat was too cute. They ended up with one boat at the end but I am sure they had fun while it lasted. At the end of the rapids where we got off to have lunch our boat filled to the top with water and I seriously thought we were going under. It was a close one.

Back at home just in time to get busy on the bag I was working on yesterday. Its been awhile since I have listed anything in my shop. Its time!