sad and neglected- a catching up post

yes, my poor blog, you are sad and neglected... but no more! Wow, it's been ages, hasn't it?? The holidays have come and gone, and my cold took at least 5 weeks to finally leave, too. Tom and I both had some time off over Christmas; vacation and work holidays meant that both of us had vacation from Christmas till after New Year's. We didn't do too much... visited some friends on Christmas Day, spend the day with our friend Dennis enjoying dinner and a movie (we saw The Golden Compass), and took a day trip to Bisbee, Arizona, a copper mining town about 3 1/2 hours south of Phoenix. (we toured a copper mine, which was really neat- I do have some pictures of that to post, eventually!)

The holidays were difficult for me this year, truthfully... It started with having to put Cleo to sleep, stress from lots of overtime at work, feeling under the weather from that terrible cold, and not being able to go back to the Midwest for the holidays... but, the new kittens have started to feel more like part of the family, the overtime is done with for now, the cold is (mostly) gone, and we did talk to everyone on Christmas- so, I'm feeling a little better, finally.

This photo is a Flickr mosaic- some of my favorite photos, put together into one place. I have a tendency to Favorite really cool artwork, cute kitties and dogs (mostly Shelties- imagine that!), and striking landscape photos. You can see the original here- underneath the Flickr photo are links to the original pics, if you want to check any of them out further. This year I didn't even make our Christmas cards; I just didn't feel up to it- not much crafting got done during my vacation either, oddly enough. But, I had to do a major cleanup of my craft room because our friend Dennis came to see the house, so I finally found the desk again! I've been making some new domino keychains; they're a lot of fun to make, and I've actually sold a few of them in my Etsy shop lately. So, these two pictures are two of my newest designs... the Journey keychain above was made with a bit of a vintage atlas- the map is of Bull Shoals Basin, on the Arkansas/Kentucky border. The word was stamped onto a separate piece of paper. The ink ran a bit when I sprayed it with sealer, which actually contributes to a rather vintage/aged feel, I think. I posted a pic of it on my Flickr page, and it's actually garnered quite a few views. (I finally posted it for sale in my shop- hopefully someone there will like it just as much!) This keychain turned out amazingly cute (if I do say so, myself!), and is already sold. I called it Birdie Love Song... It was actually an afterthought, made with a scrap of vintage music paper leftover from something else... the paper was colored with a light blue wash of acrylic paint. I liked the placement of the music and words on the domino, but didn't know what I would do with it till I thought of a bird, and birdsong. The birdie was stamped onto cardstock, colored with pencils; then I cut it out (!) and glued it to the domino, along with the tiny cardstock heart in the corner. I like this birdie, so I think he's going to have some more domino adventures soon! When he does, I will be sure to post them- I am going to try and keep the cobwebs and dust off my blog this year!