random photos from the past week or so

fun mail earlier this week from my sister Jackie... Our Lady of Guadalupe dishtowel, embroidered on a flour sack towel by my Mom... cool embroidery pattern by Sublime Stitching!

The planet Venus, taken by Tom with our regular digital camera. Taken earlier today thru the telescope in our backyard. Venus has been extraordinarily bright the last few weeks in the early evening and into the night, but it's actually so bright that it can be seen during the day, too... pretty cool, considering Venus is actually 25 million miles away when it's closest to Earth!!

Bisbee's newest trick, "Shake." It's hard to believe she's going to be a year old next month!!

Sedona and Bisbee, actually sharing the chair for a few moments. This is a rare occurrence, since usually when they get close to each other, they end up wrestling and chasing each other thru the house.

good mail!

I've gotten some pretty fun mail lately; here are a few pictures of the latest. The first two are photos of my very own felted sweater kitty, purchased from a fellow Etsy seller, Fluffy Flowers. The shopowner, Felicia, also has a blog; somehow we ended up reading each other's blogs, and commenting on each other's posts occasionally. From that, I found her Etsy store where I fell in love with her kitties, tree sprites, and bunnies. She writes the cutest stories about all of them, too! She made my kitty (named Phoebe... ) after I sent her a photo of my very own Phoebe. Phoebe the sweater kitty is now perched on the bookshelves in my craft room. Perhaps a sweater bunny is in my future, too... check Dixie the sweater bunny out here! (she's a bit afraid of flying, it says, but I might convince her to travel to Arizona someday... lol!)

This was an envelope that came in the mail today... the first envelope from my "recycled inchie" swap partners. (I signed up for an internet swap, and one of my swap partners ended up living in Phoenix- how funny is that?!?) This batch of inchies is from Jessica, a high schooler; she recycled everything for this swap except the envelope and the stamp... they look like candy wrappers, maybe?? I love the colors, and the resourcefulness of her recycling!

In other news, Tom is on the road in the Midwest all week (he will be in Michigan, the Chicago suburbs, St. Louis, and the Kansas City suburbs- it'll be a long week for him!) so I will have the table covered with crafting supplies by tomorrow night... LOL! I took a journaling class at a local stamp store on Sunday with Kelly Kilmer (check her blog out for some great journal pages!)... I made two mini books (will post pics tomorrow) during the class, and want to keep working on them while I still have the inspiration going. Right now it is bedtime for me, as I am working 10-hour days at work right now, and 3:15 am tomorrow will come awfully early!!

great mail week!

I recently joined swap-bot, which is a great internet site for hosting and organizing all sorts of swaps, including craft supplies, handcrafted items, postcards, letters and lists, and ATCs, which are my main thing right now. (Check out swap-bot here.) This week was a great mail week; I got envelopes from 5 people, 2 different swaps that I'm in. (Much better than just the usual junk mail and bills!)

These are ATCs from a swap titled "Flower Power Postage Stamps" where you use the postage stamp as inspiration for the card. Jeannie sent me some extras, too: the cutest metal dragonfly brads, and some shiny red Christmas paper (which didn't focus too good, so there's no pic of it here) which will definitely be put to good use!

These are only part of what Dawny sent me for a painted ATC background swap. She even painted her envelope! (you can see the rest, including the envelope, here) The red and green ones are perfect for another swap I'm in for Christmas ATCs. The top right one is painted felt, the bottom right one is collaged, and the red and green ones were made using crackle paint, I think.

Backgrounds from Kimberly.. the top 2 went right into my album; they're too pretty to use as backgrounds! The other three were made (somehow) using sandpaper, crayons, hairspray, and rubber stamping, from what she says. I need to find out exactly how she did it, cause they're really cool! I'm not sure I want to cover those up, either...

Flower power postage stamp ATCs from Kasia. The stamps are from Poland, and she watercolored scenes onto the cards that continued the scene in the stamp. The one on the left is a view thru a hotel window, with a flowerbox on the balcony.

She also sent me an envelope full of these great extras, which I can't wait to use!

Backgrounds from Susi from the ATC background swap; the gold and white ones will also be great for Christmas ATCs- they're tissue paper, I think. The other ones, I have no idea how she made them, but the colors are gorgeous!