Another beautiful braided leather bracelet

You may remember this braided leather bracelet I made.  When I got the cording for that one I also received some narrower leather cording from the same company.  I love bracelets…you can never have too many!!

The cording is really easy to cut and glue the ends of the cording into the silver end caps. I added a few beads I already had to the grey strand. 

There is one strand turquoise, one grey, and one a metallic teal color.  The color combination is really wonderful!   There are so many colors available in this fine leather cording, you can’t even imagine!

I’m loving the arrow through the heart clasp!

I may be linking to some of these great parties!

Container planting and other flowers

Yup that’s an amaryllis sticking out of the top of my stacked pot planter. It used to be 3 pots stacked high…

Then this happened…an accident caused by a pug chasing a Great Dane.  It was quite a sight.  So now the stacked pot is only two pots high.

Around this time of year I stick flags in planters all over the deck.

I love bright flowers and easy to grow flowers.

Mom gave me this peacock décor for my porch planter. I love me some peacocks!

A hanging plant with three different kinds of bloomers.

I put a big shallow pot on a stump and put mulch around it (those same two dogs I referred to earlier keep digging it up) and it looks great by the willow tree.

I think every year the day lilies bloom earlier, this year they are really pretty and tall!

I found purple fountain grass at Lowes for $1 each so I planted four clumps of it in our “pet cemetery”.

Purple coneflowers come up in the yard like weeds.  Sometimes I just let them bloom before I cut them down.

Coreopsis blooms every where and the dusty miller has taken over as well. I need to clean out my perennial garden and start over next year. 

The house looks so cozy with the flowers and the grass cut!  Hope you are having a great week!

Some favorite quotes and playing with Picmonkey

Picmonkey is a great photo editing site…you can add all sorts of textures, text, colors, special effects to any picture you upload. 

Google images has a lot of paint chip type files and I have used a few of them for backgrounds for quotes that I like.

So, you can resize a square of color and “write” any quote with any font…so easy and fun!

Most of picmonkey is free but there is a plan you can pay yearly for which allows you to use more fonts and different effects.

A lot of fun to play around with, that’s for sure!  You can go to my Pinterest Speaking Words of Wisdom board to see more of my favorite quotes!

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Recycling and Reusing Containers

My niece saved a bunch of these baby food containers.  The lids fit tight and they are great for storing a variety of things.  I use them a lot to store my jewelry making supplies.

They come in two sizes and stack nicely.

These yogurt containers are great for pouring paint into for smaller projects, or Mod Podge when you don’t want to dip your dirty brush into the Mod Podge container (think glitter projects).  You get the idea…

I make a lot of pincushions and buy the nice pearl head pins in the little containers (I always buy them when Jo-Ann Fabrics has their 50% off notions sales). 

Anyway, they are also great for storing all sorts of jewelry findings and the lids stay on tightly as well.

The Mentos cylinder containers are perfect for storing various supplies like beads, buttons, hair elastics.  I keep them tucked in the top drawer of my sewing desk.

and in my jewelry supplies tote.

They are great for on-the-go projects.

Mandarin orange cups are the perfect size for paint or glue too.  I keep a few of them in the car and put my pug’s ice cream cone in them (he just gets a tiny cone!).

I found these vintage thumb tack containers at a garage sale and they are a great size for organizing all sorts of craft supplies. 

And of course there’s always the old school glass baby food jar!  We all know what to do with those!

I might be linking to these great parties…

What to do next…

This blogging thing has been weighing heavily on my mind.  I create things all the time, but with the blog I feel like all that creating is under pressure, gotta get this done, gotta get this blogged, gotta get four more projects started so I will have some posts coming out about them too.  Staging and taking photos is sooo time consuming too!

At any given moment I have a minimum of three or four things underway.  Now I have about four quilts to bind, they are done except for that, and my Aunt Marge has another one for me that she just got done quilting.  I have four quilt tops cut out waiting for me to sew them together.  I am redoing a bench that goes on the deck, I am in the middle of creating a frame wall.  All the frames are purchased and all except one have been painted.  I have the empty wall to hang them on.   I am in the middle of creating a fabric hoop wall in my sewing/craft room.  My son is moving out in  a few weeks and I have a few projects I am finishing up for him.

I have a stack of towels to be made into washcloths, I have rugs to weave from a giant stack of discarded fabric.  I have a pillow cover to make, a lamp to strip and repaint. A lamp shade to cover.  Then a room to furnish into a guest bedroom.  A bench to finish painting, a newly purchased thrift store hexagon table to refinish, a birdbath to paint and mosaic. 

Throw in a family, a new job as of last Monday, and a new boyfriend (he’s no longer in the picture) and sometimes it all gets to be too much.  I keep thinking that maybe I need to stop the blogging part of my life….but here’s the deal—I really enjoy blogging, I love to see how many folks visit my blog every day, even if just to pop in for a quick visit.  I love to see how many of my projects are pinned. I like that part of it all very much and I like to create. 

I have been creating since I was a kid…I made a dollhouse fireplace from a Jell-O box with my cousin Twyla, I sewed, I knitted socks in high school (I still have them), made 6 foot knitted snakes for my brothers for Christmas, I embroideried a tablecloth for my grandparents, I painted, I made some of my own clothes, I made flannel gowns, I hand sewed baby layettes for new babies (including kimonos,  gowns, hats, diaper covers, knitted booties, crocheted bibs, stuffed mouse toys, crib sheets, with matching quilts and blankets).  I was doing all these things when I was still a kid and continued into adulthood.  I made teddy bears from old quilts.  I hung a child’s chair on the wall of my sunroom for a plant to sit on, I used all sorts of containers for my outdoor garden. 

Mom and I had a talk a few weeks ago, she said that she had made the cute cake stands from pretty plates and candlestick holders.  That none of these ideas were really new, it’s just that now we have the blogging thing to showcase them. 

Any way, I think I’m going to be around the old blog for a while longer!  I appreciate all you great folks out there who read and comment and pin and feature my projects!

Have a great week!