1.31.11 ... love those homemade stickers

today i had two etsy sales and i managed to prepare one for mailing before we left for scout's nerd day {as we fondly refer to it}. i wanted to include a little extra and couldn't resist heading to that lovely new sticker stash i am amassing. here is the bookmark ...

this is the front and here is the reverse...

See and download the full gallery on posterous

here is the item ready to slip into my recycled usps stamp order envelope. they are fabulous. if you haven't ordered stamps online, run, don't walk to the website and do so. you receive your stamps in cello sealed cardboard inserted envelopes - one for each denomination stamp you purchase. i trim off the top and use them for so many things. love them. best of all, though, is that you can choose from all the pretty stamps {most post offices have a very limited selection}, no driving to the p.o. or waiting in line or dealing with anything negative - save money on gas, etc. your order takes minutes to place, there is a one dollar handling fee per order and within 2 days your stamps are in your mailbox. it's the greatest thing since ice cream. true story.

here's the {recycled} envelope for this item all ready to go. i covered the addresses for this photo:

i love the little plane up there between the stamps. this was a magazine airline ad. hope you all had a lovely day today. and the start of a beautiful week.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.30.11 ... my first sweet potato pie

 

the other day we baked two giant sweet potatoes while we were baking another dinner so we could conserve energy and time. i have always wanted to bake a sweet potato pie but i could never save a sweet potato because they are so fabulous. so, there's a tip ladies and gentlemen ::: have another irresistible meal like enchiladas while you bake your sweet potato and you'll be able to save it for pie. this morning i had a request for my famous french toast so i decided to make my crust beforehand while i was still relatively chipper. picture my family laughing uproariously at the concept of me being cheery. especially before noon. at any rate, here are two all ready for the fridge. not sure yet what kind of pie i want to make with crust #2. maybe a quiche. maybe a lemon or chocolate cream. oh, scout just went nuts over the sound of quiche for dinner tomorrow night so there's that.

here is the pie before it went into the oven...

isn't it pretty? i had to take these two photos with my iphone. and here is the finished pie. it just came out of the oven a few minutes ago.

i'll let you know how delicious it is in my next post. the french toast was a hit, by the way. and my other main project of the day was re-taking photos for my shops and organizing my buttons, magnets and vintage jewelry. i took over 200 photos and am happy with the results. thank heavens. what a job. if you'd like the pie recipe let me know. i'll print it up for y'all.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.29.11 ... favorite towel obsessive mend

i have a vintage towel that i love and i mend it when i start to fret it is wearing too much. this one has been mended before. but it needed - and still needs - a major fix. so here is a little bit of a stitching journey ...

this photo shows the other worn end of the towel.  this strip was mended long ago before the edge became this frayed.   if you look closely you can see how the stripe section is wearing, too. now here is the end i worked on one day last week and finished today...

first i choose patches and iron them in place with a little bit of bonding tape. you can see one old patch in this row. next, i put two long single pieces on the reverse...

...along with a few extra patches ... it seems unending which is why i can't handle it in one day. the set up project is very time consuming. following are some photos of the completed mending. to me, the towel becomes more beloved with the patches. i chose them carefully. most are pieces of favorite clothing we've worn out or the children - all four in some cases - outgrew. others are pieces given to me by wonderful people who know i love to sew with scraps. every piece has a story no matter where i acquired it. i do this with favorite clothing and sheets, too. we have extremely unique and interesting sheets in our house. those are typically mind numbing projects because of the size & bulk of the fabric and the extreme state of disrepair of the threadbare sheets. my sewing machine is just a simple lightweight model. favorites are revered in our house. i guess.

there are many lines of stitching in order to secure the edges of both the reverse and front pieces. and also i like to sew random patterns. it helps keeps the task enjoyable instead of becoming crazy making monotony.

i would tell you the stories behind some of these pieces but i have no idea if anyone even reads these posts so i'll save those for now. enjoying your weekend? i hope so.

 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

i'll wait another week or so before i tackle that other end and then i will have my towel back. i'll be one happy shower camper.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.28.11 ... tazo tea monopoly property cards look recycled bookmark

we took a drive this afternoon because it was such a beautiful day.  besos came with us.  she was ridiculously happy as always.  car cat.  it turned out there was a meet up of a vintage car club at the hamburger place and we enjoyed that scenery while we sat outside under the trees eating our late lunch.  scout took some photos.  i am sure they will be fabulous.  

as for today's creating, i worked on a zine page - i have five more to go - which left me with no photo op so when we returned from our outing, i had to think fast before i lost the light.  i've been saving these tea papers for a while.  ok, ok - confession time - evan's been saving them for me.  i think they are so pretty.  but i had no idea what i could do with them.  when i spied them in my stash, during my frantic search for inspiration, i noticed how appealing these three colors look together and then they struck me as resembling monopoly property cards so i lined them up to sew a bookmark and as i reached for my sewing machine i had to move this beautiful bird collage i had trimmed from a magazine and set aside when i was gathering pieces to turn into stickers.  anyway --- look how wonderfully it coordinates with these tea bag papers.  so voila! it became the reverse side.  

we just finished watching the joan rivers documentary on netflix instant and loved it.  earlier we were viewing some of  jake shimabukuro's you tube performance pieces.  amazing.  there's two recommendations for you all.  and if you haven't watched parks & rec this season with rob lowe you honestly haven't lived well lately.  you can rectify that by watching online.  hilarious and smart.  just like some of my favorite family members.  

sweet dreams, everyone.  thanks for stopping by.   until tomorrow.  happiness to you. from me. with heart.   ox joon

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1.27.11 ... pencil valentine & pastel flower magnets

i was cleaning up my art room a bit and sorting through papers and came across a rescued paper pencil bit that i had clipped out of a discarded children's book and punched a row of mini hearts across. that gave me the idea for this illustration with the single heart punch and the traditional puny sentiment. i used my regular colored pencils for this drawing and my beloved le pens for the sentiment.

then i dug out my pastel pencils and made these simple flower magnets based on a little sketched flower i had done one day and saved. i love how they turned out. i don't have many opportunities to use my pastels because they smudge easily but the mylar on buttons and magnets preserves them. so they're good for these projects. i also made the background paper using the three flower color schemes. all in all, highly satisfying creative spurt. ciao for now.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.26.11 ... bookmark and stickers

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how are you all this evening? i have a little bit of this and that for you tonight. i made this bookmark for a customer's package today - from a scrap of board paper. the other side is pale green and i continued with ... i love to read. i also put my www.joonE.etsy.com address along the bottom. here's another photo with my fabulous vintage patchwork pincushion dog in the background. i love him. replicating it is on my wish list for his year. have you ever made one?

i took this photo of batch # 2 stickers now that they are dry and flattened out. i am crazy about these. and look at photo FOUR to see how i have started using them....

how cool is this? i just lick and stick, my friends. way too much fun. this one is covering up a store logo that was in the lower right hand corner of the address panel on this reused packaging. i attached the address after i took this picture.

i am really pleased with this sticker business. i might start offering kits in my etsy shop. good idea? i will be making more soon. i hoped to today but you know how time has a way of getting away from us. or is it just me? sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.25.11 ... blueberry recycled envelope corner

today was the second in a row where we had appointments interrupt a large part of our day. our little {who is anything but little} cricket hasn't been feeling well so we went to the vet and hopefully her medicine will fix her right up. back at home, late afternoon, i returned to my packaging. i've had three sales in the past two days which is pretty nice. this bookmark is for my blueberries magnet set customer. it's an extra surprise. i am glad i looked through my circle papers stash because i felt like i had something blueberry i had saved and i was right. i used two crayon colors for the background design. i love crayons.

i chose this particular envelope corner because i like the blue stripes on the inside and because i love my frost bank. it is not just one of the best perks of life in Texas, it is one of the best services i have ever chanced upon. if only every business was like frost bank. life would be a dream. :) but i digress.

i hope you all had a good day today and enjoyed tonight's post.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.24.11 ... confidential valentine

we found this fabby office supply resale place today and scout spied these message pads (10 cents). irresistible to the both of us.  we also found a CONFIDENTIAL stamp in the old stamps bin (1.00) . again, could not resist.  we were gone most of the day and i needed to accomplish my project late this evening so i knew it had to stay simple and be something we could scan instead of photograph. this is the idea that came to me.  i made a template of different sized hearts so i could stamp their shape with the confidential stamp and then stamped the word in the message space. checked the urgent box and there it is - an old school hand made valentine that's one of a kind and ready for personalization.  hope your day was a lovely one. 

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.23.11 ... exploding art collage

i was introduced to this project when i returned to college the first time. it was 1987-ish and i was working on an elementary education degree. one of my classes was about the art of teaching art from K-8 and we made these wonderful notebooks - scrapbook style - with 100 art projects inside {if you wanted an A} so we'd have it as a resource. at the time, i thought it was a crazy idea and insane amount of busy work {i did have three young boys to mother} but that scrapbook is one of my favorite things and i love looking through it for inspiration. over the years i have made excellent use of it both when i taught and for myself and my family. it brings back many fond memories and i find the old fashioned look of the lesson copies - they're all typewritten with simple hand drawn illustrations - charming.

i used two of my favorite discarded children's books to create this piece. the scene slices were in my stash. i had cut up the book in a variety of ways, mostly different sized strips. today i happened to locate a couple that matched up and that inspired me to do an exploding scene if i could find enough that went together. i spent a very long time locating them, but enjoyed myself. we listened to pandora windham hill. quite pleasant. the background piece is from another book. i love how well they compliment one another. the serendipity factor is very high. and i love that.

the background is also collaged a bit, the end slices are not in synch with the main scene on purpose and i used the sticker glue since i had it handy. i made another small batch of stickers but they weren't done drying by the time i had to run outside for my usual catch-the-twilight, freeze-and-cross-my-fingers-that-a-few-photos-will-work. i hope you enjoy today's creation. have you ever done one of these? i think you'd like it. i know i will do more throughout the year. they are always so individually unique there's no way you could tire of the process or results. let me know if you try it. i'd like to see what you do.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.22.11 ... homemade stickers

this is another one of those groovy projects i've been wanting to try for years. seriously, i wonder about myself on more than one occasion. this was more fun than i even imagined. it worked so well. and i was not really organized as far as prospective sticker paper goes. i am excited about making more tomorrow. i mostly made magazine piece stickers today, but did manage to make a couple of plain white paper and a vintage children's book page. they did curl up a bit as they were drying but flattened out beautifully under a light weight in no time. so here's the story on these....

this is all you need to make your own stickers....

paper. 2 TBSP. Elmer's glue. & 1TBSP. white vinegar mixed. grab your paintbrush and go to town!

it was getting dark out and i was making a new chicken recipe so i did a one sticker trial and oh my gravy - how cool is this vintage car sticker? worked beautifully. i ran and quickly cut out some more so i could hop out back and try to get a decent picture or two for you all. so here you go...homemade stickers...

 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

how's your weekend? i do hope it's a happy one. 

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.21.11 ... scissors rest

i have a scissor fetish. and even though it is close to impossible to choose favorites because i am lucky enough to have quite a wonderful collection, these sewing scissors are indispensably fantastic. they're very heavy and i usually keep them in their boxes to protect them and my table but that is not very convenient, as i am sure you can imagine. i made this rest for them using heavy muslin, the old mattress pad {used in yesterday's project}, and this groovy vintage astrology cocktail linen that i've been saving for just the right moment. yes, i am a leo.

i know i will enjoy having this and wonder how i ever lived without it.

i started another ~ rather involved ~ mending project, added some more miniature patches to one of my t shirts and worked on my zine today. i have photos of the mending project in progress that i will add to the post on the day i complete the task. i hope you enjoy today's entry. stay warm. sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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1.20.11 ... little birdies coaster

i love these vintage tea towels i found years ago and have doled out the pieces sparingly. this bit was peeking out at me today as i walked by my neatly formed stacks of fabric and this is what came to me. i needed a coaster, too. inside is batting in the form of a vintage mattress pad cover that lost its primary occupation many moons ago. all around, a quick, fun daily project.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

i'm still working on my zine and a few other longer term projects. looking forward to sharing those with you another day.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

if any of you have a homemaking question for my zine columnist, the flying housewife, please leave it in the comments here. {there's a bit of a hint to the theme of my new zine.}

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

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