Trick or Treat? Jingle Is Finished!

Jingle the Snowman is finished as I promised yesterday that I'd post a picture of him. His face is sculpted from paperclay. His body was cut out of 1/4 inch wood.

I like his rhinestone belly button! I'm working on his brother, Snowflake now.

These little girls are all dressed up and ready for Trick or Treating! To find out how you can adopt one or both of them visit the All Hallows Evening site.

Pumpkin Collection & New Christmas Ornaments

I collect terra-cotta pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. They are around the house here and there but the smaller ones are in my pie safe.

My friend Donna made this "Abracadabra" tag. Isn't it cute?

I'm working on my new line of Christmas 2009 ornaments. Say hello to "Jingle"! First I did the sketch, traced it on 1/4 inch birch, cut it out with the bandsaw, sanded and painted it.

Next I sculpted his face from Paperclay and it's drying as I type!
Then I cut out and glued on his hat, pants and shirt embellishments.
Added the bells, scarf and his tiny rhinestone belly button!

Tomorrow I'll paint his face and then glue it onto his head. There's a lot of work in making just one ornament. I don't think people who don't craft realize the time that goes into making each one. Then, they seem to think that you should sell one for $2! Oh well, I think he's turning out pretty cute and I'll post the completed Jingle tomorrow.

Inspiration, Snowmen and Garlic!

Greetings from a perfect autumn day in Western Pennsylvania! The leaves are a blaze, the sun is shinning in a cloudless deep blue sky and a breeze is rustling the leaves. It's times like these that inspiration seems to sneak up on me and whollip me up-side the head! Such inspiration happened to me last week when I stumbled upon the most worderfully vintage style decorative papers. They have a 1950s-1960s feel about them. Naturally I knew I'd have to incorporate them into the "Fresh Vintage" Christmas tree ornament line. Here's what I came up with....

This is "Zoots". His passion is selling vintage Christmas ornaments and he has what some might say, is an unnatural love for tinsel. Zoots is compised of 1/4 inch baltic birch wood, painted light ivory with a hand painted face and then embellished with text, decorative papers, rubber stamps and cutouts. Everything is then sprinkled with ultra-fine glitter! (which is difficult to see in the photos!) He is 7 inches tall from the tip of his hat to the end of his body and 4 inches wide at the bottom.

Zoots is available on Ebay right now. So click on the word Ebay and check him out!

Now on to garlic planting........

I use to think I wanted a Christmas tree farm but now I'm thinking a garlic farm would be much easier to take care of and even more profitable!

Late September and October are the times to plant garlic here in Pennsylvania. Today was such a glorious fall day that my husband and I decided to put a bed of garlic in. It will grow all winter (slowly) and then when sprink hits it will really shoot up. July is the time to harvest it.

Here's a quick picture tutorial on how to plant it.....

First prepare the bed by turning over the soil and adding a sprinkling of 10-10-10 fertilizer.

Next split the garlic bulbs into individual cloves (leave the paper covering around each clove). Notice I have on blue rubber gloves so I don't smell like garlic! Oh! That's a scary picture of me!

Then plant each clove, pointy side up about 2 inches deep (that's my Gary doing that). Now sit back and wait until July to harvest it!

Happy Sunday! I hope you are doing something you love to do today!