glittergoods

hey, cowgirl!

After a false start or two (excellent false starts which will eventually end up in my shop, but still), I finished the pillow that accompanies the Reading Rocks bench.

First I was thinking about how I will try not to over-commit myself to auction junk next year, but then I was thinking about how this particular pillow was the tipping point that finally sent me out to buy that serger I've been wanting, so maybe I should go ahead & over-commit next year but just do it in some interesting new area that will require similar sort-of justifiable purchase of expensive equipment.

Anyway, then I had time to turn my attention to a birthday present for my girl's best friend, which was specifically & jealously requested by the friend when my kid showed up at her house in full cowgirl regalia last week.

(Note the totally unnecessary serging around the hem.)

So we were in the cowgirl mood & all, but had no idea there would be real live ponies.  Ever since we saw her brother's elementary school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, we've been planning a fairy birthday party around here, but now there's some small, hopeful talk about whether fairies have ponies.  Fairies with bigger backyards, maybe, I said.

she'd put bells on her toes if she could

Today is a sitting around kind of day, everyone is tired & half sick, plus there is nothing truly pressing that has to get done this instant.  But then my girl found a scrap of pink pipecleaner & turned it into a ring (because she loves nothing so much as adorning herself), & the box of leftover auction project jewels caught my eye, & hello, fastest kid-pleasing project ever.

Obviously, a girl can't stop at just ONE jeweled pipecleaner ring.

Wrap the pipecleaner around the finger, twist a time or two to keep your loop in shape.

Trim the ends to a couple of inches above the loop.

Take a pair of beading pliers (or similar) & make a little loop at each end to get rid of the sharp bits, then smash the loops flat.

Holding the two ends together, twist them around into a circular "nest" that sits perpendicular to the ring loop.  There is no particular trick to this, just twist & tuck until the setting is the shape you want.

Once you've got your nice flat setting, you could put just about anything on top (as I type this, I am suddenly wondering where I put my shrinky dink sheets).  We put on our jewels with Fast Grab Tacky Glue, which is my current favorite kid-craft glue due to it being thick &, well, fast-grabbing. 

After you've made rings for every single finger, don't forget the matching bracelet.

and now for something completely different

Except completely the same in that my Sisyphean auction season will not end.  I am probably even more tired of talking about it than you are of reading about it.  Though that still doesn't stop me from writing this post.

Ok, so, Auction 1, the big one, was on Saturday & came off very well, if I do say so myself.

The only time I almost cried during setup was when it turned out that we -- & when I say we, I mean me, an interior designer, & a graphic designer, so we're not a spatially incompetent bunch, ok? -- had completely overestimated the distance between mezzanine railings & people's heads, so my mobiles were way too dangly.

Eventually we figured it out, managing to avoid the threat of forehead paper cuts for our taller guests.   I didn't even have to rebuild anything.  [I will mention here that they were not hard to build in the first place:  each one is based off of a pair of 36" dowels, wired together as an X, with an 18" X suspended from each of the four arms.]

One last picture of the Quilt for old time's sake.  We hung it from a sturdy coat rack they had on-site, but the rack wasn't quite tall enough so my husband rigged up a rail from a piece of composite trim molding & a handful of bulldog clips.  He attached it to shelf brackets on the back, then zip-tied the brackets to the top of the coat rack.  It worked beautifully, & I'm pretty sure the rail is destined for a wall in my house somewhere, if I can figure out where.

I loved working on the Quilt, mostly, but I never particularly felt like it was mine, & I wasn't too sad to see it go.  Especially since it went for a satisfyingly large bid.

Glitter aside, I take no responsibility for these little arrangements of kermit mums (my design/decor co-chair knows her flowers!), but I love them.  Also, this picture reminds me that I think there's one of those little boxes of chocolate rattling around in my purse somewhere, excellent.

Now then.  Auction 2 is coming up, & while my original plan was to only be involved to the extent of donating that little quilt & helping out with my son's classroom project, I of course immediately fell into the irritatingly sucking black hole of me not being able to resist making things for auctions (though I did stand firm about not decorating an 8-foot umbrella this year), so in the end it was me & one other artist mom doing almost all of the work on the GIANT DECOUPAGE BENCH.

I don't have pictures of the entire thing, since it was flipped on its back today when I finished working on the front panel, but I think that the front ended up being pretty excellent in a totally over the top way:

It's a "reading bench," & so we put READING ROCKS! on the front with fancy rocks & jewels (the kids did this part), then filled in all the gaps with tinier jewels & beads & sequins (the other mom & I did this part, discovering that we were both perfectly, serenely content to spend hours fussing over getting the letters glamorously encrusted just so.   It's possible that this was more excellent to do than it will be to buy; also, this is not the way to speedily finish an auction project.).  Our teacher was the one who suggested that we "bedazzle" (actual quote) the words, which is only one of the reasons we love him.

Like I mentioned, the bench is flipped on its back; this is the front panel, just under where the lid closes, just above two big drawers, just next to a stack of three smaller drawers on the side.  (I told you, GIANT DECOUPAGE BENCH.)   The rest of the bench is covered with vintage book pages (try setting up your book-destroying decoupage project in an elementary school hallway & just SEE what kind of crowd reaction you get), color copies of favorite book covers (brought in by the kids), & kid art that represents something from their favorite books.   

Plus a teeny little bit of glitter.

Now it's in the hands of the varnish volunteers, so I just have to make a pillow for it, & then I AM DONE.

crossing things off the list

Finished this:

[45" x 51", it's off to Auction 2.  I will miss it.]

Finished this:

[Sample custom pillow for Auction 1; silent auction companion piece to Auction Quilt.]

Still working on this:

[A lot, though probably not as many as we'll need, of glittered leaves for the three big mobiles I'm building for Auction 1 decorations.  My leaves have a crush on Meg's flowers.]

Almost, almost there.

and...it's finished (one of them, anyway)

Turns out that the silver lining to catching an awful achy fever the last full weekend before the first of the two upcoming auctions is that I had no choice but to spend an entire day on the couch, binding the Auction Quilt.  Binding the quilt & watching Wolf, Witches of Eastwick, the fourth Omen, & part of Sky High, ahem.

I was thinking, as much as you can think when you're sleepy, feverish, trying to keep your stitches even, & also half-watching an exciting wolfman wrestling match between Jack Nicholson & James Spader, about how much I always dread the time commitment that hand-binding a quilt brings with it, but how much I always fundamentally enjoy the process of wrapping a neat tight edge around a quilt with a gazillion snug little stitches.  It gives me a sense of tidy closure, which lasts approximately until it's time to put the quilt in the machine & then I stand around anxiously for the entire wash cycle, wondering if my quilting & or binding & or basic idea for a quilt is going to hold together.

Look at me, waxing philosophical about this thing now that it's done.

Done!  Hurrah!  (Lots more detail pictures in my flickr set.)

Not that I have been all quilt all the time, lo these many silent weeks.

Or not just the ONE quilt  This one is lap sized, destined for the second of the auctions.  I have to finish binding it approximately immediately.  Next year:  two kids, one school, one auction, can't wait.

This little one is on the bind too, but has to wait until next week.  When I'm totally going to feel like picking up a little quilt-binding project just to relax.

I mock, & yet...it's probably true.