Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Lazy Afternoon

Our house is and will always be a work in progress, because my husband likes to do the renovations and repairs by himself. I think we both forget we're not spring chickens anymore, so we tend to move and do things a little slower these days. So, he's working on a little room just off of our bedroom; opening it up to make our room larger. Now, this little room is where I stored excess books and shall I say vintage magazines (if you get my drift), while he stored his excess luggage and tools, golf balls and golf clubs (he hardly golfs). Everything is on my front deck right now. For the past couple of weeks, it just seems chaotic because now I'm forced to address a new home for my things and cull through them to see what I can donate or just get rid of.
Though we have this chaos going on here, we have managed to cut some bananas and pick some of our grape tomatoes. Check it out:

I think I'm trying to avoid the obvious, so I look for things that must be done, like, I had to solder a broken mini lampshade, so out came the soldering iron only to find that it wouldn't heat properly. I switched to a different tip after an hour or so, had to wait for the other tip to cool down, and lo' and behold it worked! I was able to fix the lampshade and I also found these soldered pendant/charms I made some time ago. These are stickers from Deb's Rubberstamp Plantation that I have sandwiched between two squares of memory glass by Rangerink or Inkssentials, foiled in copper then soldered using silver-gleem lead-free solder. I put two stamps together so that both sides could be used.

My Bff's sister came for a visit from Washington state one year and learn how to do this from me. She went gang busters making tons of different charms with these, rubber stamped pics, and even made charms with scrabble pieces; made lots of money that Christmas at the craft fairs.
That's it for now, I think I hear the books and magazines calling...
Aloha,

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Flat Leilani

Aloha;
Well, things have certainly been busy around here. I'm working on a couple of purses; tiny ones. On one of them I'm doing bead work, using a free-form peyote stitch. The other one, you've actually seen the flat product with crazy quilting and bead work, so it's taking a bit of time.
But, I wanted to share with you a sweet little thing, her name is Flat Leilani. I believe she's cousin to Flat Stanley, some of you if you have young school children may have heard of him. Joy from Joy of Crafting, started this and Flat Leilani is on her blog; I just post a few photos of her. When I got her PDF form, I decided I would fit her with a coconut bra top, so I used coconut buttons strung onto some embroidery floss for that.  I used the same floss for her "rubba slippas"; check out her feet. I then used some scrap fabric for her pareo. I love this new thing called soft petal and I used it to make a  lei that is on her head. She's such a darling, don't you think?













Here's Flat Leilani in my strawberry garden.














See her slippers in this 2nd photo? She's taking some time to smell my lavender.













We all had a wonderful time at the Haleiwa Art
Festival this past weekend, Hoku (my sweet dog)
and my husband (see his hands?).

Aloha for now;

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Weekend Fun

Aloha;
Hope everyone is having a great weekend!  I didn't mean to be away for so long, things just happened. I had too many sleep overs with the grand babies; it was fun but tiring. Then, unfortunately, both my daughter and I caught some kind of bad cold; I'm still trying to get back to 100%.
My weekend started Thursday night at the Waikiki Aquarium enjoying the Willy K concert, he gives more than 100% when he entertains.
Saturday was the start of the Haleiwa Art Festival; it's a two day Fest. So, I wanted to go on Saturday because I knew that a fellow blogger was going to be there and I wanted to meet her. She taught her fabric painting class at this years Hawaii Quilt Conference earlier this month and now she's at the art festival selling her beautiful hand painted quilts, cushions and gift items.. Her name is Sonja Hagemann and her blog is www.sonjahagemanndesigns.blogspot.com.
Tomorrow, I think I need to veg. seems like my cold is trying to do a comeback. Might be a good time for me to get some beadwork done. I started a bead project last week, but pushed it to the side when I started to feel this cold coming on.
So, here's Sonja at today's Festival:

Aloha,

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Rambling

Aloha Oukou;
I have spent a good part of the day visiting friends on Teacup Tuesday. I've enjoyed myself, but failed to enter my studio, I just finished and it is now 11 pm. I did break for lunch and dinner with my hubby. Tomorrow, I'll be spending time treasure hunting with my daughter and grand daughter, so, it's a good guess, I won't be in the studio tomorrow either; I'm usually drained after a day of shopping. 
I have four TQ cards to make, so I must get into the studio to work on Thursday. Plus I want to try one of Brenda's (from Sweet as Gumdrops), projects I keep putting off.
Before I forget, I've noticed lately that when I post comments to others' blogs, my profile photo will not show up if the photo is to the left of the comment, but they will show up if it's on the right.  Has this happened to anyone else? It doesn't bother me if the photo doesn't show up at all, it's just that I read somewhere that it's not very nice not to have a photo and I don't want anyone to think that I'm rude.
Okay, that's enough rambling, I can barely keep my eyes open. See you all in a couple of days.
Aloha,

Monday, July 5, 2010

Teacup Tuesday

Aloha to you all;
I hope everyone one had a wonderful July 4th celebration! Here in Hawaii there's always several fireworks' displays throughout the island. But we love every little excuse to have family over to celebrate anything.
Okay, tomorrow is Teacup Tuesday, and I vowed to participate, so I'm posting it today. I have two cups to share, one modern island style and one from the past.



This is, obviously, my island-style tea for one. There is a licensing company here in Hawaii that have a selected variety of artists that produce beautiful useful artwork, this is one of them.This particular set was given to me by a dear friend, Elena. I love using this when I'm home alone and I want to pamper myself with a cup or two of tea. I love the leaf effect of the saucer; can you tell I love nature.



This lovely piece, I bought about 20 years ago for my mother. I was visiting one of my s-i-ls on the mainland and of course I go antique hunting. Not that I know much about antiquing, I just buy what moves me. But I saw this, with all its worn gold edges on the saucer and floral motif inside the cup, I fell in love with it and I knew my mother would love it too. My mother  transitioned about a year and a half now and I was lucky to have this back. Though I don't use it, I remember her when I see it.
Thank you Terri and Martha for having Teacup Tuesday.
Aloha,