I offered to make a door prize for my class reunion. Then ended up making two necklaces, three bracelets, and three hand painted bookmarks.
They are packaged on old book covers, with a note about being inspired by my love of our high school art and literature classes, and my friends from there. Each includes jewelry and a bookmark.
Garage sales haven’t been prolific so far this spring, but what I’ve picked up has made up for the quantity in kick ass quality.
Like this vintage violin with inlaid mother of pearl flowers!
Just in case I’d hit the jackpot (don’t we always have that lingering hope when out junking?) I popped into a music store that specializes in string instruments to be sure it was “craft quality.” I was reassured that it was old and beautiful, but in need of too much repair to be marketable, so I began digging through my jewelry supplies to find any shell, mother of pearl, or abalone bead that I had.
Our mosaic club now meets 3 days a week, and I drop by when I can and often bring other crafts, or just inventory that needs tagging to hang out and visit friends. But I rarely do any glasswork. I just like the company. The group is varied, people come when they can, we could have two, or fifteen there.
At first, I thought I might collage the instrument, but realized it was an ideal candidate for some gluing and grouting instead. I covered the neck with tiny, textured black tiles, then placed my shell pieces into flower blossoms onto it.
Next was the tricky part, I cut those green leaves myself!
I’m not much of a glass cutter. Actually, I’m not at all. The great thing about our mosaic club is that there are shelves and shelves, generously overflowing with precut, tiny squares of glass available in any color, sorted and ready to work with. Wow, huh? What a treasure chest!
Makes me wonder why I do not create more, since the hard part is done. And my pal, Shan is a professional glass artist, she offers to cut anything I need, I just do not want to take advantage of her.
Not only is there precut squares of glass to use (like the white ones I’ve started to apply). There are containers of scrap glass. That’s where I found the shades of green to make leaves that coordinate with the abalone leaves I’d added in the center.
The plan is to add a few more green vines, then fill in the background with the iridescent white squares. In tight spots, I’ll have to snip some of those in half to make slivers or triangles to fill in better. Then, I’ll grout it all in either dark gray or black. The sides will be decopauged with sheet music, and I’ll leave the back as is, it has a lovely inlaid wood design on it. The back is so pretty that I should probably display the finished piece on a stand instead of hanging on the wall, so people can see the inlay.
Hmmm…… looking at these photos, makes me want to pull off the squares around the scrolly holes and line the edges of it with tiny pearls first. Then do white squares around that as I fill in the background. What do you think? Ooh, or itty bitty, shiny black beads not pearls?
Aren’t these tulips so springy and bright? They have such a realistic look, everyone is surprised to find they are fakes. My friend, Mindy, had some excess inventory and offered them to a few of the dealers at Juju the other day while we were all working there. There were a LOT of blooms. I have plenty to plenty to use around my space, plus took these home.
This year, due to my surgery, I haven’t set out any Easter decor around the cottage, or even anything spring themed. I was happy to have these.
I do have holiday goods at the antique mall.
For the March sale, I crafted quite a bit of bunnies and eggs, plus had a couple boxes of vintage too. After the sale, it didn’t look like anything was missing. But when I went through sales receipts I was surprised to see just how many bunnies had hopped away with customers.
In retail, you need to be a few skips ahead, so March was the time to sell Easter goods. And our First Friday sale this week is actually the holiday weekend, so those who needed decor items, most likely already got them. And their minds were turning to all the things they had to pack away, instead of planning new arrangements.
Being smart, I’d have packed my own wares away and used the real estate space for another box of stuff to sell. But I was enjoying the festiveness and let it stay.
Sometimes my displays are more about entertaining myself than good business practices.
Oops, did I admit that out loud?
Heck, I guess a lot of what I do at Good Juju is to make myself happy.
One of the reasons that I moved into a larger booth was to indulge my design and display dreams.
Im not really missing having my home all Eastered up, since I got to indulge myself at the store. Now, of course I do hope that shoppers will be attracted to the goods and choose a few for themselves, but I know the odds are lower this month.
And I’m still happy to be doing it. I hope you’re enjoying your holiday too, in whatever way you do it. We will have a quiet day, just Rich, the dogs and myself, along with that joyful bundle of fake tulips. Maybe a walk in the woods? Probably some physical therapy exercises for my arm too.
Focaccia bread flowers are easier to make than they look.
Here, I’ve used the natural shape of the orange and yellow bell pepper slices to make a sort of daisy with caper centers.
I then turned short strips of peppers into petals to make an another shape of flower. I used strips of pickled red onion in the same way.
With the onion, a half of a black olive is used for the center of the coneflower-ish bloom. For the orange pepper, black olives sliced lengthwise become the base of the bachelor button type flower.
Roses are a bit more complicated. I started with a dark red, sun dried tomato center, and made the rose petals from jarred red peppers that I cut into petal shapes, then spiraled around the tomato. Narrow strips in the center, wider at the edges.
The greenery ties it all together, with rosemary and thyme as twigs and stems. I used asparagus cut lengthwise to make leaves and stems too. Green olives are used throughout and the finished piece is generously filled in with lots of thyme, then I spritzed the bread with olive oil and sprinkled it all over with Italian herbs.
One flower that didn’t work as well, but tasted good was the mushroom one. It was a center slice of the stump as the center, then petals formed around that center from the slices of the cap. The color was simply too neutral to stand out. I could’ve done the same look with cherry or grape tomatoes and it would’ve turned out better.
The design can also be very simple, like this mini serving with an herb heart and caper posy that I made for a guest who had food allergies and couldn’t eat the various peppers on the bigger bread.
I made my own dough in the bread maker, then flattened it out on a sheet pan for these. It’s pretty thin, for a crunchy crust, but you could use a smaller pan for a thicker, chewier result. I made mine so thin because I wanted more “canvas” to create flowers.
I can never have enough flowers.
Maui was a delight.
From the little things
To the majestic ones.
The food
The nature inspired artwork
And the nature itself
Friendships
Grand vistas
Sunsets
Spending time with people we love
And with each other.
I like to work while on vacation.
Of course, painting pretty flowers in a setting like this does not feel like work.
It feels like pure joy.
Layered in blessings.
Not work at all.
The last week of May and first one in June were hoppin around here. I started off touching up house paint where needed, then stopped myself and changed to power washing first. Why repaint it if it only needs washed off?
Two days of spraying cleared off most of the discoloration, but a lot of the house still needed some fresh paint. The entryway especially.
Earlier, I’d also simply touched up the black shutter paint. Afterwards, I saw that didn’t solve the problem, and went back to scrape off all loose paint and redid each shutter (at least on the first floor). It was worth the effort, knowing this will last further into the future. Typically I walk around the house every year or two and dab paint on bad spots.
But over time, that isn’t enough. A thorough washing and scraping before getting my brushes and buckets of paint out means I can hopefully skip a few seasons my usual redos.
This trick postpones the need for hiring a pro to repaint the entire home.
Speaking of home maintenance, this corner has been an issue for the twenty years we’ve had this addition. We’ve had a half dozen pros out to give advice and make changes, but still had water seepage into the breezeway.
Well, while power washing, I put a hole right through the wall! I knew the sprayer could strip paint, clear piles of mud the dogs had thrown onto the deck, and also zip the skin right off my shin.
But I didn’t realize it could decimate water rotted wood. 
Rich ripped out all the siding and wet guck, rebuilt and sided the wall. I siliconed and repainted. While having the wall opened up, we think we found the leaky area that contractors had missed, since we had a view to the inside that they hadn’t had access to.
Rich thinks it’s fixed now, and when we run the garden hose over it, we see no water pouring out the bottom into the breezeway. Still, we are going to add extra guttering to detour the rain away from that vulnerable spot we unearthed.
Stopping the river that ran through the breezeway inspired me to take on two other run off issues. They didn’t hurt the house, but often left standing, muddy water on the gravel or patio. Rich and I dug out trenches to divert the rain away from this spots and filled them with larger stones.
In this area, the bricks were buried under so many years of mud, I forgot they existed. The power washer not only revealed them, it showed me the path the water took. Basically a huge puddle in this area, no movement at all. So we dug out two trenches, starting shallow and getting deeper further out.
(the pile of bricks are the ones we removed to dig the trench, I need to relocate them to a flower bed that could use an edging repair)
So far, the garden hose proves that our efforts worked, and after a big rain, all seems fine. Now, over time, mud will back up again, but it might take ten years or so. Maybe we will fix it with a French drain then, but for now, our dry river beds of rock will do the trick.
While we were in a rock hauling mood (ha, yeah, right, no one ever wants to haul rocks) we decided to freshen up the other gravel areas. Not redoing, just cosmetically tweaking them by using the sprinkle technique of Rich and Sugarwings walking around with an open bag and drifting more rocks over the existing ones while I followed with a rake.
Of course while it would be better to spread a truckload, these bags of river rock from Home Depot were helpful, if not perfect.
Although in this spot, I needed to use a full bag, these stones had washed away, or sunk into the ground pretty bad here.
While the weather kept giving me perfect springtime days, I figured I might as well keep working outside before summer heat hits. So, next up was water proofing these stairs and the deck flooring Rich had replaced last month. The original framing was dark, but I went with a honey tone for the new areas, because I liked the contrast.
It was a surprise for him on his birthday, and a gift he much preferred over something from a store. We also had a sit down dinner for a dozen or so friends to celebrate his day too, and will be having another party to follow this week.
Next up? Well I just repainted the guest bathroom and need to finish the decor. And something needs to be done about my flower pots. Many of the plantings look like this. I dusted with diatomaceous earth, and hope that helps. If the flowers don’t make it, I’ll need to replant.
I’ll have pics of the new bathroom when it’s done. Looks like I’ve run out of steam for now, after two days of sales at Good Juju, I simply could not make myself finish the job yet.
A couple of friends came by to enjoy the exquisite spring weather and have some chicken salad on fresh baked bread with me in my courtyard.
Both brought bags of stuff they had around and wondered if I could use.
Jen’s husband had bought a case of air spray cans meant for cleaning a key board and she asked if I wanted a couple since they’d never use up that many. She’d remembered me complaining about how dusty Good Juju was and that I was worried that my sun catchers would soon become dirt collectors.
It wouldn’t have occurred to me to try spraying the crystals with an air can, but once she mentioned it, I was thrilled with the idea. There are so many things there that could be so much simpler to keep tidy this way.
Shanna had a couple of sacks with her and seemed almost apologetic to offer them. She said they were things her grandma had for years and were in pretty bad shape. My ears pricked up with those words and my heart might’ve skipped a couple beats.
One package was stuffed with pieces of vintage fur, ideal for crafting Santas at Christmas. The other contained all of these millinery floral bunches. One of my favorite things in the world.
See why? These are all perfectly faded and tattered. I see many exciting craft projects ahead for me, as well as clean chandeliers in my booth. Thanks to my pals!
For a person who dislikes sewing as much as I do, I end up doing quite a few sewing related projects.
Like these hand made pincushions in vintage vessels.
There is even an entire shelf of sewing related goods. Which I do find interesting. I told myself never try to sell anything I don’t like, because you might just get stuck with it.
There is also a display of pet themed items. More up my alley than sewing. But I sure enjoyed making the pincushions I hope they sell so I can craft more of them.
Another thing that needs to go are these birdbaths. Not because I don’t like them, I love them, and all of the cherubs, to pieces. And it might look like I never sell the angels, but actually, I do, I just keeping buying more. I’ve had a steady stream of concrete statues in my booth since Christmas. 
Christmas angels, valentines cherubs, garden statues, I love them for many seasons.
The issue is that these concrete pretties are bad for my torn rotator cuff that I’m too stubborn to have repaired. And my husband pointed out that it isn’t exactly fair to ask him to haul the hefty birdbaths around either. So, I see some rock bottom sale prices coming in the future if I still have them in my booth.
This month, my mushrooms are tinted in pretty Easter egg colors.
Soft pinks, shimmery greens, sky blues, and silky lavenders.
And while you’d think I had more than plenty of my dyed roses, whelp, nope. I made more of the smaller ones to fit onto mini pots and white glass jars.
Of course, there are fairies too.
And more roses.
I redid my “ballerina corner” with some new dancer themed finds.
Doesn’t this great lamp go perfectly with my spring time pink tones?
This is the time of year when sweet little birdies start adventuring out into the garden.
Where they build their nests and lay some eggs.
Spring makes me so happy, I just couldn’t stop filling my booth with as many mementos of the season as I could possibly squeeze in.
Do you know the best part? I get to do this all over again for May!
