Look what I found on Etsy! I bought all the little plastic shoe charms that I could find, even though they weren't the right colors. I fixed them by using red glitter spray to get them wet and sticky, then tossed them into a bowl of red glitter.
I mean "ruby red" glitter.
The first 50 people in our Dorothy Tag Swap will get one on their tag book. For the rest, I need to come up with something else….
The swap is still open, and I've had a lot of people say that because of Back To School, they are swamped. So…. we are extending the deadline. Instead of Sept. 15th, lets go for the end of the month. You get a couple more weeks to work on them!
Also, we have a flickr group, please join!
Personally, I'm glad to have the extra couple of weeks too! I've been trying to get ready for Sugarwing's Under the Sea Birthday Splash Party.
Yesterday, I painted this mural onto a canvas drop cloth cut down to fit the wall above the bed in her big girl room at her Hippy Chic Mommy's house.
For the party, the mural will be nailed to the side of the house. I'm setting up a tent for kid's crafts and this will be the decor behind it.
Years ago, I used to paint murals for a living. It was a goooood living. But hard. When I'd paint hotels and bars, it usually involved a lot of scaffolding, and that is heavy to move around, plus I have a fear of heights and really detested being up 20 feet high. The worst thing ever is to be on a LADDER on top of SCAFFOLDING! It gave me the willies.
Plus, not a lot of Kansans were open to murals. But gosh, other states love them! When I was painting a public space in Florida, I'd get a ton of job offers and ended up working nights in private homes as well as days on the job I had traveled there for.
My favorite thing to paint was kid's murals. One thing I always did was to make sure that each character in the painting had a buddy. Lots of conversational groupings make the picture more interesting for kids.
Painting "murals to go" sure is easier than doing it directly onto a wall! I liked using the drop cloth, I could work at my own pace, in my own home while playing with the dogs, snacking, watering the garden and taking breaks!
I thumb tacked plastic to the wall of the garage, and then tacked up the canvas over it so the paint wouldn't seep through to the wall behind it. I worked on the scene through out the day and was able to get other stuff done too.
Sugarwings loves Mermaids, I hope she likes this birthday gift from me!
While I was taking breaks from the mural, I repainted this hutch in my studio. Since I am the one who painted it in the first place, I knew that the top coat on it was water based poly. So, it didn't need any pretreatment of priming or sanding. I was able to simply dry brush a couple coats of white satin paint over the existing taupe glazed with brown.
After it dried, I lightly sanded it all for a distressed look. Silly me, I was too lazy to run to the store to get a coarse sandpaper, and now have a sore arm from sanding with with a fine paper. It took way too much work and too many sheets to rough up the hutch! I have a bad habit of not stopping until I am done, and really should have just quit yesterday, until I had a chance to pick up another pack of sandpaper.
Another thing I got done for the party was to get a start on cleaning the studio. Its such a mess and this is spider web season. Why does my home get so cob webby every single July and August??? This year, it is so bad, I am tempted to leave them, let them spread a couple months and just throw a Halloween party.
While I had the garage cleared out to do the mural on the wall, I used the leaf blower to clean the room. I dreamed of being able to use that to just blow all the cob webs away in the house too. If I were a minimalist, it wouldn't be so bad, but as a collector of junk, I have too many things that would blow away along with the mess.
I did clean the stair way that goes up to my husband's office with the leaf blower. There was nothing that could be ruined or blown away, and I have to tell you, it was a magnificent thing to do. What a great idea! I cleaned the breezeway and my car while I was at it.
Are you wondering what the pictures of poppies have to do with cleaning my house with a leaf blower? Nothing at all.
I just thought that you might like these. I used a lot of these vintage greeting cards with poppies in my Oz tags.
I've also scanned more pages from my 1920s Oz book for you. You don't have to be in the swap to use them, help yourself if you want some.
All you need to do is click on the picture for it to pop up in a larger size,save, and print it.
Some of these are edited into sepia for you, too.
It will be such fun to see what everyone comes up with. One of my favorite things to do when I attend a class is to walk around the room and see all the ways one single project can turn out. 
After making up all the banner bits, I got busy typing up instructions and drawing the patterns. I hope I don't get a stiff neck from patting myself on the back too much, but I just have to brag about how early I am getting this done. 
