A basket of Eggs....

April and I went out to breakfast and thrift shopping this morning. Who knew that Goodwill was open on Sunday? I didn't think that they were....Actually, they may as well have been closed.

All I managed to find was this little hinge lidded basket for a dollar. And it was just right for carrying home the eggs that April gave me.

She and Seth have three chickens in a small pen in the back yard. They average maybe an egg or two a day. She gave me four.

We will be having omelets for dinner tonight. That is, if I can manage to get them away from Tessie. She saw them and instantly went into mother hen mode. She insists that, "If I sit with them in the basket, sing to them and keep them warm, we will have cute, fuzzy baby chicks in no time."....I hate to burst her bubble, but there is no rooster involved. I need to think of something to distract her.

Here's the outside of the basket. With a little stain, a lining and a needlework inset in the lid, I think that it will make quite a nice, small sewing basket. Just what I need....Another sewing basket for my collection.


I am getting carried away with the witch scissors. I am now working on a needle book to go with them.....This witchy quote from Macbeth will go on the cover. It seems fitting, somehow.

I did that yesterday. Now all I have to do is make the book to go behind it.

I am going to go play some more now. Maybe tomorrow I will get back to serious townhouse stuff......Maybe....

See you then.

Monday Is Laundry Day.....

I wonder why Monday was picked as "official" laundry day. I mean they even wrote songs about it and embroidered it on dish towels. Why???

Since it is Monday, laundry day, I decided to make a laundry basket for Tessie.

Actually, I was cleaning out a box labeled "To Be Sorted" when I discovered three of the little baskets from Jet Dry dish washing stuff for getting rid of spots. At least that's what I think it's for. I have never used it. Someone gave them to me years ago. I hope that they still make them. The worked great.

Since I am trying to use up, as well as clean out, things in my stash, I thought that a Monday would be a good day to make laundry baskets.

All you need to do it is the bottom half of one of the little plastic gadgets, some quilling paper and paint if you want the frame of the basket to look more like wood.

I think that you could use the top half also if you wanted to go to the trouble of cutting out a bottom to fit from mat board or poster board.

Since I have three, I may try making one that looks more like plastic, but for demonstration purposes, I just did a straight basket. I painted it trail tan. Then I started weaving strips of quilling paper in and out around the spokes.

It just so happens that seven of the pieces of quilling paper fit the slots exactly. I did mine in gold and brown. You simply start inside the basket by gluing one end of a strip of quilling paper to the back of one of the spokes. Weave around, ending on the inside and overlapping the starting end. Fasten it with a drop of glue and trim the end.

When you finish the weaving, cut a couple of pieces of quilling paper about an inch long and fasten to the sides as handles. Then run a strip around the top and bottom.....Almost instant basket.

After you finish. stuff the basket with scraps of fabric and go to Sherree's website http://picasaweb.google.nl/sherree2 for the detergent box of your choice. Go down towards the bottom and hit the thumbnail for laundry supplies. It will take you to lots of choices. If you just want one box, poke the kind you want and when it comes up, you can just print it straight off of the website. I use Gain, so that was Tessie's choice.

Please notice that the basket is sitting on the finished kitchen table. That is the third coat on the top. I did two coats of the glaze to give it some depth and finished with a topcoat of Deft semi-gloss spray. With that combination, I got the mirror finish that I wanted.

Now I have to get back to the real world and do real housework....Bah Humbug!

See you tomorrow.

Seven With One Blow......

I set myself a goal of seven of the tile displays this morning....It took me two hours almost to the minute to finish seven of them. Now Tessie has one for each day of the week.....She is going around singing "Eight Days a Week!" Remember, she already had one from yesterday. She thinks that the song is clever......

Again, don't forget to poke the photos for a closer look.

In the first photo I decided to show you the six steps of making them. The first three pieces that are overlapped are two fabric covered ones and a paper one. Next the top corners are cut out and the bottom is trimmed even with the foam core. The white one is showing the corners turned up with glue and mitered. The next one is with the paper glued around the board. The last one laying down is with the paper glued on the back side. And lastly, there is Tessie sitting in the one that I showed yesterday.

Here are the ones that I finished this morning.

#1. Tessie is standing against a background of real wallpaper that has metallic stars on it. I got that one from a wallpaper sample book that I got for free years ago. She says that moonlight is quite conducive to yo-yo-ing. I'm not sure why.

#2. Another wallpaper sample. I used to have loads of these. They are getting whittled down to a small stack now. As you can see, I stuck a geranium planter on this one and "Home Sweet Home" plate on the wall.

#3. Zar had to get into the act. He demanded that he got to model if I was going to hang his clock on the wall...BTW, It is still going strong. So far I haven't even had to change the steam powered battery. The wallpaper is mini paper.

#4. The next one is fabric. The painting is a watercolor by my friend Val. Thanks again, Val. Two of Eskiaga's cats wandered over. The Christmas party is pretty much wound down now. They just wanted to get out of the way of the clean up crew. Dodging a bulldozer is not fun.

#5. The wallpaper here was sold as mini wallpaper, but I suspect that it was real wallpaper that someone cut up. It is very heavy like the real thing. I borrowed Spike's four poster doggy bed, so of course he wanted to come along. He wanted a rawhide bone for payment. He is getting more like Tessie everyday. The picture on the wall is one of the stamps that I bought in that bag a couple of weeks ago.

#6. The wallpaper here is some mini stuff from a company that has not been in business for a very long time. I got it when I was working in a local mini store back in the early 80s. You have seen the swan cradle before. Mom and the two babies are doing fine.

#7. This one is covered with Tessie's favorite apron fabric. Tessie says that as soon as she can find her apron this one will be a good place for her to hide and be a fly on the wall....She says that the apron will make her invisible if she stands totally still....Meanwhile, the Peruvian Monster Bunny is holding his own with Theo. I don't think that Theo knows that Monster Bunny has fangs and claws, larger than his own, under all that fluff!

Kathi, over a Beautiful Mini Blessings, http://beautifulminiblessings.blogspot.com/ has already tried this tutorial. She came up with a beach scene to put behind the wicker chair that I sent her the other day. I never thought of using outdoor scenes on them. Great idea, Kathi. Do go look.

I hear rumbling from all over the house. I am not sure if it is the bulldozer at Eskiaga's place or if it's Tessie zapping the tile displays here and there so that she will have lots of places to sit and relax around the house. I had better go check and clean up the mess that I made whilst putting them together.

See you tomorrow.