Ann-Denise's 31 Wishes Event

 A few weeks ago, I headed once again down to Ft. Worth to attend Ann-Denise's 31 Wishes Halloween Event.  If you've read my blog for a while, you might have read about last year's Halloween Event: A Wicked Tea.  Ann- Denise *always* goes way above and beyond in every way for her events.  These were the decorations that greeted us as we walked in the front door.

When you look to the right inside the front door is her dining room.

As you scan around the room.  Every inch of this house is ready for Halloween!

This is the candy table.  Later in the day it was filled with all kinds of delicious cupcakes.  The little dracula boxes were made for us by Kimber.  Kimber lives in Texas but she is also a member of Tulsa Dolling Dames. 

With any Ann-Denise event, there is no detail that is over-looked.  These adorable sewn pockets held our napkins and utensils for dinner.  They were too cute to use!

 Of course, this is the embellishment bar.  Can you believe this?  Ann-Denise is so amazingly generous with her supplies.  C'mon up - pick your favorite goodies to embellish your project - there's enough here for everyone!

There's always some sort of fun "kit" and no event would be complete without an amazing name badge!

I would have taken more pictures but my camera battery died.  :(  But be sure to click on each of the photos above to enlarge them for a better look.

 We had a couple swaps too - but I'll have to save that for the next post.
If you want to take a peek at the other events that I've been to hosted by Ann-Denise, check these out:
A Valentine Makery
A High Tea

Viv's Halloween Swap - Part Two

Here is the adorable hat I received from my swap partner, Cindy.  Simple and sweet and I love it!

 In the box with the hat were all these awesome goodies.  The cute owl stamp, the Halloween decorated box with trinkets inside, a pin cushion and Halloween pins, a vintage spool with Halloween trims, a Halloween tag, a beautiful cross stitched pumpkin ornament, and the fun "Boo" banner.

 Yes, she totally spoiled me.  Take a closer look at the work Cindy put into this beautiful ornament:

 Isn't this pincushion the cutest little thing?  Check out those Halloween pins.  I have it sitting on top of the vintage spool wrapped in trims.

Thank you Cindy for all my beautiful things!

Viv's Halloween Witch Hat Swap

When Viv announced her Halloween Witch Hat swap, I knew I couldn't miss it!  Here is the hat I made for my swap partner, Cindy:

 I made this little charm of a ghost inside a glass vial topped with a bead cap and a glass flower bead along with some rhinestone trim and filled with black star and yellow moon confetti.

 I also included this cute tiny teddy bear whose dress is made from a mini cupcake liner.

 This witch is hand made from paperclay - I think she turned out pretty cute!

 I also made a little shadow box.  The ghost inside is made from polymer clay.  He looks scared with that creepy hand trapping him inside the box!

I also included a Halloween Tag with some Halloween Trims.   Cindy sent me an adorable hat with some really cute things, but you'll have to wait until my next post.  ;)

Beautiful Canvas from Tami

My friend Tami has a blog called Vintage Connections.  She recently did a giveaway of a beautiful canvas on her blog and I was the lucky winner!!!  Isn't it beautiful!?!

I first met Tami in the Spring of 2011 at Karla's Birdsong Event.  It was Tami's first art event, but definitely not her last.  We both attended Birdsong Two this past Spring (along with Laurie and Suzanne) and have participated in several other swaps together.  One of my favorite things about attending art events is the wonderful people I get to meet and new friends we make along the way.

Thank you Tami for this lovely piece of artwork!

Breakfast at Tiffany Cloth Book Swap

Earlier in the summer, Laurie sent out an email to see if any one was interested in participating in a Breakfast at Tiffany Cloth Book Swap.  I knew I couldn't miss it. It was so fun dreaming of how the pages would look and bringing the vision to life, but I couldn't even imagine how much I would love this book!  I sent off my pages and Laurie worked like crazy to get them bound and sent back to us in an amazingly fast turnaround.
Look how fun Laurie packaged these for us:

Laurie also spent much of the summer making her own page (see below) along with this unbelievably gorgeous cover and the back cover as well.  

Once she received all the pages, she carefully bound them into this beautiful book.

The page with the typewriter is the back of the front cover, with a table of contents for each page.

On the right, the page with the black dress was created by Terri Wilkerson (a fellow Oklahoman!) of Http://junqueseeker.blogspot.com 

 On the left side is the back side of Terri's page.  Her details are amazing!  Click on the photos to get a closer view.
On the right side is the page I created.  I sewed blue satin into a ruffle and attached it to an iron on photo transfer.  I then adhered the ruffle adorned photo to a piece of black velvet and hand sewed the pearls.  I also added rhinestone trim to the bottom of the photo.

I kept the back of my page simple by sewing two white satin bows on to black satin.
On the right side is the page done by Tamatha Kaplan of http://snipsandthreads.blogspot.com
I've been in a couple swaps with Tamatha and I just got to meet her last weekend at Handmade U!  How cool is that?  We were partners in the Vintage Ephemera Box swap.  I still need to blog about that...
Tamatha used beautiful fabrics to make a collage page.

On the left is the back of Tamatha's page.  Can't you imagine shopping these windows?

 On the right hand side is a blue Tiffany Box page created by Suzanne Wingfield.  I wonder how she got the correct font for this page?
Below, on the left side is the back of Suzanne's page.  You've got to look at that stunning chandelier!  and the black lace she used is beautiful!
On the right side is Laurie's page with a gorgeous pink lined fabric and a sweet pink dress made from lace with a beaded sash.

 Below on the left is the back of Laurie's page.  The text in the pink box says, "You can always tell what kind of person a man really thinks you are by the earrings he gives you".
On the right is Linda McMillan's page.  I love the NY skyline and the little cat.  Cute, cute, cute~

The back of Linda's page is a collage of scenes from the movie and of NYC.  

I love the simplicity of Tami Hackler's page on the right.  It's beautiful! Tami's blog is http://vintageconnections.blogspot.com.

 The back of Tami's page has some of the lyrics to Moon River.  The page on the right is the inside of the back cover.  Isn't that fabric Laurie used so cute!  Did you notice the cat she sewed on made from buttons and embroidery?

 The back cover Laurie cut a silhouette of Audrey and covered her with mesh, then adorned the page with lace and vintage buttons.

Head on over to Laurie's blog to see her much more eloquently worded post about this amazing swap!

Secrets of the Dearly Departed

In just a couple short weeks, I'm off to Ft. Worth to attend Ann-Denise's 31 Halloween Wishes event.  Of course, there will be swaps, and one of them is an 8 1/2 by 11 inch book which is about Secrets of the Dearly Departed. We had to come up with some sort of "secret" that one of our ancestors took to the grave and create a page about it.  Here is my page and her "secret" is hidden on the black card behind her picture.

I'm happy with my page but I had a real hard time coming up with a secret.  I printed off the background of the spooky tree on a piece of cardstock.  The picture of my ancestor is a transfer on vinyl.  I sewed the vinyl on three sides to make a pocket in which to put her secret in.  When you remove the paper behind her, you can see the creepy tree through the transparency.  I added some fun confetti bats and a spider and circled three sides of the page in the gingham and ric-rac trim.  The top edge was left plain so it can be bound.  

I've sent my page off and it will be bound in a book with the other 11 participant's pages.  Now, I can't wait for 31 Wishes to see the rest!

My Breakfast at Tiffany Pages arrived yesterday - you are going to want to see these!!!  I'll blog about those tomorrow.

Hoot!

Check out this cute owl wallhanging I made the other night over at The Paper Crown:

Bobbie taught this one and it's even cuter in person than it appears in a photo.  I just love it!

I understand our Breakfast at Tiffany books are on their way back to us so you are going to want to come back and check those out, I'm sure!

Just got back on Sunday from Handmade U - Fall 2012 and had a great time meeting up with friends and journaling.  I need to blog about that too...Oh yeah - and I have TWO more swaps to finish up before Saturday.  Better get off this computer and get to work!

Fairy Pages!

Earlier this summer, Karla announced she was hosting a fairy page swap.  As with anything Karla hosts, I knew I had to join in - and I'm so glad I did!  I posted about my pages here. 

Karla's cover:

Page by Elaine Paullus:

Page by Jane Palmer:

Page by Karla Jackson:

Page by Kim Caldwell:

Page by Robin Carr:

Page by Robin Martin:

Page by Roseanne Van Etten:

Page by Terry Frias:

I love every. single. page! A couple of these ladies I have swapped tags with in the past - Jane Palmer who hosts the White Christmas Tag Swap, and Robin Carr.  How fun it is to recognize most of the names of the people whose pages I received.  :)

Miss Pumpkin Queen

 Yesterday, I traveled over to OKC to the Paper Crown to make this sweet little Miss Pumpkin Queen:

This was the first time that Bobbie taught a class at Paper Crown and she did a great job! Bobbie is teaching another class in a week or so that I had already signed up for before I took this class. The picture of the sample for the next class is completely adorable, but when I saw the actual project displayed yesterday at the Paper Crown,  I can't even wait.  If you hop on over to Bobbie's blog, you will see what what I'm talking about.  Don't be jealous. ;)

I just love my sweet Miss Pumpkin Queen and I've already displayed her proudly on my fireplace mantle.  Now it's time to get out all my fall decorations to jazz things up around here. 

In other creative news, I finished my Breakfast at Tiffany pages last week and sent them off to Laurie. Even though the design was fairly simple (I thought!) the execution definitely took way longer than I ever anticipated.  I hope everyone likes them - I thought they were pretty.   No sneaky peeks on those right now - you'll just have to wait!

I'm also waiting on my Faerie Book from Karla's swap.  Lots of the girls have gotten their books and the pages are amazing. Everyday I go to the mailbox hoping, hoping, hoping - but not yet... I know there were between 80-100 people who participated, so Karla's getting them made into books and sent out as fast as she can.

Next up, I'm getting my things together to head to Omaha on Thursday for Rachel's Handmade U - Fall 2012.  Driving up Thursday for a weekend of journaling and hanging with my creative friends.  I went last fall and we stayed at Minglewood Lodge and had a great time.  The retreat is growing, and this year, Rachel moved the event to a hotel in Omaha.  Better go finish up my swaps!

Queen of Hearts Doll

Here in Tulsa, we have a doll club called Tulsa Dolling Dames.  Every month, one of our members makes a doll to raffle off as the door prize. The money collected goes into our funds that we use to bring teachers in to teach us new techniques in doll making.  This month, Doreen made this fun Queen of Hearts doll and I was the lucky winner! 

 She stands approximately 15 inches tall.

A few months ago, I was the lucky door prize winner of Jayne's cute little doll. She is only about 8 inches tall. 

We are getting ready to have Stephanie Novatski come to town to teach us some new doll making techniques. She will be teaching us a large male doll and we had the opportunity to pick between a wizard, a steampunk guy, and a santa.  I'm going to make Santa.
I haven't yet finished my doll from Sherry Goshon's class back in March (you are not surprised, are you?).  I need to get on that!

Our dogs, our babies...

So - this is our sweet Phoebe.  This year has been a challenging one as far as her health goes.  She's a little over 8 years old and for quite a while we have battled with her weight, her allergies, and skin issues. 

Her adrenals were out of whack which caused her to feel like she was hungry all the time, which caused her to overeat,  which in turn caused her to be way overweight.  Also, problems with her adrenals also caused problems with her skin.  If I didn't bathe her almost every other day, she would get terrible sores all over her.  I'd put her on antibiotics and steroids, but that was only a temporary band-aid.  We tried Melatonin implants but those didn't really work.  Our vet recommended a medication that we tried for a while, and it worked for a time, but all of a sudden threw her into adrenal crisis.  We caught that just in time and now she goes for an injection every 25 days to keep her "up"where her adrenals have failed.  

Shortly after that crisis, we ended up in the Doggie ER one night because she wasn't acting right and doing a funny thing with her eyes.  I worried that her injections were having a bad reaction on her and I was still frightened from the crisis we had just gone through. Turned out that she had a corneal abrasion (no crisis - thank goodness!)  which we treated for several weeks with antibiotic eye drops and her eye seemed to get better. 

                                      

A couple weeks after that we were back at the Vet once again for seasonal allergies and a skin infection.  Her skin was so itchy that none of us could stand the scratching, but at least she didn't have the big sores all over like she used to get she used to get. Two rounds of antibiotics later and things were once again looking up. 

This week, I noticed something wasn't right with her once again.  Her left eye looked funny to me and she was only blinking with her right eye,  and when she would walk her gait was just off.  We went to see our Vet and sure enough something is wrong with her eye.  Her left pupil is dilated and she isn't blinking on the left.  Poor baby girl.

Since the Doggie Opthamologist only comes to town once every two weeks, we are off to see him on Monday to see what is going on with her eye.  

She seems to feel okay - she's bossing me around as usual, and her gait seems to be back to normal.  I'm putting artificial tears in that eye but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her tear duct and her eye is staying moist, even without the drops. 

If you are so inclined, would you please say a prayer for our girl?    

And while you are at it, could you also say a prayer for our other baby who needs it too?  This is Niles. 

 He's our 12 year old little guy who almost got killed last year at Doggie Camp.  His arthritis is getting pretty bad.  I'm trying to keep him medicated but the medication is not holding him quite as long as it used to. He's limping around a little more and it may be time to up his pain medication.  Unfortunately, the medication is not good long term on his liver.  Ugh.

Why can't they stay young and healthy forever???

The other two babies seem to be just fine. 

Nestle is still nervous, but that's just "'cwazy ol' Nettie!"

Then of course, last but definitely not least - sweet, sweet Teddy Bear - he really is just a baby!  Not a mean bone in this baby's body.  I just want to squeeze him until I get a pop!

Wow - if you've made it all the way to the end of this post - I appreciate you taking the time to read about my babies.  Since we don't have human children, these are our kids. When they are out of sorts, so are we.  We can't stand it when they don't feel well.  ;(