I don't think I ever told you guys this, but back in October my bee hive was robbed by another colony, forcing my bees to take to the skies in a panic. It was a depressing day--Dave and I both loved watching the bees from our living room window, and losing the colony was like losing a beloved pet. I was pretty emo about it. Since October, I have been continuing to maintain a few hives for some neighbors while they were on holiday vacation (which meant delicious educational experience and delicious honey). The plan was to keep the colonies going strong and to split the hives in Spring, allowing me to once again host some bees in my backyard. I am very impatient. Spring seemed like a really long way off. The thoughtful and ever-adventurous Linden found out that some bees had moved into a coworker's tree--the hive had been there for awhile and grown drastically in size, and Coworker wanted the bees removed. What excellent news! Linden donned her bravest face and agreed to help me cut the hive from the tree. The hive was pretty big.
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Welcome to another year of life on our delicate little planet. While I love Christmas very much, I'm glad it's over--crafting gifts for giving and for selling is super fun, but I'm excited to get back to painting for awhile. Making journals and jewelry does not so much satisfy my artistic needs. One of the gifts I made for Christmas this year was for an incredible couple, Adam and Annie. Adam is a graphics and web designer who makes awesome stuff out of leather, and Annie crafts all sorts of fun and delicious things. They both love being in the mountains and hiking in the woods, and they are a super creative couple.
The "Crafty Christmas" handmade gifts sale is running full-blast at Felicitous right now, and it is going great! I spent so much time the last few months crafting like crazy to prepare for it, and things are selling quickly. Along with the annual favorites (T-shirt Journals and Geeky Earrings), I also made these super simple "Lucky Penny" charm bracelets--I used pennies from 1980-2005 since Felicitous is mainly a college hangout for the University of South Florida. I was not confident that these would be a hit, but to my surprise they are one of the most popular items from the sale so far. Making a Lucky Penny Charm Bracelet is super simple, and it makes the perfect Christmas gift or stocking stuffer for almost anyone you know who wears bracelets: give your mom a bracelet with a penny for each of her children's birth years, your lovey a penny from the year you met/wed, or just give anyone a bracelet with the year they were born. The hardest part is sorting through your change jar/couch cushions/car to find the right penny. Because this is such a simple project, I dressed up the how-to presentation a bit by making a little instructional video. I hope it makes this quick project more fun for you.
November is just around the corner, and I have been madly creating jewelry and thingies and gifts for the 3rd annual handmade sale at Felicitous. A big seller from past years has been my mismatched trinket earrings--I make them from whatever random bits, charms, and dongles I have collected over throughout the year that didn't make it into another project. Pieces from thrifted board games are my favorites, and there are always a handful of Monopoly-piece and Clue-weapon earrings hanging off my laboratory bulletin board ready to be gifted. Well, apparently everyone in my neighborhood decided Clue is boring, because the thrift store was chock full of the old mystery game. I grabbed a few for $2 each, thinking I would make some earrings out of the weapons like always. When I got home and opened one of the boxes, the game pieces were super detailed characters and the board was in perfect shape. Our Clue game growing up just had colored pawn pieces, and I was totally mesmerized by these miniature people. I couldn't toss them out, so instead I upcycled the game and made coasters out of the game board and wine glass charms from the characters. This Clue Drink Set for Six makes a fun hostess gift for a murder mystery party, adds flair to board game night, and pairs perfectly with a viewing party for the movie "Clue," which is hilarious. Best of all, it is easy to make yourself and, with some creative adjustments, could be replicated with pretty much any board game.
As you know, we just bought our first house in June. The house had a wooden shed in the backyard which we've been turning into my art studio.
Two months later and the project of transforming the wooden shed into my epic artland is done. DONE. I even made my first project in there tonight (right after I took all these pictures--the studio's cleanliness has been replaced by nylon scraps and rope bits). So here it is! Bask in the beauty of my wondrous studio. Come visit and sit on the settee from last post. We can make crafts together and laugh and stuff. It will be great. I wanted a comfy place for people to sit if they were visiting my studio, but the space is so small that the piece of furniture needed to be an odd size and visually lightweight. Figuring out this little conundrum was not on my radar at all--the studio still needed a lot of work, so furnishing the new space seemed far off. BUT THEN I found these gross chairs.
We passed the one-month-in-our-new-home marker!
Everyone is feeling comfortable and finding new favorite spots in the new place. StarFox is fond of staring out the window and watching bikers pass our house on the Pinellas trail, Nemo prefers to cuddle up to anything that was recently laundered, and Dave has been reading/devouring an Orson Scott Card series my mom recommended. We all know it: Craigslist is awesome. I'm sure there are people who use it to make a good amount of money or sell really expensive things, but I pretty much just use it to sell stuff for cheap, to drool over local puppies and kitties (and pet monkeys), and to get free stuff. I've been combing the free listings obsessively lately.
Since moving, my brain is constantly updating and revising my list of future house projects, and while I realize that things like adding a patio and a chicken house and a pantry and an office and another bedroom are best done slowly over time, I want them to all be done RIGHT NOW. One of the larger future projects we want to do is a sizable paver patio and walkway (with fire pit) in the backyard. Ignorant me was like, "pavers are probably super cheap, duh." This turned out to be an enormous lie. Since we are in no rush to spend hours a day laying pavers out in the height of Florida's summer sun, my plan is to slowly collect free pavers from craigslist until we have enough to cover the entire area. Then I will fashion a glorious mosaic from the array of variously sized pavers, and we will install the whole patio in the Florida Winter. We closed on our first house one week ago today! While the process was a bit stressful for me and my struggle with the virtue of patience, finally getting to open the door on our new place was well worth the wait.
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