Last month, I bought this Leanin' Tree card rack at a mostly antique sale with a little flea market thrown in. The rack looks old, and it could be, since the Leanin' Tree Company has been "an American tradition since 1949", according to their web site. Cards and envelopes come in so many bright and cheerful colors…

   Although my crafting interests are varied, scrapbooking… as in embellishing photo albums, has never caught my interest. However, the cutting tools and wide array of papers… now that I can get excited about. I made this wintery landscape from a variety of scrapbook papers cut from templates that are available for download on Martha Stewart's web site.  …

  I made this set of three retro lamp pictures, inserted them into some old frames I found at a yard sale, and hung them gallery-style in a row on my wall. My inspiration for choosing to make them was my memory of growing up in the 195os and 60s sitting on our sofa watching a black and…

    Yesterday, I created postcards. After typing in each recipient's address on the postcard's front, I printed them off in sets of 4 on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of cover/card stock paper using Publisher's postcard format. I then wrote a note to each of my five grandkids to drop in the mail today.   To make them, I…

  I'd like you to meet "Tillie." I formed the foundation of her skirt by creating a tagboard cone that I glued onto a clothespin… not the snap kind but the other variety. After gluing fabric onto the tagboard cone, I wrapped fabric around the upper part of the clothespin for the dress's bodice then…

  Yesterday, a local quilt shop offered a 25% discount on all cotton fabrics, so I picked up a yard of this Heather Bailey "Pop Daisy" print. On my computer's screen, some of the flower's petals look lilac in this scan… shudder (purple is my least fav color), but in reality they're pink. Also, the center "spoke" in the flower is red,…

    I broke one of my rules… a very recent one that I came up with… regarding not buying fabric until I have completed the project that I'm presently working on. In the same outing, when I purchased the fabric for my bib apron that I made from the "A is for Apron" book, I spied an…

      "Mary from Madison". Congratulations, Mary! Because those of you that participated in my drawing weren't able to be in attendance when the winner's name was drawn after the 8 p.m. close of the drawing last night, I will describe the setting and what transpired. I printed off the list of comments submitted on the Food…

  In the Dec. 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine, it showed how to fold a wrapping paper "pocket" to slip a gift card into. You can access the directions on her web site, as well. I haphazardly wound yarn around the package to add a little more fun to the solid color paper. On Martha…

    The heavy cloud cover throughout the entire day today nearly deterred me from this bird photo shoot, but Miss Hilda, Libby, Elsa, and Effie May got dressed in their finest, so I didn't have the heart to disappoint them by waiting for the sun to shine. I used scrapbook paper to create this…