I'm A Winner!

Look at what I won from Lyric Kinard's blog site. I put a comment on her blog site for a chance to win one of her ATC's.
I love her surface design on this ATC. I do believe that she has a book coming out in fall of this year. You can pre-order it here. I can't wait to get it as I love Lyric's colorful art quilts!

Jane's Project

Those of you that keep up with my blog (and thank you!) know that I mentioned I was working on a project for my friend Jane Powell. You know Jane, right?

NO?!

She owns Random Arts in Saluda NC. If you are a mixed media artist, fiber artist, any kind of artist...you HAVE to go there. She has THE most wonderful and charming shop around.

Seriously, Jane carries products there that you can't get anywhere else around here. And if you want something that she doesn't have, most times all you have to do is ask and she will try to get them for you.

How cool is that?

Anyway, Jane has these neat little packs "Sweat Treats". They are ATC packs that have everything that you need to make several ATC's from one pack. She ask me to take a couple of packs and see what I could do with them. Oh, also a handful of trinkets, ribbons and a paper mache house.
Wow! What an great deal for me!

I painted, stained, drew, ironed, outlined, cut, shaped, glued, sanded...well you get the picture.
I ended up with a handful of ATC's, a rusty house and a quiltlet. The picture above is the quiltlet "Play".
See the bee on the flower? That's a real bee! My husband found it in the house and thought it would be a good addition. It looks so cool!
I'll try to add another post later with the house and other ATC's.
Right now, I'm finishing up packing and heading out the door to Concord NC. Going to the Inspired Artist Retreat. Four days of learning, teaching and having fun with like minded people.
I hope that you all have an inspired weekend!

Baking by The Book

While going through my mom's cookbooks, look what I found!
It's a "How to bake by the Ration Book" . It is date 1943.
There are readers of my blog that will remember this. I can't but am frightened that one day it may come to this...history does repeat itself, doesn't it?
Let's get past that scary thought...
Let's all do everything that we can to live a lean, scaled down life. Let's agree to try our level best to preserve - no Improve - our way of living for our children, our grandchildren.
Now, let's move on to the inside cover...which reads


Who said "No cake"?


And it goes on to give pages of recipes without sugar, without shortening and without eggs! Some use what they call "blessedly low amounts of all three".
I love looking through all of the old recipes that my mom has held onto all these years. A lot of church cookbook just chock full of good ol' down home cooking and baking.
My mom was one of those cooks (and moms) that thought you needed something of every color on your plate...
meat, yellow, orange, green and white...Dinner's ready! Oh, and three meals a day.
I never got to eat pre sweetened cereal until my younger sister was old enough to eat it (she is 13 years younger than I am). Wonder why mom allowed her to eat it and not the older sisters?
Oh well, a short trip down memory lane tonight.
I've got more art journal pages drawn, not colored yet as I wanted to scan them without color first. I've been working on a project for my buddy Jane Powell (Random Arts). I'll share later. I can tell you it involves a paper mache house, Sweet Tweet ATC's and rust strips...oh, and maybe bee's wax.