crafty mcgee

Arbor weekend

Saturday was Arbor Day, so I celebrated by both creating and planting a tree. The made one was created with pipe cleaners, ribbon, embroidery thread, copper wire, beads, and tiny fabric flowers and leaves. I was inspired by the movie The Science of Sleep. In it, two misfit crafters, Stefan (played by Gael Garcia Bernal - yay!) and Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) ultimately create their own world based on Stephanie's story of a forest that sets out in a boat to find its mother. I was good! Parts of it (the creative bits) were great.

Here's the purchased tree. It doesn't look so impressive yet, but it will grow up to be a fine hawthorne. I couldn't find a decent picture of a grown one, but it has berries and thorns and birds love it. I've been looking for one for years, and finally found it at what was billed as "Seattle's Biggest Plant Sale".

Also on Saturday, as if to honor its day, the dogwood burst into bloom! It didn't flower last year, so I take this as a sign that it's happy here. Trees...a good thing.

Say hello to my little friend

I suppose you were thinking you'd never hear from me again? Nope, I'm back. How long will I stick around this time? A day, a week? Nobody knows.....not even me. I do have a few lame excuses for why I haven't been posting. The big one is that I finally got a new computer! Yay! It's that tiny box in the picture and I love it. I've spent the last couple of weekends (in addition to lots of gardening) getting my old computer organized so I could do a clean transfer. It took forever - it's amazing how cluttered a computer can get in just seven years.

The little gals are from the fairy vending machine(!) at Uwajimaya. Speaking of fairies, remember way back at the beginning of the year when I got inspired by The Princess and the Pea and decided I was going to illustrate a story with my vignettes? Well, I've decided to do A Midsummer Night's Dream. I already have most of the scenes storyboarded out, a couple of the characters sewn, and some sets in the works. I'm trying to get far enough ahead that I can at least guarantee a scene a week. Look for the first around mid-May. Uwajimaya seemed to be full of more treasures than usual last week. I also found this amazing thing -

a pink kitty bottle filled with wine! Now, I'm allergic to wine, so I've got no idea if it's any good or not, but how could I resist? I need to invite some wine-drinking friends over so I can fill it with different color liquid (like red, or blue) to see how it looks.

I haven't been completely slacking on the craftiness front. I made a holder for my moo cards using this incredible tutorial from splatgirl. I can get a little antsy sewing tiny things - and she had a warning about that - but it was really fun and easy. The ribbon is from superbuzzy.

Did you see who got a great big picture at the top of the latest Craftzine? Congratulations futuregirl! be sure to head over to Alice's place and pick up your very own octopus pattern, if you haven't already.

That's it for today. You've heard it before, but I shall return!