Leather Purses

I thought I would share with you a picture today. I belong to a small private miniature swapping group and I made purses for one of our swaps for a ladies boutique theme. I used small pieces of very thin leather and one source I used was a few pairs of ladies vintage leather gloves. I was able to position the purse pattern over the fancy design of the glove and incorporate that into the glove! It was such fun making these. I need to keep a lookout for more of these gloves. Any lawn or tag sales, fleamarkets, etc are great places to look for these. Don't be afraid to ask when you're at fleamarkets or antique shops as sometimes they keep items such as these in drawers and you won't see them laying out.

Awards

WOW it's been a long time since I've been here at my blog in blogland. I just got so caught up in real life everyday stuff I couldn't find my way here. But I see I have some things I need to attend to. Like an award....well a couple really. These are the first I've ever recieved so lets see if I can accept them properly.

The first one I recieved from Casey at  http://caseymini.blogspot.com/ and Jaime at http://jlilroomer.blogspot.com/. The rules to this award.....wait a minute there are rules to awards????.....Yup I guess so....

Here are the rules for the award:
1.Thank the person who gave this to you.

2.Copy the logo and place it in your blog.

3.Link the person who nominated you.

4.Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know.

5.Nominate seven "Kreativ Bloggers"

6.Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.

7.Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you nominate them.

Ok lets see
1 thank you Jaime and Casey
2 I tried, not sure if it'll work
3 Done
4  see below
5  I can't bring myself to nominate 7 others at this time because I'm sure ever blogger I know has already received this and may not be too happy for me to give it out again at this late date
6  again refer to number 5

OK now 7 things you may not know about me...this'll be easy since I'm a new blogger....

1 I'm a grandma to my oldest daughters 3 children
2 and I am just absolutely crazy about my grandchildren I couldn't love them more if they were my own children
3 I love quilting almost as much as I do miniatures
4 I love to camp in our 30ft Jayco camper, my home away from home
5 I had a springer spaniel/border collie mix friend for 12 years that I can't seem to get over losing. We loved her every bit as much as she loved us. And after my kids grew up and left home she was my constant companion.
6 Even as old as I am I still love a really really good pizza
7 I'm addicted to court shows on TV. Love to watch them in the winter with a quilt on my lap that I'm woring on handquilting.

WOW I could have kept going......

And for a photo.....I'll pass along this one that I took coming down off the hill where I live into the valley. The fog was just beautiful and I had to capture it.

Tomorrow I'll adress the issue of the other award. I also have plans to have another drawing and lots of other things happening. Ideas just swirling thru my head. Until then..... Oh and don't forget to poke the picture so you can see it larger. It's just so pretty!

MINIATURE DRAWING

And the winner is...............................Doreen...............Thank you Doreen for your thoughts on what the skellie ladies were talking about! Please send me your address and I'll mail you your prize!





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I'm not really thinking it's a safe thing to post haley picture on my blog. So you see her little hands anyways. She thought this was great fun and wanted to draw another name. I'm going to have another drawing in a few weeks. A little twist to the next one. See if we can get more people to enter. For every person that promotes the drawing on their own blog I'll enter you name into the bowl again. I need to work on those details because I'd like to enter your name for every person that you refer over to my blog that enters the drawing. If you refer 5 people and they all commented and joined the drawing and told me that you referred them I'll enter your name in 5 times! More details later. For now we'll get this gift off to Doreen!

Thank you everyone!








Today's the day for the drawing. All of the names.....well I think there is only 5.....will be put in a bowl and I'll let haley draw a name out. I'll be back later with some pictures of the drawing.....

MINIATURE DRAWING

Not much time to blog these days. Spending all my minutes listing auctions on ebay. Just wanted to drop in and let you know that I'll have the drawing on Tuesday for the handcrafted mini! My granddaughter will be here and she can do the drawing. She's only 3 1/2 and she'll get a kick out of doing this.
So til then......have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend! Hope you're all having some type of celebration!

New Followers and Free Mini Drawing

A big HELLO to all the new followers! I welcome you. I hope to soon get a chance to chat with you all. I'll be over to visit your blogs as soon as I unpack all this ''''''stuff'''''' from our camping trip.



To anyone new, just stopping by, go over to the right here and look at the list of followers. Click on their link and adventually you'll find yourself looking at their blogs! Please check them all out. I'm sure everyone would love to have stop and visit. And be sure to leave them a message. ME TOO! I love to read a comment. Lets me know I'm not sitting here talking to myself.



Also......We've finally been getting summer weather, now that fall is basically upon us and I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can before the snow actually starts to fly. I'm afraid that'll be sooner than I wish. Altho I do enjoy the winter months......time spent indoors all warm and toasty. It's the time of year when I get to spend more time on the computer and more time to spend on miniatures. Selling mini creations on ebay. And reading a good book. Working on a cross stitch project or sitting in the recliner with a half finished quilt spread across my lap while I handquilt it and watch my husband channelsurf. (((((Good grief....does your partner do that too? Does it drive you crazy like it does me? But that is a whole 'nother subject I'll delve into another time.))))) All wonderful exciting winter projects to look forward to. But for the next few weeks I will try to cram as much summertime activities in that I can. Hopefully enough to last me thru the long winter months!



Hummmm let me see if I can find a picture for you to look at............OK here's one! My Skellie Ladies. Coming back from the dead.....got themselves all prettied up and they're sharing a cup of coffee, a slice of cake and some stories of how they got themselves where they are .........Hummmmmmm

These ladies are up on Ebay as we speak. Check them out.......Seller ID Peechtree-minis



CONTEST......CONTEST.......CONTEST......CONTEST......

Don't forget to poke the picture so you can see it larger! Leave me a comment and let me know what you think they are talking about! I'll have someone blindly chose one and send a little mini gift to that person. Handcrafted mini of course by yours truly!


WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO

Back from Vacation

And what a wonderful time we had! Camping, boating and a visit to a museum in Blue Mountain. We really had a lot of fun and probably spent more on gas for the boat and truck than we did anything else. It's crazy! Here are some pictures. One is a picture of Blue Mountain taken from the boat out on Raquette Lake. Beautiful view out on the water!

Also here is a picture of a Blue Heron we watch feed on the other side of the river by our campsite. He was only about 30 feet from us and couldn't have cared less. Be sure to pole the pictures to see them enlarged so you can check out the detail.

And to stay on a mini note here are a few pictures of some miniatures showcased in the Blue Mountain Museum. Completely handcrafted chairs and tables, hutches and more. Crafted by Bennie Arnold. I purchased a pamphlet about him and his work. It says that each miniature was executed with dentist's drills, files and a jackknife and each was an exacting scale copy of a real object. Just amazing. I wish I had taken a few more pictures of the collection. Bennie's wife donated 800 pieces of his work after Bennie had passed away. This represented 25 years of his work. It mentions that he sold a lot of his work too. i wonder if anyone out in blogland has a piece of his work. Please tell me if you do or know someone who does. That would be so interesting!

OH MY I think I made a mess of this post! The pictures don't correspond with the writing......please excuse my errors as I try to figure this posting stuff out! What a mess!

IT'S HOT, HOT, HOT

I can't believe how hot it really is!! We're having a heatwave here in New York. Here are the temps recorded on the wall in our den. It shows the temps inside and out. And that is in the shade. I can't even imagine how hot it is in the sun!

Guess this is why I haven't been on the computer long enough to post an entry or to work in my workroom on the bread box bakery. I need my husband to tear off the one side so that I can get the round closing lid off. I want to replace that with a piece of plastic to keep the contents dust free. It will also give me some added height with that removed. So as soon as I get him to do that for me I can get started on that again. So picture soon I hope!

A Challenge

My first blog challenge.....and it's an easy one at that! Casey from Casey's Minis has sent me a challenge. Post the 4th picture in your 4th file, explain the picture and then pass this challenge on to 4 other people.

The picture I'm sharing is of a roombox I finished last year. It's a little girls room. Filled with all her toys and treasures. Don't forget to poke the picture to enlarge it and enable you to see all of her toys. Most of the miniature toys in this roombox were made either by myself or my mini friends.

OK now the hard part....I need to pass this on to 4 others. Not an easy feat for me....I need to figure out how to include that info here and connect to others blogs. I'm sending this challenge to Jaime from Lil' Roomers, Diann Minis By Diann, Katie from Katies Clay Corner and Tarkus from My Miniature Adventure. I apologize if any of you have already recieved this challenge. Being new to this I'm trying to figure out who is who and what is what. Haven't figured out yet how to post links inside the message. For now it won't let me so I'm sure i have to activate or poke at something to let me do it. I'll go figure that out now!

A new follower, summer flowers and a new project

Wow I was away for a few days, feeling under the weather.......which is a terrible place to be in the summertime.....so I come back to find a new follower....Hello Kim...Welcome...I'm so happy to see you here. I absolutely loved visiting your blog and seeing your gardens. You look like you live in the country like me!!!! We have a small farmette in between 2 large dairy farms. I've attached a few pictures of some of my flowers.

I've also attached a picture of the base of my next project. It's a wooden bread box I bought at a flea market a couple of years ago. This will be the future home of a bakery. I have a plastic shoe box tote full of wonderful bakery goods and it's time to get a display built to show them off. And now that I have conquered the lighting demon I'm ready to light up this bakery too! So follow me along as I attempt to accomplish this. Since it is summer and we still have lots of real life things going on during the nice weather I'm not sure how fast this project will go but I promise to do a little bit of something on a regular basis.

Summer Garden Harvest

Ahhhh it's absolutely awesome to be able to walk to the garden and gather our bounty for dinner! Really! We walked down and picked this zucchini and I cooked it for dinner last night. Delish! Slice it thinly, dip in a mixture of egg and milk whipped up and then coat with flour. Fry til nice and crispy! Awesome! For us it makes a meal......not to mention that we went out for ice cream around 4pm so we weren't very hungry. Shhhh don't tell anyone. That's one of the perks of all the children being grown and we don't have to follow the rules anymore. We can have ice-cream for supper if we want to. HA! And sometimes in the summer, we do!

Casey's gift of Wicker Chair

Todays post will be to show you a picture of a wallhanging shadow box I put together a few weeks ago. This project was started because I was the absolute luckiest winner of a handcrafted wicker chair that was created by the wonderful miniaturist and blogger, Casey from Casey's Minis. I was thrilled to win this beautiful chair and matching ottoman. I had envisioned it in a garden setting roombox and had all intentions of putting together a scene with that theme. But as I started to go thru my workroom looking for things to use things started to develop on a different plane. I started to find things that made me think more of a comfortable reading area. Surrounded by a few plants, shelves filled with some more wonderful handcrafted miniatures. Another area to display some delightful things I've been given or made myself. Hence this little reading corner. A place to put up your feet and relax looking thru a miniature magazine or reading your newest novel!

Don't forget to give the picture a poke to enlarge the picture for a better look see! My youngest daughter bought this shadowbox for me for Christmas a few years ago. I'm so happy to finally have scenes to fill it!

The upstairs room in this wall hanging box is not completed yet. I'm still looking for something to place in the right hand corner. So as soon as I find or create that perfect thing for that corner I will take better pictures of that room. Already I have many things in there that have been given to me by some wonderful miniature artists that I'm so lucky to call my friends!

I hope you're having a wonderful day!

Shabby Rose Boutique

Well with the pushing and prodding of a few mini friends I've had to join this world of Blogging! It's like your first day out in a new pair of shoes! I'm sure it will take me a little bit of time to break it in, so please bare with me as I become acquainted with this new forum and learn my way around it.

I've started by adding a picture of a boutique roombox that I've just finished putting together. Well finished.....how finished is anything we do in the world of miniatures? Are we not always adding. moving, rearranging? This roombox actually still needs some type of windowcovering....a picture behind the window of something better to look at than my carousal of tools on the workbench....I also left the one part of the right side wall empty....I'm looking for a special picture or shelf to hang there. I've also left a little bit of room in the shelves and cabinets to add new minis as I acquire them.

Also I am so proud that I now have electricity in a roombox!!!! My first time ever!! I just didn't think I had it in me! What a difference a couple of lights add! It's amazing. This roombox really called for lights because otherwise it would have been so hard for people to see all the detail with all the tiny miniatures. I couldn't have done this without the help of good friend Diana. She posted pictures in an email to me with the step by step process. How much easier could she have made it for me other than hopping on a plane and flying here from New Mexico to show me in person. So thank you Nanner for all your help. I couldn't have done it without you!

This roombox would not have been possible or at least as beautiful if not for all the wonderful miniatures I've collected over the last 6 years from some talented mini friends. Or my "Midget Friends" as my son-in-law calls them! He's just a sweetheart isn't he?

Well I must save some for another day! Now I must get out and learn what I need to know to survive this new and exciting adventure! Maybe I'll even come back to find that someone has read this!!! LOL!