I Honor You Today Dad

My father served in World War II.   He was a gunner on a Liberty ship.   He was with the Armed Guard, a division of the U. S. Navy.    He served in the Atlantic and the Pacific.    He had to leave his wife and three children to serve our country.    He never talked about his time in the service until the last few years of his life.    He was and should be proud of his Service.    I honor you today Dad.  


Upon my parents passing, we found a large box of correspondence between the two of them while he was at sea.   He sent a lot of V-Mail to Mom and she corresponded by letters.    It gave me goosebumps to read the mail.

My father is buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.   This is a picture of the Boy Scouts putting 140,000 flags on the Veteran's grave there.  They do this every year for Memorial Day.   My thoughts are there today for not only my father but all the Veteran's who served our country.   And a special thanks to all the Boy Scouts who give of their time to do this.    It is a breathtaking sight and we appreciate all the work involved in putting the flags up.

I would also like to honor a really good friend of my father's, Bud Abbott, who was also a WWII Vet and is now laid to rest at Willamette National Cemetery.

And I would also like to honor my cousin, Alvin Schmid, who served our country and is laid to rest at Willamette National Cemetery.

And I would also like to honor my nephew, Gene Haun, who is in active service in the U.S. Navy and has to be away from his family for long periods of time.   We love you and appreciate what you are doing for our Country.

Thanks to all who are serving now and who have served our Country in the past.   We Honor You, We Respect You and we are forever grateful for what you have done and are doing for us.

You Can Never Have Enough Resistors

The other day a friend gave me a box and told me to look in it..........guess what was there.......more resistors for my collection.   I love these guys.   These will make a great addition to the ones I recently got at an estate sale.

Here is a link to a March post I did about making bracelets with these resistors.  

Also, check out the piece of linen.   This is actually card table size.   It was white and I colored it.   Love the way it came out and how the crochet lace looks too on it.   It is another piece of very old linen that I got from my friend.

Happy Mother's Day

I would like to say a Happy Mother's Day to all of my family and friends who are Mothers and who are not as I am sure you have helped and brightened someone's life while traveling down the highway of life.   I hope you have a wonderful day of rest and relaxation or doing whatever you like to do best.  

In Memory of my Mom, here she is in her Senior High School picture.

You are in my thoughts today Mom.   Thanks for everything.

I want to also say a Special Prayer for a friend  who lost his wife and her children who lost their Mom  yesterday in a freak car accident.    She had just said goodbye to her husband and son when she was leaving a car show in her 1955 Chevrolet.   She hit a curb trying to avoid another car and it flipped over and killed her.   Her and her husband were high school sweethearts.  She was only 68.    It happened not more than a block from where her husband was loading another car on a trailer.   I hope everyone who reads this will say a prayer for this family.

Golf Cleats, Plumber's Tape, Sewing Machine Parts

Well I got a call that there was an estate sale just a few blocks from my place so I went down to see what it was all about.

They had a lot of nice stuff but I thought it was priced high and there was so much that I was not really interested in, i.e., furniture, dishes, knick knacks, linens, etc..      You just never know when you go to one of these what you will find and that is the fun of it for me.  

I found a little box of old sewing machine parts which one can always use in assemblage, some plumbers tape which I have used before for a book spine and some golf cleats.   I bought the golf cleats because I had read on a yahoo group some time ago that someone used them to make jewelry with so since these were so cheap, I picked them up.

Sewing Machine Parts

Golf Cleats for Found Object Jewelry, Etc.---I have never done anything with these before but I saw some really nice altered jewelry pieces that someone did but I don't remember where it was now so will just have to come up with something on my own.   Or, I am sure they would look great on an altered piece too.

Plumber's Tape---Sometime ago, I used this kind of material for a spine of a glass journal I did.   When I saw this roll of it at the sale for 25 cents, I grabbed it up.

I don't know how old this is but it was neat and it now sits on top of the refrigerator.

Old Food Scale

I just ran across this wonderful blog and giveaway at Bluebirds Living in the Meadow.   When you have a minute, check it out.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.   It is really warming up here in the desert now.

More Stuff I Found Along the Way....

Well it has been awhile since I posted some thrift store finds that I couldn't resist...........all very cheap, of course.

The following four pictures are pretty self-explained.......unused great items for the artist.

A whole set of charcoal pencils and stixs and graphic pencils in hard and soft sizes.  

NuPastel color sticks

Colored Charcoal Pencils

This was all packaged and never been opened.   All new watercolors paints and paper and instruction book.    And another piece of hand embroidered old linen.

One day I found a package of wood chop sticks which contained 50 sets......all brand new and each set wrapped individually.  Then on my next visit, I found a package of new real Ivory chop sticks.    Never seen something like this before.   I just know they both will be handy in some art project.

On the left side are some sacks that normally would be used to hold a quarter of beef, venison, pork, etc.    I loved the soft, open-weave fabric and thought they would be good for some art projects or to layer it for collage, etc.  There were four of them and very large in size.  The next items  were a set of three shadow boxes from IKea.   The roll is 250 feet of laminating paper.........and the far right items are three flat panel canvases which were a downright steal.

Have a great day everyone.

 

Paintchips and Pockets

Well, I know we have all used paintchips for various art projects but I decided to use them for pockets for my journal pages for my Remains of the Day journals which I am addicted to and have talked about in other posts.

Here are the various sizes that I got at the big box home improvement stores on a few visits picking up a few at a time so they wouldn't put out a warrant for me to the paint chip police. I love all the varying sizes that they had. The ones in the back of the picture are really bigger than they look.

Eight different sizes and shapes.........way too cool.   The ones in the back are quite large.

A friend of mine gave me these old sample books which work great too.

Also, take a note of the pretty crochet item and the wonderful linens that were in my linen  box.   I will try and showcase some of the different ones I got as I take pictures of projects, etc.

You can easily erase the paint names and numbers with a white Staedtler (sp?) eraser if you want to but for my journal, it didn't matter if they showed.

Before you put the item in the pocket, you can always write on the outside what, where or why about the items inside.

The window envelope is going to be a page in a book.

The second page is a page from a magazine with a pocket on the outside.

The far left one is sewed onto a security envelope and will be a page for my journal

In the middle one, I cut up a long strip to make a small pocket.

I put a long strip on the edge of a magazine page which is sewed on a cardstock page  to write a note or whatever.   That way this page has the cardstock page with the Bingo card sewed to it and then the magazine page sewed to the other side of the cardstock page.

This paint chip matched so well for this page so I just sewed it on.   Thought it would be good for an area to write a note.   This is a magazine page sewed onto a used large priority window envelope.   What a great way to recycle all those window envelopes and magazine pages.

A very nice large pocket sewed onto an old magazine page.   Lots of room to write on the outside of this too before filling it with items.

Three of them sewed together to make a big pocket for a journal page.

I love this crochet piece which was  done over 100 years ago.  

Three different size paint chips for pockets and for writing on. 

These are smaller and will be sewed on a journal page.

So if you don't want to make pockets for a journal, another thing you can do with these paint chips is die cut them into layered flowers........use whatever flower die cuts you have........also leaf die cuts would work well too with the larger solid color paint chips.    Have fun everyone.

My First Moleskin Journal

I have heard about moleskin journals a lot but never have picked one up.   While visiting Rice's blog,  Notes from the Voodoo Cafe, I noticed she had a giveaway so I entered it and to my surprise won one of the moleskin journals.   I received it today in the mail and just love it.   Can't wait to actually work in it.   The pages are quite heavy so I will be able to put a lot of ink and/or paint to it and lots of other things too.     Thanks a lot Rice.   I just love it.

Take a look at the linen piece I photographed this on.   I folded it in the center so you could see the beautiful tatted edges done by my friend's grandmother.   This was one of the many linen items I got at her recent estate sale.   Isn't it just gorgeous. 

A Wonderful Giveaway at Trash to Treasure Art

Well I haven't done much in the way of creating lately to post about but wanted to let you all know about this wonderful giveaway by Lynn Stevens at Trash to Treasure Art Blog.   She has a lot of yummy stuff that I know a lot of you would love to have in your stash.