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One mystery has been solved. No, I didn't find my drawing pens and pencils which I discovered missing a few days ago. I have a feeling I might have put them someplace "safe" before my sister and her family came to visit so that my 4 year old nephew wouldn't be tempted by them. I may doodle only a couple of times each month but when I do I simply MUST have my drawing pens and pencils. They are an extension of my very essence during that time. If they don't turn up soon I will have to replace them which will be inconvenient and expensive and will pretty much guarantee that I find the original set shortly after replacing them. It will be the airline tickets all over again. About 15 years ago Jayson and I bought plane tickets to Florida to visit his family and do the Disney World thing. This was back before e-tickets. You could buy plane tickets online but they sent you an actual ticket that you hold in your hand. We bought our tickets several months in advance so we ...

A couple of weeks ago I scored a huge box of lace and trim from eBay. In that box was this lovely pompom trim: The color in the picture is funky, it's actually turquoise. What in the heck am I going to do with THAT? And I have yards and yards and yards of it. As I was contemplating how I might possibly use such a hideous thing, I realized I was staring out my front window, looking at the car that's been parked at the curb exactly half way between our house and our neighbor's house for the past two weeks. HHmmm. I thought this trim might actually look nice on an art car. I found myself wishing someone had a spare El Camino they would be willing to let me have my way with. I would cover the interior with various patterns of faux fur then trim it out with these classy turquoise pompoms. Of course the look wouldn't be complete without pink fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. How fun would that be? I wondered why the car had been parked there so long. ...

Well it's been another busy week here at Casa del Verde. Wait, what? It's only Thursday? Good grief, I've wasted a week's worth of time in only 4 days. I'm even more awesome than I thought! Let's do pictures again so I won't get too wordy. A couple of weeks ago this was my system for storing lace and trim. I outgrew this system with one eBay purchase. This is my new lace storage system. I wanted something that would organize *and* display my trims so this works for now. I do tend to change things up quite often. I've ordered a center support for the curtain rod and I need to collect a few more vintage brooches so I'll have one on each hanger. Been eyeballing these dead cow skins at IKEA for about a year. The other day I noticed their stash was looking sort of picked over so I decided I'd better grab one before they're gone. Naturally, the one I wanted was on the bottom of the pile that I could not lift on my own. I enlisted the help of a coup...

I've had a full busy week this week. Not busy as in I've worked 12 hours a day or saved a life or served the underprivileged or anything like that. But busy as in I fixed one thing then broke two more. I know, it's exhausting being me. I don't know how I do it either. Here's a pictorial review of my week: I covered the tops of my button jars with scrapbook paper that matches the color of the buttons inside. Because I wanted to, that's why. I started decorating some of the old bottles I picked up at Trader's Village. I bought them for next to nothing from a couple of gangsta looking black guys who had a store full of frilly white girl antiques. They were practically giving the stuff away so naturally I assumed it was stolen. I was okay with that and bought all I could carry. Broke the lid to my apple shaped jar that holds all my ribbon scraps. Then broke a chunk out of Grandma Mable's sugar bowl. My box full of broken stuff to use in a mosaic some day is ...

Last year was my first attempt at dying eggs with scraps of silk. You can read about it here . I was really happy with the results even though I used the silk ties I had on hand (which were the ones in my husband's closet) and they weren't very colorful. Since then I've been collecting brightly colored silk ties and scarves when I can find them for under $1 at the thrift stores. I've also been thinking about the technique and wondering if there were any ways to improve on it. I wondered if it was really necessary to wrap your silk wrapped egg in a scrap of white fabric before boiling it. This is done to help hold the silk tightly against the egg since the pattern will only transfer when there is snug, direct contact with the egg surface. It is also done to prevent the darker dyes from bleeding onto the lighter eggs.  I split my eggs into 2 batches this year so I could do some testing on the first batch.  I won't go into detailed instructions since you can read those...