An UpCycled Answer & The Winner Is.....

Hello to my blogging fans. Thanks to all of you who participated in my blog giveaway. I plan on doing some more giveaways this year, so stay tuned. I asked you to answer the question about what UpCycled item I used for my Susan sculpture. As most of you guessed, it is in fact a light bulb.

I also have used the smaller, itty, bitty burned out halogens to make mini sculptures. I named these 2 mini ones after my nieces, Kristin & Katrina. The one in pink is Kristin, who happens to have a similar hairstyle as the sculpture. The one in yellow is Katrina.


I got these mini halogens from a store I worked at. Anytime there was a bulb that burned out, I asked if I could have it.


Anyway, the random number generator picked number two, which belonged to Melissa. Congrats to Melissa! You will be getting a Mr. Fluffy Bum Bottom pin and Petite Purse mailed to you just in time for Easter.

My Cat, A Bee & Me!

The weather has finally been warming up here in Wisconsin, so the other day I gathered some of my pieces to clean outside with my new Dremel stylus. It was wonderful to be outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine. However, after taking a break from my cleaning, I came back to find a bee or a hornet visiting my pieces. Yikes! I never got stung by a bee, so I did not want to start. My kitty cat wanted to chase after it, which made me all the more nervous and I carefully grabbed my kitty and put him inside. When I took this picture, I did not even notice my cat made it into the corner of the shot.
Can you see my buzzing visitor sitting by the two Dremel wrenches? He put a little delay in my cleaning plans.

Win a Bunny Pin & Petite Purse

Hello! In honor of Easter and to celebrate the growth of my Facebook fan page I'm going to have a free giveaway at my blog starting today. I have a fun little quiz for anyone interested in entering to win one of my "Mr. Fluffy Bum Bottom" bunny pins and one of my Petite Purses. A picture of Mr. Fluffy Bum Bottom is shown below.

The exact Petite Purse will be a surprise. Here's a sampling of some of my Petite Purses, which come in a small & a large size. The small size is perfect for giving a small gift in like a pin, magnet or necklace, the larger size is the perfect size to hold a gift card or a small trinket/treasure. This giveaway will be for the smaller size Petite Purse.Now it's quiz time! Shown below is a photo of one my sculptures named Susan (after one of my sisters). She likes the dress and said she would wear a dress like that one, so when I was thinking of a name for her, I decided to name her Susan. Anyway, my question to you is.....what did I use for the structure of this sculpture? Clue: It's an object that I UpCycled. Another way to get a clue is to visit my store and look in my UpCycled sculpture section and find out what I used for some of those pieces.

Contest closed. Time to pick a winner!
All correct answers will be entered into a drawing for the bunny pin & purse. Please include your e-mail address in your comment/answer, otherwise you won't be entered into the contest even if you answered correctly. Contest closes at 11pm CST on Thurday, March 25th. Good luck!

Sunshine Award

Thanks to Michele of By Your Side for awarding me the Sunshine Award!

Here are some of my favorite blogs:

1) Crocheted Little Things

2) Elegant Bloggery

3) Pickles on Pizza

4) Structured Chaos

5) Anastasia Drawing and Dreaming

6) By Your Side

7) Forest Creations

8) Happy Cloud Moments

9) Four Dog Day

10) Indie Pretty

11) inkihandmade

12) Just Something I Made

Here are the rules, so please pass this award along....

The rules for accepting the Sunshine Award are:
- Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
- Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
- Link the nominees within your post.
- Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

THANK YOU!!

You are what you think!

Some food for thought...

“Your mind is a Garden, Your Thoughts are the seeds, You can grow flowers or You can grow weeds." - Unknown

I love this quote. Changing my thoughts to grow flowers instead of weeds is an ongoing goal of mine, getting rid of the negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. :-)

All Buttoned Up with Handmade Buttons, part 2

I am crazy about buttons, they are just so cute! Yesterday I blogged about my handmade polymer clay buttons and here's part two. I mentioned that I'm going to paint & glaze some of them to use as jewelry pieces (pendants, pins & rings). Today I found the correct glaze to use with polymer clay. I did some research online and found out that Varathane Diamond Polyurethane is one of the best glazes to use on polymer clay. Other glazes can eat away at the clay and cause the surface of the clay to become sticky.

Here are a few of the buttons I painted with some metallic silver, white & black paints.

Here are some unpainted gold buttons I made.

And here's a photo collage I made with some of my button photos! :-)

All Buttoned Up with Handmade Buttons, part 1

Hand-made Buttons!

click here to learn more about polymer clay glaze

All Buttoned Up with Handmade Buttons, part 1

I love buttons and right now I'm in the middle of a handmade button project. Here's a photo of my button work space. I'm making buttons with polymer clay and it's fun to create them.

Last Christmas I got a Dremel drill press and I'm so glad that I have one. It works wonderfully when I need to drill holes into my handmade buttons. All I need to do is line up my button at the base of the press, turn on the Dremel tool and pull down on the blue lever. It works like a charm!

How do you like my handmade buttons? What would you use them for? Maybe scrapbooking? I'm working on painting and glazing some of them. And I'd like to make them into pins, pendants and rings. Buttons are fun! :-)

Click here to see my first set of handmade buttons that I made last year.