Paint, M.E.E. Christmas exchange gift

Paint: Joanne and I went to Paint for Joy (a shop in St. Albert's Campbell Park) last week as she needed some white paint for a project. Since we were there already, I asked if they had any white enamel paint for paint some furniture I needed for a project. They suggested Americana multi-surface satin paint which I bought and used on a corner cabinet for a project I was working on. I'm very pleased with it....it works very well to match the white furniture already in the project.

Christmas Exchange Gift:

I decided to give some of my readable books and the teddy bear slippers made by Judy Mitchell for my exchange gift. Didn't seem like quite enough so I decided to add a set of faux books.

The instructions for the faux books are from Dick Tabor in the U.S. So easy to make and can be used to fill book shelves.

Cut a half inch strip from the edge of a cover from a hard-cover book.

Cut that strip into  pieces. I use my Easy Cutter for this. 

Here are the faux books.

I took a black maker to colour the white portions of the 'books'.

This is one of three different silver Fashion Nail Stickers that I bought at Dollarama a few years ago. These are self-adhesive and do not have to be dissolve in water as some nail stickers do.

I took four sections of one strip of the stickers and added them along the base of the spines of the 'books'.

Then I added another piece to each of the fronts of the books.

These are the four  readable books that I added to the mix.

And here is the final gift:

The slippers, the four readable books and the 10 faux books.

Judy Mitchell

Our dear friend and fellow miniaturist, Judy Mitchell, had a table at the St. Albert Indoor Farmer's Market last Saturday.

Judy is one of the dealers at our annual Show and Sale...and will be next year.....

These are the wonderful things I bought from her last Saturday...

A multi-coloured tea light with a little house and landscaping built around it

It's hard to describe this but when the light is switched on, the windows, door, and chimney take on lights of different colours.

A ;lovely table centrepiece

Beautiful floral display that I gave to my Mom

The cutest pair of slippers with Teddy faces

She also does a pair of slippers that are yellow duckies!

Judy will be giving me a supply of the tea light scenes to sell at the M.E.E.Christmas party.

She will also be at the St. Albert Indoor Farmer's Market at City Hall on December 8.

A little pond...

Shoot! FINALLY got this blog written - then it disappeared! Not a happy camper...

As a club, M.E.E. is blessed to have members who teach the most incredible classes! And Jillian is one of the best!

I painted my pond (supplied by Jillian)

Took it home, repainted the edges that had chipped off during the trip home, then filled the pond with "water" and the water lily.

This pond is really plain but Jillian taught us how to add moss (flocking) and paint to suggest other things about the pond.

For instance, Jillian is from B.C. so she added moss and different colours to her pond....as did many others in the class.

This will eventually appear in my "Secret Garden"...

Ta-Da!!! My workroom is clean!

From this on November 15th:

To this at 7:00 p.m. on November 21.....

That is not to say that I'm finished. I still have this shoebox of things to be put on my bulletin boards. Most of it has been bagged but a lot of sorting to do.

And I have two boxes of papers to sort through, file and shred.

But the room itself it cleaned!

YIPPEE!!!

Cleaning coming along.....

Tina, both a friend and follower of this blog sent this to MEE and I took it as a comment on my cleaning efforts. If it was, I love it!

A crafter clearing their work space is like a kid trying to clean up their room. You find things you forgot about and stop cleaning to play with them.

A lot of that is true! But what I have been finding is that I keep coming up with things that I haven't dealt with yet. Such as these things that were left in one of my meat trays that I keep projects in.

Had one full tray of strips of paper that needed to be dealt with, a copper end cap that needed a handle added, knives that needed to be finished and 4 sets of salt and peppers!

Still so much to do but it's coming along.....

Off to a good start but then RL interrupted my cleaning!

The cleaning is coming along pretty well. As well as it ever does :-)

As always, I keep coming across things that need to be completed, or started (such as the bowls from yesterday), or set aside to be worked on sooner rather than later.

After visiting Mom this afternoon and having something to eat, got a call from a neighbour who wanted to come by to visit. So while I was waiting for her to come up, I started a little item to go with the Meals on Wheels tables....and add to my stash :-(

Got 15 little laser-cut trees from Dollarama for $1.25. Large ones are about 1 1/2" and small are about 1 1/8".

I had this nail embellishment kit in my stash with 120 tiny 'jewels".

Here you can see four of the trees "bedazzled". The second one from the left, I used super glue for the jewels but that gave me no wiggle-room in placing the beads so switched to Aleene's Tacky for the others. I used a piece of spaghetti (wetted the end) to pick up and place the jewels.

I 'think' I will probably use my Pilot pens (very fine tip) to edge the trees in either silver or gold. For the larger trees, I may also add a star with the Pilot pen - if my hand is steady enough. (I bought my Pilot pens from Staples - the marker types in the store and the fine lines online.)

I have some 'laser poop' from Tina: little circles that will become the bases of the trees so I can set them on the mini tables.

A couple pieces of wood covered with pieces of thin foil from candy wrappers as presents under the tree and that's a great start to decorating a wonderful little mini table.

Unfortunately after my friend left, so did my get up and go....

So tomorrow will be another day.

Last year at a Mini Day Out, we decorated 42 mini tables for Meals on Wheels to accompany meals in December. You can read about it and see the basic instructions here. They only need 8 this year so I'll just do them myself. BUT as a club, we thought that we could make more tables to include in our children's grab bags for the next show and sale on September 15, 2019.

To speed up the process of cutting the cups, I decided to use the hot wire styrofoam cutter that my late BIL gave me when he quit model railroading.  The heated wire cuts through styrofoam very quickly and cleanly. In order to keep the cut perfectly straight, I taped it to my 3 hole punch which fortuitously was the exact height I needed.

I first tried it with the bottom of the cup down but there wasn't enough room between the wire and the base of the punch to cut all the way through.

So I turned the cup right side up and that worked perfectly!

I bought four different packs of cupcake liners at Dollarama to use as tablecloths and here you can see four mini tables that resulted.

In a story for another day, I'm actually tackling cleaning my workroom! While doing so, I came across two childproof pill caps. Using pliers, I pulled back the edges of the caps and removed the clearish plastic inserts.

I trimmed the thin rim of plastic around the bottom edge and ended up with a bowl 1 3/8" in diameter and 7/16" deep.

Voila! A salad bowl.