Leaves

This thing took me about an hour and a half to make tonight - and now I'm not sure I'm going to take to Artisan's Alley tomorrow. I'm very happy with it, but I'm worried about the frame. It's a wood frame that I bought a year or two ago, that I spray painted black the other day. It was purple, I think. But the purple was kind of a laminate coating over the wood. I'm not really sure. But I'm worried about the black paint coming off. Also, I was a Bozo and bought flat black spray paint, when I meant to buy matte finish. I'm thinking I'll take the other stuff to the store tomorrow and probably disassemble this one, repaint the frame and reassemble it.

That is a leaf stamp, one of a set of four, by my beloved Hero Arts, but I think of this single leaf as a feather. I stamped it on my new Kaleidoscope pad, Autumn Leaves. I visited our new local stamp store today at lunch, Utopia Stamps and Craft. Stamps to 'Di' For went out of business earlier this year, then this store opened. The former owner and the teacher from STDF both now teach at this new store. It looked like Utopia bought a lot of the store fixtures from STDF too. They haven't been open too long - their grand opening is August 13th I think. It looks like they'll be getting more product in. I did see a few things I'd not seen in person before, only in magazines, so that was cool. I bought a little bit of paper, some black brads and Style Stones.

The store is quite a haul from work, not really a good lunch time trip, I found. I figured I was already going to be late so I ran into JoAnn's to look at their ink pads since Utopia didn't have what I wanted. I bought the aforementioned Kaleidoscope Autumn Leaves and a Brilliance pad called Peacock; light blue, light turquoise and light green. Their Mat Stacks were 50% off so I bought one (4" x 6" sheets of cardstock together in a pad) in Earthtone prints that I envision using for more paper quilts.

I made another Bozo move tonight. I noticed the slightest scratch in the frame of the pink baby pins picture. So I took it apart and spray painted the frame. Too red. So now I'll have to buy dark pink spray paint. Oh darn. (Have you visited the spray paint aisle lately? It's fantastic! I can feel myself looking for excuses to buy more paint. It's cheap! It's fast! It's fun!)

I talked to Pam, owner of Artisan's Alley, this morning to make sure she was going to be at the store tomorrow at lunch and she is. She said the store might even be open by then.

Simon is working a double shift tonight and Lizz is at Darien Lake (amusement park) with friends, so once again Steve and I are practicing our empty nest thing. We keep thinking of things that will affect us, our standard of living and our money - like how much we'll save on the water bill without having to run the dishwasher once, often twice and sometimes three times a day!

I'm off to pack up my framed pieces for tomorrow - then off to read my book in bed.

Life is good.