Sweet Surprises and A Few Finished Projects.....

"We cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love."

~Mother Teresa~(Click on any photo to enlarge for better viewing)

I am often overwhelmed and amazed at the generosity and thoughtfulness of bloggers. I recently received a couple of sweet surprises in the mail from two new blog friends, Caroline and Jodie.

Caroline, I do hope you can forgive my tardiness in posting on and thanking you for the super sweet note you sent me and the precious angel magnet you enclosed. Caroline's handwriting alone is an exquisite gift, she writes in the most beautiful script! I have a thing for beautiful handwriting.

Caroline, you will never know the depth of meaning the words you wrote inside this card mean to me. You did not know that it would arrive on a bad day and was just the encouragement I needed to hear. I have placed this card in my keepsake box and the magnet on my message board. Every time I look at it I will remember you and be glad our lives touched. Thank you for blessing me!

Jodie of Everything Vintage recently won a give away here and sent me a thank you card and enclosed a token of her appreciation. I am in mad love with her packaging! This is such a clever little box and its embellished beautifully with a velvet flower, silk leaves, a button rose, and such dreamy vintage paper!The box held a beautiful handmade book mark. The beading and cross are so sweet and I love the message "BELIEVE". Thank you so very much Jodie for your kindness. I have already put this to good use in my current read!

I do believe that I am one blessed lady not just by these two precious ladies but by everyone of you who takes time out to visit here. I probably don't say it often enough but I do appreciate each and every one of you who visits. I have formed some amazing friendships here in the land of blog and you are just the best! It is with great love that I share the small things in my life with you and the blessings I receive are great things to me.

I finally figured out how to finish off the ink cupboard I showed you in this post. I thought I had a vision of how I wanted it to come out but it just wasn't coming together like I wanted it to so I put it aside until I could figure out how to embellish it. I made these darling paper birdhouses that I thought would work but they were all wrong so I tossed them in the Ooops pile and will use them later. One of the papers got some wrinkles in it but life is way too short to worry about wrinkles! I love the quote I chose to go around the door and the little vintage key detail. The feather in the inkwell was a gift from my friend, Pam, who gave me some beautiful feathers from her collection. I think these are Emu feathers. Since it is a cupboard to hold small rubber stamps and ink pads I decided an ink theme would work and I am happy with the results.

Between working on the never ending pond project and doing some DIY in preparation for having some work done on our house I managed to squeeze in a few storage solutions for my studio space. I found a tin cone, wicker stationary holder, and a wooded spice rack at a flea market a while back and finally had time to jazz them up a bit.I used a little paint to highlight the tin relief designs. I tied it to a shelf bracket with a satin ribbon and now have a handy scissor holder within easy reach while crafting. The spice rack got a new coat of white paint, you can see a peek of it beside the scissor holder. It now holds glitter, glue, and a few other assorted things. I'll show you later in a bigger reveal.The wicker stationary holder and a book holder that I forgot to stick in the before photograph both got a fresh coat of Spring Green spray paint. I used the stationary holder to hold a case of drawing pencils, oil pastels, chalk pastels, and as scrap tag storage.These colorful ready to embellish tags are made from scrap card stock left over from other projects. Sometimes a scrap is not large enough to use but too large to throw away so I turn them into various size tags. You can do this using various punches but I use a tag stencil to trace them and cut them out with a scissor. I bind color families together using twine and a large button, tying the loose ends in a bow. This keeps the tags tidy. I placed them on a shelf above my work surface where I have them handy.This little book stand has been with me for quite some time and its icky gray~green color had to go! I often use this book stand to hold various art books when learning a new technique or for visual inspiration. When not in use I wanted it to look inspiring all on its own so I gave it a couple of collage "pages" as well as covering the lip that holds the pages open. I love the happy green color, well, I just love green period! I hope you found a little inspiration here. Next week I will have another Q&A where I will share some tips on preserving vintage ephemera (paper), and address a few other questions. I also hope to have a new tutorial up for you. I just got a vintage book on making paper flowers and they are so fun and fantastic that I just have to share!

Oh, and before I forget, Dawn at The Feathered Nest is having a huge 1/2 price sale on her tutorials, only $5.00 each!!! The sale ends on July 7th EST time. I purchased her Nest Assemblage and Nature Journal tutorials and they are totally awesome. The photo illustrated step-by-step instructions are clear and concise. You even get a bonus of images to use in the projects! There are ten wonderful projects for you to choose from, just visit here at Lessons from The Nest.

This will be a four day weekend for our family so I will not post again until Tuesday. Handy Hubby assures me that this will be THE WEEKEND that ends the pond project, we will see. I hope you all have a safe and happy 4th of July!

Blessings,

Miss Sandy