Paperback Correspondance: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I love love love writing letters and kind of hoard stationary. I also love making cards, and as I mentioned in my last post, I made some with an old copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

I first read The Wizard of Oz in fourth grade for a board game making project. I vividly remember staying up late the night before with my mom pouring green sugar over swirls of Elmer's all over my board because we didn't have any glitter. To my delight I learned there were several other Oz books and I read them all. I didn't see the movie until I was in high school (though I watched Return to Oz all the time on TV as a kid).

It is absolutely one of my favorite books and I had so much fun making these cards.

I made one for each of Dorothy's faithful companions- the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion.

I also made one with an illustration of the Munchkins, too. I plan on making more this week!

I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I don't know if I'll be able to bear actually sending one of these away!

WIPWednesday: My craft stash, my life.

Alas, I have made no progress on last week's WIPWednesday project. I did sit down to work on it on Monday, because I found the perfect copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz- falling apart, beautifully yellowed, and with illustrations. I couldn't believe my luck. Buuuuuut as per usual I got sidetracked and started another project. I made some greeting cards with illustrations (similar to this one and these others) and they turned out really well! Hopefully I'll have them up later this week.

This week's WIP, though, is my stash of craft supplies.

I'm a packrat, through and through. I got it from my dad. So of course, my crafty stash of buttons, beads, scraps of paper, bits of fabric and ribbon, and other odds and ends is too big. Not to mention I'm organizationally challenged.

I hastily moved back to my mom's after a painful but definitely for-the-best breakup mid-July and so much of my crap is still in the garage, totally unorganized. When I packed up all my craft stuff at the old apartment I had probably seven different ongoing projects on my desk, and we literally just threw everything into these little plastic boxes we had handy.

I hadn't touched them until today, when I got the organizing bug. Part of the difficulty is that I don't have a space in the house to put everything yet. Maybe eventually in the extra bedroom, but Mom will take some convincing...

It felt really good to work on all this stuff today. I went from a dozen little boxes of totally unorganized odds and ends to four designated boxes. Slowly but surely I'll sort through all this crap, figure out what's worth keeping, and where the heck I'm going to put it.

Finally fall... sort of / / cupcakes and boots

Here in California it rarely cools down before November. Fall is a hot season, and we often hit triple digits in October. Today, though, was not super hot. It was just cool enough to pretend it's boot weather. And I've been absolutely dying to wear this pair I picked up last month.

 I'm seriously stoked about these boots. I picked them up for seventeen bucks at Ross. The best part is that there's a zipper down the back so you don't have to do all that crazy unlacing to take them off!!

In celebration I decided to make cupcakes. Naturally I hopped on Pinterest and searched for pumpkin cupcakes. This recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting caught my eye, from the Frustrated Cowgirl.

These are possibly the best cupcakes I've ever made. Not that I make that many cupcakes, but I crank out a batch now and then. I definitely recommend trying out the recipe.

What's the first thing you do when the weather starts to change?

Linking up with the Bloglovin Bloghop over at Happy Kids Inc this week. You can find me on Bloglovin here.

WIPWednesday: bookshelf decoration

Several months ago I found this little thing at a thrift shop- very pink, very cutesy, probably intended for a little girl's room. Something about it caught my fancy and I hid it away. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it, but I'd spent a buck on it, so it just gathered dust...

I pulled it out this week to finally let it go. Instead I decided to paint it and decoupage book pages over the front of the letters. Because books are friends!

The pink shows through a little on the letters, but that'll be covered up. I was all ready to finish this project but I didn't have the right book. I'd like to use an old favorite- Wizard of Oz, maybe. I'll check out the little used book shop at the library and see what I can find!

Haven't done much work on last week's WIP. Maybe next week!

Caturday: Tommy the Tabby

A few weeks ago I went down to visit a friend who had just moved to LA. I had a fabulous time. We went to The Last Bookstore (which is amaaaaaaziiiiing and I want to live there), Universal City Walk, and Disneyland. It was an epic weekend.

And her roommate has an epic cat, Tommy the Tabby!

It's hard to tell from the photos- but he's MASSIVE. The biggest tabby I've ever seen. I mean, he's kind of chunky in terms of weight, but even without that he's huge.

King of the castle!

Time to get ready for work. We got a new movie yesterday (The Spectacular Now- it looks great), and we're showing the 49ers game tomorrow, so it should be a busy weekend!

Happy Caturday!

Work-in-progress Wednesday

I think I'll start trying to post a work-in-progress or two every Wednesday. I haven't had a great track record with this sort of regular weekly stuff (or, you know, blogging period), but I'll give it a shot. WIPWednesday is nothing new, and hopefully doing it myself will both encourage me to finish projects and connect with other WIPWednesday-ers.

Yesterday I started working on something for my mother- a special book-plate to mark a shelf at the library that holds her personal recommendations for patrons.

She found the image with the ship and text, but wanted something more. She loved the card I made last week with book pages and asked if I would help her with something similar. Of course I was happy to!

We'll probably glue the image down over what I've done and trim it into a border for the image. One reason this is a WIP is that I'm out of glue and couldn't get out to the store for more.

I'll be sure to finish the finished project!

Getting back into blogging...

Well! I have done nothing for this blog over the summer. I've spent my time moving, adjusting to change, working, introducing my mother to Dr. Who (she loves it!), and reading. Lots of reading. I do want to try giving this blog another go, though. Maybe this time I can make it stick.

You may notice that crafting (of any sort) was not mentioned in my list above. With moving and all the other things I've had going on, I have not have time; it doesn't help that all my buttons, beads, papers, glues, and tools are still packed away.

I've made a start though. I'm slowly starting to catch up on blogs I used to follow, though I really don't spend much time online anymore. I also made a card a few days ago, and finally got around to snapping a picture of it this morning.

 

Do you like it? I used pages out of a beat-up collection of Hauff's Fairytales to put it together. The book is filled with wonderful illustrations and I plan on creating many more cards from its pages!