Baskets and Bracelets

Every week it seems I'm on a different bend as far as making something...There's a craft show the first Saturday here in the RV park in March, and I want to have lots of different types of things to put out there just to see if anything in particular captures the discriminating buyer's eye. So this week, it's safety pin bracelets among other things....A fun, cheery beachy colored bracelet made from size 1safety pins (1 1/16"), elastic cord, a couple of silvertone barrel beads and four 6 mm silver toned plain beads. The size 1 pins make the bracelet a little on the wide side for me, about 1", so I made a second one with smaller pins....

This rose colored beaded bracelet is made from size 0 safety pins and the same elastic cord, barrel beads and silver beads. That makes the width about 7/8" wide, a little more to my liking. We will see if these go or not...Not sure how much to sell them for.....If anybody has seen them at a craft show, I'd love to know what the asking price was!

My worry is that the safety pin head might come loose on a pin some time....Some people suggest squeezing the head of each pin after it's been threaded on the elastic. I tried that, and the heads don't lie as nicely on the rose bracelet as they do on the beachy one, and that's probably because I didn't squeeze the pin heads on the first one. I didn't know that was suggested! I think someone else suggested dipping the heads of the pins in some kind of glue, before stringing them. Not sure what kind of glue, but I'll have to look into that......

Time to make some matching safety pin earrings....Here they are....

Here's my attempt to make a more "artistic" photo of a bracelet...I draped it over a wall plaque in the motorhome which happened to have a 3D leaf on it. :-)

I like looking at items people are selling on Etsy and seeing how they display them...especially the jewelry....They use flowers along side of the bracelet, or drape it over a tree branch, I think I will experiment a bit and see how I can improve my photos....Until next time....

Ever Cheat on a Diet?

Or totally pig out on something ridiculous? I'm not on a diet, but I sure have a what-the-hell, we're all gonna-die-sometime-and-it-might-be-sooner-than-later attitude lately. My best friend of over 33 years had a serious heart attack. She's ok, but it's the first time someone very near and dear to me and my age had serious health problems. So I've started copping the attitude that life is too short to diet, to eat the right stuff that I don't like, and the heck with other dietary contraindications, and while we're at it, let's go stay at this pricy RV resort next year, in case one of us gets ill and we CAN'T enjoy ourselves! So what did I do? Polish off a whole bag of double stuff vanilla oreos in 24 hours, maybe less. The RV resort we can justify next year because if we tack on our fuel budget to our basic campground cost budget, a four month stay is within budget. Don't you just love all this rationalizing?

I have an old sugar addiction I battle. M&M chocolate peanuts do me in, vanilla double stuffed oreos, a can of frosting or a bunch of little cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I'm getting better about peanut M & M's. I don't polish off a bag of them any more. I eat a small handful, just a few a day only every few days, if that much. If I stay away from the cookies, I don't think about them except some times when I go to the grocery and happen to go down the cookies and cracker aisle. So I usually avoid that aisle. And I manage to not have them for a few months. I haven't had any cravings for a whole bunch of cookies and sugar until now. Something about vanilla double stuff oreos sets off a BAD craving for sugar. I'm still biking, I'm still doing my swimming exercise class, but I'll be lucky if that whole bag of cookies doesn't throw off my body chemistry and PH and I end up with some kind of pesky infection.   Sigh! It didn't help that a personal friend of Eldy's (my better half) had a teacher friend pass away this week, same age as him. It's starting, that old age and illness thing, taking friends down, one at a time...He's had more friends and acquaintances pass away than I have. I haven't had any that I have known about for several years, but there's a two year age difference between us. He reads the obituaries every day for his hometown, I find that depressing but guess that's the only way you are going to know what's happening with your friends back home. 

Speaking of illness and unfortunate news, there is some good news--- my sister is doing WELL! She's done with chemo, she had a double mastectomy this month, and the doctor says, the margins are clear. Yay! She had to have drainage tubes in for a LONG time because she's had radiation for past breast cancer and that causes longer healing times, but now they are out. She is feeling well, mentally feeling great, and she is coming to Florida in March for some R & R.....I get to see her then! Woo-hoo!

I've been working a LOT on my little squares...They are coming along nicely and I just LOVE the colors! It's truly a patchwork, crazy quilt knitted table runner, as I'm not trying very hard to coordinate one block against another, just letting it kinda flow....Just looking at the bright colors makes me feel cheery!

And I've been working on little people pins....I calls these my "Free Spirit" pins. I like to make them look like they are dancing. I miss my ballroom dancing very much! Eldy doesn't care to learn how...but I used to go dancing every weekend when I was single. It was the BEST exercise! He just really doesn't want to learn and thinks he can't..... Sigh....

I made a few red people pins for February Heart Month...BUT---a standard pin back won't fit on the back of the heart, even the littlest size, so I have to use something called a coil pin and clutch back. It's more like a stick pin, but you insert it thru the beads, so it should work. I had trouble finding them locally and even online, but managed to get a few and I still have to figure out how to bend them to make the pin sit right when it's pinned on.  I also tried to figure out a way to make a key fob, but couldn't find a good spot to put a jump ring on to attach a lobster claw. I'm still trying to figure out how to market these....I'd like to sell them at a craft show.....If anybody has any ideas, I'd love to hear from you....

I thought of making some into magnets, but our residential fridge is NOT magnetic, so not sure if most RVers whom we run across have fridges that take magnets or not?

Time for a break .......  Until next time......