I decided to do a little project with some old cigar boxes given to me by a friend.  Since I need a gift for a Halloween gift exchange, I decided to make up a a Vampire Eradication Kit! 



I chose a BrickHouse cigar box because of the nice red laquered wood.   I scraped off the big Brick House label, but decided to leave the edging. A quick swoop with a black sharpie over each little Brickhouse logo hid them effectively and made the edging just look old fashioned enough to pass muster.
I googled antique labels and found a few I liked, inserted my own copy,and printed them out.  Brick House became Dr Otto VanHelsing's Vampyre Eradication Kit and Gewntelman's Companion!  I covered the embossed areas on the box with more lables.  The sides have "The Rightious Need Not Fear The Night"  in Latin, French, Romanian, and German, and the bottom has a disclaimer lable listing the types of manifestations the goods are effective against.



 Scrounged through my collection of little bottles for a couple that might fit, painted one former nail polish bottle with Krylon Mirror Paint to simulate mercury/quicksilver. An old airplane booze bottle became Holy Water and a fancy honey bottle with a wide neck and cork became deadly Wolfsbane.



Then I turned my attention to the inside of the box.



I covered the cedar sides with purple scrapbooking paper and covered luan panels with purple velvet, added two pieces of black grosgrain ribbon and wide elastic, tacked down with hand stitching to hold the stakes and cross in place inside the upper lid to the top piece, then glued both into the top and bottom of the box. 



I picked up a cheap metal cross, fake garlic, and hand mirror from Hobby Lobby, cut and sharpened 4 stakes from a dowel rod, took a freebie rosary someone sent me in the mail, a dollar store dagger, and an old small prayer book from the thrift store.  Et Voial!  The Vampyre Eradication Kit!  Now if I can just get all the pics to upload...

Link to BYU study and another link about how to safely keep pests out of your stored foods!

I've been asked to participate in an outdoor crafts fair by a couple of friends.  This will be the first one I've done in about 10 years!  They make sculptures out of dinnerware.  I don't have any pics of their work, but I'll get some Saturday.  I've been making my cake plates from Goodwill and garage sale finds as well, so I will have stuff to put out on the table.



I think I've shown this one before - a heavy crystal relish plate on a base made from an Amway bathsalts jar.



A swirled shallow bowl on a dessert cup.


A very pretty aurora fluted bowl on a very old and sun-tinted cup.  The purple sun tint on the cup doesn't show up in the pic, but it echos the rainbow sheen of the dish.



A new "cut glass" cake plate on an upturned salad bowl in the same pattern.



Here's a pic showing the base.  Sturdy!



A little piece I found at a friend's yard-sale, already assembled.


This silverplate pairing really needs to be polished before I glue them together...



And a set I made from some china, also picked up at a garage sale.  Imagine the votives switched out for white pillar candles...
There is a second 2-tier piece as well.  I really love the look of the tea cups as bases.  I'm going to have to play with them more.

We got another 28 turken chicks from my brother in law.  He incubated our eggs in his ginourmus incubator.  We also got three mallard ducklings.  He's currently running 200 guinea eggs in it, so hopefully he will let me buy some of those when they hatch.  We're still waiting for Luna to kid.  She's been bagged up for over a week, so it could be any time now.  That should wrap up kidding for the spring.

The kids wanted Godzilla trading cards for Easter....as far as I can tell, no one makes such a thing.  But the kids got their nagging gene from their mother so I set out to create something that will make them happy.

BEHOLD - Homemade trading cards!



I made them the same size as their Poke'mon cards so they'd fit into the plastic sleeves of their card binder.




The fronts looked great, but the backs needed something...



Yep.  That'll do! 
I had to fiddle with it a bit so the backs would print when I flipped the page over, but I came up with a template that works pretty good.  A short drying time and a quick coat of clear spray varnish and they were ready to cut apart and bundle up!

I've been doing some gridding of a friend's apartment.  While it's fun and really does seem to make a difference in the atmosphere and I would love to do it for my customers, I didn't see how it was practical for me to drive all over creation, carrying a bunch of stones.
Then I had the idea of fastening a fixed purpose set of stones down to a plate or dish! Hit Michael's for some wooden plaque blanks and museum putty, and voila'!  Made these up as prototypes at the April 1st Dallas Psychic Fair.



Prosperity Growth Grid

Apophyllite, Quartz Crystal, Peridot, and Blue Topaz on pine with museum putty. 
"A grid designed to foster the continuous orderly growth of prosperity rather than prosperity by windfall."

I made this, put it out on the table, and promptly got swamped with customers for the next hour-and-a-half.  Sold the first one,and finally got to sit down for a while.  After finally getting to eat my lunch, I made a Romance Grid (pic below), then a Manifestation Grid (which sold so fast I didn't get a pic of it!), finally made another one of these, and promptly sold that one too!  I want to do up a bunch more of these for the next show.



Like my display isn't busy enough as it is...

I did get to take the Romance Grid home to play with.

The kitties are growing well, and other than an unfortunate tendency of one to suckle at her brother, have no problems.  Here's some gratuitous kitteh pics...





Had to move them to the pen because they were bailing out of their box.  This is their first day.

Our black and white stray cat Baba disappeared this week, leaving behind a litter of week-old kittens.  After listening to them cry all day and looking for their mother, Joe and I fished them out from under the old satellite dish that covers the septic tank.



Two have white on their faces and white socks, two are pretty much solid black with a few stray hairs, and one has a frosted mask of silver and silvery feet.  I attempted to feed them with a homemade milk replacer and an old rennet bottle I'd saved for some reason. 



No fun.  The hard nipple was a struggle for them and me.  Luckily Tractor Supply had KMR and the proper bottles.



See that can?  That's powdered gold.  I'll be buying quite a few of those if I succeed in keeping these little guys alive.



Update:  Day 4 and the kitties are thriving little poop machines.  Looks like we're a go for the next 6 weeks...

Picked up my chicks from my B-I-L this evening. 4 dozen eggs in the incubator netted me 27 puffballs.


I'm guessing about half to two-thirds are naked necks.  Max thought there was something wrong with them when they started hatching.  Poor bald necked things.  Only 4 have the striped down their turken parent sported, the rest are solid buff of the orphingtons...except for one...

I call it "Token".  I'm guessing the lone turken rooster did his best to cover all the orphington hens, plus what the turken hens laid.  It will be interesting to see what these little fuzzballs turn into as they feather out.

There's the one sporting eyeliner as well.  Cute little buggers.

We've had a slew of babies this last few days...


Nilla's ginourmus buck kid, Bull.


Suite Judy Blueeyes' (AKA Little) little doeling.


Stormy's Boy and...


Her girl. Flashy, ain't she?


Shadow's twin bucks, A


And B.



And Pheobie's twin girls - A


And B.

 Last but not least is Sparkle's single doe...


I've been calling her Shine.

Still waiting on Sable and Luna to kid.  Everybody is healthy and growing quickly.