Pets and Parades

This past weekend I was very busy helping raise funds for The Pet Orphanage.  Our main focus is spay and neuter and we also foster some animals, as well as provide medical outreach when needed. Some of the ways we are helped, are through grants and donations.  Another way is if someone signs us as their charity through Kroger rewards, we get some funding when customers shop for groceries and scan their card.  Sometimes local groups help us out too, to have pet food purchased and other things that we can use. Be sure to stop by and friend us on facebook. We had a booth at the annual Washboard Festival.  We gave away cat nip toys and dog treats.  We also had a basket drawing of pet goodies and information on our low cost spay and neuter program.  I made over 70 cat nip bags to give away.  I had also Illustrated a coloring page for the kids and painted kids faces for 3 days. Whew!!! My little dog, Jessie also got involved.  He would lay under the table while I painted the kids faces and would clean their feet. lol  It was too cute!  He also made friends with some kids and loved that they talked to him and made him feel important.  He even made friends with a cute little taco bell dog. lol

Here is Janet and her mom, Shelby working a shift at the booth.

This is Tammy painting a child's face while his brother looks on.      We were both very busy! I took a photo of each one I painted and I know that there were about 8 of them that didn't get photographed when my batteries died, so figured I painted 84 kids alone over the course of three days. With others painting, I am guessing close to 100 were done.

We made several cat faces

and little kittens too.

Some were copy cats!

and then there were dog faces.

Of all different breeds! (This must be a BLUE heeler.)lol

Then there were Dalmations

and Papillons too!

There were opposites, but many were Hello Kitties!

And then there was this funny face that was so much fun!

There were sweet little butterflies

Snakes on arms

and snakes on faces!

lovely red masks

and pirates too!

Doggies with pointed ears

and Doggies with floppy ears!

Lots of butterfly cheeks 

to match their hair

and match their clothes.

Other furry friends visited our booth too.

There were balloon sculptors and vendors selling their wares.

And the festival wouldn't be complete without a parade!

Lovely ladies doing their famous queen wave.

Free rides on the street for the kids

Washboard bands

complete with the wash!

There were heros

and horses.

A great time was had by all!  I missed out taking photos of the main stage as well as listening to some favorite bands. Ah well, they will be back again next year.  

Go Fish!

I began this at my desk, several posts ago and kept it secret until I had the chance to get it ready for a trade debut with one of my online groups.  Today I was ready to reveal what I had worked on.

 I have some finished fish laying here and a sketch in the works.  I have enjoyed making several whimsical fish.






The purple fish,  is " A Fish Called Wanda".  LOL  Since that is my name, how could I resist? Can you guess what kind of fish the other one is?  Why she's a "hairing", of course! I have had so much fun with these and so many others.  I painted the above ones in acrylics on fabric and used an old file folder as the base.

Another interesting technique, I added 3-D texture.  Below is how I did it.

I started out with fabric pushed through a cookie rack with a pencil.

I cut away the excess fabric and put a piece of fusible on the underside of the "bubbled" fabric and ironed it right on the cookie rack.

When I pulled away the paper backing of the fusible web, it looked like this.

Before I took it off of the cookie rack,  I cut a fish shape from a file folder and ironed it onto the fish shape.  Then I was able to trim around the fish shape.

The other side should look like this.  Note that I trimmed and left a bubble for an eye.  I also pulled out and flattened  few of the bubbles out toward the back of the tail.

I then painted the face and tail area with craft acrylic paints.  I painted the one bubble black for the pupil of the eye.  I also took apart a pre-wound bobbin and painted it a darker yellow for the eye.

I was able to pull the black pupil in through the bobbin piece and then painted the details for the eye.  I also cut fins, painted and glued on from the back to make one very cool fish!

Well, hope you have enjoyed the many new fish species.  There are many fish in the sea and I have many more fish to fry!

WOYWW/ Lady Luck

ALOHA!!!  I had a request from last week to post the papillon!  So sorry I was too tired to post much last week and I am afraid it was short changed, so made up for it this week and dressed him to the nines! lol  Also forgot to post that the day after that we named him Pip, we decided on another name so we actually have named him Jessie!  At the moment, he's incognito! lol  This past weekend we went to 40 miles of yard sales on Rt. 40 and had lots of fun! Jessie even got this little doggie Hawaiian shirt on the trip.  I crocheted a little straw hat out of raffia (Or "ruff"ia, as Jessie would say)  I couldn't get him to wear sunglasses, so I edited those in Blingee!
   Other purchases I got this past weekend are a toaster oven for my  polymer clay,  lots of purses that were free, so I took several to cut up to use the leather, hardware and zippers to up-cycle in another use.  I even made a quarter since it was left in one purse.  On the left you can see that I have torn out several beige zippers.  I can get as many as 5 from one purse!  The fabric laying under the zippers I have quilted and will make smaller zipper bags with them and sell them at the local festival to benefit The Pet Orphanage.  I think zippers are so expensive that I have started to recycle them from clothing and now purses!  Mostly, they are the sizes I need anyway, so guess this is actually my WOYWW project.

 I also got lots of odd plates and votives so that I can make them into yard art like these! Aren't they gorgeous!

 You can see some more purchased  here.

It's awesome to see the translucent qualities, but the opaque ones are great too!  This is my haul from this past weekend. Most were anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar. I am playing with some color combinations, but obviously I need more to go with others!  lol

Then I got 14 skeins of thread for $3.00 and the wicker basket for 25 cents!

But my most exciting find was this chair for $10.00.  I guess you might say that I got it for the cats! (Herky and Zack) The wine colored throw was $2.00 find.

Actually most of my furnishings in the bedroom are from thrift stores, yard sales or antique stores across the country.  When we lived in England, We got the monk's bench, the barley twist sideboard and the gate leg table.  The chifferobe was in my husband's family.

The shelf came from North Dakota, and the sheep skin was from a yard sale in Las Vegas!  Yep, I guess not every one gambles in Vegas! You would have laughed at me last year, as I stuffed the sheep skin in my suitcase and mailed my clothing back home. LOL The chair is a little ratty looking but it is comfortable so the sheepskin is a nice cover up.  Most everything else I got at yard sales in Ohio including the lamp, clock, pillows and comforters.

I promise to do better checking out the other desks this week at Julia's Stamping Ground.   I was distracted by other events, including the fact that my daughter's husband was in a head on collision.  He has lots of bruising and had 23 stitches in his head, but could have been much worse than it was. All in all, It's been a very lucky week!