All posts by chasenfratz

Unfinished Compost – Diary of Dad’s Garden

Conservation, Gardening, , , , , , , , ,
Overview of Dad's garden in late summer 2014
Overview of Dad’s garden in late summer 2014

In 2013, my Dad expressed an interest in expanding his garden and growing some vegetables organically. We put our heads together and came up with the following strategy – in 2013 we would make his yard a better habitat for beneficial insects, then in 2014 we’d start planting vegetables. With a healthy beneficial insect population in place, we should have a better chance of getting any pest problems that might manifest on the crops under control in a natural way. Another goal we have is to be as frugal as we can – we both read The $64 Dollar Tomato and we hope to produce vegetables at a more reasonable cost than that! Neither of us have much experience growing vegetables organically. I’ve been gardening organically for about 10 years but where I live I don’t have enough sun or space to grow most vegetables so I have concentrated on herbs and flowers. We will both be learning a lot as we go – some of you more experienced gardeners out there might find some of our actions strange, if so don’t be afraid to offer feedback! We know we have a lot to learn!

March 30, 2014

Most of the vegetables we plan to grow are going to be direct-sown into the ground. It was too early to plant yet on March 30, so we worked on garden prep. We are going to attempt to use a form of permaculture gardening called the Hugelkultur method to build raised beds. One of our ideas is to put a chicken wire fence around the vegetable garden area to keep the rabbits out. Last fall Dad had done some pruning on some of the bushes and trees and left the cut branches lay where they fell during the winter. This was a good idea for two reasons – one, the birds were able to eat seed from the branches if they wanted (some of them, like the Rose of Sharon, had a lot of seeds which I’ve observed being eaten by house finches, gold finches and starlings), and it caused fallen leaves to gather among the branches which helped keep the ground warm and moist around the shrubs and trees during the harsh winter we had. We gathered up these branches and started building long mounds for our raised beds. We added some compost in various stages of completion and some more organic material. After the fence is erected, we plan to add more woody material, leaves, organic matter and top it off with soil. The walking paths between the planted mounds will be mulched.

Beginning the raised beds by building up organic matter
Beginning the raised beds by building up organic matter

There is an area of Dad’s garden where we plan to plant a wildflower seed mix. In preparation, in the fall Dad spread leaves over the area we’re going to plant – we plan to put soil over the leaves before planting. Dad was pleased to observe that he had inadvertently created a well-used foraging area for birds who love to turn the leaves over looking for insects.

April 4, 2014

A neighbor of mine was giving away free wood from a cut tree so I filled the back of my Jeep with bundles of this wood and brought it over to Dad’s house. Perhaps we’ll use this to make walls around the raised beds to hold the soil in. Or if we decide to build a chicken wire fence around all the raised beds, we might use the wood to reinforce the fence.

This was a pretty cold day, so after unloading the wood and some extra unfinished compost I brought over to help build up the raised beds, we retreated to Dad’s basement where I spent the afternoon sewing on what had been my Mom’s old machine and he planted tomato, cucumber and spinach seeds in little containers to sprout indoors on a windowsill for transplanting outside later. We both agree it’s probably a little late to start that but we’ll just do the best we can with what we have. The Hugelkultur method is supposed to warm the raised bed and extend the growing season. We’ll see if it works!

My own garden is mostly perennials. It’s great fun at this time of year to see what comes back. Things are a little behind schedule this year but there is evidence that a lot of plants are still alive!

April 13, 2014

Dad has lots of cucumber and tomato seedlings coming up indoors! The final decision has been made on how to protect the vegetables – we’re going to fence in the vegetable area with chicken wire and reinforce the fence with wood and repellent plantings.

I brought over some more organic material to help build up the raised beds that will grow the veggies. The neighbor who was giving away wood earlier still had some large stump sized pieces left, so I brought some of those over too. We’ll use those to put containers on if we need more space for plants that need to be raised above rabbit level.

After unloading these materials, Dad and I headed over to a home near Dad’s where a man recently had a large stump ground down and was giving away a quantity of wood chips. We filled up many containers of this to use as mulch. We started figuring out where we wanted walking paths in both the vegetable and herb/wildflower areas and we put the mulch down over scrap cardboard and paper to help hold back the grass underneath.

Paper and cardboard to be mulched over for paths
Paper and cardboard to be mulched over for paths

Dad thinks his flowering fruit trees are growing more vigorously this year. We hope that means the compost and mulch we put down at their bases last year is paying off! We still haven’t put down enough material to smother all the grass to the drip line, but we’ll get there someday!

April 19, 2014

I think we’re done with freezing weather for this year (I hope I’m right!) so I put away my “pond” heater (I have a 1/2 barrel water feature on my deck) and planted some seeds on containers on my deck – grape tomatoes, wheatgrass, bronze fennel, mullein and sweet basil. Most of my garden plants are perennials so there isn’t much to do in the rest of my garden yet. Yesterday I dug up some extra volunteer plants to give away and sell at the various shows and farmers markets I’m going to do this year. So far I have quite a bit of extra lemon balm and garlic chives.

In anticipation of receiving a shipment of dirt, Dad bought some manure and spread it over the mounds of woody material and unfinished compost that will become the vegetable beds in his garden.

Adding dirt to raised beds
Adding dirt to raised beds

The new dirt arrived on the 19th and was deposited on what will become the wildflower section of Dad’s garden. It’s up to us to spread it around where we want it. Dad filled in the future vegetable beds with dirt.

April 20, 2014

On Easter Sunday, my Dad, brother and I attended mass together then went out for brunch at Yacovelli’s which is sadly now closed. When we got back to Dad’s house, we changed into old clothes and went to work on the garden. Dad surrounded the new vegetable garden area with chicken wire fencing while I got to work on the dirt pile.

jeep_and_wood

First I loaded up two carloads full of dirt that we are going to give to a friend of ours who also hires me one day a week to help him with his garden and with various things around his house. Dad is going to deliver one and I’m going to bring over the other. Then I started distributing more dirt to the wildflower and herb portion of the garden. Some plantings are already in place in this section. I took some chunks of dirt that were hard to break apart and used them to mark the boundaries of paths, the garden edge, butterfly puddle area and herb beds. I put down some more recyclable paper and cardboard on the paths to keep the grass from coming up after they are mulched and started to fill in the wildflower area with dirt. Dad moved the stump pieces we had collected to various locations to later put containers on.

The last thing we did this day was to head over to the man’s house near Dad who was giving away mulch. It didn’t look like anyone had taken any since we had been there the previous week. Since my Jeep and Dad’s car were already full of dirt containers, we took my brother’s car over there and filled many grocery bags with mulch. By the time we covered the new paths and touched up some mulched areas from last year, we only had two bags left. We put that aside for later because we know there are areas that will need periodic touching up.

We think the paths really help improve the appearance of the wildflower garden and make it look like an inviting place to explore. The paths will also make future maintenance easier – we’re going to be going in there for weeding and harvesting herbs! There may still be some dirt left after we’ve used all we can and in that case we might make a berm for the wildflower seed mix portion of the garden. That could be very interesting because different seeds might sprout at different levels if the moisture level is not consistent throughout.

05/03/14

I came over to Dad’s house after my stint at the Tower Grove Farmers Market in the morning. I was a bit tired and Dad was working on a car so I just did a little weeding. Dad had finished distributing the dirt in the meantime so it’s ready for planting whenever we have the time to do it!

05/04/14

I worked on my own garden on this day. I loosened up the soil in several spots and planted the following seeds – Mullein, Forget-Me-Not, Cilantro, Flowering Tobacco, Blackberry Lily, Queen Anne’s Lace and Columbine. Direct sowing seeds right into the ground is kind of a hit and miss method for me, but I’m out of room on my deck for containers so we’ll see what happens! While loosening the soil I collected all the grubs I could find to feed to my two pet starlings – that is one of their favorite foods! I gathered up handfuls of earthworms and put those in my deck containers which have a lot of partially finished compost in the bottoms under the soil.

05/16/14

We were determined to finish all the planting in Dad’s garden on this day, and we did it! First we planted some extra seedlings that I brought over from my own garden – grape tomatoes, bronze fennel and Korean hyssop. Next we tackled the seeds we’d accumulated over the last several months. Some were seeds saved from previous years and some were collected at plant and seed swaps. I guess it’s not very realistic to expect them all to come up but we are excited about possibly enjoying leeks, watermelon, sweet basil, cucumber, onion, Summer savory, 4 O’clocks, Hollyhocks, Tansy, Baby’s Breath, Morning Glory, Sumac, Annual Sunflower, Cantaloupe, Cosmos, Coreopsis and a wildflower mix which has too many things in it to list them all here.

Overview of the garden after planting, as seen from the kitchen window
Overview of the garden after planting, as seen from the kitchen window

On Sunday the 18th, I attended a plant swap and picked up some extra plants for my garden and for my Dad’s garden. I scored some Mountain Mint, Solomon’s Seal and Parsley for my own garden and several plants that I’m going to give to my Dad.

05/25/14

Well, I was wrong about having all the planting done due to having picked up new plants at the plant swap. To Dad’s garden we added elderberry, foxglove, collards, cauliflower, red cabbage, moonflower, and a romaine lettuce that I had started at my house from the cut-off stem of a romaine lettuce bunch.

Vegetables growing
Vegetables growing

06/01/14

Brought Dad a another romaine lettuce and a celery for him to plant, both started from cut-off stems.

Results: 02/10/15

Nice salad!
Nice salad!

Whew! Reading this over again many months later reminds me of how much work we put into Dad’s garden! I was correct in predicting that not all the seeds we planted would come up, but enough did to make the effort well worthwhile. Nearly all the transplants did very well. Dad was not able to stop buying vegetables in the grocery store (not that we were expecting that), but a reasonable amount of vegetables and herbs made it to his table. I’ve read that the area dedicated in the garden to flowering plants should be equal to the area planted with vegetables in order to provide a sufficient beneficial insect population for pest control and pollination. Dad’s wildflower and herb area was the right size and worked as planned – there were almost no pest issues at all and the plants in the wildflower and herb area were the site of constant activity from beneficials. I counted 12 beneficial wasps on a single plant on one occasion. Some of the herbs, like the bumper crop of dill, were in the vegetable area and their masses of tiny yellow flowers were gorgeous to look at while performing their valuable function.

Veggies in the foreground - dill in the background
Veggies in the foreground – dill in the background

Since there had been a new application of unsterilized soil over the garden, a lot of weeds came up. I was expecting this and kind of looking forward to it because I was hoping some of them would be useful – such as purslane, which we got – yay! We let things grow for awhile then when the plants were big enough to tell what they were, we pulled the ones we didn’t want. For example, we pulled out some of the pokeweed and let some stay since they are pretty plants and serve as bird food. There was one unknown good-sized white-flowered plant in particular that I really want to know what it is because it’s very beautiful and was swarming with beneficials. We let those stay as well. This year we are going to plant more wildflower seeds in this area to supplement last year’s wildflower mix, which mainly produced evening primroses. These are biennials so I sure hope they keep re-seeding!

Pollinator heaven!
Pollinator heaven!

We were both really pleased with the appearance of the wildflower and herb area as well. The combination of flower colors (mainly yellow, white and purple) was stunning and the berm left over from our dirt application and the mulch paths really added to the attractiveness of that part of the garden. The butterfly puddling area we had built in 2013 didn’t seem to be holding any water and we never saw butterflies using it though there were plenty in the vicinity. We may have to dig that up and rebuild in the future with a better water collection container.

To overwinter the garden, we didn’t do much to the wildflower area except to mulch now and then where there was bare soil or when any of the cardboard under the mulch got exposed at the edges. Dad put the leaves he collected in the yard in the vegetable area to protect it and use as mulch the next year. Since that part of the garden is fenced, the leaves stay put until we need them.

Mulching paths in the vegetable area
Mulching paths in the vegetable area

On February 8, 2015 I came over with some leaf and wood chip mulch that I had picked up at the Richmond Heights mulch pile the day before and we touched up the mulch where needed. Dad also had on hand a supply of wood chips that came from a ground up-tree that had been taken down at a rental house that he owns. We also put down cardboard and paper over the path areas of the vegetable garden, without removing the leaves first, and covered that material with wood chips to form this year’s paths. We had some wood chips left over so we stored those for future use. Our gardening method requires lots of mulch so we know it will be used eventually. We are leaving last year’s plants standing until it’s time to plant those particular areas. At that time we’ll also remove some of the leaves from the raised beds and compost them in another area of the garden and also leave some as mulch around the new plants. Since we are using a no-till method we will not be disturbing the planting mounds from last year but instead just planting on top of them. This will require a fresh infusion of soil – we are not sure what our source will be for that yet. We won’t need nearly as much as last year, no need for a truck to bring it this time! A carload should be more than enough.

Garlic starting indoors on the windowsill
Garlic starting indoors on the windowsill

Dad has some garlic bulbs started in the house, and will be starting seeds indoors shortly as we get closer to planting time. Here is a planting calendar I made for the St. Louis, Missouri area that we are attempting to follow. We’re hoping that last year’s hard work will pay off even more this year!

Unfinished Compost: Garden Diary – February 7, 2015

Conservation, Gardening, , , , , , , ,

It’s late winter here in the St. Louis, Missouri area and we’re having an unseasonably warm weekend – not that I’m complaining! This is a good opportunity to look over my garden while the ground is relatively bare and make plans for the coming year.

Every garden has it’s own challenges – I started my current garden in January of 2005. My main goals for this project were to grow some culinary herbs and do my part for the environment by managing my garden to benefit wildlife and have a positive impact on the local water, air and soil quality. When I started the only plant growing in my garden was liriope – a nice plant but not that interesting by itself. I have made a lot of progress. I have found a number of plants that will grow in my part shade conditions. I have built raised beds filled with imported soil, sand and masses of organic matter over the mixture of clay and construction debris that passed for soil before I started. I have excavated buckets full of bricks and other debris. I have installed connected soaker hoses under all the beds to make watering easier and less wasteful. I don’t have all native plants but I have planted some as food for native wildlife. I have attracted a population of birds and beneficial insects that do nearly all of the pest control for me. Japanese Beetles and Eastern Tent Caterpillars are no longer a major plague on the flowering trees outside my bedroom as they were when I first moved here.

There is still a lot of room for improvement. I live in a condominium and I’m fortunate that the condo owners’ association lets me garden at all. My unit is on the ground floor and on the end, so I’ve claimed three sides of that end of the building for my garden which gives me quite a bit of linear space. I’ve let my near neighbors know that they can garden there if they want because I don’t own the space, it’s common ground, but none are interested so for now that’s my garden. I imagine most people live in condos because they don’t want to bother with yard work and things like that, but some of us in the condo complex do garden, we even had a garden club for awhile. I’d much rather work on a garden – for me it’s a hobby – than maintain lawns or shovel snow so I’m happy to let others do the maintenance type things outside while I do the creative stuff! My gardening style is different from how most of the rest of the condo complex is managed. I prefer the permaculture way of management. I like to plant mostly perennials and leave them standing until late winter for wildlife habitat and food, while the landscaping company employed by the condo complex likes to plant a lot of annuals and leave large patches of ground bare in the winter. I don’t think they object to what I’m trying to accomplish, the property managers seem to be wildlife friendly, but it’s taken some time to get them to understand what I’m doing. Wildflowers, native plants and herbs look unusual if everyone else in the vicinity is growing hostas, begonias and impatiens, I understand that.

One of the major problems my garden has is that it looks sloppy in winter. Having a garden that looks good all year in a continental climate is really difficult even when you have complete control over your space. I think leaving perennials stand in winter is much more attractive than bare ground, and the local birds benefit from the resulting cover and food. This practice is good for the health of the garden also – it keeps soil from washing away, helps maintain the fungi, bacteria and tiny animals that keep soil healthy, provides shelter for new seedlings to increase the number of plants available and the standing plants serve as overwintering places for beneficial insects. Unfortunately when the landscapers come by with their leaf blowers, the standing plants (if they are still standing) end up looking bedraggled and beaten up and a lot of the mulch I put down gets blown away. Some of this mulch ends up in the grass which does not help the already struggling lawn. By far the best thing for my garden would be for the leaves in my garden to be left alone – I’d have less dieoff of plants over the winter and the soil would be much healthier both for my own plants and surrounding trees in the lawn – but I don’t know what my chances are of persuading the management go along with that. I do have a proposal that I’m going to run by them for leaf management in my garden next fall and it remains to be seen if they’ll go for it. In the meantime, how can I make my garden look neater?

One problem area is the ground around my Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) bush. If you have one of these plants, you know they are very prolific seeders. There are positive aspects to this – I’ve observed three species of birds eating the seeds and the abundant flowers attract masses of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds – but you do have to keep up with the extra seedlings! I’ve been unsuccessful so far in getting much else besides Rose of Sharon seedlings to grow under there so for now I’m going to put down some cardboard, paper, and other biodegradable barriers to kill off last year’s seedlings, add a layer of dirt, and mulch the heck out of it so it’s not unsightly. This is my favorite method of weed control – much better than poisoning the ground! There are a few Blackberry lilies hanging on somehow there and if my memory is correct some irises also so I’ll go around those so they don’t get smothered.

My "dirt mine" - also a brick mine!
My “dirt mine”, with temporarily unburied section of soaker hose – also a brick mine!

This task ended up consuming much of the day – one reason is that my source for the dirt was to dig a large hole in an area I use for a “dirt mine”. I needed a lot of dirt so I dug the hole bigger than I ever have before and as a result ran into a lot of construction debris which took some time to dig out of the heavy clay. This is not all bad – free bricks are handy for shoring up raised beds and I think I have a plan for the large flat rocks! Stay tuned for the next garden improvement!

Why I Send New Year Cards Instead of Christmas Cards

Art, Graphic Design, Holiday Crafts, Paper Crafts, Upcycling, , , ,

horizontal_strip_all_four_web

For about 10 years I have sent cards to celebrate the New Year instead of Christmas. Why do I do this?

One reason is that I like to design my own cards, and everyone on my list does not celebrate Christmas, so a New Year card saves me from having to design multiple cards and remembering who celebrates Christmas and who does not. Another reason is that it’s different, and I never mind being different. Still another is that I make a lot of my own Christmas gifts and it’s difficult getting the gifts AND cards done all at one time.

But the main reason is that the act of designing the cards reminds me of one of the best Christmas/New Year holiday seasons of my entire life and by making the cards I can have a private celebration of that memory to give me hope for the year to come. I was still in college and I had recently completed one of those design class projects where you are assigned to depict the four seasons in an abstract manner. We did one set with paint, and another with collage papers. I was really enthusiastic about the project because I love to work abstract and I especially enjoyed the collage part.

I was still fired up about collages when Christmas break of 1988 came around and I didn’t want to stop doing them. During the break between Christmas and New Year I had some rare time off from both work and school and I was able to work on some projects just because I wanted to do them. My uncle had given me a new Devo tape (one of my favorite groups of the 80s) for a Christmas gift and I listened to that over and over while I worked on several collages that I was really pleased with. I thought they were the best work I had ever done up to that point and I used ideas I developed during those few days for spinoff projects for some time to come. One of the pieces was a collection of “thumbnail” collages in a Mid-Century modern style that I still keep in my studio and still periodically get ideas from. I will never forget what that burst of creativity was like, it’s hard to describe but I felt fully alive and purposeful for one of the first times in my life. It’s a feeling I’m always working to recapture and I do succeed from time to time but it is not easy to get “in the zone” like that.

For this year’s design I decided to do a four seasons treatment, using collage in a sort of DADA/Constructivist style. Those kinds of pieces are typically either chilling, disturbing or both so I watered down the type if imagery I’d normally use for that type of collage because I wanted to convey a positive feeling about the New Year! I used my collage paper collection that I’ve been building up since 1985 and mostly let the colors carry the message. I did a little bit of editing with the computer after scanning the collages to finish  them off and size them for cards. Each card recipient is going to get one of the four seasons at random this time, instead of everyone on the list getting the same card. I wish everyone a creative New Year in 2015!

If you want to see what handmade greeting cards I have for sale, go to http://carolynsstampstore.com/catalog/handmade-carolyn-c-47.html

New Recycling Guide for St. Louis County, Missouri

Conservation, Marketing, , , , , , , ,

recycling_guide_web_graphic

For the last several months I’ve been working part time at Schnarr’s Hardware in Ladue, MO. Part of the work I do there is helping with marketing. In order to attract potential customers to our web site and social media outlets, I wrote up a Recycling Guide and created the graphic above to make links to it easier to share in social media. I also made a short url and QR code for those on the go or who only see the graphic and can’t click it.

This project is an example of content marketing. Content marketing is a way to build a relationship with potential customers by providing information that is relevant to them. I tried to make the content of the Recycling Guide relevant by including information on how to recycle items we sell in the store or items that are closely related.

Content marketing can be effective when other forms of advertising are getting overlooked. If you think about what your customers need to make their lives easier it can help you think of ideas for content marketing.

Making Convertible Bracelets

Beads and Jewelry, Upcycling, , , , , ,

One of my favorite pastimes is to take apart jewelry that I purchased from thrift stores and make new things out of it. When I do this, I end up with a lot of odds and ends of chain. It occurred to me that some of these chain pieces could be the foundation of a convertible bracelet design.

convertible_bracelets
Three strands of different silver colored chain make a good base for a convertible bracelet.

In this example, I linked three lengths of chain together with a small jump ring on one end with a lobster clasp, and a larger jump ring on the other. The larger jump ring will be needed to accept multiple items clasped to it later. This bracelet can be worn as is, or used as a necklace extender.

convertible_bracelets_set1

Next I made some parts that I can attach to give the bracelet a different look. I made a narrow strand of small beads with small lobster clasps at each end, and a dangle that consists of three silver colored beads on head pins attached to a small jump ring and a small lobster clasp. The picture on the right shows the bracelet with the convertible parts attached – I twisted the bead strand around the bracelet and clipped it to the jump rings at each end, and clipped the dangle to the large jump ring.

convertible_bracelets_set2

I had so much fun with the previous set that I made another, this time with two strands of beads. These short bead strands could also be used as necklace extenders and the dangles could be attached to necklaces in strategic places as well. Think of all the different combinations you could have fun with! See my tutorial on convertible necklaces for more convertible jewelry ideas!

Creative Memories of Mom

Holiday Crafts, , , , ,

Four years ago today (December 11), we lost my Mom to breast cancer. There isn’t much positive you can say about a horrible event like that, but one comfort I do have is that Mom and I spent a lot of time together and I have a lot of great memories to look back on.

The photo above shows Mom doing one of the things she really loved – entering (and often winning) cooking contests. Click the photo to read the accompanying article in the North and Northwest Journal and as a bonus get Mom’s winning green bean recipe!

Mom was really good at a lot of the domestic arts. She would not have called herself creative – her craftsmanship was excellent in everything she did but she rarely if ever created a pattern for a project or changed a recipe. I was capable of following directions and would be content with that if I couldn’t think of a way I’d rather do it, but Mom expressed amazement many times at how I would more often create a project from scratch or change an existing one considerably. I’m sure one of the things that enabled me to do this was her support – she never put down my efforts at expressing myself even if the results were pretty terrible!

Mom had been a teacher before I was born and liked her career, but she thought it was more important to raise my brother and I when we were small so we had a lot of time with her at home. My love of crafts was well-established before I ever started school. A lot of times I’d sit at the kitchen table and play with plasticine clay and Play Dough while Mom was baking. She’d let me use the cookie cutters to make clay shapes and I have a great memory of her showing me how to make a tiny clay pie, I can remember her rolling tiny clay berries to put in it and crimping the clay crust with a fork. When I was a little older, she showed me how to do my own baking experiments and we had matching kid-size and adult-size cookie presses. I learned to pipe icing on cakes and make things like stained glass cookies out of dough and crushed lifesavers. During my grade-school years I developed a passion for salt dough projects which were trendy at the time. This next photo shows one of Mom’s ornaments made from a kit on the left and one of my salt dough ornaments on the right.

Kits played a big part in both of our lives. When I was very small Mom used to subscribe to a club that sent her a different craft kit each month. The cupcake ornament above is from one of those. I always wanted to “help” my Mom with her kits but she gave me my own to do instead. She always did a super-neat job on hers and I loved watching. I got lots of kits as gifts for my birthday and Christmas and many times for an extra treat Mom would take us to Lee Ward’s where we each would pick out a kit for ourselves. Another great treat was a trip to the plaster shop where we’d get blank knick-knacks to paint. That sure was a thrill to spray on the pearlized top coat! Eventually I had quite a collection of plaster flowers and butterflies on my wall to go along with the finished embroidery, string art and hooked rug kits. My brother got into the act too with a plaster frog and a plaster bear head on a plaque.

In the summer, Mom used to work on her garden and I would follow her around a lot. I remember her showing me my first praying mantis sitting on her gardening glove. We were both kind of apprehensive about it, but that did not stop me from developing a strong interest in invertebrates which I still have. I had my own little gardening plot for awhile too. I didn’t like winter much, but one thing about it that I did love was long cold Sunday afternoons or after school time spent in the warm basement (where the TV was) working on my projects while watching bad movies on Channel 11. The sewing machine was down there too and a lot of my kits and my brother’s model kits got done there on TV trays while my Mom sewed clothes and decorative items for the house. I didn’t learn the sewing machine until much later because I was afraid of it but I spent a lot of time hand-sewing things like clothes for my Barbies and small stuffed animals and pillows.

Later on in life Mom got into some hobbies that even she I think would have called creative. In addition to occasionally being written about in the Journal for her cooking, Mom started writing travel articles for that publication accompanied by her own photographs. Photography and travel were passions we both shared and we spent a lot of time together on local one day trips or longer trips pointing out interesting subjects to each other. Her photo output was prolific! She loved it so much she even made little vignettes out of the decor in the house, garden or of the decorated holiday table to photograph. If she had lived long enough to retire she probably would have been a prolific blogger. She already had some experience making web pages for the travel department at her job, so along with her other interests and skills it would have been a natural progression, I think.

Another creative outlet that meant a lot to Mom was singing in the church guitar group and performing in the church talent show. Most of the time she presented herself as shy and quiet but that went out the window onstage – she had no hang-ups about performing skits, tap-dancing or singing in front of an audience. She did tell me once she thought she might be a frustrated thespian. She was pretty good at it too – after one of her performances the MC spontaneously remarked, “looks like we actually have a legitimate act here!”

In January 2009, I attempted to recreate that cozy winter afternoon creative atmosphere by pursuading  my Mom, Dad and brother to make collages with me at their kitchen table. Mom is not in the picture above because she was taking it. This cheered me up greatly (I need cheering up in winter!) and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. I encouraged them to cut pictures out of magazines that they liked without worrying too much about why they were attracted to it or what it means. Below is what Mom came up with.

I expected that after Mom retired that there would be lots more times like this to look forward too, but it was not to be. Lucky for me, Dad will indulge me by gardening with me and working on projects with me and that helps a lot. And I often bring my sewing over to Dad’s house to work on while he and my brother enjoy a race or some other show on TV. Sometimes they will even work on models! I don’t know if they know how much it helps me to remember those happy times.

How many of those Pinterest projects have you made?

Beads and Jewelry, Upcycling, , , , , , , , , ,

That’s a question I asked myself after listening to a discussion on that topic on a crafting podcast. Have I actually made any of these projects that I’m pinning, and if so did they turn out much like the original? I spend a fair amount of time pinning, for both business reasons and because I enjoy it. I have a Pinterest board called Craft Ideas – has all this work of collecting attractive items to inspire me actually done any good? This past weekend I went on a jewelry bender and I thought it would be good practice for my motor skills to try to make versions of some of the projects on my Craft Ideas board and here are some of the results. I hope I added enough of my own touches not to make these a total rip-off!

Too bad I don’t have more than one key like this, I’m pleased with this result. Creator of the original: Jennifer Evans.


I didn’t have any large briolettes so I used more faux pearl and crystal beads and linked them together to make more volume.
Creator of the original: Joan Stowell.

I added dangling beads to the bottom of my fringe instead of using paddle headpins. Creator of the original: Stefanie .


I added longer strands of faux pearl and crystal beads to mine and to compensate for the extra length I used post earring findings instead of earwires. I also substituted faux leather cord for leather. Creator of the original: Lynda Carson.

I liked the idea of seed beads on wire wrapped around the bead, but I ended up just using a small scrap of chain to hold my dangles under the large bead instead. I’m going to revisit the seed bead on wire idea, but will need some lighter weight beads to try it on if I’m going to make earrings like in the picture. I decided the large faux pearl beads I had on hand were too heavy for earrings. Creator of the original: unknown.

Have you been inspired by something on Pinterest? Feel free to share a link to your original inspiration and a link to your finished project in the comments below!

Halloween Faux Postage

Holiday Crafts, Paper Crafts, Rubber Stamping, , , , , , , ,

Sometimes it’s fun to get back to the basics – rubber stamping and making faux postage! I don’t have any actual “Halloween” rubber stamps but I used what I had to make some disturbing postal imagery for Halloween.

I used assorted stamps from various companies plus some from my own Faux Postage collection –
http://carolynsstampstore.com/catalog/faux-postage-rubber-stamps-c-22.html

Stamping inks are Ancient Page and ColorBox Archival from Clearsnap and StazOn.

How to Start a Blog

Marketing, , , ,

A friend of mine solicited advice in Facebook on this topic, and since what I’ve written is probably too long for that platform, I’ll make a blog post out of it!

  1. First think about what the purpose of your blog is. All of the decisions you make will flow from that, so be clear in your mind on why you are doing it. What is the theme, if you have one? Pick out a title that fits the theme and purpose. While doing business blogging as part of my living, I was taught that one of the purposes of blogging and other social media is to give your company a more personal feel and create a connection with the audience. Whether your purpose in blogging is to make money or just express yourself, informality is expected so if you want to go off topic now and then and write about whatever is on your mind at the time, that is ok to do.
  2. Decide whether you need your own domain name. Is it acceptable to have your blog at myblog.wordpress.com for example or is it important to have www.myblog.com? If you want your own domain, is there a domain name available that fits your chosen title?
  3. Decide whether you want to use your real name or a pen name.
  4. Decide what email address you want to associate with your account. If you’re using a pen name, you might not want to use the same email address you use when you’re using your real name online. Also if you want readers to be able to contact you by email, it might be useful to have a separate email for this so you can better manage the spam settings. On most platforms that I’m familiar with, allowing readers to contact you by email is voluntary.
  5. If you have any interest at all in Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms, get an account in each to complement your blog – using your pen name if you have one, or it’s ok to use accounts under your real name if you don’t mind revealing all your online activities to the world. Many blog platforms allow you to link your blog to these accounts and it makes promotion of your blog a lot quicker and easier and gives people more ways to interact with you. You will most likely to be prompted to link these accounts when you set up your blog so it’s convenient to have them ready before you start. It’s a lot of work to fill all the social media platforms with content, so whenever you can have one account propagate content to the others automatically it’s a big help. For example, my Twitter account accepts feeds from my other activities, mostly automatically, and I rarely have to go straight to Twitter to add content, though I still can if I want to – http://www.limegreennews.com/ – the rest of that web site is very out of date, but the Twitter feed at least is current!
  6. Select a blogging software platform. Make sure you picked out a title and how you want to identify yourself online before you start playing around with the software because you often cannot change the name after you start setting up your account. I don’t think you can go far wrong with WordPress because people have written a lot of useful free plug-ins and you will be able to do a lot with it. If there are certain special features that are important to you it might not hurt to look at a comparison chart of different blog software, such as this one – http://startbloggingonline.com/blog-platform-comparison-chart/ or this one – http://weblogs.about.com/od/choosingabloghost/p/BlogSoftware.htm. It isn’t strictly necessary to use “blogging” software to have a blog because the meaning of the word “blog” comes from “web log” which is just a web page that is updated frequently. If you use “blogging” software it will make it easier for people to understand what you’re doing but if you want to get more creative with the format, you can do that. Update in 2022: These days when using someone else’s software, you have to beware of companies that are trying to enforce social engineering by practicing viewpoint-based discrimination. I recommend you research and choose your blogging platform wisely!
  7. Select an avatar image to identify yourself as you set up your account. There will be other decisions to make as you set up the account, they will vary depending on the platform, just keep your purpose in mind while doing it and those decisions will be easy.
  8. Now comes the fun part – filling the blog with content! Whether doing personal or business blogging, if I’m stuck for an idea I ask myself, what’s going on right now in my life that might be interesting to someone? A project, an observation, an interesting event? If you have an interesting life, finding time to write will probably be more of a problem than finding things to write about. In any kind of creative work, I find it helpful to keep a notebook or scrapbook at hand to jot down any ideas that I can work on later when I have time. Also if you’re stuck in a situation where you are in a waiting room or a line or something, writing is a great portable activity – write a rough draft and refine it when you get home! With today’s mobile devices, you don’t even have to wait until you get home!

Other tips for getting ideas for content:

  • Do you get emails with interesting topics that might spark some commentary from you? Collect them in a folder in your email software, and when you’re feeling dry, read some and see if you get inspired.
  • Have you read articles online or in publications that are interesting? Clip them or print them out and put them in a folder to look at on days when you want to write but need ideas.
  • Have you written a substantive or interesting email or social media post? Turn that into a blog post! For example, a fellow artist at an outdoor show once asked me for advice for finding shows. I wrote him an email and later used it as a newsletter article because I thought it would be helpful to other people.
  • Reviews are enjoyable to read and a good service to the readers and are always a good fallback if you’re stuck for ideas.
  • If you want to cover a certain topic, you can use the Yahoo News service to have emails sent to you with links to news articles that include keywords of your choosing. Open yourself up to news outlets that cover the topics of interest to you – free community papers, bulletin boards, newsletters, online magazines? A blog is a good place to report timely news since it’s meant to be frequently updated and informal, and posting news is a useful public service too.
  • Is someone you know doing something interesting that fits your theme? Interview them!
  • Consider allowing guest bloggers. Perhaps you have a friend with a blog and you can strike up a deal where you can occasionally write a post for their blog and they write one for you. Be sure to allow including a link back to the guest author’s blog – that will expose both of your blogs to new readers.
  • If you don’t have time for a substantial blog post, don’t feel intimidated – it’s ok to post just a photo, or a couple of lines of commentary, or embed a video you like now and then. Remember it’s informal! It’s more important to post frequently than it is to post long, substantial articles. I personally like to read long, substantial articles, so I would not follow a blog that did not include one from time to time. However I’m probably not typical and many people in your audience would probably rather read something short. I’m always being told to cut down my writings – but I usually refuse if I can get away with it! My reasoning is that people who want to read my blog want to read things written in my “voice”, so I don’t want to mess with that. There are literally millions of other people they can read if they don’t like my style. There is a lot of competition so the way to stand out is to be yourself, in my opinion!

Have Fun With Your Jewelry and Accessories

Beads and Jewelry, , , , ,

Last night I co-hosted a jewelry party with my friend Laura who is a rep for Park Lane Jewelry. I was showing my own hand made jewelry designs along with her offerings. I delivered some remarks about my ideas for enjoying jewelry and accessories and here are my notes from last night, expanded a bit.

My background

  • Disclaimer – I am by no means an expert on fashion. I am a designer and I pay some attention to what people are doing in many different areas of design so I’m a little bit aware of what is fashionable even if I don’t make the effort to follow it!
  • I’m involved in lots of different arts and crafts.
  • I have been making jewelry as part of my creative output since 1989. In that year a friend of mine introduced me to the twin joys of thrift shopping and making things out of old jewelry. I was never the same after that!
  • Sometimes I try to make a jewelry piece harmonious with current trends, sometimes not – I just make what I’m inspired to make.
  • I love to incorporate found objects, mixed media and reused beads and components.
  • I do take special orders.

Fashion vs. Style

  • My own definition of these terms is that fashion refers to what is popular right at the moment.
  • Style, in my opinion, is incorporating your own tastes into a mix of current, vintage and other favorite items of yours to express yourself.
  • What is fashionable might be appropriate for your own lifestyle and where you live, or it might not. I don’t feel obligated to follow any trend that doesn’t fit my life.
  • One of my design teachers gave me what I think is some very good advice – “If it looks right, it’s right.” In other words, your eye is more important than “the rules”.

How do you develop your own style if you are not sure what it is?

Current trends include layering and BOHO

  • Both of those trends give you the opportunity to be creative because you can mix and match.
  • Layering and BOHO are favorite looks of mine, but there are usually so many different trends going on at one time that you’re sure to find something you like no matter what your taste is.

My ideas on good value

  • Buy (or make!) some new pieces to feel fresh but save and reuse old pieces too.
  • Many people feel that something new now and then lifts the spirits (my opinion, not science, but I suspect science would back it up!). A new outfit gave me extra confidence on a recent job interview, for example.
  • I know of no human cultures that don’t decorate their body with jewelry – there must be a deep human need for personal expression in this manner.
  • Convertible pieces are a good value.
    • Some pieces are designed to be worn in different ways.
    • Extenders are a good investment also – you can adjust some jewelry you already own to different clothing necklines.
    • Large rings that open and close can help you twist necklaces together.
    • Link items together to make a longer strand, such as a bracelet and a short necklace.
    • A really long necklace can possibly be worn single strand, double strand or even triple if it has a clasp.
  • Accessories are a good value because they can breathe new life into clothing to make it look newer or seasonal.

Layer older jewelry with new for a fresh look

  • Some ideas for getting new life out of old jewelry are on this web page:
  • If you’re not a crafter, you can commission a local jewelry maker to re-work parts of something you already have into something new.
  • If you keep a piece long enough, there is an excellent chance it, or at least parts of it, will come into vogue again – no matter how unlikely this seems! I can think of several things that I wish I had back that I once thought were completely hopeless!

To find out about my future events, go to:
http://carolynsstampstore.com/catalog/classes_and_events.php