Book review: Coraline by Neil Gaiman & my current read

In anticipation of seeing the movie, I picked up a copy of the Coraline book. I must say, it sort of freaked me out! The story is for young readers, 8 and up. I don't know how a young reader could read the book without having nightmares. I'm glad I read the book first before toting the whole family to the movie, because I now know that the girls are much too young to see it. I am interested in seeing how the movie will play out the book's plot lines. It's rated PG. The basic story line is that Coraline, an adventurous youngster, finds a secret passageway in her house that leads to another world. In this other world, her "Other Mother" and "Other Father" want to keep her for themselves. All of the characters in the other world have buttons for eyes. The Other Mother seems sweet at first but then it's slowly revealed that she is evil. The story has a lot of twists and turns as Coraline figures out how to out-smart the Other Mother. Even though I didn't totally love the story, I'm still excited to see the movie, because it's stop-action animation (which I loooove) and it's directed by Henry Selick (whom I loooove).

The book I'm currently reading is Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I was going to go to the bookstore to buy the next book in the Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire series, but I wanted to give (force!) myself to take a break from the vampires. When I was at CVS picking up a prescription I saw the book and thought it looked interesting. Plus the movie has Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in it, so I'll see the movie when I'm finished. Geez, it seems like I'm a shallow reader, reading books that have been turned into movies. Really, I'm not! That just seems to be my current trend. I read about 100 pages of Revolutionary Road last night, and it's really good. I loved Twilight and the whole saga, don't get me wrong, but it's obvious after reading a few pages of Revolutionary Road that Twilight isn't exactly the most well-written of novels. Twilight is good in its own right because of the premise of the story and the characters, but Revolutionary Road is a good departure from it, at least for me. Twlight is delicious to read because of Edward Cullen. Revolutionary Road is delicious to read because of its literary know-how, use, and placement of words. There's not one word out of place in RR or used just for the sake of using it.

How absolutely cute are these?!

I just spotted this on Etsy - a literal "love letter" in crochet! It's a crocheted envelope, a crocheted set of "love" letters and it's sealed with a crocheted set of lips! HA HA! Wonderful!

UPDATE! I just purchased the pattern to make them!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday

Etsy Favs is late this week! At least it's still Wednesday. What can I say - I was so lazy today I didn't even shower or change out of my PJs! Here's my pics for this week:

Woodgrain Letterpress Coasters

Ah, a combination of letterpress and woodgrain. Perfection. The girls have stolen all of our coasters. We're not quite sure what they do with them. If I got these coasters I'd have to glue them down.

Star Earrings

I am a big fan of metalwork, especially hand stamped metalwork. I love these earrings. I'm going to buy them as soon as I make another sale on Etsy. You see, I usually only buy stuff from Etsy once I make some sales. I'm $7 shy of these earrings. Um, have I mentioned that all of my pendants are on sale? teehee

Birdy Apron

I want this apron. It's so cute and vintage-looking. Can't you just picture me pulling a pie out of the oven while wearing this apron?

Shortbread

Mmmmm! I usually don't put food items in Etsy Favs lists, but these just popped out at me when I came across them on Etsy. They look so yummy! I've never ordered goodies from Etsy. I just might have to get these. Yum

Skull Pins

I love these! How cute! I bought a yellow birdy pin-topper last year and I love it. It adorns my pin cushion and I smile whenever I see it. I think these little skulls need to join the bird on my cushion, no?

Snow and more snow!

This is a pic of our back deck. We are all snowed in here! We have probably a foot of snow! We can't measure it, however, because there's a hard layer of ice in between the layers of snow. We got a total of four inches yesterday, then a delightful layer of ice overnight, then more snow this morning and today. Mike's school was cancelled at 8:30 last night, and I got a call at 6:30 this morning that my office was closed. Yippeee! We've been really super lazy today. I had promised the girls that we'd take them sledding, but it's so cold that I really don't want to venture out now.

We finally got some snow!

We got snow! Real, accumulating snow! This is exciting, because here in Cincinnati, if there's even a mention of snow, people freak out. They hate it, they hate driving in it, they call it the "white death." I LOVE snow! Our forecast actually panned out and we got about six inches of snow overnight; we're supposed to get more overnight tonight. Exciting! Mike has a snow day today, but I had to work. There's a rumor that our offices might close though, because of the threat of more of the white stuff coming. Too funny! I think it's hilarious that people act like they can't function when it's snowing. I wore jeans to work today, as did most other people, just because it's snowy, and hey, I'll take advantage of the weather in order to wear jeans. Well this one woman has on a sweat suit AND a hat - she totally didn't shower today. Can you say disgusting?! And I'm wondering, in what way did the snow fall affect whether or not you showered this morning? Don't get it.

Pendants reduced to $6!

I just reduced all of my pendants to $6! This is an incredible deal since most of the silver pieces used to make them cost $10 or $12 alone. I won't be reducing them any further. I'm hoping to sell them to make room for a new line of pendants and other pieces that I'm working on. Check them out here.

And the winner of the give-a-way is ...

Oh my goodness there were so many people that registered to win my Massive Give-A-Way! 20 people registered to win! I appreciate the interest! In my past two give-a-ways, I've had my girls help pick the number. Well, tonight, one is sick and the other just is not cooperating! So, I Googled "random number picker" and came across this site. And as this graphic shows:

Number 11 is the winner! And who is number 11? Diana, aka The Craftaholic! Congrats!

Below is a list of who entered. If they have an Etsy shop, it's linked - please visit their shop! Go handmade!

Who entered the Two Stars Massive Give-A-Way:

1.) Jeanette - Etsy

2.) Beth - Etsy

3.) Devan - Etsy

4.) Mikki

5.) Amy

6.) Sherri

7.) Tracy - Etsy

8.) K - Etsy

9.) Vidia

10.) Jen

11.) Craftaholic - Etsy

12.) Pam - Etsy

13.) Stacey (my lovely cousin!)

14.) Jessica A. (my lovely home-town friend!)

15.) Teresa G. (my lovely home-town friend!)

16.) Tonya P. (my lovely pretend cousin! we need to get together sista!)

17.) My Aunt Linda Dearest (yes, that is her official name)

18.) Diane (my lovely mother-in-law)

19.) Kelly (a lovely friend of my lovely friend Amber)

20.) Shaka

Thanks for entering everyone! And don't be too sad if you didn't win ... I'll be doing more give-a-ways in the future.

Today's the last day to enter the give-a-way!

If you haven't already entered my give-a-way, do so by clicking here and leaving a comment! I'm accepting entries up until 7 p.m. tonight!

You gotta love the phrase, "It's a virus, it'll run its course"

Grrrrrr ... this morning I took Lydia to the doc because she had a fever of 101.9. The doc said that she has the beginnings of an ear infection, but the runny nose, watery eyes, lethargic attitude, headache, fever, general attitude of poopiness, is all related to a virus. Stupid virus. Stupid virus that just needs to "run its course."

Etsy Favorites Wednesday & an invite

Here's this week's Etsy Favorites Wednesday. I think this is a good list of Valentiney, hearty, pinkey, flowery, lovey dovey items, yes?

Fabric/paper quilt collage by Behjat

At one of my craft shows last fall, my table was beside a girl who made art quilts. I had never seen an art quilts before that. I was impressed! They were so intricate and lovely. I love how Etsy seller Behjat uses paper in her pieces. Click on the link to see close up pictures of the piece!

Three crochet hearts by Annie Design

How cute are these? I don't know what you'd use them for exactly, but they're cute enough just to put on an end table as deco to look at.

Poppies Wall Art by Dali Decals

I have posted so many wall decals onto EFW! I love them. I love poppies in general, I've decided. The more abstract the better. This listing includes a sweet little bird too! Amber had these poppy wall decals as a favorite!

Measuring Tape Brooch by LianaKabel

This Etsy seller makes bracelets out of knitting needles and also has a line of pins like this, made out of measuring tape! Love it!

Button Flower Bouquet by Butterfly Mosaics

I have been in love with these flower buttons for ever now. I was at JoAnn Fabrics last night and I had some wire flower stems in my cart and I was going to get them to make my own bouquet, but I put them back. Someday!

Do you have a list of favorite Etsy items? Share them with me! You can be a guest Etsy Favorites Wedensday curator! Just send your list to my email: wendyplanicka(at)yahoo(dot)com. Include the Etsy link of the item and a description why you like it. Join in on the fun!

Barack Obama fruit salad

How awesome was yesterday? So wonderful! When I got home from work Arlene says to me, "Mommy, I love Barack Obama." haha! They had been watching the inauguration on TV and she was all into it. She says his name pretty clearly too (I need to get a video of her saying it, it's so cute!) Since I didn't get to see any coverage while I was at work (grrr!) I watched the coverage of the parade and the replay of the inauguration speech. Arlene kept saying "I love Barack Obama!" and she likes his little girls, she was very excited about the littlest girl's red coat and boots, she thought they were cute. When we were making dinner Arlene was helping me to make a fruit salad of strawberries and blueberries. I told her since they were patriotic colors that we could call it "Barack Obama Fruit Salad"! She was all for it! When Mike got home she skipped to the door and exclaimed, "We eating Barack Obama's fruit salad!" hahaha! Sure, she doesn't understand the importance of yesterday, but I was very happy that she knew that it was an important day. In fact, she said to us while we were eating dinner, "Since today is an important day, we should call everything Barack Obama. I'm going to drink my Barack Obama Milk. And eat my Barack Obama bread." That kid cracks us up!

*The picture? I Obamican'd Arlene. Want to Obamicon yourself? Click here.

Massive Two Stars GIVE-A-WAY!

This is my first give-a-way of 2009 (you might remember I did two last year) and it's a biggie! I'm giving away four things: a leafy scent sachet, a flowery pendant with chain, a set of mauve-ish red bobby pins, and a flowery hair clip.

The details:

• The scent sachet measures 3.75 inches, square. It's filled with lavendar and flax seed and has a ribbon for hanging. The scent is lovely and light. You can hang it in your closet, put it in your drawer, or hang it in your car. For a renewed scent you can put the sachet in the microwave for 45 seconds. The flax seed will reactivate the lavender.
• The resin pendant features little flowers falling from a tree, encased under a layer of clear resin. The pendant measures 20mm. The pendant base is base-metal, and engraved with "Two Stars" on the back. The resin is slightly domed. An 18" sterling silver snake chain is included!
• The bobby pin set is made of resin - I poured resin over mauvish/red seed beads into delicately scalloped bezels, then glued the bezels onto the bobby pins. The beads are completely encased in the resin and the top is smooth. The bobby pins are 2 inches long and made out of base metal. The resin circles measure 15mm, slightly smaller than a penny.
• The flower hair clip is made from an oval bezel. It measures 1 inch wide and 1.5 inches long. An alligator clip is securely glued to the back. The hairclip is made by gluing down a layer of decorative paper, sealing it with clear glue, then pouring resin overtop.

Some pictures!

This is how the give-a-way will work: Simply click on the "comments" link below this posting, and put your name in the comment box. You can use your real name or your blogger/online name. And it's okay if I don't know you! However, if I don't know you, please leave me your email address so that I can get in touch with you if you win!

I'll pick a winner on Thursday, January 22 at 7 p.m. I'll add up the total comments, and have one of my girls pick a number. That's about as random as it gets. (you can see how the last winner was picked here.) I'll post the results on Thursday evening, and then I'll post directions on how the winner can receive the goodies. Good luck!

Moist Towelette & Scent Sachet

I took the girls to McDonalds for dinner Friday night (I know, real fancy right?) and when we were done I nabbed some moist towelette packets to wipe up the grease from their hands and face. I realized, 'hey, I need a little moist towelette carrier thing for my purse!' When the girls were littler I carried around a diaper bag and wipes, but now that they're older I don't carry any maintenance things with me. But they're still quite messy! And I need something convenient and close at hand. Alas, my moist towelette wallet for my purse!

And I also whipped up what I call "Scent Sachets!" They're little squares of cute fabric stuffed with lavendar and flax seed. I had made a few for Christmas presents; they were fun and quick to make.

This "purple houses" I'm keeping for myself. The rest I'm giving away. Mike took the one with the little owls to hang in his car.

I think my idea just might work

As I eluded to in this (exceedingly long) post, I have a new idea for pendants. Combining embroidery and resin. I made a few test runs this weekend because my lacey-edged circles are still in the mail. I used flat-edge bezels that I already had, just to experiment, and I think my idea is going to work out just great! I experimented with different types of glue to adhere the embroidery work to the pendant base. There are the best two:

Four skinny trees:


This one WAS my favorite, until it decided to get all lop-sided and spill over. Ruined! DRAT! But I really like how the stitches look under the resin. I think the key to these is to do simple designs. And I need to be careful to make my stitches really super neat so that the back doesn't show through (as noticed in the tree trunks above).

I'm anxious for my other bezels to come in. I've been sketching up some ideas on what to stitch! Stay tuned!

Buttons & Chocolate & Candies

Buttons! Found on the Craft blog - button candy and chocolate molds!

Which turn into these ...

The molds are from the cutest bake shop, ever, called Bake It Pretty! I'm not known for my baking skills, I'd rather be doing anything other than baking, however, this week I've been making three course meals with desserts! I don't know why I've become so domesticated and quite frankly I know it's just a streak and it'll end. Sorry husband and children. But I got inspired once I saw the goodies on the baking shop's site and thought I better act while the streak is still going on! I purchased the button mold and then found a button sucker mold!

The molds are so cheap too! And the meltable candies and chocolates are too. I purchased pink, purple and red chocolates and pink and green meltable hard candy, with apple flavoring! I spent $18 and will be able to make a bunch of lovely little button chocolates and candies!

I know the girls will love these, and I'm sure they could help me make them! And they're BUTTONS!

Much too much excitement over little things

I know that no one else probably really care about the info in this post, but I'm so incredibly excited about my recent find that I just have to gush.

Okay, backstory: waaay back when, when I started designing and making resin pendants, I realized that it was very difficult to find bezels (the metal backing-thingies). I finally found an online store that sold sterling silver bezels. I fell in love, and ordered quite a bit. Some of my favorite pendants were made with those bezels.

Sterling pendants:

Then I found some cool base metal (not sterling, but silver plated brass) oval bezels from a seller on Etsy, and made many a pendant and hair clip with them. I loved those bezels, because they were, and currently are, unique to Etsy - no one else is using them with resin. I love how the sides are lacey so you can see "into" the pendant. And, another bonus of them is that they basically cost 13 cents each, which meant that if one of them screwed up, it was okay, I was only out my time and my 13 cents. On the other hand, the sterling bezels ran $8 each ... which was a bit more difficult to just eat the cost of a mistake.

Some of the oval pendants:

Resin is very difficult to work with - there have been many times over the course of the past year where I've threatened to just burn all of my supplies and rid myself of resin forever. Mixing the resin is toxic and if you get it anyplace other than the mixing container, you're in a heap of trouble. Pouring the resin is toxic, and difficult. Resin has a mind of it's own too, it can have bubbles one time, not the next. But you don't know that there's bubbles in there until the entire pendant has finished curing, which is 24 hours after you first made it. Another delightful property of resin is that it does what it wants. Mostly, it behaves and creates a delightful little dome shape inside the bezels. But there are times when it overflows and spreads all over and ruins the pendant. Hence eating the $8 mistake. Once a pendant overflows, it's history and can't be saved.

Anyway, in the last six months, the cost of sterling has risen. A bezel that cost me $8 before was now costing $12. I can't just eat a $12 mistake! And, to make it worse, my supplier was starting to be sluggish in their shipping. It would sometimes take two weeks to get something to me. Frustrating! And, my purchase of the oval silver-plated bezels was a one-time deal, the supplier didn't have any more like it for sale.

So for the past while now, I've been focusing more on fabric crafts - dolls - in my Etsy shop. I've enjoyed that craft immenesly, because I'm in charge of the performance of the fabric and the thread. I control my machine. And if I mess up, I'm out hardly any money. And of course the readily available supplies - I have JoAnn Fabrics, Michaels and Hobby Lobby all within about 10 minutes of my house! I stopped making resin pendants because I just couldn't find a good supplier, and I got tired of spending money on bezels and not being able to recoup the costs, either because of a messed up pendant or because the pendant wasn't selling on my shop.

I told myself that in 2009 I was going to develop items for my Etsy shop that would be unique and hopefully profitable. I'm not going to go into details now, because I'm not 100% sure my idea will work, but I will tell you that the ingredients of my idea are embroidery and resin and bezels! I decided to look online today to see if I could find any good bezels, and I hit upon the BEST retailer! They are called jewelryfindingsonline.com and they have EXACTLY what I was looking for! I wanted to find some more of the lacy edged silver-plated bezels. And I found them! They're not as cheap as the other ones I got, but it's still a great deal.

This is what I ordered:

Oval bezels with a sterling overlay (80 cents each!)

Two sizes of circle bezels with a silver overlay (75 cents each!) I am SO excited about these!


Silver pin and pendant backings (99 cents each!) It's a two in one!


Barrette clips (75 cents each!) To attach resin-filled bezels to!

I am so incredibly excited I can barely contain myself! I know this probably all sounds stupid and if you've even reached the end of this blog post, I applaud you for sticking to it! I'm just super happy because I feel like I can fully develop my grand idea now, because I found some stellar cost-effective supplies!

My Edward Cullen keychain

Tee hee, I am so silly! I made myself an Edward Cullen resin keychain! And I made two for TLC, she's getting one for herself and one for her sister! We are so silly! I also made some teeny pendants. I was a bit nervous about posting these items on my Etsy shop because they're so "mainstream" and not the type of things I usually sell. But I purposefully made them tasteful, so maybe a 30ish mommy like me will buy one and satiate her thirst for Twilight. Tee hee! Check out the Twilight things here in my shop.

My keychain is like this one: