From Tambrea's Custom Sewing

Yesterday I mentioned how my friend Tambrea Egan helped me hone sewing skills, use my machine, prep fabric, all those important technical tidbits.  Here is the link to read that blog for a preview: http://wendibrandon.blogspot.com/2012/03/purse-in-progress-getting-stuff-done.html.

Today I am going to post some examples of her work:

Here is her favorite example from commission for Housing Authority

Here is an example of one of my favorite cushions!

Here is Tambrea standing with her client, Dot, who is enjoying her newly slip covered chair!

Franklin, TN

Please visit Tambrea's Custom Sewing (https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tambreas-Custom-Sewing/325803460794978) to see more of my friend's amazing work.   Here you will see how fun it would be to commission your very own custom sewing creation!

Thank you for visiting!
Peace and love NOW!

Purse in Progress: Getting Stuff Done-and Ode to Memories of a Basement in Franklin, TN

Here is just a quick snippet of a piece almost finished.  One more session of beading, then I can shoot it to post with pricing and info.

My friend Tambrea Egan taught me how to use my sewing machine.  Well, I pretty much can figure that stuff out, but she made it much nicer, by showing me how to use it correctly.  She taught me lots about fabric, something about selvage, and other terms I can't find in the brain at the moment.  You know the technical stuff that is important to know if you want to make something that isn't going to fall apart, like if you glue end wood to end wood.  I am forever grateful for the fun tutorials and honing up on our Spanglish.  Bonus is that we had so much fun in the studio.  I miss Franklin, Tennesse.  I love all my people there.

I love my people everywhere, don't think that I don't!  There is a basement room in the bottom of the church that ate Franklin where a bunch of crazy folk meet to talk about life and higher power and how good life can be.   Kind of like a there is a town in North Ontario...that's how it goes...

Anyway,  here are a few photos of my work in progress:

Please visit Tambrea's Custom Sewing (https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tambreas-Custom-Sewing/325803460794978) to see my friend's amazing work.  While I both love and possess the dexterity and skill to wield needle and thread as a tool in my creative process, my friend has the formal training and professional skills necessary for this sewing business.

Some Turn to Warm Macaroni and Cheese, Others Buy Cheap Tacky Nailpaint

I'm not really a foodie, so after a long hiatus, I decided it was time for some really tacky nail paint.

I saw this twenty-one year old beauty with these short neat nails painted awful green with a chip here and there.  Her name is Mary and she is adorable and passionate and perfectly unperfect.  So, it touched a nerve.  For whatever reason, maybe it's the moon or the barometer, who knows why, I'm sensitive these days. Since I've been working on destroying my teeth and shredding my cuticles while driving to work, I decided I could go on the hunt for that awful green.  Well, I didn't find the exact Notre Dame Irish color Mary sported, but I found a hideous shimmery green-blue hue and a deathly purple-almost black paint-$.49 each.  I wasn't really searching; truly, I was looking for cat food.

I feel a little better.  For about a week, now, I've been able to quit maiming myself.  It takes what it takes, and we are where we are right now.  If you believe in something bigger than you, breathe a little deeper and smile.  The world is a moving sphere at your fingertips.

Namaste~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~be the good life~~~~~~~~~

Recycling the "Trash" Piled on My Desk

Earring tag blanks...jewelry boxes, small and xtra small...in progress.  Finished one featuring Pet of the Week from Daviess County Animal Shelter in the middle of the mess washed in neon purple.

Sure was nice to cut those boxes down and clear the clutter off my desk.

My Favorite Part about Selling Something I've Made

I love to get items ready to ship.  It is completely feasible and reasonable to utilize items that get thrown in the trash. 

Earring tags are made using a fancy scissor and seam ripper (for the tiny holes securing the ear wires) on closure flaps from a box of tea.  Each pre-decorated flap caught my eye with a rambling floral scroll design; elegant findings are all over everyday trash.  An adorable little jewelry box is made recycling a mini candy box left over from the kid's Christmas stockings.  I tore off the old label paper and trimmed the box down, as it was a little too tall for my liking.  New wrapping for the box came courtesy of The Messenger Inquirer's little community newspaper which appears in my mailbox about once a week.   The unfilled crossword puzzle and photos from "Communities Past" section were chosen.  After gluing the paper to the box I dabbed it with acrylic craft paint and that's all there is to that.

In my sewing box, there are plenty of odds'n ends, hence sweet peach satin ribbon.  In my garden the lavender and rosemary are flourishing.  My daughter is pretty sure the lavender won't look so nice by the time the little gift arrives, but I still have faith in the postal system.

I don't love it when I have to wait until Monday to ship.

fancy earrings ready to ship

cute little box

wrapped and ready

From Cliff's Timeline, I Pulled This Image; My Son's Last Sidewalk Masterpiece before Leaving Tennessee

This week had been...hmmm...can't really find the word for it...magical...exhausting...tear-filled...so much...nope can't find the words.  

No real reason.  Many reasons I could try to say are the main contribution, but I don't really know.  Do we ever really KNOW.  That's ok, I am part of the flow.

It is tax season and I work in a tax office.  I've been going there for a couple years...since we left Tennessee in early June, 2009.  Today, I don't feel as smart as I did then.  I feel a little slower and less able to concentrate.  That isn't really true, but it is, in a way. I can't find the words.  Words are hard sometimes.  Words without hands and eyes, words without blues and screeches, words without heat and vomit...no that's not true, words are good.  Words do those things.  The door is just closed right now-the keeper to that portal is just sleeping; she had a...week, too.  Maybe later I can visit and pull some words off her shelves and fill in the missing spaces on this blog.  

I'm not crazy, silly, we all have someone in our heads; it's us and it's the bigger than us.

I am very excited about living. 

I opened facebook and found this picture in the news feed.  My husband posted it on his timeline as a life event: Moved to Owensboro.  What a memory.  What a fantastic photograph for the refrigerator door in my mind.  That kid still misses Tennessee. He's pretty sure there is some sort of "haunt" in our new old house.  The hallway is more like a labyrinth of darkness which only becomes more fantastic as he collects more days to his earthly existence. He has grown so much in Kentucky...not enough to forget any moment of his first years alive.  That kid has so many closets and cupboards in his mind.  The architect of his brain was a master designer. 

We didn't ask the kids if they wanted to move.  No one asked me when we moved from North Dakota to Minnesota to Iowa...then to Indiana.  No opinion behind that statement, just stating.

Sometimes we don't need words of a spoken or written language; I suppose that is why there are a multitude of senses: the common ones and our very own that don't have labeling words.