Workbench Wednesday ~ Custom Orders

What's on my craft room table today? A few customer orders! I feel very lucky to have had quite a few requests during the last opening at Room With A Past. Here's two of them:

These miniature (3 1/2 ") chicken wire crowns are for dolls made by one of our regular customers. I started making these crowns last Christmas by request from my pal Mandi and as you can see from the post below, have found different and fun things to do with them!



Almost done with this custom-colored banner requested by a mom of of high school senior for a graduation party.



What's on your workbench? Any quilters out there excited about a project you're working on? Please share!

Queen For A Day

When's the last time you were "Queen For A Day"? Hopefully it was today!
Happy Mother's Day!

Workbench Wednesday ~ Got Hope!

What's on my craft room table today? Ideas in every stage of the project. Some will be finished at some point, others, sadly, well it's all part of the process!


First of all, my craft room desk is clean! Please look no further than the inside of the photos. You must avert your eyes from looking at the pile of projects in the center of the room, lest you think I'm some kind of hoarder.


I went to an estate sale last week. Cute little house, uncomfortably jam packed with vintage stuff stacked/piled/hung all over. BUT my purchases were limited in knowing that I'd have to pick up and carry everything I wanted to buy through the crowd of other shoppers and up to the front where items would be priced and paid for. Almost everything had the name "Maureen Mildred" scrawled on it, who I imagined to be the owner of the house, and a woman after my own heart with her love of vintage. I made it out with a few things plus these small items:


Lots of beaded necklaces in luscious shades! An old rhinestone clip, two cameo front compacts and one round brass compact.

When I opened one of the compacts when I got home and had some elbow room, this is what I discovered: (!)

Maureen musta been kind of sweet on him, huh?

What are you working on? Please share!

This Old House

There's a house in my neighborhood that's been empty for years. It's funny how I can't say I even noticed it until it was empty. I drive by it almost everyday and wonder about who lived in it and it's fate. Until last week.

I made it my destination on my morning walk. With camera in hand, I walked around the block and took pictures from the outside of the cyclone fencing from every side.




I came to the front and spotted a parting in the fence, and as I stuck in my camera to get a few shots without any obstructions, a man working on a car at the auto mart next door piped up to let me know he was tired of chasing the homeless out of it. Aware of my grungy sweatpants and tee shirt, I quickly told him I was just trying to get some good pictures of this old house for my blog and asked him if he knew anything about it. Lucky me--he was the owner! He gave me a short history lesson which, combined with what I had already learned from researching the house, gleaned me these facts:

The house was built in 1870 on a stone foundation and occupied by Mr.Goodale who was an early Concord merchant.

Then Dr. and Mrs. George McKenzie made this their home sometime after his arrival in Concord in 1891. For many years Dr. McKenzie (and Dr. Francis Neff, Concord’s only other doctor), were the only doctors serving Concord and the surrounding area.

Mrs. McKenzie used to raise the flag at the house to signal to Dr. McKenzie (at work at the hospital about 400 yards away) that his lunch was ready.

There was a bicycle-powered windmill on the property that generated the electricity for his x-ray machine.

Mrs. and Dr. McKenzie both died in the house.

Then it was occupied by the Collins family, about whom little is known.

I asked would he minded if I went inside the fence and took some more pictures? He didn't so I did.

You must have really been something in your day, house.



I'm so sorry you've been neglected.



I'm so sad that the beauty you still have goes unnoticed and unappreciated.



I'm sorry your foundation is turning to rubble and your wood is decomposing into the earth.

















I took some cuttings of the roses in the front and then squeezed back out through the fence posts.

I wish you could be saved, rehabilitated, resurrected, revived. But even though the owner wasn't at liberty to say what the future holds for you, he couldn't look me in the eye when he said the land had been sold to a developer in Washington.


You are the jewel in the crown of a city which loses a small amount of it's glint each time an old house is torn down.

Workbench Wednesday

Here's a (very little) sneak peek what's on my craft room table today. I have an idea for these images. Can you tell what they are?





What's on your workbench? Please share!

Workbench Wednesday ~ COMPLETED

Here's a roundup of what I've been working on and completed! These all sold in my spot at Room With A Past this last week.

Remember those dresses you saw here two weeks ago? They were photocopies of real doll dresses! I choose 6 of them to copy, cut out and string on Divine Twine (Hi Whitney!) with tiny clothespins to form a banner.



These two 16 x 20 canvases were covered with old book pages (you can still read them if you click on the photos!), and then I painted a bird silhouette on them.



They still needed a little something more, so I made paper flowers with mother-of-pearl button centers.




And this last one had nothing to do with me other than I'm the one who stuck it on a lamp and took the picture at the shop. My friend Jean came across a load 'o girdles, and couldn't resist stretching (It must be like a size 0! Why would a person that small even need a girdle??) one over a newly found shade to come up with a winning combo of fun and flirty!



What have you been working on? Please share!

Workbench Wednesday

Here's a roundup of what's on my craft room table today. Ideas in every stage of the project. Some will be finished at some point, others, sadly, well it's all part of the process!



This is my completed soldering project from the workbench at Hip Chick Designs! Owner Carrie Clayden hosted the class taught by the ever camera-ready Julee Herrmann last Saturday! Soldering is something I have wanted to learn for YEARS and now I know how!





What are YOU working on? Please share!