My new tiny wish fairies :)

On a warm summer night just listen by the light of the moon. You will hear the ever so quiet gathering of the WISH FAIRIES.

Fairies love to fly by day but the night brings a time to rest. They stop by the sleepy flowers after spending their day in the warm sun.

My three tiny wish fairies measure 1 1/2" tall. Their faces hand painted with dark eyes and an adorable heart shaped mouth. Their bodies are hand crafted using twists and turns of chenille stems. Their dresses are made from silk like flowers , and their hair styled with embroidery floss. Silvery wings give that little tiny fairy sparkle :).............................................

ALSO AVAILABLE are larger wish fairies holding amber wish lanterns, and on the side a hand painted floral decorated fairy drinking shell to attract fairies to your garden. Also included with the large fairy is a gold tone stand.

Please stop by my shop by the wishwithme shop for a visit :)

Awesome laundry secret for those who hate to iron

Yes, I call it awesome!
Here's a little something I do that to me was like common sense but to others it's like "Wow, that's s a great idea"!

So I've always had a thing about laundry. No I'm not one of those people who say "I love to do laundry and ironing, it calms me" OH, Pha-leese! Anyway I just like to get it done quickly and efficiently. I remember going to my sister's house and she would have baskets of clean laundry waiting to be put away. Kids calling, "Hey mom! where's my whatever shirt and such, and they would dig it out of the compressed wrinkled pile and she would have to quickly iron it and off they would go. OH NO, not in my house. I rarely iron and you would never know it.

One reason is because lucky for me my husband only likes freshly ironed crisp shirts. So he would take out his own shirt and iron it in the morning before work. My daughter throws her school uniform on the ironing board and he takes care of her. Me, I'm a t shirt and jeans type of girl. Except when I need dress clothes for whatever then I too can throw something on the magic ironing board and "Whaaa-Laaaaa" It magically ends up on a hanger all pretty :D.

Okay so no my husband is not my laundry secret. Well we are a family of four. My daughter nearing 16 my son 21, and my husband and I. There are an awful lot of Ts and Polos, shorts, pants and jeans. Here's what I do:

I separate clothes . Whites, Darks, gentle darks, gentle lights and the usual sox,underware, pajamas, towels, etc.( Don't wash towels with your regular clothes because it really does a job on them causing wear and fuzz balls) YUCK! It's amazing how long you can keep your clothes looking great just by washing them inside out in the gentle cycle. That I mainly do for my daughter and I.

So I basically wash all of the separated tops and bottoms first (EVERYTHING except pants INSIDE OUT)
When the wash cycle is finished I take out the wet clothes and shake them out a little as I transfer them to the dryer. (Shaking them out is just to help them move a little easier while drying, so there not so stuck together).

I set the dryer timer for 15 minutes. That's all the time you need. After the 15 minutes, I take out the shirts 1 at a time, put my arms in through the bottom of the shirt, give it a little bit of a stretch and flip it right side out and put it on a hanger. ( ALWAYS USE THE HANGERS WITH THE ROUNDED ENDS TO KEEP YOUR SHIRTS FROM SPROUTING WINGS) :O

The clothes on hangers collect on a nearby doorknob until I get everything out of the dryer. Next I hang them all on an entryway between by living and dining room. ( You can use any entry way or just hang them from your kitchen chairs). Sometimes I do the laundry in the morning and before I go to bed everything is dry and ready to be put away. Always hung, never folded in a draw.

When it comes to pants, after they come out of the wash cycle I just straighten them out a little , fold them as you would if you were to put them in a drawer, and throw them in the dryer. When I take the pants out I straighten them out a little, put them on a pants hanger ( the one with the 2 clips on it like you get when you buy pants on a hanger at the store) Just clip them and again hang them up to dry. Presto! Once they dry they look like they've been ironed :D After a while I finally got my sister to use this method and she does it all the time. It feels great to just hang the laundry in your closet at the end of the day instead of digging through laundry baskets :)

(Pictured is yesterdays laundry or should I say most of yesterdays laundry. My daughter likes to wear many MANY outfits, so her laundry continues on to the neighboring entryway.
The hanger pictured is the best kind of hanger to use when drying wet clothes on a hanger.)

A quick visit

As my arrived home he called me on his cell phone and told me to look out the front window. Sounded like I should grab my camera so I did and look what I found. A birdie splash party!
Right now it's about 85 in the shade so I'm sure their happy to have found my little oasis :)

My advice for Etsy friends :)

My shop started off with my Wish dog. ( Made from 2 garden gloves). It grew into having lots of different dogs and cats and even bunnies dressed from ballerinas to pirates.

Things were going pretty well for a while then the sales really slowed down. I did have offline sales from family and friends, but the economy really had an effect. I then had to switch gears. I had to come up with lower priced items that my customers could buy if they couldn't afford my more expensive items (which was usually $17.00-$22.00).

So I always wanted to try making little felt animals. I tried and came up with a pretty popular turtle playset. I was featured one day on the community type page and I was sewing quite a few turtles. They were priced at $7.00 and came with a little dish like home and drawstring bag. A bargain for only $7.00. Then I tried a guinea pig. No bigger than a kidney bean. Now those are tough on the eyes but that's what is keeping me going.

I did come up with some other tiny creations but I took most of them off of my shop because they were just too tedious to make. The two other big things are the finger-ling babies, which is a little baby in a little blankie drawstring bag and it has a little bottle attached to drawstring. And Ninjas in a bag, which is from one to three little ninjas in a drawstring bag. (both of these items are made from the upcycled cast off fingers of my glove dogs).

I hope someday I can get back into the glove animal business because that's really what I love putting together. I'm in the process of sketching out about 10 new dogs to post this fall.

So for now my shop's been tweeked because of the hard times. Not a day goes by without my trying to come up with the next big thing. So weather it be turtles or guinea pigs, finger-lings or ninjas, the best part of selling anything for me is the reaction of my customers when they actually hold one of them in their hand. I sold one of my tiny turtles to one of my customers who bought it for her son. His little sister then took the turtle, made a tiny crib for it and sleeps with it every night. NOW THAT IS PRICELESS. :)

So go crazy in the forums, get your items seen, and add some low priced items to your shop. Persistence will pay off in the end:) Things can only get better.......

Sign of the times :)

Here in the days of uncertainty. Trying to make due with what we have, and making due without. Everyone is turning to the simpler things. Stories I've herd from my parents of days long ago, when things were tough, are again coming alive in our everyday lives. Hours ago I spent the evening out in the backyard, with my family gathered around a bonfire. We went from music on my nieces i pod to the radio, to my daughter playing the latest songs she's learned on her guitar. We had too many smores and just plain marshmallows. We even threw some foil wrapped potatoes in the fire which were absolutely delicious an hour later. The hours flew by. Just talking and mostly laughing. An awesome time was had by all. It's amazing how many people I see with their own bonfires. Just spending time together in your own backyard. That's all that seems to matter.

This is a custom order I just finished for my customer in France.

Fur-bitz?

Spent the day in wishwithme product development and came up with Fur-bitz. What do you think? Do you think they will sell? What do you think of the name?

What I love about making my little creations :)

What I love about the things that I make is the reactions I get when people receive them. Especially the reactions of the little ones. One of my customers told me that her little daughter took the tiny turtle I made for her brother. She made a little crib for it and she puts it to sleep by her bed every night. How cute is that! That makes up for the added eyestrain of making something that little. Her mom asked me to make 2 more to add to her collection. One purple and one orange :D Another customer told me her daughter carries the little finger-ling baby with here wherever she goes. She sent me this Awesome picture of her chubby little hand feeding the baby with the attached bottle. I love, love, love this pic. :) This makes me happy :D

our old spot on the beach

I call this: Maybe next year :)

Oil painting on a shell of my favorite place

Yes I'm still missing my favorite place. Naples FL. :( So as long as I'm on the subject of the vacation I'm missing out on this year, Here's a picture I oil painted on a shell I collected from my very favorite beach. The picture is the area I painted my picture from. (minus the people in the back round :D

Tiny Tiki vacation

In the Hawaiian mountains, in the land of king Kamehameha, you can hear the drums of the warriors in the wind.

If you take a close look under the leaves of the monkey pod trees you'll see the tiny village of Tiny Tikis. There not much bigger than your thumb but there very powerful and said to bring GOOD LUCK. The trick is to catch them because they are very fast.

You can sometimes find them riding the waterfalls in their bamboo canoes, between the twists and turns of the Banyan trees. Local surfers say they have seen them riding on the backs of sea birds.

I've seen them but never had the good fortune to catch one. Although I did catch them on vacation at a local smoothie hut :D

Beachcombing

I live in Southern New England where we have miles and miles of beaches. But the only beach I will go to, to actually go in the water is in Naples Florida. I hate going into cold water. I have an above ground heated pool and my sister has a built in heated pool. Most of my family loves the warm water. In this part of the country it also extends the swimming season, which isn't very long.
When I get the awesome chance to go to my favorite beach, or any beach I feel the need to beach comb. Yes, I'm addicted to beachcombing. I'm always looking for the perfect shell or the unexpected piece of sea glass. My artistic side keeps telling me " Hey pick that up, you could make an awesome necklace with that shell" or " Hey I have to make something with that its so pretty". Well one day I was walking on the beach and I saw how many perfect pure white shells were around me. I thought that would make a perfect little canvas for the ocean that was before me. So I collected some and tried to paint a tropical scene. I say tried because I'm not a painter. I'm more of a crafter. So first I tried acrylics. (Dried up too fast). Then the wonderful world of time consuming oils. (Everything took 2 weeks to dry). Well I did stick with oils for there great blendability. So what if my creations took 2 weeks to dry. Somehow I had an eye for the tropical scene I tried to create, and my mini visual vacations were born. I don't really want to make anymore. Making them ironically stresses me out. So I'm left with these shells. I tried to sell them in my shop, but took them out because that's not what my shop is all about and they didn't have much page views. I'm not sure if I should put them back in my shop. For now they'll sit in there little egg crate waiting to be someones little visual vacation. (But not today) :)

Awesome snail :D

Unlike my homeless snail, this little guy has a home. I found him while playing miniature golf in Florida last year.

The gift of a sunset

Here's the pics to go with my latest post. (bare with me as I get used to the wonderful world of blogging) :)

The gift of a sunset :)

Four years ago, after spending a week in Naples I felt bad because I didn't get to see a sunset on the beach. We were so busy doing other things or the clouds would appear just in time to disappoint us. Well we were all packed up and ready to leave for the airport when we realized that because of a glitch in communication, we missed out plane by 1 hour. Not a problem :D That evening we were all given the gift of the most beautiful sunset we had ever seen. It was awesome. I think the picture of my daughter says it all...............

E-lies photo shoot !

Just plain and simple. The beautiful days here in Southern New England need to be savored. Yesterday I took E-lie for a photo shoot. I think I found an awesome place to take his picture.

Where the heck did my uploaded pics go :(

Trying again for pics..................

Missing Naples

Well I'm having a very different year. Usually once a year I get to look forward to going to Naples Florida to a condo resort with some of my extended family. My husband and brother in law are co owners so it's like a home away from home. My sister and I have our own little locked up closet with all of our things so the place can be rented here and there for weeks at a time. Which hasn't been going too well. We're going to work on that. So because of this economy we can't afford to go this summer. I miss being there so much. My favorite place to be was on the balcony overlooking the little winding lake and the ducks and the fountain in the lake that you can always count on for that soothing sound of water splashing into water. Sounds weird but it's awesome to me. :D Then there's the beach. Only 2 minutes away. Awesome white sand. Warm, and I mean warm water. I hate cold water. Of course when you go to Florida in August, the water is at it's warmest. Just the way we like it. lol Okay now I'm depressing myself. How about some pictures of my favorite place: