Ta dah.......and the winners are:

1 prize

Wet and needle felted bag with red linen lining.
19 x 16 cm

goes to........Jane La Fazio in San Diego

2 prize

Recycled Guardian Angel

Goes to........Aina at Modern Country



Consolation prizes



Wirework heart with grey pearls goes to......... Lili M
Wirework heart with red pearls goes to ........ Annica

Wirework Angels goes to.......... Marlene and Annika

I want to thank all of you lovely people that wrote comments! I had so much fun reading them! In fact, so much fun that I just might have another contest one day......

Lots of love to you all

Jeanette

PS If you are one of the winners please e:mail me your adress at fotoblogg@hotmail.com and I will snailmail the gift to you!

New hobby

I have a new hobby. I have always been interested in recycling and especially art made of things thrown away. I was thrilled when I found this faboulus book about metal craft and saw all the great things you could do with just tin cans and canisters. Art dolls, kitschy keepsakes, journals, ATC:s, a tin can necklace and much more.




I was so inspired I wanted to get started right away. But where is a tin can when you need one? No where to be found. So I had to go buy a can of olives just to get my hand on some raw material. And I don’t mean the olives….

I wanted to do a good luck charm for one of my blog friends that I know is struggling with her driving lessons. I was thinking about a small metal car and an angel…sort of a guardian angel….. hanging over it. I had a plastic bag full of metal soda bottle caps from when my daughters collected them so I flatted one of them out with a hammer and used as the head. I removed the top and bottom of the can and then cut it open along the seam. I now had a piece of metal that was ready to be transform into art…… I made the car and the wings out of the can and polished it with metal files and sanding papers. I left it raw at the back because I think it ads character to the art piece when you can actually see that it’s made of items destined for the scrap heap! I found an old Christmas card with an angel on it and cut out the face and used decoupage to fit it on the bottle cap. I added some beads and pearls and the good luck charm was finished.

I had so much fun that I made another one and that one will be one of tomorrow’s prizes in the contest. Just one day left before the winners are revealed by the way........

But this one is for you Anna Stilla! Good luck with the driving lessons! Remember that goals are dreams with deadlines!

Paintjob and bird watching

This week has been hectic and the weekend became a busy one too. I had to work on Saturday and I don’t usually so I only had the one day for all the stuff I was planning on doing. The eldest daughter have been keen on a total makeover for her room for a long while now and by this weekend we had run out of excuses not to…. The walls and roof was to be painted white and she has a wooden loft bed and that was to be white too. I have told you before that paintjobs aren’t really my forte. My husband and me…well we have a very different view of how careful and methodical you go about things. I want a quick result and my husband wants durability. The first step towards divorce is when the room is to be covered in paper in order to protect it from paint stains. I mean he literally wants everything covered and if it was up to me to decide I would use a newspaper or two on the floor and just move them about! Okey, okey so I tend to slobber a lot and there is usually more paint on me than on the actual wall but hey I just want to get down to the painting and get it over with. The decorating part is much more fun. Luckily for me my husband and daughter had done most of the walls and roof by the time I got home from work so the bed was left for me to paint. My daughter wanted a shabby chick look and I am quite sure I managed the shabby part it’s the chick part I am not equally sure about. But she was happy and said it became just the way she wanted!

Sunday was a beautiful and sunny day so with the room finished we decided to drive down to the house and enjoy a bit of sun and a walk in the woods. I am born and raised in the city but spent a lot of my childhood exploring the countryside with my parents. They loved being outdoors and there was never any bad weather you just had to dress for the occasion. The joy of being outdoors has come back to me since we bought the house and I always try to get the opportunity to take long nature walks through the beautiful landscape that surrounds it.

All the woods are filled with wood anemones right now. My absolute favourite spring flower. So delicate and pretty. My eldest daughter was born in late april and when she was younger we always went picking wood anemones on her birthday.

The sun had warmed the wings of this butterfly and she was doing a wobbly first spring flight through my garden. Here she is resting on the lawn. Very soon my garden will be filled with them gracefully flying from flower to flower.


I am not very good at birds or animals but I am slowly learning. I always bring my camera and take photos of the birds I see. That way I can look them up when I get home.

Wagtail

Yellow sparrow

Blue Tit

Room with a view!

And what a view. "The windows" facing wood anemones on the slope down to the brook.

Nature is absolutely lovely this time of the year. In the wood the trees had tiny little bulbs and the early spring flowers covered every slope and meadow. The air was crisp and warm at the same time and the whole world smelled all fresh and new. The sky was a brilliant blue and the birds were singing. And when the sun was setting we went back to town – a happily married couple again! A spring walk in the woods can do a lot towards avoiding divorce due to a paintjob argument! Oh my, life is good!



PS I am SO enjoying all your comments. So much that I am doing a few consolation prizes in wirework…..so hang on until sunday

Drop me a line

Today I realized that 24 hours is all you’ve got. And how ever much you try you can’t squeeze any more hours in. As you all understand I suffer from the well known disease “too much to do and too little time to do it” and there is only one remedy – slow down. So after a lot of agony I decided that one blog had to go. I simply haven’t the time to write in both my blogs on a regular basis so from this day on Jeanettes fotoblogg is closed and this is the only blog there is. To celebrate the fact that I now have SO very much more time to be creative ( I am being ironic here...) and that I have finally come to my senses regarding my "time issue" I will have a little contest right here and now......

So all you out there that I know read my blog, write a comment and one of you can win a needle felted piece. And if I have a lot of comments I just might pick two winners.....Considering that I now have so much more time on my hands to do creative stuff...Ha, ha!

I will pick a winner on Sunday the twentieth of April. So hurry up and drop me a line!

Lots of love to you all
Jeanette

Guardian Angel

I sat looking at a picture of an angel the other day. And it got me thinking. How come they all look so young? Look the same even. I mean angels must age too surely. And what happens to the old angels since we never see any? Are they hidden away in some desolated spot in heaven or what? I sense some serious discrimination here! It must truly be much better with an old guardian angel full of wisdom of life than a young and inexperienced one? I am not religious but it’s sometimes comforting to think that maybe we all get a guardian angel when we are born and they age with us. I took my sketchbook out and made a few sketches of what I thought they would look like, got inspired and needle felted one. And when I sat there working with my needle my thoughts started to wander…..I thought about how we all need a guardian angel in times of worry and distress and how you yourself can be that angel to others by showing your concern or by giving someone a hug…. And then I thought about two dear, dear friends in great need of a guardian angel right now and whom I can’t hug on a daily basis since they live far away from me. So now my aged and wise angel has a new home with them and I know she will do a really good work!

Her wings are turning grey and she doesn`t fly as fast as she used to. But she can still sing beautiful songs.....