I've been pretty quiet on my blog lately. Life around here has been busy with spring-time activities like gardening and cleaning and evenings with friends, but I was interested in participating over at Time Out Challenges, where Challenge #262 is a photo of a really cute handmade bag by Kim Higgins of Running Stitch Design.
The description of the challenge noted that it wasn't necessary to use dog images - but who could pass up that opportunity? I started with a 5-1/2" square brown card base to which I attached polka dot and plaid patterned papers that I retrieved (no pun intended) from my stash. I computer-generated a sentiment and printed it in brown on blue cardstock and attached that across the card. I punched the end and inserted a brown eyelet and threaded through some narrow brown satin ribbon. The dogs are from an old Inkadinkado stamp set. I stamped them on white cardstock with brown ink, colored them with Copic markers, fussy cut them, and glued them all to the face of the card. Very simple!
Here's a link to the challenge in case one of you might be interested in playing along:
On a personal note: I pretty much took the month of April off from all of my regular volunteer activities to start to get things moving on the next phase of our major front yard renovation. We started this whole process two summers ago, completely tearing out old shrubs and a very large lawn and starting over from scratch. The owner of a local nursery that specializes in native plants has been helping with design and a plant list. Last summer we had drip irrigation installed, dramatically decreased the lawn area, and got about 1/3 of the yard planted with Manzanita, Yarrow, and decorative grasses, and now it's time to finish things up. We're scheduled for delivery of a couple of boulders and all of the rest of the plantings the third week of May. In preparation I've been weeding, scraping and painting the fence around the covered patio, and getting the patio cleaned up for use through the summer. It's a lot of work, but my enthusiasm is carrying me through!
