Easing Back Into It...

Hello there!

Believe it or not, I wandered into my craft room today! I made three card fronts (fronts because I was too lazy to cut out the card bases and attach them~LOL). They are very simple, but I look at it as easing back into the creative swing of things. Yeah, that sounds good.

This first card I'm sharing uses the new Hero Arts Cling Stamps (Here's a link I found that shows them, I didn't see them on the Hero Arts website). I found this one at Archiver's and used a coupon to get it. It's a rubber stamp, but it clings to an acrylic block and has the image on the back side so you can see it when you are stamping. See that background on the image? I love it! And there is a rubber stamp that is just that background, but I'm too cheap to buy it. So, I'm getting a taste of it in this cling stamp. I colored in the flowers using pencils and oms (odorless mineral spirits) then added some yellow Stickles for the dots. The background paper is from Making Memories Wedding paper pack (found at Michaels earlier this summer).
This next card is so I can finally show this little crocheted butterfly I made earlier this summer. I found the pattern here after seeing some in an Etsy shop called Paper Blooms. The goodies in Paper Blooms are SO pretty, but if I can make it myself, I'm sure gonna try. Those who are not crocheters, I wanted to give you the link to the Etsy shop in case you were interested. The background paper is from Basic Grey's June Bug 6x6 paper pack and the ribbon is some I got at Archiver's last Christmas season. They were selling it for a phenomenal price of 29 cents a yard at the time! Hello is from PTI's Mixed Message set.
And here is my final card for today. I discovered Plum Purdy stamps from a blog in late spring and couldn't resist ordering this Garden Collection Set. (Goodness, she's added some adorable Halloween stamps!) I was itching to color up an image and got to do it today. I used pencils and oms. Nana's Nursery (the boy version) from DCWV provided colors that worked well with the image colored in. I was silly and colored first, then tried to coordinate the coloring with paper. I should do that the other way around. The buttons are from my stash, as is the DMC floss. Just Because is from Mixed Message again.

Would you believe that the industrious spider was busy last night and spun a new web?! Steve even noticed it this morning and asked me if I'd seen it. It was in the same general vicinity, but this one was hooked to the carport on two sides and our house on one side and that holly bush on another side. This time it truly looked like it was floating. I almost took a picture, but then remembered my promise and left it alone (cuz if I took the picture I'd feel compelled to share it). And a few hours later...the whole thing was gone again! I had no idea spiders completely got rid of webs or moved locations of them so darn frequently. Maybe it's just some that do as I've seen webs (not nearly as big and intricate as this particular spider makes) that have been in the same location until I wipe them down~which can be months....LOL.

Whew! I guess that's it from me today! Hope your weekend is a good one. I had thought about taking the girls swimming today, but the weather didn't cooperate. Now that the pool is closing it's beautiful out but earlier today it was windy and a bit rainy. Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Try, try again. Or maybe the title of this post could be...Location, Location, Location!

I'm so sorry. I know I said just yesterday that I wouldn't post any more spider web photos, but I had to break that promise. Because this morning, this is what I saw when I looked for the web.

This shot shows what it looks like now in the exact same spot as yesterday's photo. No one in this household has touched the web. I saw it last evening when I got home from doing some window shopping. But this is what it looks like this morning. It took me a bit to figure out where the web was...and some water misting.

I've not seen any bugs IN the web, so I guess it wasn't very successful for this spider. He/she must have decided to try a new spot. Do spiders eat their webs? I guess I could look it up. Kathi? Resident expert on spiders and bugs...you probably know! (thanks for the spider facts)
This is a shot of the spider, towards the top leaves on the underside. I supposed I could have photoshopped this and put a circle in. As it is, you are seeing these photos straight out of the camera.

And for those of you who were interested in the name of the plant I posted a couple of days ago, I finally remembered to ask Steve for the name. It's called Jimson Weed or Datura stramonium. The first link is to photos of the plant and the second to some information I found doing a search. I'm not sure just how accurate it is. Since I posted on Sunday, we've had 3 more blooms. They don't last but a day or so. Currently two blooms are open. Steve won't be behaving wonky, I promise. He likes the look of the flower and is proud of the fact that he found his own plant. The fact that it has those properties I think makes it a more "manly" flower for him. LOL Cuz, you know, real guys don't usually get all happy over flowers. Although he also really likes the morning glory, too. Ours re-seeded itself and so our arbor looks much more lush than it ever has-refer back to the linked post above...it's the last picture I posted of my "wild" garden. Of course, the tons of rain might have helped it get so lush, too. LOL Oh wait, it's the MOON Flower that he likes more than the morning glory, but it's a variation of the morning glory that blooms in the evening. We haven't been able to get one to really grow well, yet.

Okay, that's enough babble from me today. One of these days I promise I will have a crafty post again. The girls start school next week (in my best sing-song voice)...*Ü*

This Spider's a Perfectionist!

As I was starting my Tuesday morning routine of getting all the trash out to the curb, I couldn't help but notice that the spider has been busy fixing up his (her?) web. There were some big gaps developing in it since my last post. Not so anymore.

One of the most fascinating things to me about this web is the location. Usually one sees a web in a corner of something and I guess this technically is sort of attached to the corner of our carport. But to me, this one looks almost as if it's just floating in air don't you think? I tried misting it per someone's comment to hopefully be able to capture it more clearly-Mr. (Mrs?) Spider didn't like the misting too much, but stayed on the web the while photo shoot. (Please disregard dirty carports and windows if you enlarge any pictures).
This is where the web is attached on the one side. That's a holly bush that I'm not particularly fond of, but Steve really likes it and it's going crazy this year.

And you can see the connection from the web to the strand going down to the holly bush here.
This one may be harder to see, but this is where it's attached to the carport.

The sun was hitting just right and I HAD to take more pictures. It's so fascinating to me.

I'll try to refrain from any more spiderweb posts in the future. Back to your regularly scheduled day, now. LOL Thanks for indulging me if you read this post.