I've written before about my love of a vendor called "Country Pickin's" who ply their wares at the Yellow Daisy Festival every year. They make little "shadow boxes" and the figures that go in them. I've bought one a year for several years now. My first, of course, was this, which stays up in the dining room all year 'round except for Christmas and winter. (Two years ago, I bought a few little Hallowe'en figures to go in it at that time of year. Such is my torrid interest in Hallowe'en that I completely forgot about them last year.)




I "cheated" a bit with the next one and bought the same shadow box to serve for two seasons. Here it has Christmas figures (and it's hung in the kitchen at Christmastime):




And here it is with the winter figures (back in the dining room):




The next one was intended to go in the kitchen, and there it sits, except at Christmas, when the Christmas shadow box is there. "Kiss the cook," of course, refers to James, because you don't want to eat what I cook. LOL.




Since our bathroom has a lighthouse/seashore theme, it was natural that I put together this piece for the bathroom:




This cute little shelf (which I painted; it was raw wood when I bought it) is supposed to represent the household: the dog and the birdhouses, the apple motif for our kitchen/dining room, the gingerbread to represent both James' love of baking and Christmas. The autumn leaves are decorative buttons from Michael's with the shanks cut off, and of course there are the two heart buttons for James and I.




I bought this one for myself, and it's over the bookcases next to my side of the bed. "Fall Forever" is the motif.




So when last year came, my thought was "What next?" There are several other themes that Country Pickin's sells, but I have no interest in. One is beach/tropical, another is sewing, yet another is cooking, and there is Hallowe'en. I thought of the patriotic theme, and then had a brainstorm: I would do a "me" shelf, which would be filled with things that represent my interests.

One problem: they didn't have some things that I am particularly interested in, like drawing or writing or books or cross stitch.

We all know who the mother of invention is! So this is what I bought last September. You can see the bookcase (of course), the dog, the sheep (there are sheep all over the house), the lighthouse, the Christmas tree, the birdhouse, the snow plaque, the gingerbread, the fall hatbox, and the inevitable apple.

However, at the bottom, you'll see a sewing figure next to the apple, and at the right, a column of very uncharacteristic Linda things: a Hallowe'en slate, some cookbooks, and three Hallowe'en themed books, the two small purple spell books and the ugly yellow/orange open one (and, would you believe, I wished they'd had more?).




Paintboxes are wonderful things and so are color printers. Here, in the same order they are in in the previous photo, are the remade items. The slate is now an Android tablet, the folksy cookbooks are now folksy favorite books (especially Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot!), the two spell books are now Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy and Kate Seredy's The Open Gate, and the ugly yellow and orange and purple spellbook is now an open volume of the World Book. Plus "stitched with love" has spools of thread removed and "skeins of floss" replacing them.

Some sheets of paper make a little drawing pad (with a budgie on it) and half a yellow toothpick, painted with a black tip and a pink "eraser" turns into a pencil. And then there's one more cross stitch item.




Here's how you make a miniature cross stitch frame with a project in progress. Take four red toothpicks and cut the tips off:




Here's the hard part: take a bit of 32-count evenweave cloth and start stitching a design with one strand of floss "over one." (If you have more brains than I did, you will use a magnifying glass. Ouch!)




And finally you glue the "work in progress" to the frame. (Make sure the glue doesn't stain like mine did. No, I'm not redoing it. Not now. My eyes hurt thinking about it.)




I hope they are there in the fall. And have more spell books I can turn into other books, because this will need more books. Many more books.

It's not quite finished yet, as I need to paint the back of the "World Book" brown so it matches the sides. Then I'll see about setting up the shelves. Maybe I'll put the tiny glass Christmas figures I got at the glass shop in Helen on it, too.

There's one kicker. When I finish it, there's nowhere to put it. Looks like I need to call on Necessity again...

Labels: crafts

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