I had a not very good day on top of a prolonged eh mood.  Then when I get home there's a package on my desk!  Whimsy goodness to the rescue!!!!!!!! 

I received an excellent package and feel rather spoiled (but I like it!  ).

Here goes: 
Just opened.  (On a side note--holy cow Tero.  No one was getting into that box easily.  Great use of tape.  )


Aaaaannnnddd the perfect jar for a bookworm like me:





Plus a second jar!


And some externals:


R2D2 had a surprise for me:



Gorgeous necklace which will be worn this weekend:


First dump:


Contents of the little container in the previous picture (a jar within a jar!):


Second Dump:


Third:


And there was a fourth layer dumped out too, but that picture has mysteriously disappeared...

Some favorites from the book jar:


Other Jar:


Loads of Lovely Bookmarks from Jar 2:


There were homemade button hair pins in that jar too, but that picture has also mysteriously disappeared... 

And there was soooo much more awesome stuff including some more excellent earrings.  I could post pictures here all day long.  Or I can just direct you to my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/merelyme911 where you can peruse at your hearts content and I don't feel like I'm posting an even more obscene number of photos than I already have. 

I had sooo much fun going through everything.  Unfortunately I didn't have time to do so very leisurely, but I'm bringing my whimsies with on this weekend's trip out of town to show them off to my family.  Plus my boyfriend wants to see them too--he's at work, so he missed out on the great unveiling.

Maybe I need a picture taking/posting intervention?  But I wanted to show off all my whimsy goodness...   

Awhile ago our wall clock stopped keeping time.  While looking around for a new clock, I had thought about making one.  I remembered this comic page themed piece of paper I'd picked up ages ago and wham! an idea struck.   So here is my comic themed clock:





   





I didn't take any in progress pictures, even though I kind of meant to...   I got excited and then was on a roll.  It's not perfect, the most obvious defect is the pow sign at 3 o'clock isn't aligned right, but I love it anyway.  I used a wooden plate from Hobby Lobby like this:

and some small wooden circles to paint the numbers on.  The rest is paint, paper, and glue. Oh and a clock working plus hands of course.

Thanks for looking!

hokay.  After some minor technical difficulties....  here is my package received from OhThat last night.

My boyfriend wasn't home last night (he works evenings) when I opened this package so this morning he made me show him what I got.     He knew how excited I was and I think he was psyched to see my whimsies too. 

Oh, and a caveat: my good camera battery died after I took one picture.  So I had to use my not-as-good camera.  There was very little daylight left and so the pics are kind of dim.  Plus I couldn't use flash and when my camera does not have the flash on you have to hold it super steady or it blurs the picture.  So the photo quality is not so good.  Onward!


freshly opened box!

external whimsies!  The chocolate bar did melt during shipping but I put it in the fridge and it will be fine.    yummy!  The papers are a variety of patterns.  And the "J" (my initial) is covered with Star Wars characters because yeah I'm a dork like that.     Love it. 


A not so good shot of my "jar" before I dug into it.  So cute!  Travel and Pop Art themed images decopaged on a pot. 

I had to exercise restraint to not take pictures of every single item that came out of the jar-pot...so I mostly managed small group shots...however, I have no picture of all the items dumped out.     _{I did take something like 100 photos...so the rest are on my flickr account if you're interested!} www.flickr.com/photos/merelyme911  And to prevent overwhelming everyone with the scads of pictures I'm limiting the photos here to some of my favorite items and the crafted items.


Decopaged cat image and a packet of little fabric sqaures...

Some packets of paper squares all tied up in bows.    so cute!

crafted shrinky dink necklace with my initial

crafted doll...who wouldn't hold still for a photo

crafted felt bird with fabric flowers

my name in mini stamps and teeny notepads with various colored pages.  Adorable.

group shot with the crafted "beady eye" box which is awesome by the way.  It was in the bottom of the jar-pot and OhThat labeled the bottom "a 'beady' eye".    And inside:

beads and buttons and doodads!

crafted shrinky dinks

some of my favorites, although it is all delightful and was tons of fun to go through every time I've gone through it so far!   
Like I said, many more photos on my flickr account.  To give you an idea of the number of whimsies...I couldn't fit the beady eye box back in the jar-pot after I refilled it with the other whimsies so the whole thing was full.    This was a great first swap for me and OhThat was a great partner. 

So...this table turned out far from perfect but I love it and I'm excited so I wanted to share.  As long as you don't look too closely you won't really notice the flaws.   

And of course I forgot to take a before, so imagine: a forest green coffee table with brown wood knobs on the front and a laminate "wood" top whose edging is coming off near the corners. 
Here is a picture of one of the only places you can still see the green:

Here is what the old knobs look like:

And the new (old) table:

Shiny....and you can kind of see that oops, the top was not entirely clean/smooth when I laid on the contact paper.

One of the big oopses.  I have trouble cutting in a straight line...

And a better view of the knobs (they're both the same, got them on clearance from Anthropologie)

Just some paint, contact paper, a couple knobs, and a couple hours.    

Awhile back I took a bookmaking class for about a month.  I wanted to share some of the stuff I made.  So here goes...
Some Japanese stab books...simple...bu t I wanted to show off all the cool paper I decorated:




I totally forgot what this binding is called and am too lazy to look it up, anyway, it's just in here because I wanted to show off my potato stamp paper.


Italian long stitch:




More potato stamp paper trimming a hardcover book:


We had to make a found object book.  My object was an empty prescription bottle for which I made a fake label and 30 scroll "pills" to cure a variety of things (from heartbreak to migraines).  The one pictured below is for brain freeze.





And lastly, a coptic stitch book, which I think is my favorite of them all (and no I didn't include all of them...).




Thanks for looking!

That's the Autism Awareness ribbon, for those who might not be aware.  And here is the 'story' behind it:
"The puzzle piece pattern of this ribbon reflects the mystery and complexity of autism.  The different colors and shapes represent the diversity of people and families living with this disorder.  The brightness of the ribbon signals hope--hope through research and increasing awareness..."

I hope that makes my design choices a little clearer maybe?   

I've been playing a bit with Shrinky-dinks lately.  Here's a pair of Stewie Griffin earrings...fairly simple:


And then, for my mom, for mother's day I had made a set of Autism Awareness jewelry.  (My little brother had high-functioning Autism.)  I couldn't find puzzle piece charms/beads to save my soul, so this is what I came up with: 


Sorry for the shadowy quality, I realized right before I wrapped them that I had forgotten to photograph them.  Consequently I was in a bit of a hurry....  There's a pair of earrings, a pendant, and the bracelet.  She liked them, so that's all that really matters, but I'd still love to know what other people think!

Okay, so I realize now that you weren't/aren't looking for something along the lines of what I did, but I thought I'd post a picture anyway, for future reference or whatever.  Sorry for the shadows...

So I guess it's really not that crafty...but I had gotten two small plastic ninja dudes from somewhere and I noticed the way the doorframe makes a lip and thinking of my ninjas realized it would be cool to put a whole bunch of them up there.  I tracked down a larger quantity of them and now I have a mini ninja army guarding my door. 



Sorry for the relatively poor photo quality.  It's a rather dim apartment and I don't have a very good digital camera. 

Goodness gracious me oh my... Feel free to fast forward through the wordy explanation to the pictures.
 
I got to my glass fusing class this evening to have my professor announce that she had some bad news for me.  We students aren't allowed to operate the kiln (still brings tears to my eyes  ) so she does all that and over our Thanksgiving break there were some...issues.  Apparently when she opened it after one firing, all the pieces had blisters/bubbles/warts (three terms she used for them, lol) all over, so she fired them again, raising and lowering the temps really slowly to get rid of those.  Apparently it wasn't slow enough for my piece which had a particularly thick area because I'd put a fully fused piece on top of what was supposed to become some sort of slumped dish and it underwent thermalshock (dum dum dum).  Since it split while it was heating up, it refused itself and I'm left with this interesting end result.  I opted to chalk it up to experience since I wasn't overly attached to the piece anyway and I think it looks kind of cool rather than try to 'correct' it. 



  And this is where the split started and it refused itself. 

As always, thanks for looking and comments welcome!