I was thinking of starting a thread that would show pics of my garden at the various stages of the season. For instance-right now it looks like a slightly green junkyard, but the daffs are up and I'm starting to put out the ol' yardart. I would really like to see other people's gardens as they grow,too. I'm sure we will all add ideas we see on Craftster and other unique things. Anyone interested-should we do it all combined on one thread? I'm still relatively new at Craftster and don't know the rightt
way for this type of idea.

I really like to use original ephemera in my collages instead of copies, because I like the "feel" of them, but I really hate to permanently put some of my "good stuff" away...so I made this collage in a plexiglass box frame. That way if I want to I can take a photo of it, but then I can reuse pieces. I got all of these pieces at a super cool farmer's permanent yard sale in southern Ohio-which I think is the mecca for good junk buying.(All of it was about a quarter!) It's a photo paper doll, a pattern for a "chubby girl" dress, a receipt and some old snaps on a card. Then I hung a crooked empty frame around it.

I think that this goes in this thread...
I needed a way to hang up my herbs to dry and also to make my pantry wall (which is actually just a nook at the top of the basement stairs) look cool because you can see it from the kitchen-no door. SO I took bamboo sticks and tied them together with jute string and hung the sage,etc... on it. I just grab some off it as I need it for cooking.

http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_gardeninearlyspring001.jpg
I hope that you can access these pics-I'm still having trouble with my photobucket postings They keep pasting double.
My husband built this out of stuccoed straw bales and mostly recycled windows. My neighbors got new windows in their hundred year old house and they gave them to me instead of the garbage collector(I'm sort of the local garbage collector anyway
It has a tin roof which sounds really cool when it rains-which it rarely does here unfortunately!
We drove rebar through the straw bales and built the wood and glass frame around it. I've got some seedlings started in it, and my cats and I take naps on the futon couch. Very cozy. We haven't decided whether to paint the
http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_gardeninearlyspring002.jpg wood or not. It's a little Beverly Hillbillyesque, but I love it.

I really hope that this isn't repeating a question, but I am very frustrated.
I finally figured out how to post photos ithis week and successfully posted pictures in the actual post three times. Then today I went to do it and it isn't working. I click and drag and the url prints twice and there isn't a photo.
Am I missing something here?

I made this altered book for my husband's birthday last year. He went to a High School that everyone called "Prep" so when I found a book called something like "Frank at Prep" I figured I had to do it. I copied pages from his 1972 high school yearbook on paper
 and transparencies. I used gel to glue it all down with tissue paper, home made paper, dyed napkins, a bit of this and that. I also found pictures of guitars and bands he had liked since he and his friends were musicians.I used a transparency of his face over Jack Kerouac's high school picture since he is one of his heroes(check out my poetry fence in the garden art section )
I cut out the back pages to make a niche and covered it with the sheet music to Chuck Berry's "School Days" then painted an Altoid box gold and glued a key to the cover. Inside I glued a tiny mirror and put in his high school class ring.

My camera is cheapo, :
http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_alteredbooktracy001-1.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_alteredbooktracy004.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_alteredbooktracy005.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_alteredbooktracy006.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/w67/balkandina/th_alteredbooktracy003.jpg

so I'm sorry the pix aren't great, but I think you get the idea.

I made this a few years ago and like it so much that I have moved it across town to a new house! It is made out of an old fence that fell down and I just used craft paint to write on it. Jack Kerouac is my husband's favourite writer and the haikus fit on it well. I actually had my high school students write their own haikus and we wrote them with Sharpies on a really big privacy fence that someone was throwing out. You can grow vines up the boards-I use Morning Glories and sweet peas. I didn't polyurethane it because I kinda like the whole decay and wear look on old wood I just tie it to the tree loosely with cord and put some big rocks against the bottom to hold it up You could set it more permanently..

I asked questions about sewing satin without puckering on another thread, but I wanted to show the final project...I hope. I'm still new at the photo posting
My middle school daughter competes in History Day Performance and this year she was Baby Doe Tabor.  I bought the Simplicity 4078 pattern, but she wanted short sleeves and a few other changes. Here's what we ended upo with...and she's going to Colorado state finals! Of course, it wasn't all her costume, but I'm a little proud!!!

Well, my old hammock split apart, and while I was getting ready to throw it all out I realized that I could just sew the "hammocky" part out of canvas and make it new!!
So...what weight of duck canvas should I use? Or should I use something else? I will be hanging it on a metal free-standing hammock stand-not from trees!  Canvas seems to come in 10/24 and stronger. Can I double sew to make it stronger? Will I need to put a bigger needle in my machine??? I know that these are a lot of questions, but I am really excited about "going outside of my box" of what I am used to sewing!!

I have always thought of myself as a decent lower-middle level seamstress, but I am not a "sewing" student or perfectionist. To be honest I drag my sewing machine out about once a year now to sew projects for my kids....anyways... I am making a 19th century reproduction costume for my middle school daughter 's history day costume and I am having a terrible time. It  is Simplicity 4079. I am making it short sleeved without the puffed sleeves and it is in polyester satin... Boy, that bodice was nearly impossible to figure out, but I think it is ok now. SO>>> should I have sewn it over tissue paper? It puckers a lot. I have just been pulling the threads and I know that I will be covering the puckers with hand sewn lace...but , is there a better way???