It doesn't get more mundane than this. Today anyway.

I feel like all I talk about these days is crafts and thrifting and decorating my house. Oh wait, that IS all I talk about because that's all I'm doing right now. It's a good thing I called this blog "mundane" entertainment. Keeps expectations low so I don't disappoint.

Yesterday I spent the day cleaning our new used Craigslist living room furniture and rearranging it about a dozen times till I got it where I wanted it. Because some furniture moved, some pictures had to move too so I took care of those today.

My Cotan prints are hanging above the same cabinet that they were, they've just moved down about a foot. I never measure when I hang pictures and these two are particularly tricky because the bottoms are supposed to be even. I did pretty good with that but they're too far apart and you know what? Right now I don't care. They can just stay that way until their freakishly large gap starts keeping me up at night. Then I'll rehang them again.












 I moved my Delft collection to the top of the bookcase and put these glass vases full of marbles here. They're just cheap vases that came with different flower arrangements and I put marbles in them that I bought at the Dollar Tree. It makes them look special but they're not.

I thought I wanted my canvas collage to hang in the foyer about 15' up the wall but today I changed my mind. Jayson will be glad to hear that. But I have NOT changed my mind about hanging that heavy headboard so he's still got to figure that one out. Okay, fine, I'll figure it out and tell him what to do. It works for us. I put the collage above my desk and I like it there. It would pop better on a darker wall but I don't have that option here.

I moved the cross that used to hang there into the dining room where it works very well. There was too much back light to get a good picture but you get the idea. You also get the idea that my dining table is a mess. That's the way it usually looks. I'm certainly not going to cook a big fancy dinner any time soon and I'm not about having unused furniture sitting around just for show. That table is huge which makes it the perfect place for me to spread out my stuff when I'm working on a project. That means it has a few paint splatters on it as well as some exacto knife cuts but that's fine with me. I'd rather it show signs of being used and loved rather than being covered in dust and just taking up space.

I bought a couple of frames while I was out thrifting last week and had no idea what I'd use them for. Today I found that I had 2 pictures that needed frames and just happened to be the exact right size. See, I think sometimes I know what I'm doing without knowing that I know what I'm doing.

The first picture is one of me when I was about 4 years old I think. It looks really good in the frame but Taylor pointed out that the frame overpowers all the other pictures on the wall and she's right. I really don't want to paint this frame so I might just sand it and antique it. I could crackle it with some white paint. That might actually look good.

In my other new frame I put a photograph taken by my friend Blake Bernard. I think he took it somewhere around Scott, LA and it's just beautiful. It's always been one of my favorite photographs but I've never had a frame for it. This isn't necessarily the "right" frame for it but it's good for now.




I put the stand that went to my now deceased gazing ball in the living room and set my crown on it. Then today I added the silver tray to make it look more like a table. It's eclectic. I'm going with it.
















I picked up some used books today because most of the ones I have are great for ripping pages out of but not so great for removing the covers and spine. Mine aren't old enough. The older they are the easier they are to take apart so I got some older books and some that were water damaged. The water damaged books are the BEST!! Not only do they come apart easily but the pages are already nice and stained so I don't have to give them a coffee bath.

 A couple of the books were saved from my exacto knife because of their coolness. The one on top is a German translation of John Galsworthy's book "Beyond". I saved it because it's German and anything that's not English is cool. The book on the bottom is "No Enemy But Himself" by Elbert Hubbard, published by The Roycrofters in 1934. I'd never heard of The Roycrofters before but what I Googled was fascinating. They played a huge part in the American Arts and Crafts movement in the early 20th century. The book has beautiful unfinished edges and the title line on each page is printed in red. It's selling for $40-$50 in rare book stores right now so I do believe I'll just hang on to it for a while.

Last week I saw a wedding dress at one of my favorite thrift stores but I didn't buy it and I've been regretting it ever since. Seriously. I've thought about that dress every day and how I didn't listen to my instincts and just foolishly left it there. I didn't want just any wedding dress but one with lots of removable lace trim and beading that I could use on other projects. $50 was the reason I didn't buy the dress. That's a lot for a thrifted item, in my world. Later I considered that not only would I get yards and yards of wide lace trim but fabric and tulle as well then suddenly it became a bargain. It was meant for me to buy a wedding dress because today I stumbled upon this beaut at a totally different thrift store. I sometimes manage to learn from my mistakes so I bought this one like my gut told me to.

I snapped one quick picture of the dress with my phone before I started disassembling it. I'm sure it was lovely 10-20 years ago but now it's just heinous. I will admit that the fabric is good. I can't identify exactly what it is but my guess is that it's a good quality polyester taffeta. It could easily pass for silk. It's fully lined with a layer of tulle between the dress and lining.







The person who wore this dress was either 6' tall or a man. It is freakishly long from shoulder to hemline. When I took it apart I tried on the bodice which I could wear as a mini dress if I ever decide to be a hooker grandma again.

The bodice is covered in lace and beads and there are fabric covered buttons down the back and on the sleeves. I can just see some of the lace and beads decorating my white pumpkins this Halloween! No, I didn't drop $50 on a wedding dress just to decorate pumpkins, I do have other plans for it. The pumpkins are just a bonus. Not that I wouldn't spend $50 to decorate pumpkins, I just didn't. This time.

Speaking of Halloween, I saw this project on a website, tried it and failed miserably. I make stuff that turns out really crappy all the time, I just don't take pictures of it. Usually. This time I did because this one has potential. You start with a toilet paper tube, add hot glue in drippy patterns that look like wax, then stick a tealight inside it. It's supposed to look like a drippy waxy Halloween candle. Mine looks like Cousin Itt in white dreadlocks.

I made two mistakes that I know of. One is that I used a mini glue gun so that I could use up a bunch of little sticks of brightly colored glittery hot glue that have been lying around for years. I figured I was painting it anyway, so the color of the glue didn't matter. This is true but each of those fat blobs took almost one whole mini glue stick and my hand was a cramped mess by the time I got done. My second mistake was not waiting to paint it until the next day when I could go to the store to get some off white spray paint. I wanted instant results so I gave the blob a coat of gesso and painted it with acrylic craft paint. The gesso gave the glue an unwanted texture and the paint cracked in the seams where it was too thick.

I might still be able to save this little guy with the proper paint but if I make another one I will use full size CLEAR glue sticks and I will not use gesso. Getting in a hurry is usually the root of most of my creative failures.

I rearrange my costume jewelry on a pretty regular basis because I have yet to find the perfect storage/display solution for it. I've had it on a thrift store rack for a while now but I've decided that's not the best use for that rack. I've been unable to find a curio cabinet for my large collection of...curios...so I might use that rack for them.

This is the latest incarnation of my costume jewelry display. It's in a corner of our bedroom and it's temporary. That little table is all wrong but it's all I've got right now. I would like to find some kind of corner shelf or cabinet thing to put there.  Once I do that, then I can hang the tennis rackets and the rake head in some way that makes sense. Right now they make no sense placement wise, but I love how they function.

Once I decide where everything will go I can bring out the rest of it which is stored in a separate jewelry box right now. I'm not even sure why I have so much costume jewelry, I really don't wear it very often. I love it, I love to make it, I just rarely wear it.

Oh yeah, all of this doesn't include all the jewelry that I've made. It's pretty well stored in my art room until I go on another jewelry making frenzy and overflow my bins.

Then I'll just have to convert other lawn tools into jewelry holders. I bet a chainsaw would make a great necklace holder. I could put a little hook on each one of the peaks on the blade so that when you turn it on the necklaces would spin around so you could choose the one you want to wear...like those tie racks that spin around. I would just have to figure out how to slow it down so that it doesn't fling the necklaces everywhere. Hey, I might be on to something! I feel an infomercial in my future. But don't worry, my chainsaw necklace spinner would be completely safe for home use since I would only make them from electric powered chainsaws, not gas. I'm not an idiot.