New Punch Needle Embroidery on eBay

Sissy has some new punch needle embroidery pieces on eBay this week! You're gonna love how creative she got with one of them ~ she put a sheep embroidered piece on an old wood wool carding brush! It turned out really cool! (sorry...link broken)

You can take a closer peek at her wonderful work here:

Magpie1217

This week I've been working on some hang tags ~ they're Americana and Halloween vintage images, digitally overlaid with other graphics and then flattened, distressed with walnut ink and sealed to the max. I wanted the walnut ink to be sealed and for them to be nice and stiff. With these tags you don't have to worry about the glue failing on several layers of elements and falling off the tag. I'm also working on a custom order for 8 Betsy Ross flags set in vintage thread spools. As I've migrated back to the craft room, and since I had to clean it up before I could even get started on creating, I'm hoping it will put me in the groove to work on my curtain projects!

My room gets to be such a disaster area! Thank goodness that's the only room in the house hubby doesn't ever go in!

As I find and collect new materials for my artwork, it all goes straight to the craft room on top of the cutting table or work table. Pretty soon stuff is piled a mile high in a heap everywhere, and I'm thinking "okay, now where am I going to store this so that I can find it again!" LOL! Has that ever happened to you?

Well, hubby will be home from his 1 AM concrete pour soon, dog tired, and I will have to pay him some attention! Til next time,

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

If you love music, you will love the movie "Once", featuring the music and voices of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. I saw this movie about a week ago and rushed to Playlist to see if they had any music out to add to my Blog, and yes, there it was! For a short preview, take a look at the You Tube video...




Here's the review from "The Village Voice." It was a kinda hard movie to get into, but the music well made up for it!

"Once" upon a time in Ireland, a girl met a guy and they made sweet music
by Robert Wilonsky
May 8th, 2007 12:00 AM

"Once", written and directed by John Carney, is a deceptively simple movie—a narrative strung together by pop songs, but without the sheen (or arrogance) of most cinematic musicals. By day, a Dublin busker (Glen Hansard) sings Van Morrison on a street corner for spare change, which, on occasion, is swiped by old friends in far more desperate straits than he. At night, the singer switches to his own compositions, most written for the girlfriend who abandoned the guy (who has no name in the film or credits other than The Guy). A Czech girl (Markéta Irglová, billed only as The Girl) approaches The Guy and asks him about his songs. He brushes her off; she's pretty but too young (Irglová was 17 when the movie was shot two years ago). She's also persistent.
In time, it turns out this Girl selling flowers to strangers for loose coins is also a musician—a pianist and singer, every bit The Guy's equal. And so theirs becomes a friendship and partnership—though not quite a relationship, because of The Guy's ex and The Girl's estranged husband. He teaches her his songs: He gives them heart, but she gives them soul. At last they marshal their forces and book time in a recording studio, where they cut a few tracks that will lead them . . . where? We have no idea at all by the end of 88 minutes that come and go far too fast. Ah, but that's the thing about Once: You'll probably want to see it twice.
Should you need to revisit the film right away, there is an album on which Hansard and Irglová have collaborated: The Swell Season, released in August of last year. In glib shorthand, Once serves as an extended video for that record, on which Hansard sings like Cat Stevens performing Damien Rice's songs for a Coldplay crowd as James Blunt forlornly looks on wishing that were him at the mike. Hansard, best known for having played guitarist Outspan in Alan Parker's The Commitments, writes perfectly heartbreaking pop songs that are lovely all on their own, chiefly the track "Falling Slowly" heard twice in Once. "I don't know you," Hansard sings, "but I want you."
Yet the magic of the movie is how utterly wrenching it renders these songs, which thrive alongside the film's simple, eloquent, dusky narrative. Hence, Once's burgeoning legend among those who saw it at this year's Sundance Film Festival as one of the greatest musicals of the modern age—a movie in which people sing to each other, only without the genre's distancing artifice. After all, The Guy and The Girl are musicians; pop songs are their language, how they communicate in ways both grand and miniature. They don't break into song for no reason; they're people who can only express themselves through thinly veiled metaphors and perfectly constructed melodies. The Guy and The Girl—not to mention Hansard and Irglová—have spent their whole lives constructing this soundtrack to sing what they can't quite say.
When she asks him about his life—he lives with his pa, above their vacuum repair shop—he strums a few notes and sings a few words; they're on the back of a bus, he with his guitar and she with her questions, and it's the most absolutely normal thing in the world. But their first duet is something transcendent: a performance of that song, "Falling Slowly," so special that the album doesn't do it justice. They're in a music store, where The Girl goes during lunch hours to play the piano she cannot afford. She plays him a few notes of her own song, and she asks him to play something of his. He walks her through a few bars of a song—him strumming his strings, her stumbling along the keys. Then he begins to sing—"I don't know you, but I want you"—and the song written for a distant love becomes immediately about this Girl who's wandered into this Guy's life. And they know it. They're no longer strangers awkwardly getting to know each other, but they're not lovers either—they can't be, not just because of their distant significant others but because that's how most relationships are.
Credit to Carney, a former member of The Frames more than 15 years ago, for making such a sincere film and having the sense not to bring in hired acting guns to lip-synch someone else's heartbreak. Cillian Murphy was at one point going to play The Guy, and that would have ruined it. Only Hansard knows the secrets that lie between the chords.

Till next time,

My Sister's New Punch Needle Pieces

My baby sister is traveling this week so she only had time to make up a few new pieces, but they are fabulous!

The little snowman hanger/pinkeep was so popular last year and a few lucky people got "second chance offers." I think I was supposed to have one of these made up for me, but sissy forgot!

You can see her eBay auctions for these pieces here:

Magpie1217

So there's your punch needle eye candy Kimmie!

Travelin' sissy left her 'Ole Virginey home on Saturday. My Atlanta sister and sister-in-law ("SIL") drove up to meet her, and they were on their way to New York State. While up there also they hooked up with my New York sister. SIL's father is now in a nursing home, and they were all going together to clean out the house prior to sale. The main objective was for SIL was to get her mother's things ~ she lost her Mom to Alzheimer's this past Christmas.

I always tell my mother she is NOT ALLOWED to die on important holidays like Christmas, nor in the Spring because I know how much she loves and looks forward to Spring. She tells me, after 55 years, that she may not remember the exact date, but will always remember her father died in the Fall because of her association with the fact that her father was always cold. And she remembers her deep sadness that they were going to put him in the "cold, cold ground." We were talking about SIL's mother's wake and how the funeral home had "prepared her" for viewing. SIL says when she first saw her mother she had lipstick on ~ a woman who had never worn lipstick ~ and she said she felt like wiping it off. It's strange sometimes how the human mind deals with death of a loved one.

My family has been talking about death a lot this week. My father lost his younger sister last week pretty suddenly, without warning of an illness. There were four sisters, each more fun-loving and vivacious than the next. In later life they would take many "sister" trips together, with and without their husbands. The funeral was not so much of a sad event, but more of a celebration of her life and her final trip to be with our eternal Father in heaven.

In Sweet Memory 1932 - 2008



From the cell phone reports I've been getting, my sisters' and SIL's trip this week has been great fun! No road trip mishaps, except for getting turned around a bit in Washington, DC. They got to meet up with friends and relatives, and visit SIL's Dad in the nursing home (bringing him pizza and Chinese food!) SIL got her Mom's hope chest and fine china, one of my sisters scored a gorgeous Fenton glass cake pedestal, and another an old glass doorknob from stuff SIL didn't want. They also got paintings, vintage cross country skis, thread spools and other booty, but had to leave behind an old wardrobe and bed from the 30's because they didn't have room. I wish I could have tagged along, but with our hot water heater bursting in the laundry room, I've been plenty busy trying to get everything put back together! Baby sis did say she got some old watch parts for me for altered art.

As for me and my boring life ~ I've been working my little fingers to the bone making up new Primitive Vintage Halloween eBay auction templates. You can see them here:

sewdeartome

I'm having a Buy 2 Get 1 Free template sale! Plus Free Shipping on your template CD! You can also see my other templates by clicking on the link to my website at the top left hand corner of this page. And you can always do an "Advanced Search" on eBay by selecting search "By Seller", then clicking on the box "completed listings" for other templates recently designed but not relisted on eBay. Geesh, the listing fees are killin' me!

Till next time,