Book Mark Making Time (again!)

Twice a year, I make book marks that we give away at our library book sale in the spring and fall.  Over the years, I've made different book marks...some bland, some colorful, some just so so!  HA Here are some I've done in the past.   I'm sure this was from one of my first years making these!   

I'm not sure the year for these...

I think these were from our last fall sale.  

 I thought I best get started on making bookmarks for this coming spring sale in April  You know how time goes by so fast and before you know it we're setting up for the sale. 

 I started  about a week ago for the stamping process.  Which is done on the rough side of the poster board using acrylic paint.  

I got out some of my rubber stamps  I made a few years ago.  You can see in this piece and above the large square stamping - this was one stamp I carved.  The large leaf is also another one of my carved stamps.

I stamp like crazy...but there's always white area ready for the dye to paint on!

Next up, I found some dyes I had mixed up from working on a class with Hilary.  I use fiber reactive dye mixed with plain water.  Actually, this color is called Robin Egg Blue!

I just use a soft paint brush and cover the poster board.  I'll also take a paper towel and blot up any puddles of dye. 

Yes, it does look greenish here and actually looks greenish in person too!  HA

After slicing up  2"x7" pieces, I place 2 wrong sides together, a little stitching around the edges and 40 book marks are made for the April spring book sale to give away!  

All Finished for the next sale!

Now back to sewing hex pieces!!!  

Wednesday Library with some 'friends'

Cheryl, Amy and me

There are four of us (from our Friends of the Library group) who meet at the library on Wednesday's.  We arrive around noon - 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  We sort and put away on shelves or sorted boxes any donation books we've received through the week.  We like to keep up with donations so it's not a crazy time for our spring or fall book sales.  

Amy is currently in Florida for the winter and Chery (pic below)l is also in Florida for the week celebrating her 60th Anniversary!  

This is Beth displying one of her embroidery pieces she's working on!  Beth has so many she has completed and continues to work on!

Cheryl is also prolific in producing embroidery pieces!  Her Chickadee is amazing!  You have to enhance the picture to see the detail of this bird!

This is another current piece Beth is working on!!  I can't imagine trying to embroider in this small cloth!

And this is one of Cheryl's current completed embroidery pieces she had farmed!

It's beautiful isn't it!  Again, enlarge the picture so you can really see the workmanship.

This is another piece Beth completed this last month.  She's looking to find just the right frame for it.  I love this piece too...

When we're finished doing any sorting/shelving, we'll sit and 'stitch, knit, embroidery, sew'..whatever project each of us are working on.   

Here are the ladies working on their project(s).  It's such a nice seating area.  

Actually, our Friends of the Library group purchased this rug and seating area along with end tables and lights.  Any funds from our books sales, we use to support programs or needs of the library.  

This area is also used for tutoring students.  Nice and quiet and perfect for other group meetings as well.

We do work  hard, although by the pics above of us sitting, you might not believe it!  HA  Some days we are bombarded with donations.  I mean boxes and boxes of donation books.  Some have to be discarded because of torn pages, mildew, dirt, etc.  But for the most part, we are fortunate to have great patrons who provide us donation books for our yearly sales.  And our Goodrich library is also great at donating books that are no longer in circulation for us to sell.  

So, I'll be at the library later today!  

SO BUSY!

 Grass doesn't grow under my feet!  This past month we've been working on getting our local library set up for our book sale, which was last weekend!  And it was a great success....lots of work selling books for 3 days but we may look at doing that again in the fall.  

We are also very organized now...all books on the shelves around the room are alphabetized by author!  The fiction books on the tables were put in boxes designated by alpha character so it was easy to find favorites authors.  We had lots of compliments on the way the sale was set up and organized.  

This is our storage room for our boxes, which are just placed on the tables if we don't have room for the books on the fiction shelves.  We had to move over 115 banker boxes to this area, which are stacked in double rows.  Our room is now empty and ready for meetings and programs.

One of our volunteers, Amy (who is also a bigger U of M fan than my hubby!) is a great resource and our book sale leader!  She's done so many book sales and certainly knows what works...she and I are both a little 'obsessed' about having things organized so we work well together!  

I'm also working on another knitting project.  It's a lace shawl from a book called Curls 2.  The author, Hunter Hammersen, has many books and her patterns are really quite pretty!  Should only take me the rest of the year to complete this one!  HA

So by next winter, I should have a shawl that looks like this!  HA  Fingers crossed!

And I'm still doing the daily art project.  We're up to 76 days as I write this post and so far I'm doing something.  Although, I did cheat a few days posting on the book sale prep and my new car!  This is a picture from an ad for Buick.  My car is also white and so good looking!

  

I am so happy...this was a quick replacement but I love, love my new car!  I traded in my Envision, which I loved!  This is also an Envision but the Avenir model!  It does everything!!, and I mean everything, except make my coffee!  It will parallel or back in parking on its own!  So many safety features, which is really nice for us old folks driving!  HA  Seriously, the safety features are so good for any age.  I don't see using the parallel parking or backing in feature but hubby and I will test drive this just for the fun of it!

So that's it for a quick update!  I'm still here...still busy...still enjoying life!!

So what have you been doing?

Yes, I've been busy but I think that's my mantra!!  Busy, busy...busy!!!  I was reading Terry Grant's blog post today and certainly could identify with her thoughts.  I too love to stay home and just 'play'!!!  But that isn't always the way....I've posted on my week so far and yesterday was working at our library to get setup for the upcoming book sale!  But before I show what I did yesterday, here is my lesson in watercolor lettering I finally finished - as far as I'm going to finish it.  I've printed out this week's lesson and watched the video but won't get to start it until tomorrow in the a.m.  I hope!

The start of my letter and a practice border above it - not they don't do together!

Watercolor layers and white ink applied

So this is what I did yesterday - yes, I was alone due to the fact I couldn't work today with the other ladies...although, I did this last year and it does work out pretty well.  I work alone and have no problem doing so...yes, it's that type A to just get in there and get it done!

You can see the boxes on the floor and tables

Boxes are loaded with books

Ditto above

Boxes all empty now and under the table(s) - also I organized the fiction books in alpha order by author (hence, the stacks) - yes, that's part of a Type A personality too!

See all those books!

Can't remember what these books were but boxes were all unloaded