The cold can end anytime now...

I don't know about most of you, but it's been pretty darn cold here in Northern Indiana for the past few weeks & this last one, even colder! Ugh!! I'm grateful that we have 2 woodburning fireplace inserts to help heat our home with all it's drafty doors & windows. We try to put plastic over what hasn't been recently replaced & we have one of those foam thingys that you slide under your door to keep out the drafts & that was a great thing to get, I recommend those, even though they have a tendency to slide out from under the door edge, but we haven't had that problem this year.

So anyway, among this frigid time of year, what does my hubby discover roaming the street? A darling little female beagle mix puppy that's a little bit older, but definitely a pup. She's so friendly & has no collar. We printed off a picture of and hubs went around the neighborhood to see if someone was missing her. She seems to be well taken care of & wasn't even hungry at first. We're guessing that someone dumped her off hoping that someone would feel sorry for her & not want her to fend for herself in the cold temps & take her in. If we didn't already have a dog, we'd take her. We just can't afford to have another dog to feed & with her being female, that means getting her spayed. Not in our unemployment budget & we didn't even get a check this week. I hate to take her to the Humane Society for fear of her fate, but we just can't do it for her. I am almost willing to make the trek to Pet Refuge, just so that she may stand a chance of getting adopted without the sad end results.

And now on to some creative work I've done lately.

The first project is what I call garden junk art and this particular item is called a totem, because it sort of resembles the idea of a totem pole.

I can't wait to put it out in my garden to see how it looks with the sun glistening through all the different facets on this piece! Oh how I long for spring....~*sigh!*~

Now I'd like to show you a couple of cards I made, in which I stole the inspiration from one of my highly creative paper crafting friends, Andrea Amu. She is a true genius with paper crafting supplies & she puts much more details into her work than I do, but I can always find all kinds of tidbits to use for my own projects from her. I wish I could find the exact card she made or even where she posted it at, but I don't even remember & can't find it in all my bookmarks. But, I do know it had these cuts from the Cricut Blackletter cartridge on it. And here are 2 of my interpretations of her design - whatever it was. LOL!!












Now don't pick too much at this card, I sort of came up with the design after I had already started doing other things with the card & it sort of looks a bit chopped up & I love that script embossing folder, but no matter how I try, it makes my paper really wavy & I have a hard time getting it to lay flat.

And then my next card is almost identical to the one above, but only slightly different.













I like that this card looks much smoother & a bit more polished looking. Since I forgot to add a jeweled brad to the center piece before attaching it with foam tape, I had to come up with a Plan B, so to speak. I don't think you can wrong with some pretty jewels & these were in the perfect design for the center of this! If you click on the picture, it will show up larger to see more detail & maybe you can see the Glimmer Mist I sprayed on the black squares. I'm still trying to think of how to incorporate the little Thanks tag, but it just may not happen.

Well, time to sign off for the night & get dinner on & a bath for the kiddo.

God Bless & have a great day!