HAPPY EASTER TO ME!

My Sister sent me this lovely paperbag book for Easter since I was too sick to visit her.

My great niece in the the pic above wearing her mother's vintage Easter dress from many Easters ago.

That's me at about 2 years of age in the pic above with a little crown on my head. So appropriate, considering that all my "self-portraits" when I was little always included a crown.

She included the cute little Easter shipping tags and other little goodies in the paperbag pockets as an added giftie. She has an impressive stash of vintage Easter and most of the images are from her own collection of vintage postcards.

That's my sis above on the shipping tag. Click on any of these photos to see the images better.


I love the book. Thanks so much, Sissy!

MORE EGGS!

WHICH CAME FIRST: THE CHICKEN SOUP OR THE EGG???

I did so miss my blog and my blog friends when I was ill and without the net. Even alternating fever and chills would have been lessened if I could just have had my proper daily blogging portions. The one day I thought I was almost recovered (but it turned out the worst was yet to come), I celebrated by making a dozen egg-shapped ATC's for a Yahoo! swap.

I was so bored, I even rigged each egg so that it opened to reveal a little surprise inside the egg.

I hope you like them.

GREEN, PIECED AND STITCHED!

A few weeks I posted an atc I made in response to a challenge to make an atc that was green, pieced and had at least the appearance of stitches. I designed a paper one that was pieced and had white stitches from a gel souffle pen. Last week I received the 2 fabulous fabric atc's above (from Diane and Liz) as my share from the swap.

A BELATED HAPPY EASTER!

I've been down with a bit of illness, so I am sorry that I missed posting all my little Easter cards. Thanks so much to all of you who left kind messages and emails regarding the St. Paddy's Tag Swap. It was a lot of fun! I am mulling over some ideas for a new swap. Let me know if any of you have any ideas. Cheers for now and pray my temp stays down.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY! See the results from our St. Paddy's Day Tag Swap!

Below are representative samples from our recent St. Paddy's Day tag book swap. I had a great time making my tags and was very excited as all the beautiful and creative tags from the other players began arriving. In the end each person got a booklet with samples of some of the other players. Originally, I had planned to have 2 groups of 10 each and each person would have received a tag from each person in their group, but life, and the post office, intervened and some players were not able to fulfill their original obligations. In the end, I rearranged the groups to ensure that each player would receive the maximum tags possible. I hope everybody was pleased with the results. Many thanks to all those who played. I sent the booklets out to the players in this package:

Now for some pics of the individual tags:

Tags above from Sherry, Marilyn, and Nancy and their reverse sides below. If you would like to see all of Sherry's tags, click on her name and you can view all of her tags on her blog as a sideshow.

A sampling of Leslie's tags above.

A sampling of Kelley's tags above and their reverse sides below.

A sampling of Stella's tags above and their reverse sides below.

Sharon, Barb, and Shari's tags and their reverse sides below.

Darla's tags and their reverse side below.

Marianne, Trish (mine), and Pat"s tags above and their reverse sides below.

My purse I won from Nannybird Crafts arrived yesterday! Enter her new give away tonight!

How cute is this! and it is really, really big. It's a generous 12" X 8" and very roomy inside. The double handles are sturdy and woven right into the design of the purse. The purse itself is woven from bright magazine pages. Click on the pics and you can see the little images from the pages. And I won it last week in a blog contest here. Nan kindly suggested that it was mine - and that if I didn't fancy carrying it, I could sell it on Ebay. No, not this purse girl. I changed purses at the office and carried it home! THE MAN, yes, M-A-N at the Starbucks on the way home saw it on the seat next to me in the car and asked about it. I really, really love it. Thank you, Nan. This was such a generous give-away. I know you think they are so time consuming to make that you can't bring yourself to agree to sell them, but maybe you should teach some classes.
Below you can see it close-up. See how shiny it is! Its feels like the pages were laminated before the folding and weaving began. What craftsmanship! She also makes other beautiful purses from recyled garbage bags. Nan is a true artist. And she's not just crafty, but she's funny, too. I've put her on my growing lists of blogs I read regularly.

REMINDER: Nannybird Crafts is giving a purse away TONIGHT, but you have to do some counting. Get on over there now and enter her contest. Oh, and tell her The Tattered Rose sent you.

MY IRISH MOTHER

I planned to make this piece for a long time. The used Whitman Sampler candy box set on the top of my refrigerator for over a year. In the end the delay was fortuitous because I learned some new things about glues. The lid of the box is covered with various scrapbook papers in different shades of green which have been aged and randomly painted with white gesso. I love the paper with the green crowns. Then the lid is covered in a thick layer of Golden Gel Medium (matte) and an old, very fragile piece of exquisite lace with tattered edges was then embedded into the layer of gel medium. After that dried I placed a raised oval photograph of my mother and her family, circa 1925, which had been decoupaged to a thick piece of cardboard and the edge embossed with Queen's Gold. It is finished with a vintage amber four leaf clover broach. I stamped, embossed in dark green and cut out the words "Irish Treasure" and glued them around the sides of the oval photo. I dyed a vintage knitting spacer with green alcohol ink and placed it around my mother's face to indicate the other meaning of the treasure. The sides of the box are covered with handmade dark green paper with shamrocks embedded into it. The inside is papered with a striped green paper and the a bit of flowered lace painted with green lumiere. I love this box and I think it is an apt tribute to my mother's angelic face and her Irish heritage. It is my own Irish Treasure box. If you click on the picture, you can make it larger to see the details.
Have any of you made your own family heirlooms?

THE TAGS BOOKS ARE IN THE AIR!

Well, more precisely, on the trucks,winging their way to each of the participants. Stay tuned and by Monday I will post the pics for your viewing enjoyment. Until then, may the luck of the Irish be with you all.

I WON A GREAT PURSE AND YOU CAN, TOO!

This last weekend I was snowed in with an unexpected March snowfall of 12 inches. Luckily, I could surf the net to fight my cabin fever. I found a great new blog, Nannybird Crafts. Nan makes these beautiful purses that are made of recycled plastic garbage bags and woven candy wrappers and magazine pages. These really interest me because I "recycle" vintage purses from the 40's - 60's. Nan's purses are just lovely. Head over there and check them out.
Anyway, I entered her contests (yes, there were 2) and I won a purse! Isn't that super! I could hardly believe it myself. I picked one woven from candy wrappers or magazine pages, it's still being sorted out exactly which one, but I'll post a pic for all of you to see when I receive the bag.
Now, those of you who are still with me, this is how this post affects you. Nan is giving away yet another bag! But Nan makes you work for the privilege of winning this bag so get on over to her blog and start counting - the rules are over there- and you could be a winner, too.
Oh, yeah, and be sure to tell her you learned about it from The Tattered Rose.
It's a great and generous prize. Good luck to you all!

ANOTHER GIVE AWAY TO ENTER!

Magpie-pixie is having a giveaway over at her blog to celebrate her 200th post. She is offering a choice of 2 generous prizes: a lovely piece of her own art and a blog banner. (Me to Cosmos: "I REALLY NEED TO WIN A BLOG BANNER!") But I am willing for you to be my competition. So get on over there and put your name in the hat. Good luck!

NOT RAIN, NOR SLEET, NOR EVEN SNOW CAN STOP THEM!

Snow on the trees,

Snow on the ground,

Snow on the rooftops,

Snow all around!

-Children's Snow Song

It may not stop the U.S. Postal Service, but it has stopped me cold in my tracks! Although I am told that package after package of St. Paddy's Day tags have made their way to my office, an unseasonable snow fall here has stopped me from getting to them. Although the snow here was not supposed to start until about 5:00 p.m. this evening, it started early this morning about 7:30 a.m. and has made a messy business of traveling on the highways and byways. But not to worry, the temp is going back up and I should be back on track in a couple of days. Although I am frustrated for the tag swap's sake, I am enjoying being "snow bound" and having time to work on other swaps. Hope you are all enjoying pretty weather, or at least enjoying the weather you've got.

THE TAGS ARE ARRIVING!!!

I'm waving my Irish flag to show the postman the way! The tags for the St. Patty's Day tag swap are arriving daily and Boy! are they ever cute. You girls have done a really great job and the best thing about being the swap hostess is that I get to see them first. Stay tuned, everybody, and I'll post pics of the tags after everyone gets their books. This has been a really fun swap. Thanks, everyone.

While I was "researching" for my own tags, looking for Irish sayings, I found one I had never heard before I thought was worth passing along:

May those that love us, love us

and, those that don't love us

May God turn their hearts

And, if He doesn't turn their hearts,

May he turn their ankles....

So we'll know them by their limping.

The Luck of the Irish!

How cute is this cover on the March, 1968 "Jack and Jill" magazine? It's from my own stash because I can never resist a St. Paddy's Day collectible. Technically, four leaf clovers are not shamrocks, but they are also a sign of good luck so they are often depicted on St. Paddy's Day cards and as a traditional symbol of Ireland. Shamrocks, the unofficial Irish symbol, have three leaves, not four. Today I bought a little pack of holiday tissues with pigs and four leaf clovers on them and the clerk said, "I don't know what pigs have to do with St. Paddy's Day." Actually, he's got it wrong. The pig is a traditional Irish good luck symbol, it's the four leaf clover that is the interloper. I don't know the origin of the pig as a good luck symbol, but I suppose if you were living through famine by surviving on potatoes that a pig would be, indeed, a very good thing to possess. My own mother lived through the depression by eating potatoes: mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, homemade potato chips, and fried potato cakes. She told me that she even had to take a potato cake to school for her lunch because they didn't have anything else. For myself, I had a potato with most hot meals. When I was growing up, we had a hot noon time meal we called "dinner" which nearly always included some potato dish and then we had a cold night time meal. My own supper was often cheese, crackers and a piece of fruit (as it still is today). When I went to my first Irish restaurant, I discovered my traditional supper listed on their menu as the "Ploughman's Platter." How funny to discover that I was eating ethnically and didn't even know it!

I have always loved St. Paddy's Day and the tag swap this year is certainly making me feel very festive and close to my Irish roots. The tags are pouring in and more are promised in the near future. Thank all of you who have participated. I so appreciate each and every one of you. I know you will all be happy with your Tag Swap Books.

In a semi-related story of good luck, I have been hunting and gathering for a few days and my luck has been so phenomenal that I can only credit my Irish heritage. Maybe my ancestors are leading me. I have found tatting, old buttons, children's books, old store stock, old game pieces, and more. I had almost given up regular searches for these things because most of the local places never seem to have enough (at least at the price I am willing to pay) to make the search worthwhile. I think Ebay may have been responsible for that. I have hopes of getting a blog banner up soon and I have found a few things I can use for that. Now if my Irish spirit guides are listening: old cabbage rose wallpaper - just give me a nudge in the right direction, please.

What stories of your Irish heritage or unexpected good luck do you have to share?