March is National Craft Month - loving the sparkle in this star!

I've been increasingly interested in using up the supplies I already have on hand - including using some rather unusual "raw" materials in ways I've never tried before.

Recently, I participated in a "Going Green" charm challenge - I looked around the house for something I had on hand that lent itself to recycling, and remembered that pile of holey socks in the bottom of my closet - AHA!  I remembered how well the painted batting scraps worked a few weeks ago, and applied the same 'painting' method to a square of tube sock cut across the foot - no toes, no cuff, no heel, just foot.  This worked out even better than hoped - although the sock fabric did absorb a LOT of paint!
Once dry (which took a while, even with the assist of the hair dryer) I layered the sock wrong side up and added a scrap of batting and a scrap of 'backing' fabric - then quilted a star shape, added a little more paint to the 'highlights' and came up with this:

I also dismantled a bracelet and 're-purposed' the beads and wire -  and I'm really pleased and encouraged by this result - I love the sparkle in this star.

Tell me what you have crafted lately.   I love getting comments - what's yours?

Lestoil or More Toil, that is the question....

The unmistakable odor of LESTOIL hit my nose this morning... it was coming from under the kitchen sink!  I thought perhaps I had been sloppy when I used the Lestoil to clean the kitchen floor last time, so I poked around trying to find the source, and sure enough it did leak, but not the way I suspected!  It turns out the bottom of the bottle had cracked, and leaked a whole puddle of LESTOIL under the bottle and it's surrounding bottles - into a mess that I cannot describe in words, so here's the picture:

I thought I could just wipe it up and put everything back under the sink.... but that didn't work out so well, since the LESTOIL had dissolved the paint - it just doesn't seem to have a bottom anymore - the wood is so saturated that it continues to leach out of the wood under where the paint was....

 

very penetrating stuff!

 So, instead of playing in the snow (with a shovel, of course) this morning I am coping with this mess:

So, if any of my deadlines are missed this week, you know why.  I looks as though we may have to replace the kitchen cabinet (and hopefully NOT the floor UNDER the cabinet!) to completely purge the odor, since I don't think I'll ever be able to completely suck all that LESTOIL out of the base of this cabinet.

If you have a suggestion for how to get LESTOIL out of the wood, please - by all means!

Because I'd love to get back to the studio and do more sewing, or painting, or even tidying up my fabric stash!