Mother's Little Helper: March 2010

Deep dark depression, excessive misery!

If it weren't for JiFFy posts, I'd have no posts at all.

Gloom, despair, and agony on me!

Actually, that little ditty (which you were to wail mournfully, as if dressed in overalls and surrounded by jugs of moonshine, a la Hee Haw. If you did not do that the first time, please go back and do it again) does not describe this post in particular, but rather the general state of my blog.

(You know, I could go off on a huge Hee Haw tangent here. It was one of my mom's favorite shows and in my memory, I see her at her sewing machine or the ironing board with that on in the background for large chunks of my childhood. Probably explains why I ended up marrying a boy from Antlers, Oklahoma. But I digress...)

Anyhoodle, thank you for visiting me today despite my lousy posting record. Hopefully, you're the 'absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder' type, and not the 'out-of-sight-out-of-mind' type, and thus have grown even fonder of me than you were before. That's what one might call a 'vain hope,' but it is my hope nonetheless. I'm an optimist, you know.

Let's cut the chit-chat and get to the heart of the post, shall we? It's time for another Just For Fun Challenge with my JiFFy girlfriends! Hee-hee-hee-haw-haw-haw! HEE HAW! Just to recap (for those of you who stumbled on here via some random Google search, like Hee Haw) (OKAY! I'll stop! I swear that's the last direct reference I'll make to Hee Haw for the rest of this post! Sheesh... it's my blog, you know. I should be able to talk about whatever I want...*mutter & mumble*), each month one of us selects and sends out an image, then another of us sends out patterned paper. Once the paper is sent out, the image is revealed to all. Sometimes the paper works well with the image, sometimes it's what we euphemistically like to call a 'challenge,' but it's always JUST FOR FUN!

This month, Julie selected the adorable heroine of the 'Picnic With Little Red' set by My Cute Stamps, an aptly named company if there ever was one. I chose the patterned paper -- 'Brown Rice' from Jillybean Soup's Old World Cabbage Stew collection (not so aptly named, if you ask me, as there's nothing brown, rice-y, or cabbage-y about it). And wouldn't you know? The image and paper go together like... pickin' and grinnin'! (Sorry folks, it's just going to be this way for the duration.)

Here's what I came up with:

Don't she just fry your taters? She's sort of a large image, and for some reason I was bent on using a circle, so I got out my trusty old Creative Memories cutting system to make the circle layers. The CM system is what I go to when I need larger circles or ovals than what I can make with my Nestabilites. Little Red was colored in with Copics and her dress, jacket and hood were paper pieced.

Here's a close-up of the grassy hills she appears to be twirling on:

They're little curved circle pieces I 'mowed' with my scissor tips for a little texture.

I airbrushed the sky, and hand-stitched the zig-zag detail around the image borders with red embroidery floss. The sentiment (by A Muse) was cut up and staggered around the image circle. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.