Yesterday morning was rainy and crummy. My daughter wanted to do a project, “I’ll go in my room and when you think of a project for me say ding-a-ling-a-ling.” so I came up with this (rain on a rainy day: my creativity knows no bounds). I cut out a raindrop shape for her to trace and my son was in charge of the tape. She wanted to make a rainbow, because where there is rain there are rainbows, and my son made a sort of deconstructed rainbow (up there on the right). He also wanted to know where the umbrella was, so we made one of those too.  Now that it’s sunny, my daughter wants to know when we are going to make the sun.

I just realized I never posted a picture of my finished mobile I made for the swap.  My partner was very patient while I got it done. From top to bottom it goes: big house, cabin, barn, ice house. I explained how I made it here and there are more pictures here and here. I’ve received some lovely comments about it on flickr and a couple requests to sell them, but I’m not sure about that. I couldn’t find my X-acto knife when I was making these, so I used a box cutter–a sharp one, but a box cutter nonetheless–so it took longer than it should have. If I get an itch to make something with paper again, maybe I’ll put one or two up for sale.

A couple of you are concerned because you never received a mobile from the swap and I’m sorry for that. It could have gotten lost in the mail like mine, or maybe your partner’s life just got in the way. I try to think of these swaps as an impetus to make something different and try not to focus too much on what you might get. I’m going to host another mobile swap next year, so hopefully it will go better (I was a little lax when it came to managing it this year–I didn’t think it would be so much work!).

My whole family was struck with the flu this past weekend.  It was pretty crappy and we are finally crawling out of the dark flu hole.  Luckily there was one 40 degree day where we could open all the windows and get some fresh air, but now it’s back down to 10 where I now believe it will stay forever.  The flu was just another thing that got in between me and my mobile–february was just packed with those thing, dammit.  It’s now officially half done and as soon as I get my hands on a glue gun, I’ll finish it up and pack it off.   It’s four tiny houses: a cottage, an ice house, a barn, and a plain ol’ house.  I knew I wanted to do houses and I was first inspired by a sardine box .  I was planning to make them all out of packaging, but after an hour wandering through the grocery store I discovered there is a lot of ugly packaging.  Then I thought I could use the fusible timtex I had and the houses would have looked really nice in all natural linen, but they had no windows which was a little weird.  I could have embroidered all the details on, but I was late with the mobile already.  Then I found this amazing site and was back to thinking about paper.  So after another hour spent in the foreign territory of decorative paper, I thought I have books coming out my ears at home why don’t I just use one of them.   I found a great old Dr. Spock baby book which is perfect because my partner just had a baby (hint! hint!).  I mod podged the pages to either side of poster board, then cut out the details and folded it up.

I feel bad that I’m late on my own swap, but my creative process is particularly slow and I’m happy with how all the houses turned out.  There are more pictures on my flickr account and be sure to stop by the mobile swap group to see all the procrastinator’s mobiles (they are my people) and just the amazing variety of work that’s there.  I’m for sure going to host another mobile swap next January, so if you missed this one don’t worry.  I should probably start working on that one now just so I finish in time.