Bonjour!

This is Pierre. He started out as kind of a joke. Katie told me that I should make french toast and I asked her how I could make french toast look different from regular toast. This is what we came up with: When he was done, I decided to photograph him and put him in my Etsy shop. Since photography isn't my special skill, I decided that it would be fun to find pictures of French landmarks on-line and take pictures of him standing in front of them.

I had no idea at the time that he would become one of my biggest sellers in my Etsy shop. I have sold dozens of him and shipped him all over the country and to a couple of countries in Europe. Last week a cute lady ordered him from my Etsy shop and asked if I could have him arrive quickly because she was leaving on a vacation to France and wanted to take pictures of him in front of real French landmarks. I squealed with delight when I read this and asked her if she would mind sending a couple of her photos my way. She said she would be happy to. I really hope she does. I can't wait to see them!

In other news, I updated my sidebar with my 2011 show line-up. I will be really busy, but I am excited to try some new shows and see what happens!

Curious George Puzzle Blocks

This is a project that I have been really excited to do for a long time and I finally had a chance to do it.
I recently taught myself how to decoupage and since then I have been fighting off the urge to stick cute patterned paper on every flat surface that I see. This project is merely an extension of that. I found this great vintage story book that was published in 1947 at an antique shop in Seattle. It was a little battered and had some missing pages, but I thought it would be great raw material to work with. It had several stories in it, but the one that really stood out to me was Curious George because my Katie is a huge fan of monkeys. I decided to make some ABC blocks with Curious George puzzles on them.

Four of the sides have different pictures from the book. I cut them apart and decoupaged them onto some ABC blocks.

I have made similar blocks before using just patterned paper and stickers. I cut and sanded the blocks myself in previous projects, which was a super pain in the butt. I found some ready made ABC blocks for a really great price at a craft store, so I thought I would try those out for this project- much better!

I like the fact that the storybook pages become puzzles when you take them apart. The puzzle is harder to put together than one might think because you have to figure out which side of the block matches the picture that you are putting together.

The other two sides have ABC letters. My original plan was to fancy the letters up or cover them with paper, but they were such a perfect match for the pictures that I decided to leave them how they were.

I am happy with how these turned out and I can't wait to make more out of other old story books. I will be listing them in my Etsy shop, so be sure to stop by and check them out!