Spring DIY Postcard Swap

Cat at the Beach

by Kristin Corlett

This is my second postcard swap with the folks at iHannah, a blogger, crafter, positive influencer from Sweden.  I joined this swap just a week or two before the deadline, but being in the beginning stages of the lockdown from Covid-19, I was so grateful to have something creative to do.

The Spring Post Card Swap 2020 was an event by the creator of the Studio iHannah blog and this was the 10 year celebration!  She's been hosting this handmade postcard swap twice a year for 10 years.  If you want to be notified the next time the swap comes around, sign up for her newsletter at the iHannah blog. 

It looks like I have 11 cards posted here, but I only mailed out 10 for the swap.   Last time I created the postcards, I created scenes for a lot of them.  This time was a bit more scattered in thought, but circles, stripes and squares were common in the cards.

The card at the top of the post, Cat at the Beach was a striped card that somehow turned into the adorable cat looking over the fence.  It's a favorite of mine.

This one above with the CAMP sticker on it was circles and squares mostly with a few fun bits tossed in to make it more interesting.

I think this one with the sunset picture and the gift card envelope was my color blocking card.  It was one of my last cards for the swap and I really wanted to use the gift card picture.

These next two, the one above and below were put together with all of the little bits that I wanted to use, but couldn't find a place for them.  Also, I do recall that I was on the couch and most of my pictures and cut outs were in the other room, so yep, this is what I had around me at the time.  On the postcard above, I have used a Fast Jax Trivia answer slip.  No trivia shows for the near future with everything closed down, so it was nice to put one of the slips in the postcard collage.

This card was a two sided card - I think I sent this off to a person that lives in Germany, but I can't be positive  We have a mini donut place here in Jacksonville, Florida called the Mini Bar.  A bit of their advertisement on this card, plus a bowl of ice cream - chocolate, my favorite!  The striped background is a portion of a gift bag.   I am nearly positive that my cat chewed on the bag, so it couldn't be used anymore for gift giving!

The LOVE!  That's about all I wanted this one to say -- love.  I didn't want the message to be lost in the collage, so I added complementary colors on the remaining edge.

I received a message today that someone received a card with a recipe on it -- I wonder if it's this one?  This was from the little monthly cookbook that Martha Stewart used to put out.  It's a great size for the postcard project.

These two postcards with the olives are my top favorites!  One was striped and the other blocked.  I love olives, so much so that my husband and I came up with our own Olive Tapenade recipe.  I swear, it's the best thing out there.  It's here in my blog - called Olive Tapenade, our way.

Funny about this one - I put a recipe for Potatoes Au Gratin on it and I made that dish last night, but not from this recipe - I had forgotten about it already!  Mine didn't come out as awesome as I wanted, so I'll have to look at this recipe again.

The 11th card -- stripes are once again the theme.  I found this page of hand drawn people and little blurbs about what they were doing throughout the day.  I thought it was fun and quirky.  So glad I was able to get one of those into the swap postcard.


I finally dug my sewing machine out of my closet and was able to add a little bit of stitching to each card.  I love sewing paper with the sewing machine.  It's easy to do, but if you sew fabric and try to use the needle that you used for paper, you will be disappointed.  The needle will be quite dull.  So make sure you have a new needle for your fabric.

That's all for today!
I hope you are staying well.

Have a great day,
Kristin

Bread Bag Tag Lampshade

Bread Bag Tag Lampshade

by Kristin Corlett

This is my bag tag lampshade!

Bread bag tags. An obsession?  Prolly. Not really, but I do think about what I can do with them very often.  I've been a collector of bag tags for a decade or more and have recruited many family and friends to help in the collection as well.  I just recently asked my neighborhood to help me collect so I can finish the lampshade. 

What started this whole idea of a lampshade was this photo on Pinterest.  I was completely drawn in.  I needed to make it.  I had to!  I have scoured the internet and the only thing I have found is that this was from the Concordia student design show 2006.  Just this photo, no instructions on how to make it, nothing.  In fact I don't even know if it is a lampshade.  Looks like I'm going to have to do it myself.  

This is the Pinterest photo -- I found it on flickr

I think if there had been a How-To for making the lampshade I might have started this project about 4 or 5 years earlier.  Since I had to start from scratch I spent a lot of time thinking about what would work. How much time you ask?  Years.  I have been teased by many that I was never going to do anything with all those tags.  I want to do a lot of projects and never do them, so I can see why this one would also be a lost cause.

But... it wasn't!

I had several unsuccessful attempts to get holes punched through the bag tags.  The tags are strangely brittle when a hole is punched into it and they end up splitting or breaking.  I tried heating them up so that the punch might not split the plastic, but that didn't work either.  I finally decided that a wood burning tool was going to be the ticket to small holes and no breakage.  Turns out I was right!  I spent only a few days on the project seen here.  Once I got going I was on fire!

The little bits and pieces left over

Here is how I made my bread bag tag lampshade, which by the way, most of those tags are from friends and family that have helped me collect them.  It gives me so much JOY to know that people collect these for me.  If only that they think of me as they toss that tag into the drawer or ziploc bag.  Thank you to all who have contributed to my very long term project. 

Sourcing the Tags

Tags can be sourced in a few ways - friends and family can save the tags for you and send them to you every so often.  You can find some being sold on Etsy and right at this moment there are a few rolls of blue tags for sale on eBay.  I have been told that if you ask some restaurants that use a lot of bread or veggies that come with those tags, they might save them for you.  (Think diner/breakfast places)  I had a friend in a restaurant that would gather them when she worked, but she only gave me white tags.  You may have other ways to gather the tags and I welcome your suggestions in the comments.

Finding a Lampshade

The Pinterest photo that I was using as my inspiration, had the bag tags definitely attached to white lampshade.  You couldn't see through to the other side of the shade, so it had to be laying against something.   I also realized that the shade had to be the same dimensions at the top and bottom if I wanted to do a pattern.  I also wanted the shade to be round or oval so that the tags would easily go around, instead of trying to conform to a hard edge, like a 90 degree angle.  So I found a 9" round linen shade and it turned out to be perfect.

Assembling the Tags

I had several misses when it came to punching holes in the tags, but my success came from a wood burning tool.  The tags splintered when I tried punching holes in them so I knew I needed something hot.  A basic woodburning tool had a long thin attachment that I thought would be perfect and it was.  Thankfully the tags I used for this project were big enough for my fingers to hold the tag and put holes into the sides without burning my hands and fingers.  The plastic cooled fast enough that when I flipped the tag around to do the other side, it wasn't hot anymore.

I purchased jump rings from Amazon and used those to attach the tags to one another.  

In order to keep my fingers and hands from being all cut up and sore, I used two different tools to open and close the jump rings.  I already had a pair of needle nose pliers so I used those and I purchased a pair of pliers that had a hollowed out area for the rings to fit into and make it easy to clamp them shut.   Sometimes I pushed too hard and closed the rings into a tiny spiral, but after a few tries, I found the perfect pressure to use to get them to just touch together.

Finding a Pattern

I followed the pattern that was the Pinterest inspiration, but not the colors, as I didn't have all those colors.  I used the colors that I had the most of and then tried not to repeat the same color way again as I went around.

My lampshade is 2 of the same color with a one tag shift as it proceeds down the lampshade.  It creates a nice diagonal line.  I thought about doing mostly white (since that's the color I have the most of) with the colored pieces randomly placed in the design, but I really wanted this first one to be as precise as possible.  I think my next project will be mostly white, so I can continue to play with the bread bag tags and not have to worry about running out of the colors I need.



Order of Operation

1. Separate the tags into colors. Further separate to size and shape, although I didn't do that.  It would be helpful though to know exactly how many of the shape/color you have available for your shade.

2. Start!

Decide how you want your tags to line up.  There are tabs that protrude out and corresponding places that go in to accommodate those tabs.  I discovered when looking through my tags that most had writing on a specific side, so I chose to have the writing be on the backside.  There were enough pieces that had the writing on the front side to make the shade look interesting.  So that's how I decided which way to face the tags.


3. Heat up burning tool and make it just hot enough to go through the tag but not smoke. Carefully push the heated element through the tag in six different areas.  Two at the top, two in the middle and two at the bottom.  I did one side first, then flipped it around and did the other.  I poked the wood burning tool through the backside of the tag so that the front facing side would be without scratches or blemishes from the tool or from scraping the wax off.
I used the pliers with the rounded shape to take the plastic off of the tags after the burner went through it.  The little plastic bits popped right off.  I usually did three or four tags at a time.

4. Attaching the tags together was fairly easy once I got the hang of it.  I opened up the jump ring by holding one side and using the flat pliers to force the ring open.  Then I put the tag on and attached to the next tag and closed the ring.  I held on to the left side of the jump ring with the needle nose pliers and held the right side with the flat pliers.  Then I used the flat pliers to gently squeeze together the ring.  Sometimes I had to squeeze on two different sides to get it to come together perfectly.

5.  Continue.  

For my 9" diameter lampshade I ended up with 28 tags across by 6 rows in length.  I haven't done the last several rows on my lampshade as I ran out of a couple of colors, but if I do end up completing the shade, I figure it will end up being 9 rows.

6. The holes on the very top row will be the only ones that are actually secured to the lampshade.  They are secured by pushing through an open jump ring (as open as you can) through the shade right underneath the top wire of the lampshade.  Secure one of the tags and push the jump ring closed with pliers.  Continue all the way around the lampshade.

7.   I had to change out a couple of rows to make the diagonal pattern I had come together perfectly.  Since I purchased the lampshade after I had the tags together, I really didn't know how many I needed.  Now I'd get the lampshade first so I would not have to redo a bunch.  However, the two ends came together perfectly and there is no hitch in the pattern or colors.  It looks like one continuous pattern.

8.  Put shade on lamp, plug it in and behold your own bread bag tag lamp shade!

DIY Post Card Swap part 2

We are already into the new year (2020) and I never did come back and finish my DIY Post Card Swap.  As I mentioned in the previous post, the Post Card Swap was an event by the creator of the Studio iHannah blog and if you signed up you were tasked with creating 10 handmade postcards to mail to others in the swap -- I had a few international swaps, so that was real fun knowing they were going to be sent to another country. 

I created most of my postcards out of paper ephemera (aka, stuff that most everyone throws away,) but I also used washi tape, magazine pages, stickers and bits and pieces of greeting cards. 

The above post card was made (top to bottom) from two pieces of magazine pages (the donut and candy), a paper band taken from around silverware at a restaurant (coffee), a postcard sent out from a local retailer about a vintage sale near the beach (VW bug and flamingo) and finally the bottom part is from a greeting card. 

The Beautiful card above is made with security envelopes, magazine cutouts, Kleenex box and yellow colored acetate.  I try to keep all of the hanging lamps that I can find in magazines.  It's so much fun to put them into a collage just hanging down from the top in whatever scene is going on.  This one looks like it could be highlighting the miniature people. 

One of our local pizza places has some of the best creative advertising.  They were talking about their great bread and had this gondolier riding in a bread stick!  How could I not use that.  It was pure comedy.  Then I found a magazine photo of real gondolas and gondoliers - the two were meant to be together.

Since this swap was all about mail, I chose to make one of the cards with several mail related items.  A pick up tag for my mail at my mailbox, the return address from an Etsy purchase I made with a woman from Russia, my Park and Fly tag, the number I received when I took my car in for service, the stamp I got on a piece of mail and of course the *Fra-jeel-a sticker on a package I received. 
*ya know, from A Christmas Story!

This one all started with a FLOW magazine.  I love those umbrella people and I also really liked the green paper with the abstract floral design and they were both found in that magazine.  Then of course, I found a hanging light.  The rest just sort of worked to make it look good. 

I worked long and hard to find a place for the skate boarding kid.  I had him all cut out and tried him on so many different backgrounds and configurations.  I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to place him.  I found this green plate or bowl that had just the right curves and the right size for the post card and that finally made the kid work.  Then I decided he could "jump the shark" while he was cruising through the mountains.  Unrealistic, sure, but fun!

The gorgeous fall colors of this mountainous area was the jumping off point for this postcard.  The zig zag of the orange from a another Kleenex box, I thought played well with the mountain colors.  The rest was fun foliage and of course a hanging element, this time a spider.  The base for this postcard was the back cover of a braille book, so I used a portion of a page of braille to go with it. 

The first post I showed 3 of the cards and this one 7, so that concludes the 10 handmade post cards that I made for the DIY Post Card Swap.    Coming up sometime soon, I will show what I received in the swap. 

I hope you have a great day!
Kristin

Lemon Basil Dressing - homemade

Lemon Basil Dressing
recipe by Steve Binder

makes 2 cups
2 oz container of basil leaves with small stems* finely chopped
½ cup honey
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
2-4 garlic cloves, crushed
1- 2 the juice of 1-2 lemons
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ c light olive oil (mild)

A local restaurant had the most wonderful lemon basil dressing and we always tried to bring home extra.  We would order extra with our meal but they rarely let us buy some to take home.  That would have been extra extra dressing and I guess that wasn't allowed.  

Enough was enough. We had to have that dressing.  My husband decided he was going to create a dressing that was as good or better than theirs and we would always be able to have it in the house! 

Since I no longer can trust premade dressings, this is made without any unnecessary preservatives, additives, MSG, nothing.  All real pure ingredients - as close as we could reasonably get. 

*I can usually find 4 oz containers of basil at our local Lucky's Market.  I take all the leaves off the big stems and leave the little stems with the leaves.  I whirl it up in the Cuisinart and divide it in half.  I usually get about 2½ ounces of chopped basil this way, so just over 1 ounce of basil per batch once it's all cleaned and chopped.

I put the 1+ ounce of whirled basil back in the Cuisinart.  Add in the lemon juice, minced garlic, honey, cider vinegar, and salt. Blend it all together and leave it running while slowly pouring in the olive oil.  The oil should emulsify the entire batch and it shouldn't separate for many days.  

The emulsifying process is new to me, so I'm not sure how long it will stay together.   But when I just whisked everything together, it stayed together long enough to pour onto my salads.  I like to put the dressing into a nice glass bottle (recycling at it's best - I use glass milk bottles or the Silly Cow hot chocolate mix jars.) I store the dressing in the fridge and when I want to use it, I let the contents warm up a bit and shake it real good to mix everything up again. If it's needed immediately I do a quick zap in the microwave.  

This is what the Lemon Basil dressing looks like when it's been just whisked together, no Cuisinart magic, and allowed to sit for a few minutes.  Just shake and pour to use.  

The photo at the top of the page shows the gifts that I'm giving to friends.  It's about 1 cup of Lemon Basil Dressing, in the Silly Cow jars.  They look so lovely, even though I can't for the life of my get the wording off of the jars.  I've tried a razor blade, nail polish remover, hot soapy water, the dishwasher - everything I can think of.  Sooo, the advertising is still on the bottles. That's the way it goes.  

I use the Lemon Basil dressing on so many things other than salad - steamed veggies, fried calamari, fish, chicken, a drizzle on sandwiches, etc.  It really is that good and versatile.



Lemon Basil Dressing
recipe by Steve Binder

makes 2 cups
2 oz container of basil leaves with small stems* finely chopped
½ cup honey
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
2-4 garlic cloves, crushed
1- 2 the juice of 1-2 lemons
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ c light olive oil (mild)


Prepare all of the ingredients, chop the basil in the Cuisinart, add the honey, vinegar, crushed garlic, juice of lemon(s) and salt.  Pulse until all is incorporated.  Then take the little lid off the top of the Cuisinart and slowly pour in the oil. When incorporated, stop the machine and taste test.  This is where you can add more lemon or salt if needed.  I use small lemons as they are easier to juice, so I usually need two of them. When taste testing is done, pour into desired container for storage in fridge. 

DIY Postcard Swap

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

DIY Post Card Swap is something I found through Studio iHanna just this year and just a few days ago.  The time to sign up has passed and the postcards should have been mailed out by now, but she has two of these swaps each year, so if you're interested, please get on her email list or follow her blog or Instagram. Those that used the special hashtag when posting #diypostcardswap can be used to see what postcards have been made and sent out. 

Sadly, my postcards did not get mailed out by the deadline, but they will be by Monday.  I hate being late!  I hate it!

I had such a great time creating my cards.  I made just slightly bigger versions of my Index Card A Day project this summer. I was delighted to pull out my ephemera (paper) and collect even more bits and pieces the few days I was creating the cards.  Steve, who usually rolls his eyes at me saving things that should be trash, helped collect a few things.  He does love to see the childlike excitement that comes over me!

Here is one of the first postcards I did for the swap.  My love of security envelopes is well known, but not for those that receive the card!  I created mountains with the envelopes and then used the stickers that I had just recently received from an Etsy shop, Lissovacraft, and the green stripes were from the packaging that she used.  I absolutely love her work and will someday get a handmade poster with her paper plants and flowers, but for now, I have stickers. 

I used a few Jacksonville magazines for this card and a magazine that we received from Amazon for kids toys.  The purple pinata was from that Amazon book.  It was too funny to not use.  There was a special section in the other magazine about doughnuts and cookies, so that worked real well with the pinata.

My birthday was last month and I hated to just bury the card that I received in a pile in my room so I recycled quite a bit of it into this post card.  The Sunset block near the bottom is from a wetnap that was given to someone at a restaurant.  I loved the retro look to it.  This particular one happened to go through the washer - so it's extra distressed. 

I created 10 postcards, so I hope you keep with me to see the remaining 7 in upcoming blog posts.  I promise it will be soon. 

Have a great day!
Kristin

Taco Seasoning - homemade

Would you like a great Taco seasoning mix that's pretty easy to put together and makes ground beef (or turkey or chicken for that matter) taste out of this world?  This homemade taco seasoning mix uses all real ingredients, no fillers, just real 100% spices and herbs.  If you want 100% real ingredients, make sure you read the labels on your spices to make sure. 

Some really great things have come about because of my quest to get artificial chemicals and ingredients out of my life.  Now I rarely if ever used store bought spice packets for my hamburger, so having an envelope of taco mix on hand was foreign to me.  When I made taco meat before this, I'd add in some chili powder and salt and that's about it.  I didn't feel the need to add more to it, but honestly, it was seriously bland.

When I married Steve, he regularly used seasonings to amp up the flavor for his taco meat.  It was only natural for him to want more flavor for his taco meat than just chili powder and salt.  He did occasionally use the taco seasoning envelopes, but was always concerned about the high salt content. We enjoy cooking together so finding something we both liked was important.

It wasn't until visiting my sister in Michigan one year that I saw her recipe for a homemade taco mix, that I realized we could make our own mix.  I took a picture of it and shared it with Steve.  He reminded me that he had a homemade mix, too, but hadn't made it in awhile.  Here I had thought that a homemade mix was an "ah ha" moment!  WOW!  We can do this at home! 

Clearly, at this point I wasn't much of a cook!

As it turned out, we liked Alison's taco mix very much and have been using it ever since.  Definitely a hit!

There are a lot of ingredients, but this mix is so good it's worth it to keep all of these spices in stock.  It's not overwhelmingly salty or sweet or peppery or hot.  For me, it's just right.   I do have to admit though, I do not use the full amount of black pepper as in the recipe, but that's because I am not a pepper person.  But I will give the recipe as written and not my wimpy version.

A few years ago Steve and I created a cookbook for our families and in it we included this taco seasoning recipe.   One version is nearly equivalent to a single package of a store bought taco mix envelope and the other is the recipe x4 (times 4), so that you can have some on hand whenever you wanted it. 

The photos are of the x4. I took these photos in my kitchen just a few days ago.  Who knew it would turn out to be so gorgeous.  I put the chili powder in the dish first, so all that you can see is just the little red top right in the middle. 

Taco Seasoning
(equivalent to one envelope of store bought)

1 T chili powder
¼ t garlic powder
¼ t onion powder
¼ t dried oregano
½ t paprika
1½ t ground cumin
1 t sea salt
1 t black pepper



Taco Seasoning  x4

4 T chili powder
1 t garlic powder
1 t onion powder
1 t dried oregano
2 t paprika
2 T ground cumin
4 t sea salt
4 t black pepper

(2 Tablespoons of homemade taco seasoning = one store bought 1.25oz packet.)


*Most of the spices I use come from Penzey's Spices in Wisconsin.  We had a local brick and mortar store up until recently.  I am seriously bummed they closed but the rent just got too high for them to stay. They have an awesome online website and I can just order from there, or when traveling I look for a store.  I have no affiliation with Penzey's, I've just been buying from them for a few decades and believe they are the best. 


Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great day!
Kristin

Thirteen years already - liver transplant

There are times in our lives when we know life is going to change but it isn't until looking back you realize just how much.  13 years ago my life changed and a lot of lives changed.

My husband at the time, Tom, was just given a life saving liver transplant - on this day, Dec 23, 2005. My sister was in Daytona Beach, Florida and my mother was coming into town on Christmas Day to spend the holidays with us.  Tom had a car in our driveway that was supposed to be picked up by a car transport service and dropped off to a guy that bought it from Tom. 

Tom with his favorite Post Transplant Coordinator

Nothing in that crazy Christmas time of 2005 worked out as planned.  My mother and sister stayed in a hotel in Jacksonville instead of at my home in Daytona Beach and Tom's parents flew down the day or two after Christmas, to be with their son after transplant.  

 The guy who paid for the car and didn't receive it when he wanted,  was sure we were Craigslist scammers.  I mean who receives the call for a liver transplant the exact time as he's supposed to be preparing a car to be delivered?? He did finally get the car but it was a few weeks later. 

Oh and did I mention that we closed on a condo in Jacksonville while Tom was in the hospital?  Yep, Dec 28th.  The folks came up to his hospital room and had him sign everything.   

Since we couldn't move into the new place immediately, we had to rent a furnished condo for a month in Jax while Tom recuperated and had appointments at the Mayo Clinic nearly every day. 

At this point in the story we are only to day 5 post transplant.  

Whew!

Tom really came through transplant and recuperation remarkably well.  He had several complications through the year - an emergency surgery 6 weeks post transplant, unexpected,  debilitating pain about six months later and other assorted things, but now I see it is not out of the ordinary. I said then and say now, that it was the hardest year of my life. I was beat emotionally and physically.   We had it easier than some and harder then others. It's a journey for sure. 

Tom and Stamer at a potluck dinner.

Tom received a life saving transplant and in so many ways, so did I.   We moved to Jacksonville,  purchased some rental properties,  fixed them up, I started going to the Liver, Kidney, Pancreas Support Group and made a lot of friends. I learned so much more about transplant, recovery, patience,  love etc., and found a real calling with those support group folks.  I rented my condos to transplant patients,  got to know most of them very well and went along for several years just being a part of the group. 

A dinner with friends - I'm standing next to Steve, who wasn't yet my husband!  I hadn't even thought of it yet. Tom is in the blue shirt, back row. 

One day (or a month or year) I decided that I had a voice and wanted to change up some things, get more people to move to Jacksonville,  have lunches be an every week activity after group, make potluck once monthly ever month, and more.  I realized this group was 100% where I belonged and damn it felt good!

A typical scene - us sitting chatting and having a meal.

At some point, (not in order) I managed to get several families to move to Jacksonville, became one of the leaders in our group, divorced my husband, moved into one of my rentals, was the caregiver to a friend (Steve) who was in need of a kidney transplant,  traveled all along the East Coast staying with friends and transplant recipients,  blogged for many years and became a pretty decent photographer along the way.  Then I married Steve and the love bubble was formed. 

If Tom hadn't needed a liver transplant and received it at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville I would not have the life I have now.  I am so very grateful to the donor family that said yes to donating their son's organs.  In their grief they saw life in others.  Tom is a pretty healthy, active, man in his post transplant years.  He thinks I am a pretty awesome wife and that Steve is VERY lucky!   I believe I'm the lucky one to have helped two people through transplant as their caregiver and to have found my best life with the transplant family.

Happy Liverversary, Tom

Merry Christmas everyone
Love,

Kristin