This is it!!! 700 POSTS! How about a GIVEAWAY?!

My goodness!!! Can you believe how fast 100 posts whizzes by??! No matter, I love blogging, I love my precious blog friends and I can only hope that I can inspire you just a tiny fraction of how much you all inspire me by your comments, by your beautiful blogs, writing, decorating and wonderful artwork!!! What a venue this land of blog is ~ I should call it

The Land of Inspiration!!!

So my giveaway....well, I've been thinking about it and I'd like to give away this new upcoming tutorial!! It's CHOCK FULL of gorgeous images and three different project ideas.

If you should choose to purchase this tutorial, "Christmas Treasures" this week, the winner will get their choice of tutorials from Lessons from The Nest!

I'll also include my originals that have been created to demonstrate the tutorial! That way you can see first hand how they look and plus you have instructions and images to make more ~

• The shaker photo display

• A vintage postcard ornament

• A vintage tag to hang on the tree or to grace a gift

I may come up with a few more goodies to give away to other winners because I always love choosing more than one name!

So please leave a comment on THIS POST and please, if you do not have a blog, leave your email address so I can contact you if you win!!

The contest ends next Thursday evening at 6:00 pm EST so I can announce the winners in my Friday post ~

I'm still working on getting the tutorial in the Lessons from The Nest blog ~ hopefully by this afternoon!!!

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I just had to show you this! A couple of years ago I bought this beautiful baby cap at Lakewood Antiques Market South (before it closed) from a sweet woman who handmade each and every one. I bought it because I wanted so badly to learn how to make one. I guess I thought if I had it I could study it and teach myself! Hah!

But little did I know I'd have a precious little granddaughter to wear it! Don't you love the scalloped edge?

Thank you always for visiting and inspiring me ~

hugs and love to you all!

~ Happy Friday ~

xxoo, Dawn

Another tutorial in the works and a gift for you!

I just love antique Christmas postcards. I have a wonderful collection that my DH purchased from an antique dealer that we were supposed to resell but I just couldn't let them go! (I see that surprised look on your face) The graphics are amazing and some are heavily embossed.

I'm working on a tutorial with a gathering of several ideas but the neat thing about this combination tutorial is that all the images will be included for you to make them!! I've picked the prettiest images and scanned them in to be included. The first item will be these beautiful postcard ornaments that can be hung on the tree or even placed on a gift ~ you can see a sampling of the images that will be included below ~

This is one of the other items that will be included in this tutorial ~ a shaker photo display which is beautiful displaying these vintage images for the holidays but can display photos later. I will include a ton of images so you can make a lot of them to give as gifts! The best thing is you can find these salt shakers at the thrift store or second hand shops and run them through the dishwasher so they are all sparkly clean. (I think sparkly is my new fav word!)

I thought I'd show you a photo from last Christmas of my snowman trio. They are dressed in plaids and oh-so-happy!! Just another version of the Sparkly Snowman ~

And lastly as I was looking through my postcard collection today, I found this adorable illustrated card! I hope you enjoy this one ~ it was quite textured and I tried to tone it down a bit. Just right click to save to your computer!

Today is not one but TWO of our sons birthday! (What were the chances of that happening?!) David who is 24 now and Brad is 22! I love you guys so much ~ Happy Birthday Sweeties!!!

Well, I'm apparently in Christmas mode now!! Not to forget about Thanksgiving though. I just love Thanksgiving! I truly feel that a thankful heart is a happy heart ~

I hope you have a great Thursday sweet friends....

xxoo, Dawn

The beginnings of a journal tutorial ~

I am so excited about the tutorial I'm working on now . . . you can see the beginnings of it in the photo below! It's a handmade, from scratch, nature journal ~ and the neat thing is, I'm learning too as I make it!

The nature journal that I finished a few weeks ago was created inside of the complete cover of a small music book. It was really wonderful to work with but the chances of finding another is slim to none. Soooo....I thought, why not construct one myself! And believe it or not, the method that I've used is not hard at all ~

I'm still shooting step-by-step photos of the embellishing process and hope to have it in my store, The Little Speckled Egg by tomorrow evening.

I just get the biggest thrill making things! What is that??!! The neat thing about these small journals (and I'm finding that I'm becoming more and more "green") is that they can be constructed out of simple things that are around your home.

Plus, they don't have to be "nature" journals, you could make one to take on a special vacation or trip. How about creating one to give to a sweet mom-to-be to jot down her thoughts while in the hospital having her baby and after she's met her sweet angel? It would be a treasured keepsake ~ Boy this is starting to sound like a serious sales pitch but I'm just excited about the possibilities!

A spare copy of the sheet music cover printed on thin muslin, hmmmm.....I've got to think of something neat to do with this ~ I love looking at it!! I've got it pinned to the back of the advent calendar so I can stare at it ~

On a totally different note, I've had this crazy idea and some of you may have already tried this. I've always loved this precious, chubby bluebird and I bought some molding compound at Michael's a few weeks ago. I would like to attempt to make a mold of this sweet baby and make some from plaster! Have any of you tried this? Should I use plaster of paris? Who knows, I may not be able to create a decent mold but I want to try!

Can't you see a chubby, cream colored, slightly antique-washed little bird??

Today it was absolutely GORGEOUS here in Georgia.....it's like you have to soak in each and every beautiful fall day before they all vanish ~

Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday sweet friends!

xxoo, Dawn

Rubbings and a new tutorial in the works!

This is such a wonderful idea I had to share it with you! From my clippings stash ~ rubbings from the covers of very old, embossed books! How neat is that? You could incorporate the images into your artwork too. Makes me think, what else around here is embossed that I can use to make a rubbing! This will make you look at textures and surfaces differently ~ What do you use when you make a rubbing?

(Click all my photos to enlarge if you need to)

Plus, I've been working on a new tutorial!! I have an order for this wonderful French silver tray collage and decided it would make a great tutorial as well ~ I should have it ready for purchase in my tutorial blog really soon!

OK, don't faint but I'm heading to bed and it's 11:40pm Georgia time!!
I'm trying so hard to get on a better schedule ~

Wishing you a great Tuesday!!!

xxoo, Dawn