Charming, charming, charming

I guess I was feeling charming at 3 in the morning, because I woke up early yesterday/Friday, to storms, licking cats and a noisy water softener (again) and decided it was high time I assemble my charms from the ZNE http://www.zneart.com Castle in the Meadow charm swap last Sunday in Detroit. The bracelet in the bottom pic is the result. All but three were made by ZNE members in quantities of 25 each for the swap. The green glass rings, ruler bit cut for me by Kris of Retro Cafe Art Gallery in Indy http://www.retrocafeart.com and baby moon by Melanie of Earthenwood Studio http://www.earthenwoodstudio.com I added later. The soldered charm in the very middle, the Scrabble 'G' is by Donna of Bonnie Blue Denim http://bonniebluedenim.blogspot.com who was nice to enough to make everyone a charm with personalized initials, so mine has an 'S' on the back.

Immediately above my ZNE bracelet is the nautical charm bracelet I also made Friday morning, this one for my sister-in-law. It has procrastination all over it, since she had given me four charms from Michael's in late March and asked me to make her a bracelet like the one I got from Kat of Altered Kat or Great Musings on etsy and here http://alteredkat.blogspot.com. That one is the turquoise bracelet in the second photo from top. It has over 50 charms on it, so trying to make her four charms into something like that took me awhile to pull together. In the end, I used little glass fish from Debbie/Oh Kitten at Chubbyville, glass beads from Laurie of Loud Life on etsy and Living Out Loud http://loudlife-laurieblaumarshall.blogspot.com and also the mother-of-pearl charms from my Altered Kat bracelet. Who says I can't make nice and share?

And finally, in reverse order, the top photo is a review of my Art & Soul Hampton charm swap. Yes, there is a charm bracelet in there somewhere, along with 32 unique, hand-made charms.

Thank you! And Oh Drat! Procrastination. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Thanks everyone for the kind comments! What fun it was to read such supportive comments from all over the WORLD. I can now edit this to say "world" as I finally had a chance to read the profiles and blogs from some of the commenters. I am thrilled to say I received feedback from not only dear Chel on the West Coast (and top of the ZNE world) but also several from Canada and one from Norway. I am truly amazed! Although the whole idea of a blog is to act as a personal weblog, electronic record, portfolio, journal or diary, one of the other underlying ideas of course is knowing full well it is all being shared with the on-line community. Yes, Laurie, I think it was 1978, maybe 1976, ouch!!

So, it was fun to see who was reading my blog and what they liked; what it meant to them. I am truly touched as well. It was also fun to share in an e-tradition of a 100th post celebration and drawing. Soooo, speaking of drawing, I am going to have to insert a tiny bit of suspense (just like all the commercials in Dancing with the Stars). I have collected the comments, but I want to photograph the actual drawing and draft my kiddos or DH to do the honors. As I am sleeping in yet another hotel tonight for work, look for the announcement hopefully Wednesday night. This is work-imposed, unwillful procrastination. I'll get those ephemera treats right out! Thanks again and keep reading (and commenting).

I'm also eager to do another facelift to my blog late fall. Still working on a new banner, and trying to decide on my next color scheme. For now, I will leave a little sketch/doodle that I just decided is how I feel about procratinating (even a tiny bit).