Birthday Week!

This, my peeps, is my birthday week.  No big celebrations planned, just excited to have made it another year.  Before my daughter Brandi went to Heaven, she and I always celebrated birthday week.  We always did little special things for each other each day.  I miss that.  Its times like this when I miss her most.

Over the weekend, I was going through some of my stash (I listed some doll making supplies on Etsy) and I ran across some chair spindles that I saved from the trash last summer.  They were from a couple of chairs that were sitting on the deck and were being ruined from the rain.  I tore them apart and threw the badly damaged pieces in the kindling pile and salvaged the spindles.  I really didn't know quite what to do with them but here is what I came up with:

Here is what I did:  I drilled a hole into a large wooden ball that I had on hand, just big enough to fit the dowel end of the spindle.  I cut the spindle off so that the widest part would be on the bottom (for stability)  I freehanded the wings and cut them out of very thin plywood (I had the scrap)  I painted the ball flesh tone, the wings and base (a scrap of 1 x 3" cut into a square) white and put a coat of crackle over the already brownish colored spindle.  I recoated when dry and where needed.  Paint white over the crackle but make sure it is really dry before you do that.  Add glitter to one side of the wings.  I use modpodge to adhere the glitter.  Assemble.  I screwed the spindle to the base and put wood glue in the drill hole on the head.  I glued and screwed on the wings.  Then trim.  Moss and tiny grapevine wreath on the head, draw in eyes with black sharpie, blush cheeks.  I put pearls around the "neck" and glued on some rusty bells.  What do you think???

I have a bunch of spindles, so I am going to try some shorter ones, and vary the wings a bit.  Any ideas?  Let me know.

I also finished one of my big angels:

I added a candle box and a hand tipped silicone bulb.  I really like her but I worry about transporting her to my shows.  Any ideas???

Better get to work.  I have so many projects in the works.