Ridiculous

I knew, even as I was writing it, that today's to-do list was absurd.

I was awake at 5:30, enjoying the silent house.  Basking in the weird blue glow of my light therapy box - savoring my coffee and cats and dreaming of the day ahead.

I started jotting down all the ideas that were floating around.

Onto two pages.

 

So what's the first project I conquered?

One that wasn't even on my list of course.

 

 As I was thinking of the types of gift tags I wanted to make, I thought it would be nice to have some marbled paper in Christmas colors.  It doesn't take much arm-twisting to get me to marble papers.  I spent a pleasant meditative hour making papers like this one:

 and this one:

 and this one:

And then I decided I might want to do some stamping on my gift tags, but I don't have any Christmas stamps, so I decided I'd better make some.

( you may have noticed THAT wasn't on my list either)

But now I have two new stamps.

So let's look at which list items I did accomplish.

I painted a ton of tissue paper.

I lay it on big sheets of freezer paper and it works really well - doesn't move around or tear.

But it takes forever to dry.

So this is what the dining room looked like for most of the day:

 

And now I have a stack of luscious tissue.  I love the way the Golden fluid acrylics look on tissue.  They are translucent, and almost glow, and the wrinkles in the wet tissue make all these cool variations in color.  The tissues look great in collage.

Now it's about 10:00AM and it's time to tackle the Christmas present for my swap partner in my "Super Mail Artists" group.  I have a dozen or so little mail art related packages wrapped and packed in a larger box and ready to go out tomorrow.  I spent a ridiculous amount of time decorating the box.

It was one of those sturdy boxes with a lid that are sold for photo storage.

Side one:

  

Side two:

(notice how I used my new papers?)

side three:

side four:

(my new stamp!)

Lid:

 

The whole thing is so awesome, I'm tempted to mail it to myself.

So when that's finished it's 12:30.

Lunch break, followed by a trip to the library, haircuts for me and Max, spray painting some clothespins, laundry (ongoing), and not going to the gym. I even managed to shower.

I also went out and cut a bunch of greens from the yard and made my window boxes festive:

and I wrapped all the little presents for the SMA Christmas present while we had our traditional Sunday night family movie night.  (Disney's classic 1965 live action feature "That Darn Cat")

Plus it was indoor s'mores night.

But wait, sometime after the haircuts but before dinner/movie/s'mores, I started making tags.  

I decided all the new marbled paper wasn't going to work for this purpose.  The red paint came out looking very pink.  It looks great until you put it up against something red.

So I switched gears and decided to try the polymer clay ornaments that have been on my "try this" list since summer.

I tied them to simple tags made of cardstock and washi tape.  I can put them on a package, and then the recipient can pull off the cardstock and have a keepsake ornament.

Then, since I hadn't used my new snowflake stamp yet, I made some more tags.

All they need are ribbons.

and while the red and green washi tape was out, I made some quick tiny tags.

I think red and green baker's twine will look nice in these, no?

I didn't get to any of the bookbinding or sewing stuff I wanted to do today. No progress on the commission for my sister. No catching up on correspondence.  

(I'm such a slacker.) 

But I did add another layer to the 40 day experiment.

And I drew the winner for the Mail Me Some Art giveaway.

And posted the last of the swap items for the year on MMSA.

And wrote this post.

Not bad for a single day.

I'm off to bed.

Something tells me I'm not getting up in 5 hours to go to the gym.