St. Patrick's Day Countdown with Lisa Vollrath

I like Lisa's art.

Every now and then, she offers free downloadable images, usually pertaining to a holiday.
This time, she asks for a link first. Fair enough. Here is the link for St. Patrick's Day images.

If you do link and load, please don't pass those images on to others. Invite them to download their own copies directly as well.

But her clock is ticking. They'll likely be gone in the next couple of days.

Feb CMP ATCs

I participated in the Creative Mom Podcast ATC swap for February.

Some swaps ask for participants to mail the art to the host, who mixes or matches and re-sends out. This works well for large projects like an alphabet swap. 26 participants are each assigned a letter and make 26 cards for that letter. The host receives the 26 "L" cards and put one each into 26 participant bags, like Valentines. Then, every participant receives an alphabet deck with 26 letter cards from 26 artists, included one's self.

The CMP swap is easier. Rather than mailing all cards to Creative Mom, we send just our address. She does the mixing and sends each person the name and address of their recipient. It is not a matched group. I send to Person R, I receive a card from Person V. Next month, I'm assigned person B and get a card from Person H.




I received this art card in the Feb Swap. The theme was Alphabet Soup. This has nothing to do with the theme, but who cares. It is sunny and bright in midwinter and I learned on the swap page that it was one of her first ATC attempts.



Here is the back, with contact info fuzzed out.



Here is my contribution. I love playing with font and color and shape of the alphabet.

The Concert

I can check some info about my blog visitors through Site Meter. One bit of information is what key words were put into Google or other search engine to bring that seeker to me.

This week, someone was seeking with the words {short British crosswalk piano}

I know exact what you mean. I loved that little moive when I saw it in junior high music class and I still remember chunks of it fondly.

The IMDb says that it is The Concert (1974).

Ordinary Guy walks into a London black and white striped cross walk and hears piano music, as if he were stepping on large keys. He investigates for a while, puzzled, then delighted. He plays on the wristcuff of a London Bobbie / police officer. He taps a trill on an old lady's teeth. Anything black, white, and vaguely rectangular becomes a music making device.

Then, just as abruptly, the gift has run out and the concert is over. He hops expectantly through the cross walk and hears nothing by typical street sounds. He re-composes (ha, ha) himself and goes on his way.

Alas, I cannot find it on You Tube.

Arrow of Light arrows

I have been a Cub Scout Den Leader for just over four full years. My six Webelos are crossing over to Boy Scouts soon (as soon as this weather lets up). As a remembrance, I took ideas from other Scout Leaders and made career arrows for my boys. I chose to use beads to represent the accomplishments they archived in their time with us.


Here is a full shot of a different boy's career arrow.



I chose feathers of blue & gold (Cubs) and red & green (BSA).
I attached them with hot glue, then lashed them with gold cord, just like in the Webelos book.

I added name beads (fuzzed out for posting) on a pipe cleaner / chenille stem, with a blue and yellow glow bead.

(I love glow stuff. Our den behavior markers were glow MegaBloksTM that were my wedding gift from my husband.)



I used translucent and opaque tri-beads to represent each segment patch they earned. There is a stopper bead on the end. The hole was small, so I used elastic gold cord.

Next are shiny pony beads to represent beltloops, silver for sports and gold for academics, just like the loops themselves. I couldn't find copper beads for the BB and Archery loops, so I used shiny red. These holes were large enough to use yarn. I used variegated rainbow yarn.

The large orange bead represents the Tiger badge. It was a plain wooden bead that I colored with a dry erase marker. I couldn't get paint to look good. Each Rank bead has matching glow beads above and below it. I used opaque tri-beads for the totem beads, with a glow stopper bead

Finally, the blue bead represents Bobcat. I added two shiny blue pony beads to represent the 8 steps to earn the Bobcat.



Red wooden bead for Wolf badge, yellow pony beads for the progress towards rank beads, a gold oval bead for the gold arrow point and silver oval beads in two columns to the silver arrow points earned. The oval beads have small holes, so I used gold cord.

Teal wooden bead for Bear badge with red progress beads

Dark blue wooden bead for the Webelos badge and unpainted wooden bead for the Arrow Light badge. The star beads are in five colors to represent the five categories of activity pins. These are the exact beads we had on pipe cleaners for each boy's den doodle. Earning the compass badge added a fat blue disk bead. Earning arrow points after each four more stars placed a shiny purple pony bead on the stack.



The arrowhead was purchased at our Scout Shop. I used hot glue to affix it to the dowel (painted with gold glitter paint) and then lashed it on, knotting in the back and sealing the knot in hot glue.

The arrow has glow Rexlace for hanging purpose.