Autonomous wax

'Tis the season for a new greeting on the front door. I make these hang-signs for holidays, for seasons, for reminding the boys to dump the sand from their shoes. This one has an old drawer pull with distressed paint still on it. I love the handle, the weight of it, the patina of the exposed metal. And I reluctantly added it to my sign, telling myself if I found a better use for it, I'd grant permission to deconstruct it. The sign also has some splattered crayon wax (with rhinstones), and oh how this brings back a memory. One Christmas on Cooper Hill Road, my mom had a whole tray of red votives alight on a coffee table. My brother, being a boy cooped up mid-winter in Connecticut, was under the table, and sort of lifting it with his feet. You see where this is going? So we had red wax on the oriental carpet, and one very angry mom. After attempting to remove the wax by iron-&-brown-paper-bag method, we were left with a stain, and a lesson-learned. Even here on my sign, I am reminded how autonomously hot wax (mis)behaves.

Christmas Quail

Here stands the Christmas Quail. She's supposed to grace my holiday postage, but I'm struggling with the color of her plummage. The good folks over at Zazzle have printers that print a few steps darker, and I have to plan for that...so we'll see. I wish I could say the Christmas cards were this far along! I'm quite tempted to buy a few boxes, pen our names & send them off. But then I recall the exponential satisfaction of handmade...