Ten Things About August for Mary

 My friend Mary sends out Mary Mail with all kinds of fun things she's done and photos and fun videos!  I so love getting it!  Today Mary asked us to send her our top ten things about August.  Normally I'd be wishing we could just skip August, because I'm not a fan of heat.  However, this month has been extraordinary!  Thanks to Mary, I'm documenting it so I'll never hope to skip August again.  Thanks Mary!

Top Ten Things About August

1. It was like Christmas!  I won 2 blog giveaways and received 10 charms from a swap, AND just read I came in second in a contest to design a menu for a local coffee shop and won a $20 gift certificate!

2. I got invited to enter a national gift wrapping contest by a PR person for 3M who saw a wrapping paper sculpture project I did last year. (I'm sure hundreds of folks were invited)

3. Kneaders opened a restaurant near us!  Oh my heck, the chocolate dome dessert is to die for!

4. I made a see-through mosaic that hangs in a window and I love it!  I love mosaics!

5. I got invited to join three dark themed Etsy shop owner groups.

6. I entered a challenge piece in a Smeared and Smudged challenge. (Pictured above) It's a Warholesque Edgar Alan Poe.

7. I was asked to be on a design team called Poison Peas Please.

8. Several of my Cool2Craft web duties were eliminated when my fearless leader streamlined that site, but she wants to pay me the same, so now I'm being paid for my craft projects, which is what she'd planned to do as soon as it was possible!  Yea!  Tiffany rocks!

9. I found colored metallic pastes that dry completely!  They work like Rub-N-Buff, which only comes in gold and patina, but is permanent when it dries.  Eee!  I ordered them yesterday!

10. My kidlets and I had a pirate party!  Any chance to wear a pirate hat and make cardboard treasure chests is gold!  Arrrrgh!

Poe-etic Smeared and Smudged Member Blog Hop

This month the Smeared and Smudged Forum is celebrating everything Edgar Allen Poe, and our August blog hop is ex-Poe-nentially fabulous!. The challenge was to create a piece inspired by one of Poe's poems.

My entry is called The Moaning and the Groaning of the Bells based on The Bells by Poe.  The poem is below.  Check out all the lovely art works here:

Terra
Tori
Susan S.
Lady Brayton
Black Dragon
Julia
Jane
Windy
Kristy
Lisa
Shell
Candace < that's me
Wendy
Joyce
Monique
Madelein Bouquet
Ike
Vee Cassidy
Sandy
Little Black Kitten
Fiona

 I

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.


II

Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! -
From the molten - golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! - how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!