To Dye For

As I've mentioned before, I absolutely love SisterDiane of CraftyPod, and every day I am reminded why. She tweeted about a nifty tissue paper craft she spotted over on Things to Make and Do. She said she was "Ready to blow off my entire to-do list and spend the day making tie-dye tissue paper," so I knew it had to be extra-good. I tweeted back, "I will if you will," and she took me up on the deal. The race was on and I went straight for the finish line! Here is the result of all that tweetin':

Even though my folding prowess stinks; I was too lazy to put the dye into bowls and took a short cut by dripping the dye directly on to the tissue paper; got it a little too wet on one corner so it ripped;

and I have multi-colored fingers;

I would say the results were not too shabby.

Cool, eh?

Oh, yeah! The tissue paper was recycled from the packaging of a prize I won by entering a contest on Diane's mother's (Pam) Web site, Gingerbread Snowflakes. So in a way her unintended gift will keep on giving because I'll be wrapping someone's Christmas present with it.

Thanks, Diane, for getting me off my duff and inspiring me to go make some art!

Passing on the Crafty-Goodness

I have been itching to find the time to post something so it wouldn't look like I've abandoned the blogosphere! On the contrary, I'm trying to educate myself on how to do it better. My first step was to purchase two e-books by Sister Diane of CraftyPod, the podcast & blog all about making stuff.

The first one is Making a Great Blog, A Guide for Creative People, the second is Creating a Blog Audience, An Unconventional Marketing Guide.

Since I haven't been able to read them fully yet, I can't review them for you in-depth right now. I can tell you, however, just from the sections I was able to skim over, along with the many reviews I've read, I am confident I will be able to apply some of Sister Diane's wisdom to my own thing I've got going here. She writes in such a way that it can be easily translated into just about any type of blog.

I discovered Sister Diane through iTunes by subscribing to her audio CraftyPod podcast. My job is such that it allows me to listen to my iPod while scanning the hours away, and Diane's is my all-time favorite, hands-down. I encourage you to give her a listen, I guarantee you will learn something new each time.

Really quickly, a lot of "stuff" has been going on that's kept me way too busy to blog, but I hope to be able to ramble a bit by touching on things such as the loss of a dear friend, my beloved 15-year-old dawg and, on the lighter side, the start of the new hockey season featuring our San Jose Sharks (Gooooooo, Sharks!).

That's it for now. As Sister Diane, one of THE most crafty guru-mentors-most-awesome-human-beings I have had the pleasure of knowing signs-off, "...and in the meantime, craft on!"