A Recycling Challenge, IF You're Game

I picked up a baby crib bumper and brought it home the other day. No, I have no baby at my house and if I did, I wouldn't be using this bumper, anyway. Baby bumpers are not in vogue now, due to safety concerns; advisors are saying they are not safe and don't advise their use in cribs (http://www.parenting.com/article/sids-prevention).

SO! That leaves a lot of used bumpers with no place to go. Taking this particular one apart (I HAVE took other bumpers apart), I found it had a LOT of batting inside. Not only was it thick, but it had been doubled. So I took it out, unfolded it and then pulled it apart so it wasn't so thick. It was about 2" thick before I split it, and would have been too thick for many of my imagined uses.

My challenge, IF you want to play, is to buy a used bumper, take it apart, wash it, and repurpose it into other things. See how many things you can make for it. You might want to post an estimate of the number in the comments section. Then send me pictures and I will post them here.

I am thinking I can make at least ten things from the bumper I have. Here is the first thing I made from it:

It's a dress for my Little Girl Root-haired! Since she's not done, the dress isn't done either, but it will be soon, I hope. I'm going to make fairy ears like this on her:

My dolls have to be very patient as I love to make heads, as I've said before, but sometimes I am not very excited to make the bodies. Still, I will finish this one first, probably, because she is "farther along."

 

Stay tuned!! Winter is a great time for projects like this, although the weather has been so mild in the PacNW, that our grass is starting to grow.

 

 

Hey, Gang!! We have EARS!!!

I don't like making ears much. However, perhaps I am turning into an adult because instead of putting off making ears on these four, I did them all in the same evening. Once I made ears on two of the heads, the other two seemed much easier.
 

However, I changed my mind about the green-haired lass and decided that she SHOULD be a fairy, just like my friend Karla always says. I decided I was "in the mood" to make some really cool wings for her, wide and lacy and beautiful. How? I don't know, but something will come to me if I listen for it.

 I've already changed one of her ears to be a fairy ear, but then got worried because I really wasn't sure what fairy ears looked like. So I looked online for pictures of fairy ears (Google image search, "fairy ears"), and there were lots of fairies but only a few good pictures of the ears. (Did you know you can BUY ear extensions to make your OWN ears look like fairy ears??!! Now I'm thinking about next Halloween already!!)

Anyway, I found that the ear I'd fixed for Miss Green Eyes, looked just fine, so all I need to do now is make her another one. I've got a feeling the other three are going to demand to be fairies, too, and have fairy ears, of course. Believe it or not, my dolls, even when they're only a head, DO make their wishes known to me, and I try to listen respectfully. Maybe it's my muse talking, and not the dolls, but whatever, they usually get what they want.  

Doll Artist Arley Berryhill thinks this is all nonsense, and that dolls do NOT communicate with their makers, however he's a man, and maybe dolls (or muses) just don't communicate with MEN makers!! What does HE know about women and their dolls?!! (Sorry Arley, I gotta tell it like it IS, man!!)

Well, it just turned midnight and outside the wind is blowing and the rain is pouring down, perhaps sideways--I can't tell, it's DARK out there!!We are on Round One of a three or four part "Pineapple Express," which weather people characterize as a giant fire hose aimed at the west coast.

When another one of these hit on January 5 of this year, we got 7.26 inches of rain from 3 pm Sunday to 2 pm Monday and several houses slide into their streets due to mudslides, and one lady was trapped when a hill slide down on top of her house. Miraculously, no one died and we were very grateful for that.

Our town was again isolated from the outside world, as the bluff  along the highway at the entrance to our town slid for the first time in about 20 years.:



A California company stabilized it in 1991, I think. and we all doubted it would keep the bluff from sliding. We were all wrong--it worked for all of that 20 years. We just got way too much rain for even our spongy soil to soak up.

 So some of us are a little worried that if we get as much rain as some are predicting, things may become unstable again. We will see. If our house was close to a bluff or at the foot of one, I think I'd check into the hotel for the night and bring my pets.

G'night for now. I know some of YOU are buried in snow!! Stay warm and stay tuned. Barb