The Arts in the Cards atc group’s challenge for this trade  is Fabulous Fakes. Karen Musgrave is our hostess.

I have to admit to being totally stymied and every kind of fake I came up with just didn’t fit the bill.  When I started thinking about things that we value that turn out to be fakes, I thought of gold and how easily we can be fooled if we aren’t careful.  So my cards are “Fool’s Gold”.

I used gold lame and two different golden ribbons on the background. The center golden pieces are the circle with a dot n the middle, the alchemist’s symbol for gold.  This gave me a chance to tryout some of my powders I showed you in a previous post. They were wonderful! I used the brown powder and dusted it over the ribbons. It stuck the most where some of the fabric glue had come through but it still blended very nicely. I finished them off with a coating of workable fixative. As my way lately, I will leave the edges raw.

On the back is this quote: 
Gold is one of the seven metals of alchemy. For the alchemist, it represents the perfection of all matter on any level, including that of the mind, spirit and soul. The symbol for  gold [ a circle with a dot in the middle] could also be used to represent the sun in astrology.

So…..I wanted a new iron for Christmas. Right before the holiday there were many discussions on the Quiltart list about them. The general consensus was that the most expensive ones didn’t last and people talked about replacing them on a regular basis. I won’t mention brands but you can guess which ones I’m talking about.

So I picked out and DH bought me a middle of the road iron for a gift, $60 with a stainless sole plate. 1600 watts of power. Sounds great, right? It lasted long enough to be turned on about 6 times and then it would NOT turn off at all. I had to unplug the thing every time.

Back to the store and I exchanged it for another brand ; 1500 watts with a stainless sole plate.  That was January 11. You guessed it….quit working today. This one quit steaming unless I hit the burst of steam.

Back to the store again to get my money back. I came home and dug out my old Black and Decker. Great heat, steams like a charm it just has the annoying habit of turning itself off when it shouldn’t. With any luck it will limp along until the tag sales start in full force and I can buy a drawer full of gently used irons that maybe were  made in the USA.  The terribly frustrating part about our global economy and all these products made overseas??? This is just my personal opinion…the companies are saving huge dollars farming our work overseas but they aren’t passing anything along to the American consumer except second rate products.

Our little park model mobile home in McAllen, TX sold today. That part of our life experience  is now memory.

Ron and I sat here last night and listed some of the things we would not have done or seen if we hadn’t been there for a few winter Texan seasons.

I would never have experienced the Ropas and been able to have all the wonderful ethnic textiles I have in my stash.

We would never have experienced the Mexican Flea Markets where there might be a stall of chickens next to a stall of fresh vegetables.

We wouldn’t have seen the desert cacti in bloom as far as we could see while driving back from South Padre where the beach that day was full of man of way jelly fish.

We couldn’t have gone to the Killer Bees Hockey Games or the farm team basketball games.

We met some wonderful people from all over the northern hemisphere and enjoyed many dinners and fun times. We experienced mariachi bands, ballet folkloric, a boys choir from Mexico City, art walks and galleries  and too many other things to mention.

We will miss all of this, but there will be new experiences waiting for us around the next bend.

This was so much fun. The Arts in The Cards artists did a swap of things in our stashes that we could pass along and share.  Each envelope  [5×7] was completely different and they all contained wonderful things.  See some of the stash I received in the photos below.