Another Short Story Bracelet

In honor of Oxford Bound Bakery, I've created one of my short story bracelets especially for Shelby (Alexandra) to inspire her during all the hard work she is about to embrace! I call it, "England was calling her home".

What's really fun about these handmade, grunge-style, mini art pieces is that they are collages made from dog food bags and other upcycled materials; including labels from bags of oranges, old unappreciated art pieces, bits of leftover beads and lace...you get the idea.

I have quite a few started for various members of my family.  Each is unique to the intended individual, as the short story must be something significant to their life in 4-6 words.  I made one for myself called, "I am my daddy's girl".  It is still in the flat stage which is what I refer to them before stitching, beading, padding, and embellishing.

Shelby has requested some general short story bracelets to sell at the market.  Although they shall be a bit less personal, read: less meaningful, they are cute and quirky and hopefully as interesting to potential shoppers as they are to me!

Bracelet blanks.  Here you can get a better idea of the recycled bits; from dogfood bags, calendar pages, dictionary pages, and slide transparencies to name a few.

Here are three blanks that I turned into collage bracelets.

Homemade Cranberry Sauce in a Pinch

I have been getting into the habit of planning my menus weekly.  This goes hand in hand with my weight loss successes and being a little more organized; a passion of mine!  However, on this particular lunchtime day, as I was preparing my favorite sandwich of roast beef, brown mustard, havarti cheese, alfalfa sprouts, and a tablespoon or two of cranberry sauce, I noticed that someone had finished the smallish portion of cranberry sauce left in the fridge!

As my sandwich lay open and ready for it's crowning glory, I lamented on the lack of this very necessary condiment to achieve the perfection of flavor my taste buds demanded.  Suddenly I realized that I had a partial bag of whole cranberries in the freezer.  Could I whip up a passable sauce before my lovely flax seed bread dried out?  I was determined to try!

I knew that generally the sauce prepared on the stove took a while to simmer down into the perfect consistency of the sauce, however, I was not willing to wait that long!  Why not speed things up in the microwave oven?  I wasn't after a complex sauce using several spices coveting a spot on a Thanksgiving table, after all.  No, just a simple sauce of cranberries and a little sugar cooked down to nice jelled consistency.

I went for it!  I had about a cup of cranberries.  I added 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water and put it in the microwave for about 4-6 minutes.  I'd like to say I let it cool for a few minutes, but no, I was hungry after all!  I put ice cubes into a mixing bowl and set the dish of sauce into the ice and stirred like a maniac, begging it to cool quickly.  Eureka!  It worked!  Better yet, it was delicious...