Now the bidding war begins, a couple of giveaways you'll love, and a bit of art

Seth at the Altered Page is having another fabulous technique book giveaway this week. Second week in a row, so you should get over there and sign up for a chance to win Collage Playground by Kimberly Santiago. Here's your direct link. Deadline to sign up is through July 10.

And Nikki, who created the awesome WOYWW Neat Freak blog button on my sidebar is having a wonderful flower giveaway. Now who can resist flowers, right? Here's a direct link. Closes July 16.

Yesterday I met with my last bidder. Although she said she was going to send her "gutter man" to measure the gutters, she took accurate measurements otherwise.

Here Teresa is working out some calculations

then does more figuring and measuring. I hope to have all the bids back by this time next week.

This guy, whose name was Rick, came to bid the paint job on Monday.

I am not sure who was more curious, Bleubeard or Rick.

As he was giving me an estimate for the paint,

and using this really cool gadget

which made Bleubeard and me think we had landed in the middle of a crime scene,

he also took a look at my porch.

So I will get a "two-fer" on this bid.

And what would an art blog be without a bit of art? Here's what I've been doing. Spray paint and stencils on stickers and bleach spritzed onto black fabric and stencil. Poor Whats On Your Worktable Wendy, or Wendy for short, wonders if the spray paint is dry enough for her to be sitting on it.

For the stickers, I began with black paint, then sprayed hammered copper (has a texture) through stencils.

This is bleached (or discharged) fabric. In all honesty, this was just a sleeve I ripped from the blouse I discharged a few days ago. The entire back was discharged this time by laying a stencil down and spritzing bleach water through the stencils. After spraying the back of the blouse, the stencil was dripping. This piece of fabric was laid OVER the stencil in an attempt to remove some of the bleach. It is reverse stenciling at its finest. This piece I plan to overdye.

For those who didn't quite "get" what I was talking about with glue sticks, look how much glue is left in the bottom of your glue stick. You can't use it unless you dig it out or lay a tiny scrap of paper on top of the glue and press. As you can see, I've started digging out what I call "bonus" glue.

Today's blog is not a blog at all, but an e-How page. I'm not really familiar with these e-How pages, but I wanted to share another artist's perspective on Discharge Dyeing. Basically we use the same techniques, but she irons freezer paper to her fabric before spritzing with the bleach and water mix. The artist, Yvonne Quarles shares her knowledge of Discharge Dyeing. You might like her take on this technique. I couldn't find a way to leave a comment, so this link was practically painless.