Recent Happy Mail and a project

As you know there are lots of swaps over at Artforthecreativemind@yahoo.com  I can not sign up for all of them but I did show you things I made for the Jane Austen Heart tag and the Mardi Gras mask.
I recently  received Happy mail from those Two swaps

I am also involved in a spool bird swap. My idea is to make some kind of Mobile for my studio when I receive mine. It was a 5 for 5 swap. I made mine according to the pattern. Some did some embellishing. I think if I could see better, I would have done that also...but I think spool birds at cute all by themselves...

Now, in one of my groups it was mentioned about someone painting a Koi pond. There was some concern about how it would withstand the weather. 4 or 5 years ago I painted a Koi pond. I have a real pond, but it huge and has Bass in it. This little Koi pond is right outside my studio. I gave it several coats of spray lacquer and that's all I did 5 years ago...This year I will repaint the one large Koi only because  I never quite liked him...  as you can see, the pond itself holds up very well. It is in the heat of summer as well as the bitter cold of below zero temps.

The turtle has also weathered quite well and he is free standing,made from 7 rocks. Water lilies are also removable.