Charise Mericle Harper's Blog

Here's a fun post I wrote for Tara Lazar
Click here to go to Tara's site and read it

My new book Wedgieman is out.  The amazingly talented Bob Shea illustrated it.  Here is a fun maze created by the publisher. Enjoy.


CLICK HERE for maze.

Want to take a look?www.chariseharper.comHope you like it.

Here is something super cute.
It made my week!
It's so much fun to see something I've created get a new life in a different way.
Plus the kids are great!

My daughter has a collection of headbands.My daughter is not neat.So. . . in an effort to help her be more organized, I headed off to the local hardware store to get the supplies for a new invention.

I love the hardware store!
 After about 40 minutes of looking around, because you never know what you might find, I had my supplies in hand.


SUPPLIES
Flexible Aluminum Tubing (6 inches wide by 8 ft long)Two 6 inch aluminum caps  Then I went home and got to work.


 Push the tubing onto the caps.  If the tube does not fit, push the tabs you cut on your caps closer together - this will help the tube slide on easier.
TA DA!
 My daughter loves it!
Will it help her be organized?My fingers are crossed!

It's true.


And I think National Compliment Day should be more than once a year!

I was looking at Design Sponge this morning, and I came across this photo.  
I don't know why, but it made me sad.  Maybe it's because my daughter is doing fractions at school, but right away I noticed the math.
This was not a comforting percentage.  I want happy events to far outweigh the sad, so I took the picture into photoshop and fixed it.  I'm much happier now.What kind of cards would you send?

I have been working on my website for 5 months now.  It's one of those things that I thought would be faster, but obviously it's not.
Here is the latest.  
I'm using these old metal letters as the menu buttons.
It's fun, time consuming, and hopefully worth it!


Oh, I'm still writing and illustrating too!  
And making lunches, and doing laundry, and running to the post office.
I guess that's why everything takes so long.

Sometimes I get interesting ideas when I am pushed into a corner.
Last month I got some friends together for a holiday lunch.
The corner?  
Bring one homemade gift not costing over $10.00 to make.


This seemed like a great idea, but the day before the lunch I was panicked.
I ran around the house looking for ideas.
I found
- a piece of painted cardboard I had used for another project.
- a  little glass vial from Etsy.
- a sewed doll form from my daughter's birthday party 2 years ago.  
(It was a decorate your own doll party)


Here's what I ended up with.  I hope she has secret powers to make wishes come true!


And the bonus?  Our holly tree which has been on the verge of dying for the last three years, was this year happily full of berries and pointy leaves.
All wrapped up and ready to go!

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