I have all of the Austin oranges - Pat Austin, Lady Emma Hamilton, Summer Song, Lady of Shalott, and also Carding Mill. My Pat Austin has shown rose rosette disease, but is responding favorably to aspirin treatments at the moment. I'm hoping for the best on this. It does bloom nicely, but the flowers do not take our summer heat. The bush gets quite tall. It does have a good color, but, again, the flowers fry easily. Lady Emma Hamilton does not get to be a tall bush. It is more spreading. It does not bloom in large amounts of flowers at any given time, but it has a fairly steady supply of nicely fragrant flowers. It is the most consistent performer of the oranges that I have. Summer Song was quite pretty in the spring. For summer all three bushes of it that I have didn't do much of anything. I noticed that a couple of them were munched on probably by deer. Something ate the leaves off of them as well as part of the stems, and I have seen deer in the yard at various points. The first year I had these plants they did reasonably well. This past summer, year two, they didn't care for the excessive heat and just sulked. They did, however, throw long canes. The orange color does fade badly in the heat. They did not bloom much at all in the fall either. I think it was more because of the weather. Lady of Shalott was pretty its first year. It seemed to be going along okay growing and flowering most of the way through the growing season. It pretty well stopped by the end of September, but it had a couple of flowers late. I think this bush will get fairly large. Flower size has been on the small size. Perhaps it will improve some next year. Carding Mill does reasonably well, but the flowers have been on the small side. It can get to be about 5-6 feet tall here. Its growth habit is fairly cylindrical and doesn't spread much. The apricot color bleaches out to a pink in the heat. Otherwise, overall it has been reasonably consistent here. I have no major complaints about this one. I hope this helps a bit.

I got a very nice email from a very nice lady who does the gulf-shores-alabama-condo-rentals website mentioned above. You might want to keep an eye on that site. She has some more neat printables in the works for the upcoming months: Mardi Gras scrapbook pages, recipes, etc. Plus contests for the Spring --just to enter, not necessary to vacation there. :-) Also, take a look at her other crafts, especially her mosaic work! She recommends some free- or share-ware programs to make that easier. A very talented lady! Thanks for writing, Lundy! :-)

Love your samples, and I'll bet those were fun to make. I would have done like you, eyeball it! I'm slow enough as it is making cards, and I'm sure the lady on Carol wouldn't have been so fast if she didn't have it all measured and laid out. Doing it her way would take me 2 days! Have you seen the ones done with label stickers? Similar, except for the rounded corners. I just could never transfer them evenly from the backing to my card, so only the large size would work for me!

I was so excited about Doone's tip, I forgot what I wanted to add to the subject...LOL I struggle with this too. And I know that the value of items can change dramatically over the years...what is worth nothing today is worth lots tomorrow. So I ask myself these questions...if it's a common item and readily available, costs less than $5 (more or less), then it's fair game. If I have any doubts at all, I don't usually use it. But then again, I've seen antique mosaics worth tons of money....I figure it has something to do with the objects used in the mosaic as well as it's condition and age.