A thank you

A great big thanks to my friend Kris who made me these lovely magnets as a housewarming preset. Aren't they just the cutest? You should go over to her blog right now and check out her work. Seriously. What are you still doing here reading this? Get to getting.

Crush

The theme for this week's challenge over on the GPP site is crushes and I have to confess that as soon as I saw the posting, I knew what I wanted to do. (I just couldn't quite get off my lazy duff and post it. ugh)
So here it is, the object of my affection:


Yep, pens. This photo is of what I think of as my "bare necessity" pens collection. It's the collection of pens that have to be on my work table, at all times while I'm working because I honestly cannot create without them. I know it doesn't look very impressive in the photo, but there are actually 36 pens in the photo, I just piled them on top of each other. And then I have my shapries and my Bic permanent pens and my good brush pens and a of box of experimental gel-pens...you get the idea. I love pens. My current passion is the Sakura gel pen which never clogs up and will write on any surface. I cannot see these in the store without buying them. I keep them EVERYWHERE: in my purse, on my bedside table, I even found one in the bathroom the other day (I think I'd stuck in my ponytail and forgot to take it out until I hopped in the shower.)
For as long as I can remember I've been obsessed with pens. How the ink flows, the color, the way it looks. To me, there is nothing worse than one of those plain-blue bic pens with it's pedestrian design and shoddy ink flow. Ugh.
So that's my crush. Silly as it may be to crush on an inanimate object. Oh well, we all have our quirks. At least I haven't gotten so nuts as to start naming them....

Card-A-Polooza

I've been hard at work getting some samples done for my course proposal. Here are the four demo cards that I'll be using. The birthday card took me four different attempts to get right. I had so much trouble getting the background glued down, I kept having to pull it back up and then re-cut it. Ugh. But that's how it goes some days...

Twinkling H2O Class

Here is my class schedule for the twinkling h20 class I'm teaching in November. All classes will be held at Wishful Thinking in Nashville, Indiana.

Daubers and Spritzers, twinkling H2Oh-MY!
Come and experiment with the new twinkling h2o line of daubers and
spritzers in this class. We will make three cards and one funky tag
with fun fibers while learning about creating texture, faux batiking
and stamping relief.

Saturday, November 10th 10-12pm
Sunday November 11th 1:30-3:30p,

Wonderful World of UTEE Class

Here is the course information for the UTEE class I will be teaching, all classes will be held at Wishful Thinking, in Nashville Indiana:

Wonderful World of UTEE
Have you ever wondered what UTEE is? Or how to use it? In this class
we will explore some fun versatile paper-crafting uses of ultra-thick
embossing enamel. We will make three cards and one adorable bottle cap
charm.

Friday, October 12, 2007 from 10am-12pm
Sunday October 14th, 2007 1:30-3:30pm

Christmas Cards Part 2

Here are my last couple of Christmas Cards that I made for my design team work over at Wishful Thinking. This first one I used gel-pens and dimensional glaze to make the ornaments pop off the page.
This second one I made using a glue pen by Sakura and some mica dust for glitter. This one is one of my favorites.


I actually have a third card--but my scanner didn't like it because it has a shaker box on the front. The picture kept turning out all blurry and I'm just too tired to go in search of my camera.
:)
Have a good evening.

Drawing Winner!

Congratulations to Kathy McDowell!!! You won my drawing for free stuff. Please send me an email with your address and I will get your stuff in the mail!

I Heart Indiana Altered Art

I am home from a long weekend out of town.
A long weekend with no art.
I feel like I'm dying a little inside. I know that sounds really dramatic...but I've been working night and day trying to get stuff done and NOT working for two whole days felt really unnatural. I missed the outlet. And what's worse is the friends I went to go see--who I love--are not artists. None of the people that I spent time with this weekend were artists. They're all the college professor types. Now, don't get me wrong, they are all brilliant people, but they like to talk about their work. And I never get to talk about my work.
I think it would be boring to them. Who cares if I discovered a new way to use the versamark stamp-pad? Or that I got this great new binding system for my birthday? Or am considering buying a cuttlebug because I love the embossing plates?
I had a moment this weekend where I realized that I can't really talk to them about this huge HUGE piece of my life. It's like this whole part of me doesn't exist for them. It made me feel lonely.
I wonder--you other artists out there, do you ever feel this way? Or do you just force your art talk on people? I would truly love to know, because I feel so very segmented.
So, I get home and am feeling down and art-starved and a little lonely because of the whole lack of sharing and there is this great email from Beth in IndianaAlteredArt sitting in my in-box and all I could think was thank God for the ladies at IAA.
So here is my very rambling, public thank you to all the very wonderful and talented ladies who make my life a little less art starved. You are my teachers, my friends and wonderful source of support.
I heart you. I really do.

New Card

I've been trying to work on some new card designs for a class proposal I'm witting , here is my first attempt at a layered look, using only scrapbooking paper and no stamps. The text is a rub-on by making memories. In other news, I'm going out of town this weekend, so I'll be away from my blog...but I'll be back with more art and some photos on Monday. Have a good weekend everyone!

Jingle-Jingle

I have been hard at work on my Christmas cards as part of my design team duties. I've never actually made all my cards before--it just has seemed way to daunting on top of everything else that needs to be done at Christmas time. But now I'm thinking that if I could do them in July or so, I might actually enjoy making them. Here are the three cards I have done so far.

Drawing

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this. I have no excuse, other than sheer laziness. So without further ado:

In celebration of breaking 10,000 visitors to my blog I am having a drawing for four collage sheets by my friend Kris Hubick, a bottle cap pendant and an assortment of small papers from Dolphin Papers. Just sign in and leave a comment and I will draw the name a week from today.
Here's a picture of everything all together.

UTEE

I am going to be teaching a class down at Wishful Thinking next month on UTEE. Here are my samples that I made-up for the class that show each of the techniques I'll be teaching. As you can see, I got my scanner issues resolved (Finally!) so I have some nice clean pictures for you!

ATC Time

The Indiana Altered Art gals met up this morning for some coffee and some ATC fun. This month's theme was Halloween. I had a lot of fun making these cards since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. here are my cards.

And here we all are--there have gotten to be so many of us! It's such fun, although nobody can here what anyone else is saying since we all talk at once!!!

Christmas in September

Did you ever have one of those days where absolutely everything made you want to scream?
One of those days where you were afraid that once you started screaming you wouldn't stop and you would just be running madly through the grocery store, the post office, and (gasp!) the library, screaming your head off like a madwoman?
Today was like that for me today.
Today, I wished I owned a bullhorn so that I could tell everyone I met what I thought of them at the maximum volume allowable under the law.
And then I came home and sat down at my work space and faced all this Christmas themed stuff I have to get done as part of my design team work for Wishful Thinking and found myself totally and completely blocked. I was still so angry and so not in the mood for Christmas anything. But I had the time to work and it needed to be worked on, so I plugged in my ipod and turned on my Bing Crosby Christmas album hoping for some inspiration.
And then something amazing happened: all my tension melted away. I no longer felt like swearing, smacking or flipping-off anyone. I found myself listening to the music--and I mean really listening, not that half-assed in the mall-stressed-out-gotta-find-that-gift-now! listening that I normally do to Christmas music and I found myself remembering the magic and the love I had for the holiday as a child. Who knew? Christmas music as a stress-reducer.
Anyway, here is one of the pages I made using technique Tuesdays new line of scrapbooking chipboard. I am not, normally, a scrapbooking sort of gal. But I enjoyed this page. I have another I'm half-way through that I'll post tomorrow. Have a look. In the meantime, I'm going to lay on my bed and listen to Elvis's "If everyday were Christmas" album in the hopes of totaly blissed-out relaxation. God bless the king.

Twinkling H20s

I am going to be teaching a class next month on twinkling h20s at Wishful Thinking, which I do design team work for. Here are my four samples of the techniques I'll be teaching. Unfortunately, I am having problems with my scanner--again, sign--so you'll have to make do with my not-so-good photos. The techniques I'll be teaching are: basic painting, resist painting, faux texture and faux batik. (I might actually add another technique, but I'm not sure yet. I don't want to over-load the class.) Here they are in that order.

Wednesday Stamper

The theme for this week's Wednesday Stamper is Mulberry paper. I decided to do a faux batik process using twinkling h20s. The stamp is a Tim Holtz stamp made by Stamper's Anonymous. I'm afraid that the picture really doesn't do the image justice. That's the problem with scanning iridescent materials, sigh. Oh well.

A Perfect Day

Today was a perfect day:
I took an art class, got to hang out with some really talented ladies and shopped for supplies. And then I came home to cuddle on the couch with my hubby to watch vintage star trek and mock Chekov's hair.
It was absolutely perfect. I know tommorow all that perfection will disappear in all the machinations of errands and minutia of life. Which only makes today so much sweeter.

Here are the cards that I made. All of them have dimensional stuff on them, which is hard to see but they're there. I think my favorite is the one with the birds. All the stamps I used here are by Hero Arts.

What I did on my birthday

Yesterday was my birthday.
And I decided to take it easy. I had been expecting to teach, but fate intervened and I wound up having the day off. So, I painted and went shopping and took it easy. It was nice to have a day without any stress. No calling lawyers, or doing laundry, or signing paperwork, or listening to whinny parents
Here are two pages from my journal. Sorry for the lack of close-up, my scanner is acting fritzy. On the left, is a page that was made from the journal prompt over on D'Blogia. And the one on the right is the page I made in celebration of my birthday.

So after a quiet stress-free day, I sat down had a drink and listened to a little Lucinda Williams. Something about her whiskey-burned voice that just soothes my soul. I have included a video with her singing in the background--give her a listen and see if you don't feel soothed too!

Bottle Cap Pendant How-to

Lately, I've been having fun making these little pendants and thought I'd post a little how-to!
Here is what you'll need: UTEE, bottle cap, wire, pliers, scissors, heavy weight paper and image printed on heavy weight paper (this is important because thinner paper will absorb the UTEE.)
If you are using a bottle cap off of a bottle, you need to remove the plastic lining by heating it with a heat-gun and then pulling it off with pliers. Or you could buy them at a craft store which don't have the plastic in them. Once it's ready to go you need to cut out the paper to line the inside.

Trim your image down so that it'll fit inside as well. I like to cut the bottom so that it's curved and sits nicely in the bottom of the cap. At this point you can embellish it as you like, remembering that you will need to use heavy weight paper.

At this point you need to add your wire--I like to make a loop that twice the depth of the bottle cap. It needs to be a little long because you're going to bend it back. I use a glue dot to attach it to the top of the bottle cap. You really don't need to glue it down, but I like to just for security.

Turn your oven on to 250 and fill the cap with UTEE. When the oven is hot, put the cap in to bake, lining the sheet with some brown craft paper. Let it cook and watch the utee melt. You will probably need to do this step twice because as the the UTEE melts, it only will fill 1/2 the cap.

When it's all cooled off, use your pliers to bend the wire back so that it no longer sticks straight up. Add a jump ring and you're all ready to go!
Hope you enjoyed the how-to and as always, if you have any questions please feel free to email me!

A little book

Let me just say, up front, that I totally stole this idea for this book from Audrey Hernandez. She had the cutest all clear book up on her blog about a month ago and I had to try it. I wanted to make a little photo album for my friend Kasia, so it was the perfect opportunity to try my hand at it. I used a thin Plexiglases for the covers and clear transparencies (the kind made for writing on, not printing on) for the pages. I then attached the paper to the transparencies.

Here is a shot of the inside.


And here is the card I made for Kasia to go with it.

And--I got an envelope template at target for a dollar and was so excited to try it out, I made her a matching envelope for her card. I don't think I'm ever going back to plain envelopes again!

Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

New Look

Sometime this week I hit over 10,000 visitors on my blog! I wanted to say a big thank you to all you out there who come and visit me regularly! You should check back sometime next week as I'll be posting a drawing with some lovely goodies to give away.
Since it's been a year now since I started, I thought I'd change the template around. I have some new music for the month of September up as well; an all Alt. Country selection. You should give it a listen.
And now for some art:

I made this card for my grandmother for grandparent's day. The shape I had cut out at local scrapbooking place. I had no idea that they're dye-cutters could cut card and envelope shapes. I had them cut me a bunch in this shape for future use and they only charged me for the cardstock! I need to go back over the letters because something happened to them and they got a little smudged. But I think overall, it turned out really cute!
Have a safe and happy holiday.

Wednesday Stamper

I have been out of the Wednesday Stamper loop for over a month now what with moving and all. But I am ready to get back into the swing of things. Here is my entry for this week's theme which is blue.

The brown flower stamp is by Hero Arts and the paisley stamp (in the lower right hand corner) is by Stampabilities.