Succumbing to temptation

It's finally happened: I've succumbed to temptation. I blame the 10 day journal project (which I wrote about here.) Before I received that nice big journal in the mail I was perfectly happy with the size of my current art journal.
Well, that's a lie.
I wasn't happy, but I was making do. I was sticking it out. I was going to finish it and get to work in a larger one.
Sigh.
But after the ten day journal project I found that I simply could not bear to go back to my small journal. And there were all these lovely, large, books that I'd purchased at a library sale just sitting on my shelf calling to me. Tempting me.
And I could not resist.
I hate the fact that I abandoned my old book, which was almost 75% done. But I am LOVING the larger size.
Here is a page that I did the other day.

Green Pepper Press Crusade

This is my first time participating the the GPP crusades and I must say, I picked a perfect one join-up on. The crusade this month is about music: a subject that many of you know is my very heart. I guess that happens when you go to school for the majority of your adult life studying music. I had a hard time picking what to put-up for my choice, since I am one of those people who believes that good music knows no real categorical boundaries. If it's good, I really don't care what people call it. But I decided on Tori Amos for a couple of reasons--1. She's a pianist like me and 2. For the last thirteen years of my life, her music has been what I come back to when I need to be made whole again.
I picked her song "Tear in your hand" because it is the first song of hers I ever heard. I can still see myself sitting in my dorm room Sophomore year listening to it with my friend Beth, feeling like all the lights inside of me had suddenly been switched on. The moment I heard her sing, "I think there are pieces of me you've never seen/maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen/" I was sold.
I can only hope that you love her music as much as I do.

Happy

Today is my wedding anniversary. I made this card for my hubby in celebration of our five years together. The adore stamp is by Hedi Swapp--sorry I don't have a good working link for it :(
Everything else is just made with a punch. Five flowers for five years. I am a lucky lady to have someone so wonderful for a husband.

Charmed, I'm sure

The Indiana Altered Art group is having a charm swap this month and I finally finished up my charms. I used shrink-plastic, which is one of my favorite mediums. I'm pleased with how they turned out, I think they look a bit like stained glass.
Here is what they look like on the front.

This is the back--each one has a different word on the back so that they're not all the same. I did them in different color variations too.
Lastly, here is one all done-up in it's packaging, ready to be mailed out.

Wednesday Stamper

The Wednesday stamper is having an open theme for the next couple of weeks--so I decided to submit this little card that I made. The robot stamp was something that I picked-up at a warehouse sale for a dollar and have never used, so I thought I'd give it a try. I painted him in with some twinkling h2os and then gave him a hat. I used one of my alphabet stamps for the text. The stamp has a lot of detail and if you click on the picture you'll get a better view of what it really looks like.

Take 10

I had time to sit down and create last night for the first time in weeks it seems. I decided to try my hand at one of the templates in the most recent Take Ten magazines. The text on this card translates to: the beautiful woman without regrets. Which is what the stamp of the lady (by Hampton Arts) always brings to my mind. When I was done, I liked it so much I decided to submit it. So of course I had to make an envelope to send it in and a postcard so that I would know when my submission arrived.

This is the postcard I made, it is a Tim Holtz stamp and a swirl stamp by Autumn Leaves. I colored in the stamp with some colored pencils. When I was done I wanted to make several more I was so happy with the finished product! I guess I really must have missed having time to just sit and create without the stress and worry of other things needing to get done.

10 Day Journal Project

Exactly 10 days before we were set to move I went to the mailbox to discover a package waiting for me. I was confused because I knew I hadn't ordered anything and didn't recognize the sender's address. But low and behold it was the 10 day journal project. Serendipity is running this on-going art project where she sends you a journal for 10 days and you work in it and send it back. At the end of this year all the journals are going on display in a gallery show. She has a sign-up on her website but the catch is that you have no idea when the journal is going to come--you just sign -up and wait. Well, you can imagine my reaction when I got it. There was a lot of swearing involved. I'd planned on packing up my art supplies first so that there would be no distractions. So I revised my plan and started working on the journal. Since we were preparing to move I decided to do work about that. Here are the pictures of my completed work. I did five pages in total. One every two days--which wasn't bad considering that I was packing and cleaning and calling utilities and all that other nonsense that has to be done, in between my art. So after you're done looking at my stuff you should take a look at Serendipity's site and think about signing-up yourself. Just beware that the it'll probably arrive at the worst possible time--like while you're giving birth or in the middle of a hurricane or negotiating peace in the middle-east. Or all three all at once.

Moving!

This will probably be my last post for the next couple of weeks. My hubby and I are getting ready to move and it's been all kinds of insanity here! We started packing this weekend and although we got a bunch done it's going to be 2 more weeks of grueling work. The card above is a little something I made to send out to family members with our new info on it. The stamp is by paperbag studios.
I will see you in a few weeks.

Oh Yum!

This latest creation is something I did as part of my design team duties for Wishful Thinking. I did a little cookbook of my favorite sweet things. This first picture is the cover.


Here are the first two pages...
And two more....Both of these pull out--the one on the left is a tag that pulls out and the one on the right pulls out to the right to reveal the recipe.
And two more....

This is the back of the book, with an extra envelope for more recipes. The little yellow envie on the left pulls open to reveal a recipe as well.
And here is the back cover. The stamp here is by Stampendeous.

A Card

I made this card for my Dad but didn't want to post it right away since it was in the mail headed out to him. I got inspired by one of the recent Take Ten articles on cards with book marks.

The stamp that I used is by paperbag studios.
Hope everybody has a safe and happy fourth of July!

Last of the Faerie Pages

We've had family in from out of town and things here have been crazy between that and looking for a new house. But I managed to get all my design team work finished and have the last two pages from my faerie book to post tonight. I cut off the scan of the last page and didn't realize it until I went to load the photo tonight.
Ah well. You will still be able to see it well enough.

Miniature Shrine

One of my design team creations is a miniature shrine. Here are a couple of photos of the finished product!

How to Marble Paper

Since I've been out of town for a couple of days and have gotten no work done, I thought I'd post a how to instead of new work.
Here's what you will need:
1. Blank Paper 2. Glass tray 3. Shaving Cream 4. Stamp pad re-inkers or calligraphy ink. 5. Fork 6. Scrap piece of cardboard.

Start out by putting a layer of shaving cream in the glass dish.

Put dots of color into the shaving cream.

Using the fork spread the color around making a marbled pattern.

Put the paper face down and press it into the shaving cream. Don't be afraid to use good pressure.

Remove the paper from the shaving cream. Using a scrap piece of cardboard scrape the remainder of the shaving cream off in one big sweep using good pressure.
And viola! You can re-use the shaving cream a couple more times before it gets too muddy.

More Pages

My hubby and I are getting ready to go out of town for my family's Reunion this weekend and I am busy running around like a chicken with my head cut off. It seems like anytime we go out of town it's like this: I make lists, I pack, I make more lists, I cross off lists and my husband plays video games or watches a soccer match and then throws some random stuff in the suitcase as we're walking out the door. I envy his nonchalance.
I promised myself before we left today that I would have the fairy book totally done. It doesn't look like I'm going to make it, but here are some more pages.


This last one is actually the back cover of the book, which is why I didn't put any dimensional objects on it.

Wednesday Stamper

The theme for this weeks Wednesday stamper is Eggs. I have a couple of little egg stamps by Invoke Arts which I used on this page--but I really wanted a nice big egg for my focal point, so I cut one out and colored it using ink and added the spots using a pencil's eraser. The wings on the girl is a stamp by stampington and company. The background swirls are by Autumn Leaves.

Another Page

I am plodding along in my effort to get my little fairy book done. Here is another page that I did this weekend. The background is a piece of scrapbook paper and I stamped the little "Make a wish" phrase and went over it with glitter pens. Hopefully I'll have several more pages to post tomorrow. It's my goal to have it all done by Friday so I need to get to work!

More Pages

I worked some more on my design team book this weekend. Here are a couple of my pages. I used the new Twinkling H2O daubers to make the little flowers and for the background of the second page.

The big wings are from a stampington and company butterfly stamp. The little butterflies are from River City Rubber Works.
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You scream, I scream, We all scream for

Yep, that's right, ice cream. A few years ago I read this study about road rage and how these psychologists measured all these different things to see if they would help. You know what worked the best? Eating an ice cream cone. I tested this theory out yesterday. It's been in the nineties here and I don't like to run the air conditioning in my car. It's bad on gas mileage and I like to think that I can take the heat--after all when I was a kid, living in an old farm house without air conditioning we thought nothing of cranking up the oven and baking a pie while it was ninety degrees outside. But the heat has one bad effect on me, it shortens my temper. After being cut off and witnessing five cars run the same red-light I found myself wishing I kept a bull-horn in my car so that I could REALLY tell everyone what I thought of them. And low and behold, there was a McDonald's looming on the horizon and I found myself thinking about that study. So I stopped and got a cone. I have to tell you it was like magic. I felt cool and relaxed and when that crazy lady in a purple minivan cut me off and braked erratically, I found myself wondering why I liked the taste of the cone when it really is like eating Styrofoam and shouldn't be all that pleasing, instead of yelling myself hoarse. I felt cool and relaxed for the rest of my 45 minute trek through bumper-to-bumper traffic.
I am now a believer in the healing power of ice-cream. You should try it out and see for yourself.


This is the last ATC from that baby wipe swap I'm in. The stamp is from oxford impressions.

And this is something that I'm working on as part of my design team work. I got this blank book from creative imaginations. I decided to do something all on fairies, which is not a subject matter I usually explore but it seemed like a fun idea.

Baby Wipe ATCs

I am in a swap right now using baby wipes and watercolors as the backgrounds. Here are two of them. In both cases I folded and dipped the wipe into the watercolors. Both of the stamps here are from Oxford Impressions. In fact, the third one that I did (which I hope to post tomorrow as it is still drying) I also used an oxford impression stamp. I think I've been in a mood for them lately. Anyway, I stamped them using Satzon onto a transpanrency and then attached. I wanted the background to show through.
I have a couple of HUGE projects I'm working on as part of my design team responsibilities and I hope to start posting some of it tomorrow.

Wednesday Stamper

I promised myself that I would be good this week and try to get the Wednesday stamper challenge done sooner rather than later. I've been bad about it the last couple of weeks. So Tonight, I sat down and made this. The theme this week is flowers. I don't really own any flower stamps, so I opted to make this instead. The center of the flower is a plastic optical lens that I tinted with alcohol inks. I then stamped the woman--by Oxford Impressions--on card stock and put it into the lens. I hand drew the flower and cut it out. The stamp is by Hero Arts, I think it's called Italian Text, but I'm not positive. I used some sequin waste to apply some ink to give the green paper some texture and made the little tag and viola, a card was born.

My First Foray into Fimo

On Monday while trolling a second hand store I found a like-new toaster oven for only $3. I've been searching for one to do some UTEE stuff in, but also for FIMO work. So for my first try, I made this ATC back for a purple themed swap. I rolled it out and then cut and baked. I am afraid that the edges are a little jagged. But it's not bad for a first run. The stamp is by Stampington & Company, which I embossed and then painted with watercolors. I like the way it looks and am thinking I'll try something similar in blue.
Here is a little birthday card I made this week as well. The stamp is by Lost Coast designs.

Wednesday Stamper

The theme for this weeks Wednesday Stamper is doors. Since I don't own any stamps with doors on them I decided to make my own little door out of Popsicle sticks. The girl stamp is by Lost Cost Designs and the grass at the bottom is a swirl stamp by Autumn Leaves.
My other big accomplishment this weekend was baking these yummy cupcakes. They've got chunks of pineapple in them and the frosting is cream-cheese with coconut. I think I'm going to go and eat another one right now!