More Mail Art

I'm sending out 2 more envelopes. The first one uses a Raven, eggs and swirls from GPP. The second some random cat stamps. I love the one with the cats in the window but never have a chance to use it! Mail Art is a great way to use stamps you never use!!

Crusade No.10

Another challenge by Michelle Ward and her GPP Street team to create some Mail Art and send Love through the mail! I love doing mail art, so I may do a few of these!


My Mail Art envelope for my friend Therese! I used my new arches stamp, and some Stampsmith Renaissance Women stamps. This is the envelope before I put the stamp on it.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

We had our monthly artists meeting this past Wednesday, and since it's summer, we decided to have a Pot Luck Lunch at Bev's house. And what a house!! The garden was spectacular, with nooks and crannies all over!






These are just a few of the many photos I took! After our wanderings through the garden, we got to work in Bev's massive studio.



We are making denim purses! Or "Journal Duvets" as the magazine we used called them! I brought all my watercolour and drawing stuff with my moleskin to make sure everything fit perfectly. Other than that, they had everything else, including old jeans, and a ton of men's ties. I chose one for my strap.


We used part of a leg, and cut the edge seams off. Then I arranged a bunch of stuff on one piece, sprayed with the Quilt Basting Spray so it wouldn't move around, then covered the whole thing with netting. Then I took it to the sewing machine, and using invisible thread (how cool is that!!) I freestyle sewed over the entire netting.

I found some very neat fabric tags which I cut out and attached to my pocket on the other piece, and added some neat black beads as a frill. Here is just some of the stuff we could choose from!!

I needed inside pockets too, to hold my pens and brushes so I made a tall one and a short one for erasers.
I attached everything together, put the tie on as a strap, added some more lace, and VOILA!!

This is Marg's purse - she wouldn't let me see it! She said I would have to wait until she was finished, which she wasn't. :-( Hopefully I will eventually be able to let you see it!

I don't know what our next project will be yet, but we are taking a break in August, so no new meetings until September. This one was fun, and definately "outside the box"!! BTW -the Pot Luck was delicious! Starting with Mushroom Quesadillas (incredible!), followed by Garlic-Lemon marinated chicken off the grill, and Caesar Salad, Asian noodle Salad, and fresh homemade bread, followed by a scrumptious Custard-Strawberry Pie. M-m-m-m!!!

Frida

I finished my 4X4 page for my byhand artists group. We create a 4X4 page each month which celebrates an event from that month. Mine is Frida Kahlo's Birthday, July 6. She also died in July, on the 13th, in the year that I was born.




I used an aluminum tape from the hardware store to replicate the Mexican Tin punching. I just used the end of a pen to make the "holes". Her story is on the back. There is space on the left for binding.

20-07-2007

What a cool date it is today! 20072007! Well I have some new ATC's to show, that I made for my altered designs yahoo group. Our exhaulted leader, Kelly, gives us a collage image, and we are to create!! I missed the first one, but I managed this one. The image was called "One Fine Fellow"

More Journal Pages

It's been a little while since I uploaded journal pages, so here are April (second set of pages) May and June with a little July.

For this one I continued the grid from the green April grid on the previous page, just changed colours. This was not a good month for me, I was glad when it was over!




I love my new Michelle Ward stamps From Green Pepper Press! I always like playing with new stamps in my journal!



One of my new favourite pages, the flowers in the middle came from a magazine ad, the bottom flowers are from Hero Arts, I spritzed them with water after inking and before stamping. Neat effect! The little houses are one of my few homemade stamps. I need to make more!

For this one I chose pictures, that I thought went with the background colour, then took an element from each picture to use as part of the border. On the left I used her pearls, and the right I used the border of the picture. I like to add photos once in awhile to my journal, but I can never choose just one, so I often layer them. The ones on the left are of my little flower garden at the front of the house that is a bit hidden behind these little trees. There is a Japanese cast iron lantern in the centre.

Some New ATC's

I have been making a few new ATC's for my Byhand group. Yogi sends out a challenge each month and we make as many ATC's as we want, and get that many back. The first month I made one, then 3, this month I think I'm sending a whopping six! The theme is "yellow" or "music". I had 2 already made that fit into this category, and I'll add these:






I got to use my new shrine stamp (behind the violins), and played with my dye based inks. The non-stamped images are from Altered Pages.

ATC Swap

I am participating in a Johnny Depp ATC Swap with the girls at Altered Pages. This is my second one, the first one was awesome, so I'm expecting more of the same! BUT I had a huge inspiration block -it happens! - and so as I usually do when this happens, I just sat down and decided to play with my alcohol inks I'd bought a year ago and never opened, and a stamp of 4 drawer pulls I've never used. Didn't know what I was going to do with them, but ATCs are good starting points, so I started putting one together, and saw a page of faux stamps that a friend had given to me for Christmas...

And I really liked it! So as I was thinking about Johnny, I decided to make him into faux stamps, and go from there. Here are the results!









And then I made a few without the drawer pulls...




I hope they like what I did! Now I need to go back and get inspired by my two new stamps my daughter brought me from Toronto...