Happy Fall!

It even smells like Fall now, especially with all the cool rain we've been having. I wonder what happened to Summer? LOL!

Anyway, I did forget my camera when I went to my LRS stamp club meeting, so all I have to show is what we made, which was a teeny little altered book. I knew the book was coming, and needed a theme, and I hadn't done anything about Johnny Depp lately, so hey, it was overdue! I'll pop it into my little Johnny shrine in our downstairs powder room. Maybe I'll take a picture of that for next week! So I brought my papers, my Johnny collage sgeet (made myself) and some quotes to cut up. My friend Marg and I decided which quotes went with which photo and it whipped up nice and easy!

Here is the little book untouched on the left, and altered on the right. These are tiny 3" board books that came in little boxes of about 4 to a box. First we sanded them a bit, then cut the papers into 3" squares and glued them on the pages.

We chose the quotes and matched them to pictures, quotes on the left and pictures on the right. The paper I used was doubled sided pirate scrapbook paper from Michael's. I used one side on all the left pages and the other side on all the right pages.

Here is one of the pages. I'm only going to show one, and you can imagine the rest - all the same but different!
After all was done, I put a piece of coloured tape on the end, kind of like Duct Tape, but not as thick - Dollar Store, comes in a bunch of colours. Then I edged everything in gold Krylon. Hope you enjoyed my little book! I called it "Johnny" because the next one will be called "Depp"!

We also had a challenge to make something from a patterned napkin, we were given the napkin and a link to Split Coast Stampers for the technique called Felted Cardstock. So we'll see what I can do with that!

I've been sick all week, the worst was Thursday to Saturday, today was the first day I felt human again, so of course I spent the day doing errands, shopping, and Starbucks. Didn't have time to do any art, but I will write in my journal tonight, and maybe have some time this week to put up the last few pages.

I have a little teaser about my Generations Project - something I found at Starbucks. . .hopefully I can show you next week if it works out!

TTFN!

Days are getting colder. . .

and you know what that means! Fall is on its way (Tuesday, to be precise!) Here is a card I made for our monthly card swap at LRS (Limestone Rubber Stampers stamping club).

I also put some dimensional copper dots over the black dots in the word Autumn, but thought I'd scan this card first, as it takes a few hours to dry properly. I made 4 cards. I bought a cute little stamp on sale at Michael's today that is essentially a frame with a scroll feature, rather "grunge" looking. I used it for the inside so that whoever got the card could put their own stamped sentiment inside. I'll try to remember to take pictures at the meeting tomorrow night.

This week I've been excited about working in my journal again after a month of silence! I even altered the cover:

 

 

 

These pages are smaller, which is nice because I don't have to "stitch" them together to put the whole page on the blog~the first two pages are acrylic paints, the next is Neocolour watercolour crayons, which I discovered I had! It is also fun because I can sit in bed and draw/paint with them, and glue in my collage pieces. I decided to try and use some of my art on my pages, so I made a few collage pages with recent pieces (you have seen one of these images before!) I think I will go way back a few years and pull up some of those pieces too, that I have forgotten about. What a great way to remember, especially work I have given away! So yesterday I went off to my local art store and bought a bunch more crayons (I only had a few) - and they were on sale! I had a moment when I was very worried, when I started writing on my neocolor pages the ink wouldn't work. This happened with several pens - OH NO!!! Then I was reading Pam Carriker's blog, and she was using Neocolors in her journal, with a PITT pen! hallelujah! I tried it and it works perfectly. Whew! that was a close one! thanks Pam, you saved the day!

I told you last week i was going to pick a book and do something from it. Well, I picked this book:

and this page:

because I had bought this at a garage sale about two years ago, with the intention of altering it:

 

It is a Mickey Mouse jewelry box, and it swings out like this

my first job was to paint everything with gesso, which I did, and it broke in the process, but that's OK, I'm sure I can put it all back together!

So far, so good. I think the theme will be Three Generations -

my mother at the bottom, me in the middle and my daughter on the top. 

I'm looking for a good quote for this, 

do you know one?

My hamburgers and Eggplant Parmesan are awaiting, I must go! Hopefully I will have more to show of my project next week! And that I remember my camera tomorrow night!

School has started. . .

and I am very tired! I am usually too exhausted at the end of the day (I teach children 3-6 years of age) to do much art. But here is what has been happening in my life recently. I have had a few medical problems (not serious, but very annoying), one of which is my mouth. I can't really eat much without getting a very sore mouth, on both sides. My teeth hurt. OW! So I'm eating a lot of liquid meals. Yum. But the homemade soup is good! Still managing to gain 2 pounds (what's with that??).

Here was my art table this morning - not much room! I was working on my altered book page for my ABCanada group. 

So I decided to clean it up. . .

and finish the page. Yay!

I made a metal plate at the top left page, using a stamp (HA) that I inscribed into the metal. Then I sanded the metal to bring the pattern out. I would like to work more with metal! There is also some bling that is very hard to see, that Therese brought for me when she visited last month. I know the mask is not right, the long points should be up, but I was so excited to use it for the first time, I forgot! So I put some bling at N,S,E and W to make up for it!

Does your house look like this?

 

 

Art Books everywhere?

and still, the shelf is full?

I have always wanted to try at least one technique from each book that I have

. . .so I am going to try and make that my weekly mission! I will let you know which book it came from, and show you what I did. There are a few blogs out there that do this already - they were my inspiration. I have so many of these books, and I love reading them, now I have to DO them!

I went to Michael's this weekend, just to spend one little 40% off coupon and get my Xyron refill at 40% off, but I came home with all this. . .

All the stamps were $1.50 except the one I used my coupon on (the cute little round face). Beware the Peace stamp - it's MUCH smaller than the package! All the paper was on sale - bonus! I really needed some new rubber. . .

I took my coptic bound book apart. . .

and re-bound it with some hemp (for jewelry) I found at Michael's (and then at the Dollar Store for only 1$!)

it's much tighter and stronger now. So I've painted 2 layouts in this journal, hoping to give myself a head start. . . let's hope it works! I'm thinking of having several journals, this one as my daily journal. I've been getting inspired by lots of people lately, most recently Judy Wise, I love her daily journals, so mine may look a bit like hers for awhile. . .! Hopefully she won't mind. 

I absolutely LOVED this travel journal by Mary Ann Moss when she went to Portugal - I want my journals to look like that! Here it is full of stuff. Wonderful!

Ok, I think I've rambled on enough! Until next time!