Happy Hallowe'en!

Tomorrow is Hallowe'en and I'm so glad the next day is Sunday! "They" should declare that Hallowe'en ALWAYS fall on Saturday!
(Can you tell I'm a teacher?)

Some more journal pages for you! Unfortunately that's all I've done lately except for some Christmas tags for a swap, and of course I had to rush them to the mailbox without scanning them first. Oh well!

here are my pages

 

This was the book I read for my online book club.

I thought I would put my books in my regular journal from now on

rather than a separate one. We'll see how it works!

This was not my favourite book. I give it 3 stars.

Have a fun Hallowe'en!

More Journal pages

It seems that all I am doing lately (all I really have time for) is journal pages. That's not a really bad thing, but I hope to get back into other projects! I am doing a lot of material making for school that takes up a lot of my extra time, so when that is done, I should have lots more time! In the meantime, here are my journal pages:

I love the tattoos I put on the back of this lady! My DD is getting a tattoo on her back in January, I seem to be a bit obsessed with tattoos these days. I don't think I would ever get one though.

I love this page! Again, a "tattoo" on the girl's arm. I love the flying pig!

 

Another favorite page, I love the birds! Also I discovered Crowabout Collage Group

and used some of Nancy's images on this page.

Some more Crowabout images, I like the legs on this page!

And an image I cut out from an old ATC of mine. The Asian girl on the right is a tattoo image.

played with Zentangles on an empty spot. Not my forte!

It's October, i thought it would be fun to use Halloween images on my October pages!

The ghosty looking one on the upper left is a transparency. The "death" image is another tattoo image.

I really like this page, because I love the sexy image of the Spanish dancer!

Some Crowabout images on this page too.

I thought I would try a spooky black page. I couldn't get anything to write on the black, so I tried covering the black with white watercolor crayon. That was even worse and my Pitt pen refused to write at all. So I covered it with white acrylic paint (paint dauber) and my black gel pen worked on that. But I need a new Pitt pen! I don't know what is was about the white that destroyed the pen. I did manage to use white gel pen to make some highlights until it refused to work anymore as well. the dog and cats are from Crowabout.

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!

Weekend in TO and visit to Ottawa

Our "vacation" time this summer was spent in Toronto for a few days, visiting with our DD, and then to Ottawa, to get my passport and visit a few museums. We had a fantastic time in both places! We stayed in Toronto in a B&B near CJ's house (first time in a B&B, it was luxurious!) CJ took us to the ROM, where we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls, and lots more. Here are a few photos from that trip:

Mr. T!

Neat chandelier embedded into a canvas

This is the new added on "Crystal" to the ROM. It was added to the outside of the building, which you can still see on the inside. The crystal has added a lot of room to the ROM.

The garden at our B&B

next - Ottawa! Here is the National Art Gallery

Right under the spider you can see the special exhibit
sign for "From Raphael to Caracci-The Art of Papal Rome"
What an incredible exhibit! If you can possibly get to this, I highly recommend it.

The next day we were off to Hull, and the Museum of Civilization, a favourite!

This dragon was at the entrance of the new exhibit "Mythic Beasts, Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids" We love this museum and visit whenever we can!

The first floor, First People's Hall

Looking at the Parliament Buildings through a waterfall

Lunch!

Well, I guess that's it for the summer. Back to work on Monday (even though I've been there almost every day this summer!) But more art is on it's way, I have several projects up my sleeve!

More Fun with Therese!

Therese and I also wanted to make a Coptic Bound book. We tried to read the directions, but they were very confusing! Finally we looked it up on You Tube and found a great demo. I can't show you my book because I can't get my camera to co-operate with Kodak Easy-Share (anything but if you ask me! Olympus was much better) We used crochet string because that is all we had, but I think I will re-do mine with a thicker string.

We also made a tag from an idea that I got from another blog, but now I can't find it (of course!)
You take some flat plastic from an empty box (recycling!) and you cut it into a tag shape, then you run it through the cuttlebug to emboss the design (I use a pasta machine, as I don't have a cuttlebug). The you make a tag and glue it on top. Easy peasy. If anyone knows where this idea came from, please let us know! Image by Altered Pages.

We didn't get around to playing with wax, we'll have to save that for another day! I love having Therese come and play for a few days!

Most Fun Weekend of August

The most fun weekend of August was when my friend Therese from Trenton came to visit for a few days. We wanted to do many things, one of which was to make books. She brought her zutter machine, and we started to punch out lots and lots of coasters to use as book covers. We then had the wonderful idea of making little books for our guests that we were having for dinner on Monday night. So we made 9 little books, each the same but different, and we had a surprise for our friends on Monday night!




Since it was a dinner party, we had 4 quotes that had something to do with food. We left 3 pages blank, ready for mounting a photo. During the party we snapped photos, and then snuck away and printed out 3 pages of 3 different photos, each person was represented in the photos (not all at once). After dinner (we had pot-luck appetizers, then Therese and I made salad and cedar-planked Salmon) but before dessert (cheesecake!) we brought out the books, photos, and lots of fibers and charms. All of our friends but one were stampers/paper artists. They had a ball gluing in the photos and personalizing their books, even the one who claims she's not artistic! So we now all have our own little book of that wonderful time together!

I had a lot of questions about the salmon, which was incredibly good, Therese and I just looked it up on You Tube, which is where the link above takes you, you can choose which one you want to see. The one we looked at and chose, of course, I can't find! Essentially we soaked the cedar plank (Loblaws) for 24 hours, the poured on olive oil, salt and pepper, put the fillets on (nice and thick!) oiled, salted an peppered them, and put the whole thing on a hot grill (turned down to medium I think, when we put them on). The fillets were very thick, they cooked about 25 minutes I think. And boy, did the air smell wonderful!! The bottom of the board was very charred and burnt, and the salmon tasted lovely and smokey. The only sauce we used was dill cream cheese, melted in the microwave.