Day2!

Again, we get 2 gifties today!  Here is the first one from Jane S:

Inside. . .

A lovely paper bag book that I can fill up with something fun! This will be fun to play with, thanks you Jane!

and

A giftie from Carmen G

A shaker Snowman Ornament! So cute!!

Mr. Snowman is very happy on my tree!
Thank you Carmen!!

Day 1!

Today is day 1 of the 12 Days of Christmas Swap at the Byhand Yahoo group! What was really fun is that several of the gifties were doubled up this year so more people could play - more goodies for us all! So we got 2 gifts today! I forgot to take photos of the gifts before unwrapping, I will do that tomorrow - too late now!

Here is the basket, filled to the brim!

The first giftie I opened was from Ruth C

This is so beautiful! I love it, and know just where it's going to go!

Thanks Ruth!

The next one was from Judy L

Wow! A felted tree with a star - gorgeous!

Thanks Judy! 

What a great way to start the 12 Days if Christmas!!

It's Back!!

The Byhand Yahoo group is having it's annual 12 Days of Christmas Swap, and of course, I'm taking part again! Just sent my last 8 parcels out today, and 1 to my DD - it's a surprise for her - she doesn't even know it's coming!

Our tree this year, we pulled up our dingy gray shag carpet and found beautiful wood floors beneath! Makes SUCH a difference. Look to the right of the tree and you see. . .

This is the basket of Byhand gifties that have arrived so far. . .

and these went out today. I sent the first nine 2 weeks ago to the States.You'll have to wait until day 11 to see what I made!

I am ALMOST finished with my current journal, will post in a day or so as soon as it's done. Will start my NEW journal tonight, as I just finished reading The Shipping News and I need to do my page. Started reading The Nanny Diaries - I need something light hearted and fun after The Shipping news! So I will be back in a few days!

More Journal Pages

Here are some more journal pages, starting the 1st of November. I did watch Teesha's videos, so there is some Teesha Moore influence - and I like it! I do seem to be making the collage pages faster than I can journal, they are so relaxing at the end of the day! I have two pages ready to journal right now, and I'm only half-way through journaling the page I'm on now. The solution is to use more quotes in my journaling to take up a lot of space at one time. That should work! Better than not doing the collages until I catch up! Anyway, here they are:

I printed out all of Nancy's Crowabout pages so I would have lots to play with,

so most if not all of these images are from those collage pages. The bird is a stamp. The

bottom edge of leaves is something I made using photos of the leaves in our front yard.

I was visiting my DD, and the girl's body reminded me of her, so I used it.

When I showed this page to her, she was actually wearing those pants,

and had worn those exact shoes that day! These images are from Nancy's sheets,

except the girl's face and the stamped edges and swirls.

One of my fav pages, and DD's as well! She loved the Mucha girl. Again, most images are from Nancy except for the Mucha Girl and the stamped leaves.

I finished the book "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory. I generally like this page, except for the Martha Stewart letters. Don't waste your money, luckily these were on sale, but I could have done the lettering better by hand. They were horrible! The images are of the real people, Anne, Mary, Henry and Katherine, and the letter is a real letter from Henry to Anne (totally unreadable though!)!

I loved the book, and will probably read more of the series!

My "fun" reading! My DD got me hooked on the Sookie Stackhouse books

(from True Blood) and this one is the 3rd one. Quick reading, and fun. I'm now reading

the 4th one, so a new page is imminent! I thought I would just use the cover art since

I liked it so much, and collaged around it. Most of the collaged edges are from Nancy,

except for Elvis I think. Don't read the page if you want to read the book!

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!