Meanwhile, over in the Kitten Nursery . . .

Regular readers of my blog know that my daughter Clara and I have been volunteering at the local humane society for about a year, mainly walking and socializing dogs. And that, over the last several weeks, we started volunteering in the kitten nursery.

We take care of teeny, tiny kittens 3-6 weeks old who don't have a mom and who need help being fed and learning to eat. We also socialize them and tend to their general care.

Once they leave the nursery, they usually go to foster care for a few weeks and get "fixed" before returning to the Humane society to be put up for adoption.

I would never have started to volunteer at the Humane Society, if it weren't for Clara's need to do "community service" for high school, her insistence that she do her hours there, and the need for under-16 year olds to have a parent partner. And, it makes me wonder whether others do volunteer work and what your experience has been. When we first moved to our current community, I did volunteer work in the "well baby" clinic for the public health department. I weighed and measured babies and did some light translation. Once we had children, I devoted my volunteer hours to working in the schools, first in the classroom and then helping to support their sports teams. 

And now I find myself helping motherless kittens get strong enough to find a loving home. We recently got an email that over 100 kittens have come through the nursery, and we're starting to see our first graduates going up for adoption. That's 100 little souls that have been saved through the good work of volunteers. I feel privileged to be one of them.

Strangest Extra Credit Assignment (Scavenger Hunt Find)

Thursday was Clara's last day of school! I'm so happy it's over because it will give us all a chance to sleep in and her a chance to step away from deadlines and due dates. During the last weeks, she worked hard to keep her grades up or to raise them. Some of her teachers offered extra credit for various activities. Most of the teachers asked for course-related assignments, such as "illustrate a meaningful quote from Lord of the Flies." Others asked for classroom donations for end of the term celebrations. But one of her teacher asked for something quite strange.

Each spring, the Portugese community in our town hosts the Chamarita Pentecostal festival. It features a midway with games and food booths, including the signature sandwich filled with Chamarita beef. Clara's teacher has a wall in her classroom covered with photos of kids eating a Chamarita beef sandwich. The teacher offers extra credit for students who bring in a picture to add to the wall. So, off we went to the festival.

And here's her extra-credit photograph. Clara's a vegetarian. So she didn't actually eat the sandwich. I did. It was good. Ah, education!
As a bonus, I found a lamp post for the 2014 Summertime Photography Hunt, decorated for the festival.

I've seen a fair number of lamp posts popping up so far on people's blogs. Besides gnomes, it may be the most popular find so far. And I've noticed that they seem to be pretty similar in shape and style all over the world. So, I put some time into composing this shot to try to get something a little different. I hope you like it! 
How's everyone else coming along on the Hunt? Remember, you have plenty of time. It runs until the official end of summer on September 23, 2014. For details and the full list of Scavenger Hunt items, click on this link or the photo in the sidebar to the left. Newcomers welcome! It's not too late to join.

Hope House (Summer of Color Week 1)

front view of Hope House

Kristin of the Twinkle, Twinkle blog hosts a wonderful summertime event called "Summer of Color." Each week, for six weeks, she posts a color combination and asks people to create something using that color palette. People work in mixed media, fabric, paint, photography, etc. This year I wanted to do something three dimensional, so I decided to make houses - teeny, tiny houses. My week one house is based on the colors aqua blue and yellow with a splash of hot pink. The base of it is a die colored with alcohol inks.

back view of Hope House

I painted the roof with acrylic paint and added some embellishments: 14 (for 2014; I might try to add a 14 to each house); the word hope; a door; a window and an angel (all cut from foam). I really enjoyed making this project, and I'm looking forward to making five more over the course of the summer. Thank you Kristin for hosting!
If you want to participate, there's still plenty of time to join up. If you want to see what others have made using this same color palette, click on this link.

Buried Treasure

Seth Apter runs an occasional challenge to unearth an all-time favorite post and repost it for the world to see. He calls it Buried Treasure, and you can read more about it here. I decided to participate this year and came up with this post from 2010. That year, I hosted a blog hop for altered houses. I took sign-ups and then sent all participants an envelope of goodies for them to use to make an altered house. I then hosted a blog circle blog hop (which you can find here, although I'd be surprised if the links all still worked). In preparation for the hop, I wrote this tutorial which I think holds up pretty well to the test of time. This post also contains a link (in the third paragraph) to another tutorial I wrote on "how-to-collage" which is also pretty good. I hope you enjoy these tutorials. 
I'd be curious about how many of you remember (or participated) in the altered house blog hop . . . and wonder whether we should do another one . . . 

Altered House Tutorial (The Beach Shack)

Welcome House Party guests and anyone else interested in altered houses!  Several people asked for a tutorial on making altered houses, so I thought I would walk you through the creative process I used to make this house, which I call my Beach Shack. I hope you find the tutorial useful. I started with an envelope of supplies, which included the following:

I began by looking at the supplies to decide what kind of house they suggested and whether I wanted to go with it or change it entirely.  I thought these supplies suggested a beachy, funpark kind of theme, and I liked that. [If I'm starting from scratch (without a bag of supplies), I usually start with a theme in mind and pull out supplies (images, paper, embellishments) which support that theme.  Or, I might start with an image that calls to me and then choose supporting papers and embellishments.]  The next thing I did was to think about any of my own supplies that I might want to add - things that had a similar feel and color scheme.  I pulled out a few things, including paint, ink, brads and some 1940's pictures of women in swimsuits:

From here, I basically proceeded to follow the three steps that I outlined earlier in my collage tutorial:  create a background; add an image; and add embellishments. You can find that tutorial here.  It's truly not so different than what your probably do in making cards or scrapbook pages.
Step 1:  Background. To create a background for my house, I considered a variety of different ways to use paper and paint to cover my house.  I started with these three papers:

I liked this basic approach, but I really wanted my beach shack to have a rustic feel, so I tried out my two paint colors to see if either would work:

The brown seemed too drab. I liked the blue, so painted the bottom half of the house blue.  I still wanted it more rustic, so I considered using either crackle paint on top of the blue or spritzing brown ink onto the blue.

Since my crackle paint was a little dried out (and also drab), I decided to spritz the bottom with brown ink.  I also used brown ink to ink the edges of all the papers and the edge of the blue. Then I glued the papers in place, and my background was done:

Step 2:  Images. I decided to use two images:  the elephant from the envelope and a 1940's woman doing a handstand.  I double-matted the elephant, single matted the woman, and placed them on the house:

Step 3:  Embellishments. When it's time to decide on embellishments, I usually try a few different variations to see what I like before I glue anything down.  I used a selection of things from the envelope and from my stash for my first pass:

I thought this looked pretty good, but thought it felt a little plain still. I wanted to add something else, and I realized I hadn't used any of the cool gingham ribbon from the envelope. I tried out the idea of putting some under the roof line or maybe some squares in the lower right corner of the house:

I decided I liked it along the roofline, but not so much on the house.  I decided to put some yellow brads in the lower right instead.  I adhered everything to end up with this:

I liked it pretty well, but I felt like it still needed one more element in the upper left hand corner of the house.  I rooted around on my desk and found a cream-colored star button with orange polka dots.  The orange pulled some orange out of the elephant picture.  I adhered the star with yellow brads, and my beach shack was complete! [Just to be sure it was complete, I toyed with the idea of adding something else (small shells, a flag on top, flowers), but they all made it feel cluttered.]

A few things about the design that I think work well.  The color scheme followed the gallon-quart-pint formula (where you use approximately 70% of your main color - blue; approximately 25% of your supporting color - brown; and approximately 5% of your third color - yellow) which often works for me. The vertical line of the brads reflect and balance the vertical image of the woman doing the handstand (she's a friend of my Aunt's, by the way), the star with the circular brads reflect and balance the picture of the elephant on the round ball.  Like many of my collages (or scrapbook pages or cards), there's a background, a title (live simply) and then three embellishments (tickets, star and brads).  Everything (color, images, embellies) supports the theme of a Beach Shack. I've never studied design, but I think this is why the house works for me to feel balanced and complete. Usually when I'm creating, I don't think consciously about any of these design principles, but I can look at the completed product and describe them (and I find it an interesting exercise).  If I'm struggling with a project, then I usually try to think about design principles to find out what is or is not working.
I didn't use everything that came in the envelope or that I pulled out.  Here's what I had left over (it's probably enough for another house - LOL!):

A few additional thoughts. There were other directions to go with the background and embellishments. For instance, I considered painting the roof brown or using a brown paper on the roof piece and then cutting some of the flowers out of the patterned paper to decorate it.  I also thought about cutting out some of the compass designs and using those as part of the background on the house or cutting little triangular flags out of the yellow paper. Any of these could have worked.  Second, if the theme suggested by the supplies in the envelope doesn't speak to you, feel free to substitute for any or all of the supplies.  Third, just play with the embellishments until you find something you like. As Paul Gardner said, "A painting is never finished.  It simply stops in interesting places."  I love my beach shack.  I think it's an interesting place to stop and spend a few moments. It might even be a fun place to have a house party . . .
I hope you found this tutorial useful.  If so, I'd love feedback as to what was helpful.  If not, polite suggestions as to what to add or delete are always welcome.  Party on!
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To see the full list of Buried Treasure participants from this year, click over to Seth's blog here.

Zoom In/ Zoom Out on a Weathered Fence

Since finding the "Good Fences" weekly meme, sponsored by Run*A*Round Ranch Report blog, I notice so many gorgeous, photogenic fences. While wandering down Main Street the other day, I spied this weathered beauty fronted by some lovely lavender. When I got to the end, I captured its wonderful end post:

The two photographs together make a wonderful pair for Helena's Zoom In Zoom Out meme, which encourages followers to take two photographs one close up and one wide angle.
I'm linking up to both Good Fences and ZIZO.

One Photo, Twenty Words: All-American Dog

Waiting to pick Clara up after school.
Buster reflected in the mirror; the softball field; the flags.
An All-American dog.

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Abi, over at Creating Paper Dreams, hosts a link-up of short stories about photos called "One Photo; Twenty Words." To see others, click here.

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On Thursday, I will be participating in Seth Apter's Buried Treasure

It's a very cool idea to mine the treasure found in your past blog postings.  You can read more about it here.  I"d love to see others join in!

Challenge Cards for Refreshing Blog Event

Jennifer Grace ran a fantastic blog event this weekend with the theme of refreshing your craft and your soul. When I read about the event, I resolved to squeeze some time out of my busy weekend to do a few of the challenges and make some cards (especially for graduation parties I'm attending next weekend). These cards, using Studio 45 paper and stickers, as well as some patterned paper and card stock from my stash were made in response to her "keep it simple" challenge.  They're for two very special team mates of Clara that are graduating this year.

I also made these card in response to the "teal, orange and white" challenge.  The second one is birthday-themed, but I think the first one can work for graduation.
I had lots of fun checking in with the event, as time allowed. The challenges and many of the give-aways are still open. You can check out the wrap-up post here.  Thanks Jennifer for a fun weekend!