Since Henry and his friends graduated, we've been going to a variety of graduation parties. Today I made some graduation cards (sentiment from Club Scrap; paw print from All Night Media; and some paw print washi tape because the high school mascot is the cougars).
I bought a bunch of Looney Tunes flash drives because I thought they were fun, yet practical. I also added a regular flash drive for each kid.
Then I bagged them up and added the card with a bit of black yarn. Some of my more clever friends gave the kids checks for $20.13 (their graduation year) or $20 in Costa Rican money (since they'r going to Costa Rica on their senior trip tomorrow). But, I was pretty happy with my choice of graduation gift!
I made 24 thank-you cards today! I have been so blessed with the outpouring of support from people supporting me and Clara in our training for a half-marathon and our fundraising to help find a cure for leukemia and lymphoma (you can read more about it here or click here to join us) that I have run out of thank-you cards in my extensive stash. I wanted to make purple thank-you cards, as that is the color of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program. So I gathered an assortment of purple papers and got to work.
How did I make them so quickly? I used a couple of "assembly line" card making formulas that were developed by Julie Heyer of the Cape Cod Scrapper blog. The first recipe is at this link, and the second one is here. I used 24 sheets of 8.5x11 paper to create 24 cards. Pretty cool, huh? I'm calling this my Monthly Make for March (a project started by The Felt Fairy blog, which I am continuing this year, even if she is not formally running it this year due to her health).
It felt really good to get back to card making after such a long time. I'd forgotten how nice it is to make cards. Let me know if you check out Julie's blog or if there's something you've returned to lately.
Artists in Blogland have been sponsoring an art journaling series called "Fall Fearless and Fly." The final prompt, is all about looking at something old in a new way. I did a couple of things with the prompt. From a journaling perspective, I took a fresh look at where I am right now. Truthfully, I've been feeling a little mundane lately - not nearly as amazing as I used to be. I feel like I spend far too much time attending to day-to-day appointments and running the house and not as much time doing interesting work or helping my family thrive (instead of just survive). But, when I took a fresh look at myself, I decided that perhaps I am amazing still - just in a different way. And that's what my journaling page is all about.
I made this art journal page in a journal which is also something old being used in a new way. This afternoon, I took a really large road atlas (each page is 11x16) and converted it into an art journal. The "dry" art journal I've been using for my Kelly Kilmer class measures 9x12, and I've really enjoyed working in a larger format. I was also inspired by a ledger-turned-art journal that Dina Wakley has featured on her blog. So I grabbed the atlas from the junk pile in the garage. I glued 2-3 pages together to give them so more heft and gesso'd a few pages to get them ready. I'm calling the journal my "monthly make" for January and looking forward to creating some more BIG art journal pages (the double page spread above measures 16x22).
I have really enjoyed the Fall Fearless and Fly prompts. The only one I missed doing on time was Challenge #6 "Divided by God." It rolled around in my mind, though, for quite a while, and I eventually created this art journal page on how I turn to prayer when I am stressed.
I created it as part of the Kelly Kilmer class, with lots and lots of paper and no paint. I hear that the sponsors of FFF will be doing something this spring, and I'm looking forward to it!
Have you repurposed anything lately or taken anything else "old" and made it "new" again?
For Christmas every year, I like to give some hand made cards. This year, I decided to do something different. I made cards featuring my photography and had them printed at Snapfish. I made several themed sets. The first set (above) features "sea" photographs.
The second set has a "land" theme.
The third set features photographs of Ireland. I also printed a pair of sympathy cards.
It was a lot of fun to make them, and I'm really glad that I did (and I'm calling them my Monthly Make for December). But, to be honest, I'm not completely sold on Snapfish. I found the website a bit difficult to use because it seemed to over-crop my photos, which limited the choices of photographs I could use. Also, the pricing was very confusing (I used some discount codes), though they ended up being very reasonably priced. Finally, while I liked the smoothness of the cardstock and thought they did a good job on printing the images, I would have preferred for the card stock to be a bit thicker. I would have used a different website, but I couldn't figure out how to use the ones I looked at! I do think I want to make more photo cards in the future, but I want to try a different site next time. I'm not very good with technology, though. So, I'm looking for recommendations for a very easy-to-use sites to make photo cards. As well as any comments you have on these sets.
When Bernice of Newly Creative announced her November challenge blog, "An Attitude of Gratitude," I knew right away that I wanted to join in. It took me forever to figure out what type of journal I wanted to use. I almost made a stitch-bound journal with drawing paper or an old journal I had laying around. Eventually, I decided I wanted to use water-color paper and simply hold the sheets together with a brass ring. Because Bernice is posting a series of prompts that includes scriptures (as well as general quotes, an art technique and an inspirational idea), I decided to use religious/angel images from my stash. While diving through my stash, I also decided to pick a color palette of paint from my miscellaneous paint bin (as opposed to the Golden brand acrylic paints which I tend to use). The colors include metallic copper, metallic green, dark brown, antique white, cranberry and eggplant. Here's what I ended up with as my supplies for the project:
I painted all the pages with a background of byzantine copper paint and then used gel medium to adhere the images. I decided early on that I didn't want to try to make a page each day. I ended up with 16 pages, which feels just right.
Every day, Bernice offers a prompt filled with so many ideas! Rather than try to reread them each day that I find time to work in my journal, I decided to use an idea that Shimelle featured in the latest version of her class, Learn Something New Everyday. I took a small notebook from my stash (thanks Deb!) and jotted down the quotes, artistic suggestions and scriptures which spoke to me. That way, when I find time to create, I simply grab my little note book and go. I'm hoping to do a few pages today and start posting this week. I'm also calling this my "Monthly Make" for November.
Are you doing a gratitude project this month? Did this give you any new ideas?
I love creating art in October for two holidays - Halloween and Dias de los Muertos. I don't think I made anything last year at all! So I resolved to change that for this year and bought some new paper to inspire me (it's from Echo Park's Chillingsworth Manor collection). I signed up for a Halloween themed book mark swap and made a couple of different designs. The two pictures on the left show the front of the bookmark, and the image on the right is the back. Here's the second set I made:
Again, the fronts are on the left and the back is on the right. I think my favorite of all is the "Nevermore" one, but I favor a fairly flat bookmark. Although these were fairly simple to make, they still seemed to take all morning. I just don't think I'm a very fast paper crafter! Regardless, it was a fun morning, and I'm calling these my "monthly make" for October. Got a favorite in the bunch? And, I was wondering, are you a fast crafter? Or a slow poke like me?
This weekend I'm getting together to craft with a group of friends at an annual crop we call "Scramp Camp." The organizers have asked participants to contribute cards to "Operation Write Home." So, this morning, I pulled out a whole bunch of card fronts and stamped images I found the last time I organized my stash and started making cards. I ended up making about 20 cards in just a few hours! I'm calling this my "monthly make" for September. It was great to get these things out of my stash and into a usable form. Do you have a stash of images or card fronts lurking in your stash? If so, when was the last time your turned them into cards?
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The "monthly make" is sponsored by The Felt Fairy.
Every September, Shimelle Laine runs an online course called "Learn Something New Everyday." As with all her classes, once you have taken the class, you are invited to retake it every time it's offered - for free! I've done the class two or three times now and have always enjoyed it. The last time I took the class, I made a mini album and used a different rubber stamp each day to illustrate the lesson. I decided to do something similar this year. This time around, instead of using a rubber stamped image, I'm going to play with scissors and paper and glue. I'm going to cut and paste images, words and embellishments from my massive stash of embellishments and ephemera to illustrate each lesson.
I started with a chipboard minialbum of pennants that I had in my stash. To create the background, I sprayed each pennant with some Adirondack ink and then sprayed on designs using three Crafters Workshop stencils (butterfly meadow, peacock feather and peek-a-boo). I added numbers from one to thirty on the top of my inner pages, so they are ready to go. I decorated the covers already, and they are up top (as well as a sample inner page). I have found that the key to success (for me) in this class is to have my background pages all ready to go, so that each day I can concentrate on the lesson and its illustration. As an extra bonus, I'm calling my completed base album my "Monthly Make" for August.
Creatively this year I've been working hard on my drawing and painting. So, in September, I want to return to the art form where I started - collage. I'm really looking forward to it!
Are you doing LSNE? If so, what's your plan?
For the second year in a row, I'm participating in Kat Sloma's Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap. The purpose is to take some of your art (photography, poetry, painting, etc.), reproduce it, put it on a postcard and then send it out to be enjoyed by others. Kat has about 300 people sending in sets of five postcards, which she will then swap out and send away. I have two potential postcards to swap. The first one (up top) features one of my favorite photographs. I love the lines in it, the colors, the sky and the flavor it gives of the harbor near my home. Here's my second possibility:
It features a mixed media collage. I'm not sure which one to submit for the swap. Opinions welcome!
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I'm calling this my "monthly make" for July. Monthly Make is sponsored by the Felt Fairy.
On vacation this year, I knew I wanted to take along a sketchbook, drawing tools and watercolors. I went shopping and saw many different varieties of sketchbooks. I settled on this small wirebound Strathmore " Visual Journal" because it was on sale and I liked the smoothness and weight of the paper. One journal I almost bought had journaling lines opposite each sheet of paper. I loved the idea and decided to use a journaling stamp customize my journals in this way:
I customized other pages in a different way, segmenting them into smaller spaces because I often like to sketch small:
I was inspired to make the smaller segments by this post at Nodljus using the Moleskin Storyboard art journal for some travel pages. I'm counting this as my "monthly make" for the challenge at Felt Fairy. I'd be interested to hear of others who use a sketchbook that is different than simply blank pages.
Well, I did it! I buckled down and completed the journaling and embellishments to finish my "Week in the Life" photo journaling project. You can see the blank book at this link; the cover is above, and the completed book looks like this:
A typical day looks like this:
In the top photo, there's a full 6x6 red page on the left, followed by two dark brown 6x2 inch flaps, to which I added pictures, matted with light brown paper. The second picture shows the page created using the two flaps, and the third picture shows a full 6x6 red page on the right and a flap page on the left (with the photo added). This gave me plenty of room to add pictures and journaling. Here's two other pages I liked:
I kept the embellishments very simple. I mainly used two different Close to My Heart stamp sets. One had the date journaling stamp that I used on my cover and for each day (you can see the Monday and Tuesday ones above). The other had a variety of stamps (the "time to" one; a "life is good" and "good day" ticket; the phrase "follow your dreams"' and a swirl). I used these throughout the album. I also supplemented with the "memoir" and "write your own story" stamps you can see on the cover.
Overall, I'm really happy with the album. It really chronicles a week in my life and covers my work, family and creative pursuits pretty well. I've noticed that I've taken many fewer pictures this year, so I'm really glad to have this album to really record the nitty gritty of our lives. Plus, I'm going to count this as my monthly make for May (just in the nick of time)!
Did you do Week in the Life? Did you complete your album?
I have a whole bag of projects from Club Scrap that I am working my way through this year, with a little help from the Felt Fairy's "Monthly Make" prompt. For April, I created this travel journal for our trip to Ireland and Barcelona this summer. It uses a hand made journal kit from Club Scrap's Destination Collection. The pages are light green, white, dark blue and light blue.
The front inside cover (left) has a large pocket decorated with stamps. The interior pages have journaling blocks from Club scrap and the cool tags I made, inspired by this month's Counterfeit Kit.
There are more tags and another pocket on the inside back cover, too!
Once we get our itinerary set, I'll start filling it with information. And then I'll add more while we're on the road. It feels great to complete another little project! Have you had the nice feeling of completion for anything lately?
I'm trying to work my way through a variety of project kits I have purchased over the years, so I joined the Felt Fairy's Monthly Make Project. For March, I decided to make a cute little mini-album from Club Scrap.
You start with one piece of 12x12 printed paper, which you fold, cut, and fold again until it turns into an accordion album. The paper had a garden theme, in purple and greens.
The project kit left the cover design up to the artist, so I decided to make some mosaic butterflies using this fabulous technique featured on Tim Holtz's blog.
While I was playing, I made two extras. I'm keeping this red one:
But I'm sending this purple one to Deb for her Butterfly Project (read more here). While you're at it, you might want to check out my cousin Irene's wonderful post about the Project, her visit to the Houston Museum and her fabulous stained glass butterflies (click here to read it).
In making the butterflies, I followed Tim's instructions pretty closely, although I just traced the butterflies onto grungeboard because I don't have any of the dies. I then cut a piece of wonder tape around the right size, attached it to the grungeboard and trimmed. I used liquid platinum embossing powder instead of cement. I also used highly textured pieces of paper for my mosaic (most of them were extra backgrounds made in technique classes). I love how they turned out.
Have you tried Tim's technique yet? Made any butterflies? Doing the Monthly Make? If so, feel free to add a link, and I'll be sure and stop by.
Yesterday, I posted some altered blocks I made using vintage heritage photographs from my collection. After I made those, I made a few more using the Graphic 45 "On the Boardwalk" paper collection. The block above has a fun bathing beauty theme.
I also made a set of three alphabet blocks using the same paper line:
They were fun and fast to make, but I wish I would have made them spell out a word. Oh well, I have lots more blocks to play with!
Tomorrow is the first of the month, which means it's time for my monthly 24-hour stamp give-away. See you then!
When I was cleaning and organizing my craft space, I came across a good selection of wooden blocks. After seeing some of the cool blocks which Deb made, I decided to use my January counterfeit kit to make some altered blocks. I know it's now the end of February, but I finally used my January counterfeit kit to make a block with a vintage friendship theme:
After getting the hang of it, I made this one with some more heritage photos from my collection:
I like this one better than the first one which I made. Partly because I love the quote which I put on it (you can read it in the photo at the top of the post), but mostly because it just came together and seemed to flow. I really like having a single block which conveys a certain message. Tomorrow I'll feature a few more blocks, including one that is a set.
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I made this as part of the "Monthly Make" challenge organized by the Felt Fairy. To see a list of participants and their projects, check out this link.
I've had this Bazzill "Memory Mug" gathering dust on my desk for, um, maybe two years! This weekend, I decided to complete the project, spurred on by the current Stampotique challenge to produce an altered item. I kept it really simple - I started with a fun piece of patterned paper from Club Scrap and lined up my favorite Stampotique girls:
I love it! I don't know if I'm more happy about having the completed mug available to use or about completing another project and getting it off my desk - LOL!
I really do love the entire line of stamps offered by Stampotique, and, once I pulled them out for this project, I found myself making a few other things. You can look for them on my blog this week.
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Edited to add this as my Monthly Make for January. Check out other projects at this link.
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