moving out

here is my son mike and his girlfriend tina. i received that dreaded phone call yesterday and it is official - they are moving to south carolina the first week in june. they are due home this morning, any time as a matter of fact, to finish up some things here and reload their car for moving day. i tried to be brave but as soon as i hung up the phone i cried like a baby. mike is one of my best friends and i will really miss not seeing him. the trip to myrtle beach is extremely long from pennsylvania so there won't be many trips made back and forth. i'm happy for him, because he is so excited and in my mind i know it's really going to be a great life experience for him, but how do you get your heart to feel the same way? it really makes you think back to when you were young and wanted to move out and be on your own. you never once thought how it made your mom and dad feel. every thing comes full circle eventually but i never thought the empty nest syndrome would come so soon. how do they grow up so fast? if you don't mind, please say a prayer for them that they will have good luck and happiness in their new venture.

my boys and me

normally my blog is all about my art but once in a while i share some photos about my personal life. a couple of weekends ago my husband's nephew got married and both my boys were able to come to the wedding. josh (in the blue shirt) lives quite a distance away so i rarely get to see him. he is a correction's officer at the pike county jail. he does cell extraction and recently was bitten by an inmate. he served in iraq and has had a life of adventure for being 25 years old. he was my first born so he holds a special place in my heart. his laugh makes my heart melt. mike (in the yellow shirt) is my baby. he'd cringe if he heard me say that but it's why he holds a special place in my heart too. he makes me laugh and i love his sense of humor. he's quite the sarcastic fellow and i believe he gets that from me. he is so kind to his mom and i'm quite thankful for that. he's finding his way in the world and is currently in south carolina looking for a job and a place to live. he wants to move there and go to golfing school. that's a lot further than a mama would like but i want both the boys to be happy and do what they need to do. that's what life is all about. i love my boys so much that sometimes i forget to cut the apron strings. thank goodness they tolerate their old ma really well.

inchie art

my good friend, jan (you can see her blog at http://www.artfriendzy.blogspot.com ) had showed an inchie art frame on her blog a while back and i loved it so much that i decided to make one for myself. if we've trade in the past please look close and see if you can find any of your inchies on here. i want to get 100 more to make another one for my art wall. don't you just love it?

going goth

an art friend of mine is having a whimsy goth girl swap for artist trading cards. in my goodie bag from my friend, cathy, that i mentioned in an earlier post she had sent me another stamp. isn't that face stamp adorable? i can't believe she parted with it. i will use it quite a bit i am sure. of course i did alter it a little bit but it works for a goth face pretty well i think.

it's been a few posts since i shared how i made something so here are the directions:

i took a piece of printed cardstock as my base for the background of the atc. i ripped a piece of page out of an old book and painted with acrylic paints in green, blue and purple. i used a large circle punch to punch out a piece of light yellow cardstock which i painted with yellow and orange arcylic paints in a fast moving swirling pattern. i took a piece of scrap brown printed paper and stamped a measuring stamp on it. when all those pieces were dry i assembled them otop of the original sized atc background. after they were adhered i took a small background circle/dot stamp and stamped everywhere except the sun. then i edged the atc with my favorite chalk box brown ink to add the vintage feel that i love so much. to make the goth girl i stamped the face on two different printed cardstocks. i used the lightest printed cardstock for the actual face. i cut the complete face shape out and then colored the face with markers. i took the darker cardstock that i stamped another face shape on but only cut out the inside part of the hair and layered that on top for a dimensional look. i cut out a random dress shape from some scrap paper and then assembled the girl. i added the black dresden edge as a last minute thought.

using stamps

i am in a monthly goodie bag swap and this month my great art friend, cathy, sent me a goodie bag filled to the brim with papers, ribbons, ephemera and a couple of stamps. here is one of the cool stamps she sent to me that is featured on this atc. of course i altered it a bit but it's a great stamp that i will use over and over. she knows how much i love birds so how great to get a bird cage mannequin! thanks cath!

legs with stripes

a good art friend, mandy, is having a stripey leg swap and most of the people that have gotten their cards done showed striped legs only. i wanted to do something a little different than what was being posted with only legs, altho, now that i'm writing this, perhaps that is exactly what you were suppose to do! uh oh. but of course, if you have been checking in with my blog you will know my infinity for bird usage in lots of art that i do, so i think you know where i'm going with this. yes, more bird art but i did give them striped legs, does that help with any monotony some viewers might be feeling? did anyone notice the cupcake in the one bird's hand? those cupcake stickers were a gift from my dear friend, emma. do you think it's my hips that give away the fact that i love cupcakes?

atc spinner holder

a few people asked to see some photos of my 7 gypsies atc spinner so i took some pictures. you can see some awesome artwork from my friends jan and kelly.

altered photo mat

a wonderfully clever artist friend of mine, tracey, had a brilliant idea to alter a photo mat. i just love it when people think outside the box! it always inspires me so. tracey wanted the mats to have a theme of "friends". i had to think on this one a little while for an idea but, of course, you know how much i love birds so i figured i just had to give in to it and incorporate it some how. so here is what i came up for my mat for the challenge. it was so much fun that i believe i will have to do a couple of more. wouldn't these make beautiful gifts?

shout out

I just discovered a fabulous give away at
www.Justanotherhangup.blogspot.com
for a tote/purse done in Amy Butler fabrics.
The give away is tomorrow. Hurry and sign up.

7 gypsy spinner

i have a wonderful art friend, jan, who i trade atc spinner cards with every month and that is how i am basically getting to fill it up. i also traded with kelly, but she had to take some time off. so between the two of them i have some really super terrific cards on my spinner. i rarely get the time to make a card for myself, but yesterday i had the urge and sat down to create one using a new collage image i had gotten a few weeks back that i haven't had the time to use. this card was fun to make and i really enjoyed myself.

DIRECTIONS here is how i made her. i took a piece of green cardstock and used a couple of different stamps to create the background, using green and blue inks. i then used brown chalkbox ink (one of my most favorite stamp inks in the whole wide world) and edged the card to distress it. i started to assemble the images to piece together for my paper doll. i used markers to color in the face and hair. i took a gum eraser and distressed the black top on her dress. i then painted white polka dots and let them dry so i could use red sparkly gel pen on top of those. i took a small button and threaded it and put it in the center of her row of buttons. i distressed the edges of the outfit with brown ink. i colored her little shoes with my glittery red gel pen and then noticed her fingernails needed a fresh coat of polish too. i used my white opaque paint pen and put little white dots around the edges of her wings. i picked out a hat for her and added a big red rose for decoration. to the rose i added some gel pen and pink glitter glue. once she was all dry i assembled and glued her to the background. i edged the card in brown opaque paint and added the word fabulous to her dress. to give her dimension i added three different colors of markers all around her silohuette.

paper dolls

alpha stamps has some new collage sheets and chipboard paper dolls. you can see their wonderful selection of art supplies at: www.alphastamps.com.
this couple is made from all alpha stamps products. don't you just love their hands?

queen tina

i was commissioned to do a piece of art. it's a little bit of long story about how i came to do this for her. this piece is symbolic of teaching someone to play the card game spades and in that game aces are high and can make points. queens are basically no point makers but she thought they were and kept bidding out of her range because she thought her queens were so valuable. we teased her like crazy about it. so when she asked me to do something for her wall i instantly recalled how we laughed and laughed during that card game. so i incorporated that memory into her wall art. she hasn't seen it yet so i'm not sure if she'll catch on to it right away but i'll be seeing her later on today and i can't wait to give it to her!

asian flare

one of my art friends is hosting and asian twinchies swap. i thought i only needed four but it turns out the swap is for six so i need to make a couple of more. i might add a few text words to them yet but i needed to do the machine stitching first and i will set them aside until i decide if i want to add more. sometimes less is more but it's hard for me to learn. i tend to keep adding and adding and adding. it's hard to know when to quit.

DIRECTIONS so here is how i made these twinchies in case you were wondering. i took some harlequin printed paper and used purple acrylic paint to cover the paper. i went in haphazard directions to streak it. then i took some gold acrylic paint and quickly swiped the edges. i took an old stamp with chinese writing and dabbed some black stamp in on it. i purposely left areas uninked to give it a vintage feel. then i took some asian images that i purchased from alpha stamps ( www.alphastamps.com) and colored them in with copic markers. on some of the images i punched out a circle on orange cardstock that i painted with gold paint. once i adhered the images i machine stitched around them in orange-gold thread to make the image pop. i then reinked the chinese writing stamp and stamped over the the moons to give it a layered feel. i edged all the twinchies with a black paint pen.

fancy that

here is another atc i made. i'm not sure what i'm going to do with her. i could trade her but i might keep her for an upcoming challenge. sometimes i wish i could get a little stockpile of art just for those ocassions but my time seems to slip through my fingers without my even noticing. i have no clue where all the time goes and the older i get the less time i seem to have.

DIRECTIONS so if you are interested in how i made this card i will share it with you. i took a piece of paper and painted it with various acylics paints. then i layered some printed paper on top of that and added more paint to make it blend in because i was just trying to create texture more so than layers. i took a collage image from artchix and altered it with markers and paint pens. i added tim holtz distress glitter glue to her wings. i stamped some shapes on the background to create a sense of foliage and then when the collage imaged was dried i glue her on to the background. i outlined her shape with a marker to give a sense of shadowing.

making art just 'cuz

well it's been a very long time since i just made some art that had no destination, like a swap or a challenge to go to. i actually made two mother's day cards, some bird inchies and another atc. it's been quite a while that i was able to be so productive. this particular atc is made on watercolor paper and i used watercolors, markers, colored pencils and some stamps.

postcard challenge

i'm in a postcard challenge and the theme is "goddess of love". i have this new stamp of these circles that i'm using on everything recently. i stamped the circles with white craft ink on black card stock and when that dried i colored in the circles with souffle gel pens. i used a white souffle gel pen to journal goddess of love on the background and then after i stared at it a while i thought the bigger circles i left uncolored needed something so i added gel pen hearts in those areas. i stamped a little goddess doll image on heavy white cardstock and colored it in with prismacolor markers. i had a watercolor heart left over from my heart inchies that i felt was too light in color so i painted it with red acrylic paint which i then put in the the goddess's "circle of love".
i didn't like the little goddess didn't stick out so much once i glued her down so i machine stitched around her in gold thread as gold is definitely a goddess color. then i stitched around the edges in gold as well.

nursery rhymes

a good art friend of mine is hosting a fairy tale swap for atc sized cards. i had this humpty dumpty stamp for ages that i got from alpha stamps (check out their website at: www.alphastamps.com) quite a long time ago and just didn't have the chance to use it. i often wonder when i look at people's art...and i ask myself...how did they do that? so i've been thinking i will share the steps in making some of the art i post for anyone who is curious. here's what i did for this atc: i stamped humpty on white cardstock and colored it in with copic and prismacolored markers. then i stamped some dots on top his little head. i cute out the entire stamp and edged it in an opaque black paint pen and light brown ink. the atual atc background was created by using a blue cardstock which is suppose to emulate night time and then i used a metallic blue gel pen and wrote the humpty dumpty nursery rhyme on it. i took some blue acrylic paint and painted haphazardly around the edges of the card. i also used acrylic paint to stamp the yellow swirl which is suppose to be the moon. i added some other stamps around the sides and stamped the stars across the top which i colored the numbers inside the stars with a light yellow gel pen. i cut slits in the humpty stamped image around the bottom of his feet to free them so i could slide a piece of green paper (painted with acrylic paint and then stamped with an "assemblage" definition stamp) underneath them.

making art

i'm in a challenge that calls for a "masked man". i saw this butterfly mask and dug through some male images i had tucked away to come up with this postcard for the challenge. i'm thinking i might make his bowtie red yet...but i have to ponder on it some more.

inch by inch

my friend, jan, made this wonderful piece of art using her inchies and i just loved it, so i asked her where she got her frame for it and i made one too. it takes 100 inchies to fill the frame so i'm bound and determined to get another 100 to make another one. i'm hosting a heart inchies swap and i dug out my watercolors to make backgrounds and i also did a piece just to use to cut out heart shapes.

color my world challenge

i'm in a challenge called color my world and you must use markers and/or colored pencils. stamped images are allowed as long as they are colored in with markers and/or pencils, too. i drew all the circles in the background and colored them in with prismacolored markers, layering the colors on top of one another to get varying colors. next i added the swirls and triangles with my black opaque paint pen, which happens to be my most favorite art supply in the world. next i stamped albert and used markers to color him. i just love that stamp. i love coloring. i hope you feel inspired to dig out your markers and color your world a little today.

seeing green

i'm doing a series of monochromatic swaps and this time it's green. i really like doing these even tho the first time i did monochromatic it took me forever to figure out how to work in all one color. i've done three green chunkies so far and i still need to complete a few more. i've not been able to do much art the past few days because my dog has come down with a mysterious illness that the vet cannot figure out. he is slowly detoriating and for being only 4 it seems so sad to watch him be sick. if you're a dog lover please feel free to send some prayers out for my dog, benny. he's a good boy and could use some extra well wishes.

making a thrinchie

there is a challenge to make a thrinchie magnet. i love art magnets. i put them on my refrigerator and on my metal art door and every day i get to see them. this particular challenge was to use only the colors brown, tan and blue. here is my magnet.

postcard challenge

here is a postcard for a monthly postcard challenge. the theme is that you have to use at least 3 circle shapes on your postcard and i am sure you can tell by looking at it that i managed to get a few more then 3 circles on it. i dug out my alcohol inks and did the background with them. i go through spurts where i use alcohol inks on everything i make. it's been a while since i've used them and i am always amazed at how lovely they blend together to make beautiful color combinations.