the skinny

i woke up this morning feeling the art bug. that was a nice feeling! i made a skinny for my friend, cathy, who i trade with every month. along with the chunky page each month that we do we also create a "zetti" skinny. the one for april is a surprise but i'm ahead of schedule and this one is for may. the cupcake for the body is a collage image from the sheet cathy sent me for my birthday. everyone who knows me knows how much i love cupcakes, so it was a really thoughtful gift she gave to me.

tips and techniques club

today was the monthly meeting for a club i belong too. it's all about using different tips and techniques to create greeting cards and/or other gift giving ideas. today we made this great flower card using a once inch circle punch. you punch out 8 circles and fold them with 2 sided paper and when you are finished you get this beautiful 3 dimensional flower. the other item we made today was a st. patty's day gift envelope. what was clever about this is that it is made out of a regular mailing envelope that you lick shut. you use a punch to punch out the sides leaving the inside piece that becomes a handle. of course this template will be great to use for other holidays as well. i'm thinking i'll make my nephew one for easter and tuck some easter grass and a few goodies, like skittles and cash, inside.

cathartic writing

it seems that my earlier post today was quite cathartic. i've been busy in my art room for most of the afternoon and actually finished an art project. this chunky page will serve as a two-fold piece. i will use it in the alpha stamps gallery as part of my design team requirements because the collage image and the fabric tape are from their website, but it will also serve as next month's chunky page for a friend that i trade with. i get to choose the topic for april and i wanted to choose vintage women since i have so many great vintage collage sheets from alpha stamps. 

i also finished two other spinner cards for my collection to trade.

finding the time

so here i am wondering where the time goes in my day? every morning i wake up feeling like today is going to be a productive art day and then in a blink of an eye, night falls, and i realize i've had little time in the art room. i'm beginning to wonder if i'm related to austin powers and having a serious loss of art mojo. more than likely it's just a cycle of creativity that has an ebb and flo as i do remember not so long ago it was nothing for me to work 6 hours in my art room a day and sometimes i'd stay up til 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning trying to finish projects. now it seems i can barely muster an hour of art time and some days i find myself being totally absent from the art room. one thing i can say is that i am hearing something similar from quite a few of my close art buddies so i am hopeful it is nothing more than the winter doldrums. i feel guilty when i don't create because i am so passionate about art and i love the feeling of joy and peace when i am creating. while i profess i don't understand the art flow i am in quite now, i do respect it, so rather than worry over why i'm not sitting at my desk i did make time for an art run to michaels. i still had some birthday money and figured some new art supplies might inject a little nudge in the right direction, after all, the last time i went to michaels i made a few things with those bird rub ons i purchased there. it seems that the michaels run did help me to do some art work when i got home. i created another spinner card. the image is a rubber stamp from alpha stamps. the little girl is stamped and then colored in with markers and gel pens.

a chunky page

cathy, a great artistic friend of mine from alaska, suggested that this year we do a themed monthly trade for chunky pages. she said, that then, when the year was up, we would have a wonderful selection of chunky book pages to assemble into a chunky book of one another's art. it didn't take me long to realize that her idea sounded like a fabulous plan. as we worked out the details we decided that we would take turns every other month choosing a theme, and this month it was cathy's turn to pick. she wanted to choose birds this time around. while every one who knows me knows that i love crows probably would have bet their last nickel that my page would have had a crow on it. for those who bet i have to say that you lost a wager because i had one more of those bird rub ons from the package i bought at michaels the other day, so i decided to use it on this page. i teased cathy saying i might keep this page for myself but now that it is finished i just might! cathy should really start to plan out a few good begging lines to get me to send it to her.

7 gypsy's obsession continues

i worked on a couple more cards for the 7 gypsy atc spinner.  i really love making these cards for some strange reason. i will have to blame jan, my stamping friend from california, who turned me onto this spinner.  i had these pink chipboard crowns that i received as a gift from someone and i was dying to use them. i love the dimension and texture that chipboard adds to my art. the bird card is made from some of the rub ons i got when i went to michael's art and craft store the other day.  i just loved that bird rub on package the moment i saw it.  the other atc spinner card is made with a teesha moore collage image that i altered with markers and liquid pearls.. notice how well the saying on that card speaks for itself.

something for alpha stamps

i was busy making art this morning and i was quite surprised at how productive i was. normally it seems i start something, get distracted by something else, which leads me in an entirely different direction and i never finish anything that i started. i actually managed to finish three rolodex cards for an online rolo swap i host at atcsforall.com and i worked on a project for the alpha stamps website. i'm really hooked on these cards that you put on the 7 gypsy spinner. so here is what i did using a lot of alpha stamps products. i call this "future draftsman".

7 gypsy atc holder card

today i managed to find time to work on some cards for the 7 gypsy atc holder. i did three of them for a monthly personal trade. the houses have a little shaker box for the window. all three of the cards are alike but i did used different paper combinations for the houses to make them somewhat different for the girls. there is something i just love about shaker box cards. it must be the kid in me but i love to shake them and see the movement and hear the sound of that art. i just recently came across a great tip to use white fun foam to create the little box. you can stamp on it, cut it easily with scissors and it's the perfect heighth to use pop dots to create an even plane when you are putting down your art. it really is so much easier than using that thick double stick tape which always required lots of little pieces being cut.

my birthday

well today is my birthday. i didn't actually get to do any artwork today due to my party preparations, but the above card i was working on for a few days and finally finished yesterday. you know how it is when you have an idea but then making it turn out like you wanted is part of the plan you sometimes can't control? well i wanted this atc to be a little different than how it turned out but i have to say i still like it. the heart is metal venting tape that i dry embossed with a stylus. the background stamp on the inside is one of my favorite stamps. a great stamping friend, jan, gave it to me last year. now how lucky was i!

an alpha stamps project

i've been working on an alpha stamps project for the past several days. i said that i would do an altered microscope slide mailer. pictured here is the front, the inside and then the back of the mailer. almost every thing used to make this project came from alpha stamps. the images were from a collage sheet that the company sent in a design team package for use. as you can see from the inside photo i had the notion to dig out my soldering iron to use on the microscope slides. i forgot how fun it is to do soldering. i managed to solder all three slides without one single burn! how lucky was that.