My Journey Into Art

Sneak Peak 3!!! How did I miss the 1st 2????

just because Nancy Maxwell James inspired me!

I made my own ‘glimmer mist’ with alcohol inks and Perfect pearls, stamped with new distress inks, Pumice Stone,  and stamps from Quietfire Designs.

I belong to another Yahoo group, we_love_digital_art, that has challenges for us to take pat in. One I did was making a name tag for signatures.  This is what I came up with. I’m still struggling with getting perfect outlines when I try for transparent backgrounds. gonna have to learn how to use masks!

Another challenge was for using celtic images but I misread, tired as I am, and I was to use images from the photo albums on the group. This however is what I came up with. I used an image from www.aon-celtic.com who has a ton of gorgeous freeware to use!

Don’t know if you can tell but I am very proud of my Irish heritage!

anything it seems now! When I was a kid, my mom taught me to knit in 1 lunch hour  … can’t read a pattern, can only knit and purl etc .. etc .. but I can knit!!! lol Later she taught me how to crochet … I can make chains, and shells, dc and tc, but I can’t follow a pattern. Still I can crochet!!! lol  In high school, I took Home Ec and learned how to sew among other things (cooking, you know….). When I was pregnant for my 1st son, I taught myself how to do xstitch on printed pattern. I didn’t like the look so I moved onto  counted xstitch. And I’ve done country crafts and so on and so on.  So long story, not so short, my main love is paper arts.

BUT this past 2 weeks I have gone back to sewing. I have a ton of denim from cast off jeans to use up and I have started making purses.  But not only that, caps. My DH bought a cap that just got my imagination going. So I did some measurements and this is what I came up with ….

I can sew without a pattern!!! Only trouble is it doesn’t fit any one who lives here!!! LOL  Having fun anyways and you never know this might end up in my etsy store!

a couple of weeks ago, we had  a couple of days and nights with really bad storms, so bad we had basements flooding in our area, an almost unheard of occurrence.  Luckily, we’re in a condo with no basement so we didn’t have a problem. I was lucky enough to be able to get a fairly good shot of one of the lightening bolts but this was only a baby compared to some of  bolt flashing. I was thrilled to get this shot as I have always wanted to get one!!! lol

This was about 7 or 8 o clock at night and it was about as dark as midnight!

Also managed to do a challenge on one of my Yahoo groups in the theme of nature, right up my alley!!!! Make an atc, 2.5″x3.5″, send it to your assigned partner and they make an altered book page including your atc. I made 2, one for my partner and another just like it for a dear friend who is doing an altered book with the nature theme. I was flattered she wanted one of mine! I received mine from my partner, who happened to be aforementioned dear friend, lol, but haven’t done my page yet, this weekend!!!!!

This is the atc from my friend…..

the leaf is hinged to reveal

it’s lovely, I love it!

to get a lot of art done while I was off with the broken elbow!!! Best laid plans, eh?

I’ve been off since April 6th when I did it, couldn’t use the arm for about 3 weeks, not even for housework, yay!!!!.. but then physio started, going 3x a week, while I’m out I do errands, then come home and am pooped!!! lol don’t want to do anything except go on Facebook and play games. Shame on me!! lol

Well I had  couple of projects in mind, but I have to stew on them, until they come together.  this one ha all the pieces ready to go but I had no idea how to put them in a decent form til one night I looked and said, HA!!!!!! Got the glue out and away I went!

The tree background is one of my pics, one of the most gorgeous textures I have ever seen!

I named it Dryad … D …. Dryad …. wood nymph …. you know….. well in my mind! lol Collage images from Paper Whimsy. Twigs … real.

Back to work June 15.

that’s how many years my husband Chris and I have been married today! And today is exactly the same as it was that day … extremely bright and more than a little cool but oh so beautiful!

Here’s the card I made him, maybe a little girly!!!! LOL

I’ve had occasion to make  a few cards lately and even tho that is what started me in this craft, I don’t make them well. I have a really hard time designing them but in these cases I was really lucky and I think thy turned out well. The 1st is a thank you card I made. I had done a 8.5×11 sheet of paper using a napkin and mod podge to adhere it to the paper and cut it up to use a backgrounds.

And this one is for DH’s mom for Mother’s Day! The brown border around it is from the scan, the card is all white!

Gale at PW has a wonderful challenge going on, you can read about it here. Now I don’t know how whimsical I am, always thought I was a bit ‘toned down’ or ’straight laced’ I guess would be it, but Gale’s images are to die for and I love trying to loosen up using them. Here’s my 3 atc’s for the challenge.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, lol or are new to the blog, I LOVE doing tags!!!! To me, they are a perfect size for my art. Luckily, Gale at Paper Whimsy seems to know this!!! lol  Well not really but I’m just lucky enough that she has some wonderful tag backgrounds for sale. This is my latest using nothing but PW images I recently purchased. I absolutely love her images!

Hope you like it!

on PID Yahoo group for April was cages. I love anything to do with nature, birds, butterflies, eggs, …. you get the picture so while I’ve been getting art done, I wanted to do this challenge. Unfortunately, I left it too long and didn’t get it done before the end of the month, fortunately, Eileen, who ‘hosts’ the monthly lotteries was even later!! She put an extension on getting art in until tomorrow!! yay. As soon as I read that, I hurried to gather images, etc and get a move on. I’m hoping the meaning behind this arch isn’t as obvious to everyone as it is to me. lol A little dark I think and I really don’t like showing my dark side!

I also used distress inks and some chipboard butterflies from my stash!

wow!! Ok this is the big thing that I’ve been working on, I love it but I have no idea what I’ll do with it! And my DH just shakes his head at me when he sees me do stuff like this, he just doesn’t get it! Last year or probably earlier a friend of mine on The ByhandArtist group I’m on got and altered a series of wig heads for an exhibit at a store she was a patron of. Her name is Joanne Ross and she is very talented, I am lucky enough to be the owner of some of her fabulous art, including a beautiful white amulet bag. This is her blog, she even has one of her heads as her profile pic, so cool.

Any way, my DH found some of these heads at the Value Village by us and got me a couple. I had absolutely no idea hat to do with it until I actually had time to sit down and ruminate on the problem!! lol I have some beautiful stamps from Suzanne at Quietfire Designs, whose Yahoo group Byhandartist is and I thought I would use them for this head.  1st, I covered the head in white tissue paper, using modpodge, love the crinkly texture.

then I stamped them on white tissue paper using Versafine Onxy Black and heat set. I adhereed them to the head again with mod podge. And there it sat!

this is just one of the side, I won’t show all in the interest of not boring anyone!! lol

So then last week, I got a brain storm, after I saw some napkins in one of my drawers, I’ll go to teh $ store and check out their napkins!!!! YES!!! ha I got 4 packages but only 1 really sang to me for this project. It had 4 different sizes of poppies on it and a really cute striped background. I didn’t want the b/g so I cut the flowers out of 6 or 7 napkins and again adhered them with Mod Podge. I love it and I’m suer that within the next little while other embellishments will be added!

so now, I have 2 cards to make for thank yous to the people who took care of us in the ‘crisis’, and as soon as I get them done, I’ll post!

Thanks for peeking!!!

my husband’s birthday was almost right after my accident! I had big plans to get him a gorgeous steampunk style pocket watch from a seller on ebay but because I’m off work, we both thought we’d put that expense off for a while. So I thought I’d try to make him a steampunk style card. Don’t think I quite caught it but I tried!

I use Tim Holtz masks, Distress Inks and stamps. I also added some watch parts in the one corner. Sentiments is cg, cut out and inked it up!

coming up……

ok, so now that I’m off work for the next month or so, I can get some blogging done. I’m off because I had a stupid accident, falling off m bike and breaking my elbow! I have 2 pins and some wire in it and just yesterday morning I got the stapes out (what an awful feeling that was!!!) I’m going to share some pics, If you have a squeamish stomach, don’t go any further!!! lol

I had to get my wedding ring off at the hospital right after I broke the elbow, otherwise it would have had to have been cut off!! NOT!! I still can’t get it back on! My hand was so swollen!!!!

I had 28 staples in the suture line and this was taken 15 days after the op. It looked a lot worse before! lol please excuse the flabby arms!!! rotfl!

So now I’m home, not quite so tired, I’m getting some art done!

and coming up…..

I’m a clutz, always have been and I guess I always will be a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve had accidents, speeding tickets,  more accidents, falls,  more falls and so on and so on. Things just always seem to happen to me. I realize it could be a lot worse but when you’re going through these thing, you just shake your head and say, when am I going to learn … at the ripe old age of 53 when am I going to learn!

Tuesday night, a week ago, I was riding my bike to work, and an object that I knew was there, but had forgot about, loomed up out of the darkness and snagged me off my bike. I landed on my left arm and elbow and slid along the pavement while my head, happily encased in a helmet bounced a couple of times. Luckily there was an ambulance in the vicinity and some very nice passersby stopped to help me. blah, blah  to make a long story short, I broke my L elbow and will be off work for at least 8 weeks but probably more. I will be using that time to rest, reflect, look into other art forms and I guess just decide if I should be doing what I’m doing. Oh there was no damage to the head! lol

I haven’t blogged in a while, really nothing too much going on right now except a lot of spam coming into my comments and I have to try to stop it. Really freakin’ bugs me!! Anyhow, if you haven’t given up on me yet, please don’t, I will be back!

I’ve been lax lately,    and not done much of anything. I hope to remedy that situation soon so if I haven’t lost you yet, please don’t give up on me!!

for the hanging – #130 Kate

and for the tags  #34 Nicole

CONGRATULATIONS ladies, I have emailed you asking for info, please get back to me as soon as possible!

Thank you to everyone who visited and entered the giveaway, I totally enjoyed visiting back and meeting new people!

Can’t wait for the next OWOH!!!!! LOL

Over at the Byhandartist group, one of our lovely artists came up with the idea that we’d have a challenge with no commitment to sending. It has the theme of Queen of Hearts (hence the title of the post lol) Check out the challenge and entries here. Here is my entry for this challenge

It’s about postcard size – I embossed Quietfire Diamond background on a paper of hydrangeas I had printed out long ago but the paper warped, I should have retried but had no more paper, should have flattened before finishing, but don’t think that fast! (shaking head at self) attached a collage image from Quietfire cut the Q♥ off a card and stuck them to the paper. Then I added some little puff blossoms that I received from a friend a long time ago and voila!!I  I love this image of the little girl with wings and thought she deserved to be a Queen for a day! It didn’t scan well due to the dimensionality of the flowers (is that a  word?)

Hope you like it!