Great tip to keep track of blogs

http://www.blogarithm.com

This is a great site. You can set up an account (FREE) and then enter the addresses of blogs you especially like and want to keep track of. You will then get an e-mail whenever these particular blogs are updated. This is such a time-saver, especially if you have several favorites and don't want to "miss anything." Instead of going to each blog and checking to see if there are any new posts, blogarithm alerts you when there is new activity. I love it!

Quick Challenge

I'm in a small online group and we do "inspiration challenges" once a month. A picture of an ad, a piece of clothing, home furnishings, bottle labels - just about anything - is uploaded to our site and then members must make something using that as inspiration. You can take the inspiration from the color scheme, shape, function, theme - whatever. The first photo shows the challenge for June - a summer purse. The second photo shows the little tag I made using the tropical theme. A plain manila tag was covered with a tropical napkin that just happened to be similar to the purse. Then I stamped a summer quote and a bathing beauty on vellum, coloring on the backside, and attached it to the tag with some fibers. This has gone "postal" to this month's recipient.

Seventh page done

Another page finished - this one uses "burgundy and dark moss green." This was a hard one for me - everything seemed too Christmasy with these colors. I finally went with the Audubon picture of birds. It doesn't show in the scan, but the background cardstock is stamped with brown leaf sprigs. The other papers and image are layered and I used some machine stitching on a few. The quote, leaves and feather are my new stamps from the sheet "For the Birds" from Time to Stamp. I love this sheet of stamps!

I'm starting to feel the pressure - only two more weeks 'til the deadline and I have four pages still to do!

Teal and gray color page

It's been a long week, with very little art time. But I finally finished another color page - this one is "teal and gray." The background has several layers of paints and gesso - I just kept adding until I got the colors I wanted. This is another "Zetti" style collage and I used a face from one of Teesha Moore's collage sheets. The body was printed from the Internet - I colored the dress with colored pencils and blending fluid, painted the legs, and added wings, a hat cut from music paper and patterned paper collar and heart. The stars are stamped with white paint. I did the words freehand and added white Galaxy marker inside some of the letters, Zetti-style. This page is 8 1/2 x 11. Clicking on the image should enlarge it.

TAG

There's a new online "game" of tag going around... I've been tagged several times. You are supposed to write 7 facts about yourself and then tag 7 others. I think everyone I would tag has already been tagged, so I will only list some personal facts.

1. I grew up in Vermont - beautiful but cold.

2. I spent a year studying in Paris while in college.

3. I graduated from an elite women's college in 1970 with a degree in French, but couldn't type so had to spend the summer learning to type in order to get a job. (Hard to believe now, but in the 70's women had two career choices - secretarial or teaching.)

4. I have five beautiful children.

5. I am a nationally certified needlepoint teacher.

6. I am a chocoholic.

7. I am NOT a morning person!

You've gotta see this!

Check out this youtube site - be sure to watch til the very end. It's worth it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIJtKxdRQzY

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to any fathers out there. I hope everyone is having a relaxing day. It is gray and rainy here in Texas and we're having a nice quiet day. I hope to "art" a little later.

Here are a few neat blogs for you to peruse. Be prepared to spend some time looking at all the eye candy.

http://vickichrisman.blogspot.com
http://tracyroos.typepad.com
http://redlead.typepad.com
http://artsyvisions.blogspot.com
http://20six.fr/anne (this one is in French, but it's worth it just for the photos)

Lisa Vollrath's Countdown

Lisa has another "countdown" - this time for Father's Day. For several days prior to the holiday, she posts a free image or images to download each day. Check these out at: http://countdown.tentwostudios.com . Her only requirement is that you post a link to her site before downloading the files. It's a great source of free images - but please honor her request so that she can continue to offer these.

Fifth "color" page finished

I've had this page finished for about a week, but thought it needed a little something else. I finally made it to the fabric store today to get the black fringe embellishment for the bottom edge. The color choices for this page were "red and black".

I love this patterned paper from Basic Grey called "Scarlet's Letter" so used it for the base and overstamped it with French script stamps. The Eiffel Tower is made with embossed metal; the round seal is black hot glue stamped while hot with a gold inked "je t'aime" stamp. The fleur de lys is chipboard embossed with several layers of black and gold embossing powders.

Only five more pages to go!

TA DA - I'm a certified

metal work teacher! (Did you think I was going to say NUT?) I spent all day yesterday, along with several co-workers from Recollections, at a certification workshop at Ten Seconds Studio. This is an awesome company that makes metal sheets, plastic molds, and metal-working tools to make amazing art pieces. The best part is their studio is only a few miles from me and we carry their products in the store. They demo at scrapbooking and stamping conventions - check out their website: http://www.tensecondsstudio.com/.

For the certification, we made a wonderful "sample" book using all the techniques. We had a mock-up to follow and could add our own touches to it. The book was made with black matboard and opens in the center with both the right and left sides spiral bound with the new Bind-it-All machine.

Here's mine. The first photo is the cover which we first sliced in half. We then embossed a sheet of black metal, sanded the front side and spackled the back side (to prevent the raised areas from "sinking"). This was then adhered to the front matboard covers.

The first page was also cut in half and the edges were diecut. I used wings and lined them up to meet at the edges. A large sheet of metal tape was embossed (the "Art is life" I wrote backwards on the back side so it would be in relief and readable on the front), colored with alcohol inks, sanded and adhered to the matboard pages. The heart is a matboard diecut covered with embossed, colored with alcohol ink and suspended in the opening with fishing line threaded through eyelets. (Sorry the scan didn't turn out well because of the metal.) You can see a bit of the next page through the opening.

The third page is only bound on the left side. The right side was randomly cut with a diecut to give an uneven edge. Rubons were used on this page, but, since they were black, they didn't show up well, so I went over them with a silver gel pen. Two embossed and alcohol-inked hearts were added and the wings outlined with white dots using a Galaxy marker. This can be seen from the previous page. Next are two half-page pocket pages. One is bound on the left side and one is bound on the right. The half diamond cuts on the top edge of the pockets was cut with a diecut machine. The silver diamonds on the edges of the pages are metal tape as is the title block on the right page. The words on the left page are stamped and silver embossed. (We were supposed to take notes during class to put in here, but we didn't have time! You can see my pages are blank!) This page is a hand diecut from matboard and is bound on the left side. It is covered with tan metal embossed and sanded. On the back I stamped and silver embossed "Trust your crazy ideas" - no photo. You can see the last page peeking through. Here's an extra I did - I embossed a diecut red metal heart and attached it to the back of one of the note pocket pages.The last page was left blank - so we could add our handmade certificate at the end of class! Cheryl and her daughter, Megan, made each of us one of these to adhere in our books! Classy.



And here's the back cover. It was supposed to be blank, but I hate to throw anything out, so I used the metal tape cutouts from the wing page and mounted them here along with two small hearts. Interesting side note: these were colored with alcohol ink but when I burnished them after adhereing them to the back, all the ink was removed!



I loved this class and love my book. What a great memento of a fun time as well as a great reminder of all the techniques!

Altered Postcard

I haven't been feeling very creative the past few days due to some busy, long days at work. But I played with a postcard tonight and came up with this "western" theme. I swapped with someone online recently - she sent six old postcards and one was to be altered and returned to her. This is the first altered postcard I have done and I wanted to try Omni Gel transfers. I collaged bits of various papers to the picture side of the postcard, stamped the quote and star and then adhered the transfer of the little boy in a cowboy suit. The transfer was an inkjet print with three coats of Omni Gel (first horizontal, second vertical and third diagonal, drying completely between coats). When dry, this was immersed in water for a few minutes and then the paper rubbed off the back. This results in a plasticy decal type of image. I didn't like the glossy finish so added matte medium to the entire postcard after attaching the transfer.