Another round robin page and some paper dresses

Yesterday a friend and I got together all afternoon and evening to work on art projects.

Our local art group is doing a round robin book swap. Each of us made our own themed book and they are now traveling through the group. The above photos are of the page, front and back, I made for Christine whose theme is "My Favorite Animal." Needless to say, most of us are using our pets! I used a Karen Foster paper called "The Dog Bone Times" as the background for both sides, added dog and bone cardstock cutouts, and stamped some paw prints and my lab's name, Boomer. I was going to use a photo of him, but the cutout was a much better likeness (have you ever tried to take a photo of an all-black dog?). This was a quick and fun page.

I am also doing a "paper dress garland mingle" with an online group. We had to make three dresses to send to three people. The idea is to put the dresses together in a decorative garland.

I had purchased a chipboard die cut baby doll dress kit from Crafty Secrets at the recent scrapbook convention and used that as my pattern. Once I started these, it was hard to stop. I made four last night and will undoubtedly make more later.

The two above were made with Papertrey Ink coordinating patterned papers. The top pinafore is stamped along the hem with a lace edging stamp (Morningstar Stamps) and embossed in white. The bottom pinafore and dress are edged with a Martha Stewart lace punch.

The dress above was made with a double-sided paper (My Mind's Eye, Wild Asparagus) and real lace The tabs on the sides were punched with the SU word window punch and the tiny flowers on the hem were punched with a $! punch from Michael's.

I wanted to also make one from real fabric. The polka dot and stripe fabrics for the dress below were drapery samples I'd gotten a long time ago. (We have to have our stash, right?!) I cut the collar from cardstock, added white rickrack, a ribbon bow and a little teddy bear button in the pocket (left over from when I sewed for my little girls, who are now in their 20's and 30's!).

Back in the groove

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I think I've finally recuperated and caught up from my two weeks' "vacation". I'm glad to be back to arting and blogging! Today Blogger is giving me fits with photos, so they are all posted here at the top.

Last night was my local stamp group's monthly meeting. We had alot going on! We just finished a "Fourth of July" mingle where we each decorated a paper mache number 4 and we swapped them out last night. The first photo above is "the group" - minus the two gals who aren't local. Second photo is my 4 which went to Julie. The next two are the front and back of the ultra-decorated and very cute 4 I received from Trisha! Both sides are literally encrusted with tiny bits of sequins, beads and what I call "gumball machine" goodies. The last photo shows all ten! We had so much fun with this swap!

We also had decided to submit some cards for the Stamper's Sampler magazine "Different Point of View" article. The idea is to take one stamp and use it many different ways. We used a SU dress stamp and the photo below is what we came up with. There are 10 very different cards from 8 members. The second photo is the card I made. Let's hope that SS likes this eye candy and publishes our efforts!





And we also made this cute little purse/card/folder. All supplies were Stampin Up. This is made with two square envelopes, one sheet of 12 x 12 double-sided paper,3 round, scalloped note cards, and a few flowers and pearl embellishments

Scrapbook album

Since I haven't been arting for a few weeks I thought I'd post these pictures of the scrapbook album I made for my mother for her birthday. I didn't post beforehand as I was afraid she would peek!

This is a small Making Memories album with page protectors that hold 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" pages. I made this in a "scrapbook-in-a-day" class. I used alot of fabric and sewing, along with many Cuttlebugged embellishments. The papers are from Fancy Pants' Simplicity line. I love the colors!

This was so much fun to do. I'm hoping she will add lots of our old black and white family photos.

(EDITED: I'm sorry the photos are out of order. For some reason Blogger is not cooperating and won't let me move the photos.)

It's been too long...

I've been out of town for almost two weeks and it seems forever since I posted on the blog! I went to visit my mother who celebrated her 80th birthday on June 15th. We are blessed that she is in remarkable health and an extraordinarily active woman. We call her the energizer bunny! I find it hard to keep up with her.

I returned this morning and have spent the day regrouping - wading through snail mail and e-mails, doing laundry and just trying to get back in the swing of things here.

About a year and a half ago I was involved in 2 collaborative "chunky book" art projects to be sold with proceeds going to a fellow artist, Robin Whittemore, who was battling breast cancer. You can read about her journey at http://www.fightforherlife.org. Both books were recently listed on etsy - you can check them out at: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12451734 and http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12452035. The tea book has already sold but the nature book is still available. Unfortunately, Robin died before this effort was completed, but the proceeds will now be used to help benefit other patients.

Chipboard mini-book

I made this little book in a "Scrapstashers" class where we brought our own papers and embellishments and the precut chipboard pages were given to us. The original sample was a horizontally opening book, but my chipboard alphas were too big for a horizontal orientation so mine ended up going vertically.

I originally was making this for my mom for Mother's Day but, as you see, it didn't quite make it in time. This is just a simple little book with graduating size pages. I added some of my favorite old photos of my mom and once I give it to her I will verify the dates and write them in.

The first photo shows the book completely closed. Each photo after that shows one more page lifted to reveal what's on the next page. This was a fun little book to make and could be adapted for as many or as few photos as you want and it could also be adapted for just about any theme.

A few fun things:
The flower paper clip was made by simply gluing the top of a large paper clip between two paper flowers, then adding a button on top.

The large flower on the last page was made by punching 6 circles (I think they were about an inch) out of double-sided paper. Then two sides of each circle were folded in slightly to form the petals and glued to the page. A button was glued in the center.

The chipboard letters were painted with acrylic paint and smeared with iridescent Stickles when dry. The "O" was stapled to the page - the staples criss cross to form an x.

An easy way to make photo corners: punch or cut a square any size, then cut in half diagonally.

Great American Scrapbook Convention

I spent all day Thursday with a few friends at the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Arlington, TX. It was a long and hectic day but loads of fun. It took me all of Friday to recuperate! There was way too much to see, but I managed to make my way through all the aisles and spent way too much.

I didn't see anything that I would say was new. There was chipboard everywhere - albums, shapes, mini-books etc. - and lots of clear acrylic items. Since I'm more of a stamper than a scrapper, I was more interested in stamps and what I saw was mostly clear. One vendor, Inque Boutique (www.goinque.com) had very inexpensive stamps and stamp sets. Some were clear and some were unmounted rubber with EZ mount. The rubber was either lime green, aqua or pink - a pretty change from the regular color! They also have a rather unique stamp storage system. It's much like the Stamp 'n Store sheets which are 8 1/2" x 11" slick coated rigid sheets punched for a 3-ring binder. The Inque Boutique storage comes in the 8 1/2" x 11" size or 12" x 12" and is a thin clamshell "box" which is also punched for a 3-ring binder. The nice feature is that it closes like a box so there is no chance of any unmounteds slipping off and falling out, but it also very thin. I think this will be a great solution for tiny stamps as well as alphabets. I bought a few to give it a try.

My most favorite booth is always Heartwarming Vintage/Crafty Secrets (www.craftysecrets.com). I just love their products and samples. Their senior designer, Vicki Chrisman, is a fellow blogger who I have known for a year now. It's always great to make real-life contact with online friends, so it was wonderful to get to see her again and chat for awhile. She has a gorgeous blog so be sure to check it out: http://vickichrisman.blogspot.com The photo above is of the two of us, though we both hate having our pictures taken!

Julie's Round Robin Book

I apologize for these horrible photos, but no matter what I do, I can't get a decent photo or scan because of the dimension on this page. This is another of the round robin books from my local art group and belongs to Julie who asked for "Favorite Childhood Memories." It's a chipboard house book which she covered in newspapers.

Since one of my favorite memories is of sledding with my younger brothers during the winter on a hill behind our house (and also because I had this darling sledding stamp from Red Lead Paperworks), that's the theme of my page!

I used Golden Light Molding Paste for the lower half of the page and for the roof and chimney edges of the house. While this was wet I drew two lines with a pointed skewer for the sledding trail. I stamped the sledding stamp on a domino with Staz On, colored it in with Sharpies and sealed with a clear Krylon spray sealer. The winter quote was stamped on white cardstock which I had first embossed with the polka-dot Cuttlebug folder and the edges were heat-embossed with silver. The top part of the page has a snowflake patterned paper which I stamped and embossed with more snowflakes.

Since Julie requested we journal about our memories, I made a fold-out accordion book sandwiched between two mittens. I also added a childhood photo of myself on the inside of the top mitten. This is held on the page with a snowflake brad and a white piece of yarn is tied around the top of the mitten book to keep it closed.

Row House Swap Arrived!

I was so excited to receive the 11 row houses from the swap I joined. It's been quite awhile and I had almost forgotten them! My good friend, Jeri , of The Artful Gathering hosted this and there were approximately 30 participants, all of whom made eleven houses and received in return eleven houses from other artists. It is so inspiring to receive other artists' work and to see the different interpretations of the same theme. The only "rules" to this were to make the houses on matboard with dimensions no taller than 8" and wider than 4" (at least that's what I remember the dimensions to be!).

I received houses from:

Elaine Akers, Kathy Wasilewski, Gerdie Fisher, and Connie Hippen (top photo left to right)

Chelise Stroud Hery, Virginia Madison, Heather Robinson and Laurie Blau-Marshall (middle photo left to right)

Lydia Hildebrandt, Mary Wagner and Cher Blasengame (bottom photo left to right).

Click on any of the highlighted names to go to their blogs or websites and check out the other art of these talented women! Thank you so much ladies for sharing your art with me!