Happy New Year!

Can you believe it's the last day of 2009? It seems like we just entered the 21st century and now we're already 9 years into it! I wish all of you the very best of everything in the coming year. Is anyone making resolutions? Mine is to try to blog more regularly and to make more personal art, which will be a challenge as it seems I'm always designing new classes and projects for the store. Here's a lovely free winter image for you from http://thevintageworkshop.com/.
I wanted to share the gift I received at my local art group's annual Christmas party this week. (We are all so busy with jobs and families during the holidays that we always plan our party for after Christmas.) We draw names and make something special for that person. This year my good friend Julie had my name and look at the fabulous wire dress form she altered! It is full of bits and pieces of "junque." I love it! It is so apropos as I am the one who introduced her to recycling and saving everything. One of the most meaningful items on this are the tiny charms with pictures of each of my 5 children, as well as a heart charm with 5 "stick" figures. There are also little special items like a Texas license plate (we live in TX) with my name, her high school athletic ticket (she has four very athletic boys), a ribbon from chocolates (I love chocolate), a bit of a tape measure (I sew) and so many more. The best part of this gift is I can keep adding little goodies to it. Every time I look at it I see different things. Thank you Julie for a very special gift.

Home again

We're home after an uneventful and safe 10-hour drive back from Albuquerque. It was a fun trip but it is always good to get back. I mentioned that this holiday was not our traditional one - here is what we were doing on Christmas Eve day - ultimate frisbee in 20 degree weather. At least the sun is usually shining in New Mexico! I pleaded for mercy and was the official photographer, although I probably would have been warmer running around. Even the dog got in on the game.

I didn't get many other good photos all weekend, but here's one of my youngest, Sara, (on left) and eldest, Kim (modeling her new cat-eyes T-shirt).

We drove home Sunday and this is what Boomer looked like most of the trip! We thought he'd sleep most of the way but he was very interested in the scenery. I would love to know what was going through his head! I'm grateful he was a good traveler - in fact, my husband remarked that the trip was easier with him than with any trip with the kids!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful holiday with your loved ones. We are in Albuquerque at our daughter's house where the entire family has come together. This is a real treat - first time ever that one of my children has hosted Christmas dinner and I'm enjoying being a guest! It's cold here and we had a bit of snow the first day. We've seen weather reports that back home in Texas they received six inches of snow yesterday and today for the first white Christmas in 80 years! I can imagine it's beautiful but I'm glad it came on a holiday when everyone didn't have to get somewhere. Hopefully the roads will be cleared when we drive back on Sunday.

What are you making?

Are you making Christmas gifts this year? I've only made a few but I did make three wood and metal embossed frames. The smallest one is shown below - not a good photo due to the flash and the metallic surface, but at least it shows the embossing. This is Ten Seconds Studio black art metal embossed with the Cuttlebug folders and inked with alcohol inks. It's hard to see, but the colors pick up the colors of the flowers in the wedding photo. (Those are my four girls!)

Shake It!

This is one of the projects I made for a techniques class on shaker cards. (Forgot to scan the other project which was a card.) This is an ornament made with a circular coaster and the new "Shake It" frames from Impression Obsession. Shaker cards/projects are far easier to make with these frames. No more messing with foam tape, getting it perfect so none of the goodies fall out! These frames are self-stick - you make your background, add the loose material for inside and pop the frame on. The hardest part is getting the top layer cut to fit, but using the appropriate size punches make this easy as well. The frames are not too thick and should go through the mail just fine. The little snowman below was first stamped on the blue cardstock and then again on white. The white one was cut out and paper-pieced on the blue one. I added mica flakes and a bit of glitter for the "snow."

2010 Calendar

Here's a cute little calendar project I made at our monthly Scrapstashers' class this past week. It is made to fit into an empty CD case and each page is very simply made with only three cut pieces of paper. The base is approximately 5" square (CD cases vary slightly in size so it is cut to fit.) with a 3" x 5" piece of patterned paper and a 3" x 4" piece of either coordinating cardstock or another patterned paper. The mini calendar printouts were found online. A few ribbons, buttons and embellishments finished it off. This was made entirely from scraps - I love it when I can reuse and recycle! The first photo shows the calendar set up for January with the other 11 months stacked in the case behind. The other three show the finished months' pages, ready for photos. I'm thinking this will make a nice little gift for someone this year...

Too long

Ten days since my last post - so sorry! Geez, where does the time go? Is everyone else busy, busy, busy this time of year?

One of my online groups has a tradition of sending holiday 4x4s instead of actual Christmas cards. Some of us bind them into little "fatbooks." Here are the first two I've received this year - the first is from Autumn in SC showcasing one of Tim Holtz' mini holiday collage stamps - I'm just going to have to get that stamp, love it!

The second is from Linda in Temple, TX - the beautiful, shimmery embossing does not show well in the scan but is gorgeous in person! She uses that swirl stamp often and I love it, too.

Guess what? I doubt seriously that I will get to making any 4x4s this year. I'll have to start early next year or maybe I'll do some Valentines?!

Countdown to Christmas

I've been busily prepping for several full days of classes this week so I have no new art projects to share, but thought I'd let you know about several ongoing "countdown" offerings I've found.

Lisa Vollrath is offering her 25-day countdown to Christmas at http://countdown.tentwostudios.com/

Tim Holtz is doing another "12 Tags of Christmas" on his blog: http://timholtz.typepad.com/

Roni at http://inkstainswithroni.blogspot.com/ has 25 days of Christmas ornaments.

And you can find 12 days of Fast Holiday Ideas at http://colormedaisy.com/messageboard (Scroll down to find the thread with the holiday ideas.)

I think these sites may keep you busy for awhile and give you some great ideas for holiday projects!