November swaps

The theme for the November altered trading coins swap was "Christmas." I made these two coins to send off.

And I received these.

I also hosted an "Old is New Again Technique Tag" swap. The theme for this was to use a Tim Holtz Christmas Tag from any year as inspiration.  Mine was inspired by his tag #3 from 2007. I haven't received one back yet.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with family and/or friends. We are traveling to Kansas City to be with my sister-ini-law and her husband. Two of our daughters, their husbands, and the four grand boys will be there too.



May your turkey be tender, juicy and delicious! (My husband smoked a turkey last weekend for our own early holiday meal.)

More retreat projects

This project was created on a large 12"x16" canvas board using Dyan Reaveley stamps for the outfits and borders, a brick stencil and paint for the background, and copies of photos of each of our heads. I used colored pencils and Zig markers for the coloring. This was fun and a great memento of our week.

We used two different-sized embroidery hoops to create this wall hanging in pinks and greens. The hoops were painted and covered with painted lace and canvas, then embellished with lots of flowers. This photo doesn't show the real-life colors and dimension of this pretty project.

And here is one other book we made. This is a Traveler's Notebook made with the Eileen Hull TN die from Sizzix.  The cover was cut from Spellbinder's chipboard and is very sturdy. The papers used are from Stamperia - gorgeous and vintage.  There are many pockets and tags on the three folders making up the signatures of the book. I love this size of book.

cover

Inside front cover and cover of first folder

Inside front cover of first folder (this folder has dotted-grid paper for journaling)

Inside back cover of first folder

Cover of second folder

Inside of second pocket folder

Back of pocket folder and front cover of third folder

Inside front cover of third folder (this folder contains plain paper for journaling)

Back cover of third folder and inside back cover of notebook

This notebook will be fun to fill with notes or sketches and the folders can be removed or replaced.

Back from annual retreat

Every year I attend a week-long retreat with 9 other artsy friends. This year we rented a large house in Blanco in the hill country of Texas. The attendees were from Washington state, Utah, New Mexico and Texas. Five of us presented day-long art projects and the remaining four brought kits for creating five or more cards. WE had a fantastic time, as always, and it certainly sparked my creative mojo!

This was my project - a Christmas-themed "shadowbox" using a six-cup muffin pan. I used a dark green paint for the first coat, then crackle and a top coat of ivory paint.  The openings have different backgrounds of Christmas papers along with various embellishments.

Another project was this great book project. We first created the book foundation using black cardstock and the "Stack the Deck" hinge system (Laura Denison). The kit included lots of these pretty papers, Tim Holtz "paper dolls", die cuts, metal embellishments, ribbons and stickers.  We all added many of our own embellishments as well. I love the vintage feel of this little book!

Cover

First two pages

Pages 3 and 4

Pages 5 and 6

Pages 7 and 8

Pages 9 and 10

Pages 11 and 12

Pages 13 and 14

Pages 15 and 16

Page 17 and back inside cover

I will share more of our projects in my next post.