Scrapbook in a Day

8 hours plus 17 ladies plus twenty pages equals ? Scrapbook in a Day! On Saturday and Tuesday Anthologies featured two scrapbook-in-a-day classes which I team-taught to a total of 17 women. They made this fantastic Prima 6x6 scrapbook with a total of five double-sided canvas pages and five double-sided paper layouts in page protectors. It was a super fun class filled with lots of techniques including sewing, glimmer misting, masking, painting, stamping and more. Each of the five store designer/teachers designed four pages which were then assembled together into this darling "You = Joy" book.

Here's the cover - love these fun colors!

And a peek at the open, assembled book (that's one of my pages on top).

Another view of the front of one of my canvas pages. The patchwork border includes both fabric and paper pieces. I especially love the wire heart.

Backside of the above page - before a few button and doodling embellishments were added. Forgot to take a picture of the finished page.

My second canvas page. I love making those paper flowers with twisted stems. Also love how the canvas takes the paints so well.

Another canvas page. Again, I forgot to take a photo of the completed page, but this had half of a huge red flower added to the upper right and a deep pink/red crushed velvet ribbon placed horizontally along the bottom.

Love how this book turned out, especially since it was a collaborative effort. You never know how it will all go together, but it does! I think our students all had a blast too and loved their finished books. Yes, almost everyone finished all 20 pages that day!

Artist of the Week

I will be teaching two classes at an artist retreat in Salado, Texas, in April, and today I'm the featured "artist of the week." Check out the details of the retreat, including venue, classes and teachers at: http://www.shadyladiesalteredart.blogspot.com. While there, sign up for some classes and join us this spring!

I won!

I can't believe it, but I've won a giveaway in this year's One World One Heart Giveaway. I had commented on K.C. Willis's blog and won one of the two giveaways - out of 325 comments! I think I'll be getting a book on creating with fabrics and some goodies from K.C.'s stash. Just up my alley as I love working with fabrics. Yeah - I am excited! I love her fabric hangings and can't wait to play with some of her bits and pieces. This was my lucky day!

Happy Valentine's Day

Look at this sweet Valentine tag I received from one of our customers - in fact, she made one (all different) for each of the twelve employees! They were all adorable and looked so pretty on our pink Valentine tree at the store. I love it - thanks so much Linda!

Hoping everyone has a wonderful day and wishing you lots of love and chocolate!

Happy Birthday Kelly

One of my daughters turns 30 tomorrow, Feb. 14th! How is that possible? She is also engaged to be married on May 1st, so I made her this frame for either her engagement photo or a wedding photo. This was a "Hot Metal Mamas" class project using Ten Seconds Studio's black and red art metals. The wings and heart were embossed with Cuttlebug embossing folders and the grid and heart border pieces on the frame are Ten Seconds molds which I also ran through the Cuttlebug.
Everything was sanded well before adhering to the frame. The wings are brushed with the wire brush tool which gives them a really cool look.

Happy Birthday Kelly! Enjoy!

SNOW!

Northerners (and those of you who have had your fair share of snow this year) will laugh at this post, but the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex had record-breaking snowfall yesterday. We are buried in 9-11" of snow! It is truly a winter wonderland here - and a view rarely seen. Schools are out and everything came to a screeching halt yesterday as it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. Luckily it's a wet snow and won't stick around too long, but for now everyone is enjoying the beauty of it.

Here's a view down my street, taken today after some melting. I wish I had gotten some photos yesterday afternoon when the trees were all snow-laden.

This is the view from my art room window, overlooking the garage rooftop. The sky is the same color as everything else!

And here's our "official" marker on our front porch post. You can see from the street in the background that it's already started melting.

So, now we've had our taste of snow, I'm ready for spring!

The finished boot book

I finally got around to taking and editing the photos of the collaborative boot book project my local art group did. Here is the cover that Cathy designed. The bare chipboard was covered with Mod Podge and tissue paper, then painted and distressed with black ink. We also used black gel pen for the "stitching" details and silver Stickles for the "rhinestones." The diamond inserts are covered with black stamped and embossed paper and the little tab at the top is a scrap of leathery/vinyl fabric with a wooden star and brad. The heel is Ten Seconds Studio black art metal embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and sanded.

The page on the left is our "sign-in" page. We die cut stars and everyone made up a western-style name to go with our name and signed the stars accordingly. The page on the left is from Karen and she used actual photographs of her husband's relatives. The patchwork diamonds were all handcut and glued back together.

Debbie's page is on the left and Christine's on the right. Debbie used the paisley Cuttlebug folder to emboss the paisley printed paper which doesn't show up in this photo. She also used embossed metal on the heel and embellished the edge of the paisley paper with tiny white pearls. The middle part of Christine's boot is a paisley stamp heat-embossed on the brown cardstock. The top and bottom of the boot are done with flocking.

Julie's boot on the left sports a woven vinyl fabric band and heel, a metal concho with twine and a wanted poster in which she adhered a photo of each recipient. Mette's boot is on the right with a cork sole and heel. She also added vintage lace.

Lynn used the yellow rose of Texas theme for her page on the left. She hand tooled the art metal for the roses and painted them yellow. The Texas shape was die cut from jean material. Laura's boot on the right has stamped flourishes, twine, a leather strip and a neat star button embellishment.

My boot (which I shared in the last post) is on the left; Bess did the boot on the right. She used a pretty patterned paper along with embossed metal diamond, a pink leather strip, a feather and a silver deputy's badge.

And, last but not least, is Trisha's boot on the left on which she used a cute vintage image and did lots of cutting for the letters. Her background is awesome paper that looks like embossed leather. And Cathy's boot on the right which has a background of 50's western paper, a scrap of "Home on the Range" music, a cowgirl image, fringe, bandana strip and a tiny lasso made with twine and a star brad. The image twists to reveal a cute photo of Cathy and her sister dressed as cowgirls for Halloween when they were younger.

As you can see, although we all started with the same theme and basic shape, every boot was very unique and totally different. That's the part I love the most about swaps and collaborative projects!

Boot Book Swap

Again, apologies for not being here for almost a week! I've been busy making eleven of these babies. My local art group did a collaborative "boot" book swap. The chipboard books were purchased at the Great American Scrapbook Convention last summer (sorry, the package with the name of the company that makes these is long gone, but if anyone knows the name I will edit this post to add it). Everyone designed their page and then duplicated it for all eleven members. Last week was the reveal and swap.

This was my page. I used a kraft cardstock as the base and misted with walnut ink over a large Tim Holtz mask. Cowgirls (Hampton Art, Cowboy's Ransom Alphabet) was stamped and embossed with Ranger Rust embossing powder for a rustic look, as well as the oval cowgirl stamp (Deadbeat Designs). I did this on black cardstock because they didn't show up on the background otherwise. The star stamp (Deadbeat Designs) was embossed in black. The cowgirls stamp (The Queen's Dresser Drawers - can you read it, it says " cowgirls just want to have fun") was stamped on the same kraft cardstock with black and then layered on burlap and torn fabric and sewn to the page. The "Happy Trails" is twill ribbon. Final embellishments were two bronze star brads and a rusty star.


Here's the finished set (oops, just noticed one didn't make it into the photo) all ready to swap.

Tomorrow I will try to photograph and post the other pages I received.

The last of the JFF Samples

Here are the last of the cards and layout samples I made for Just For Fun Stamps.

For the last card above, I cut up a Christmas note card I had received and added it to framed stamp. These stamps are so versatile. Below is the one scrapbook layout I did - it's 8 x 8 and uses one of the stamp frames for journaling and one for the photos. Isn't this baby the cutest? She is the daughter of one of my daughter's best friends. She is such a Gerber baby - rolls of fat and always a smile on her face. These latest photos just made me laugh.