Be Inspired!

Join us at the Little Blue House on Friday, May 30 to preview our new summer buffet classes and a new series of "Be Inspired" workshops.  These workshops will feature new trending techniques - texture, stenciling, Ver Day, Cattle-ist leather, doodling, unique scrapbooking techniques, Hazel and Ruby masks, and Reverse Confetti stamping.  Each class will be offered four times - two day and two evening classes - with dates in both June and July, allowing flexibility to fit into your busy summer schedules.

Come join us for our 
Summer Preview Party 
at The Little Blue HouseFriday May 30th
10am-6pm
​We will be releasing
some NEW...
*LBH Buffet Projects
 *Be Inspired Summer Series Workshops
*Designer Paper Collections & other Goodies 
 

We will have FREE Make & Take for you to enjoy, Lots of Give-Aways & Yummy Refreshments all day at The Little Blue House! 

Father's Day Cards

Back by popular demand - one last "masculine" card class on Thursday, May 29, 10 am - 1 pm.

These cards can be used for almost any occasion, but they are great for those Father's Day cards you will be needing soon!

Call or stop by the LBH to sign up.

More information and supply list here.

Always Remember

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!

Let us remember and thank all those who serve or have served for their sacrifices to assure our freedoms.  Never take that freedom for granted!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Count on Me Art Journal Page

I had done the background of this page awhile ago and really liked it, which hindered my finishing the page as I didn't want to cover it up.  But earlier this month I decided to complete the page and just added the cut doily, some black alpha washi tape, old hole reinforcers and some stickers for the title.  

When I glued on these items with gel medium, it reactivated some of the color from the Distress Stains I had used which are not permanent even when dry. I liked the effect, which toned down the bright white of the doily and reinforcers.

And I added a torn tag with a date stamp which means I've finished it!

Textured Art Journal Page - Start to Finish

Last Thursday I posted this textured art journal page (see more here). I used more than 30 products/textures on this page and, since I always like to see the process behind a project, I thought I would share that with you.

So here's the final page.

It all started with a "clean up" page where I clean off my paintbrush or stencils and use later as a base of a page.

Painted pink then added drywall tape and some torn book pages.

Heavy gel medium through a chevron stencil.

Tulle stapled on and heated with heat gun to create holes;  hot glue designs (lower right)

Whipped Spackle (Faber Castell) through punchinella and Tim Holtz tissue wrap glued in places (music and text)

Punched and die cut paper flowers and tissue tape

 Diamond stamp heat embossed with white embossing powder

 Dimensional paint (red) through alpha stencil; satin ribbon, torn edge of notebook paper and lace (middle left)

Small chipboard flowers and gold-painted scrap of corrugate

Doily, masking tape (upper and lower edges), burlap and embossed paper scraps (dark pink pieces on right side)

Puzzle piece and two old floral stickers

Gesso through stencil (lower left above flower, to left of upper flower and to left of doily) and a torn ticket

Button, glass bauble and hole reinforcers

Covered all with Silks Acrylic Glaze in pink and gold and added rubons and black stamping

Highlighted raised areas with more gold paint

Added focal point - black Clearly For Art (Ranger/Wendy Vecchi moldable plastic) on which the butterfly was stamped in gold

I just realized my "final" photo of the page does not include a piece of heavy thread that I looped and stapled in place over the page. 

So there you have 30+ textures on one page (think I counted 34 in all)! Hope you will try this yourself - it would make an awesome canvas as well. It's so fun to keep adding more texture!

Warning - more photos of the grand boys!

I try not to post too many family pictures on this blog, but this sequence that my husband caught on film is just priceless - it's almost as good as a video.  These are the special moments we need to remember.

It started out one morning last weekend with getting out the playdoh for some fun time. 

Drew (on the left) is being given yellow and blue. (It's his playdoh by the way.)

Carl (on right) looking longingly and then someone hands him the red.

I think we are missing one photo - apparently Carl must have taken the yellow one from Drew. Below is the beginning of Drew's meltdown.

Drew is upset - you can see Carl has red and yellow in his hands. He is also looking guiltily at someone who is most likely telling him to return the yellow to Drew.

He's thinking about it as Drew gets really worked up.

OK, so you can have the yellow back.

Thanks Carl - tears subsiding.

Friends again, happily playing side-by-side. If you look closely you can see the big tear on Drew's cheek.

I just love these photos. They depict so accurately how the boys are interacting now. They both still have a bit to learn about sharing but are mostly very good about it. They both have very sweet dispositions.

Hope you enjoyed these too.

Another Textured Art Journal Page

Two posts in one day - guess I'm making up for the past week!

This is another very textured journal page that I created as a sample for the "Texture Techniques" Art Journaling Class at LBH next Tuesday. (Still seats available so call or stop by LBH to sign up. More information on the blog here.)  

I think I counted more than 30 different textures on this one-page spread! Here are a few closeups. You can really see the shimmer of the Silks Acrylic Glazes and irRESISTible Spray that I used.

Come to class and learn more! 

I'm Back!

Happy Belated Mother's Day to everyone. We spent the weekend in Albuquerque with one of our daughters and another daughter and her family joined us from Austin. Both grand boys were there which made it an extra-special time! They are just so cute together. Both are now talking and it's fun to see their personalities developing. Here are just a few pics from the weekend.

family brunch

"cool dude" Drew

Carl, always snacking

loving cousins playing in dirt

getting wet

they get along so well!

It was a whirlwind weekend - tiring to keep up with those two!

DIY Enamel Dots

Type in "DIY enamel dots" on You Tube and you will come up with a bunch of sites showing how to make these.  My husband was out of town all day yesterday so I decided to make some (didn't want to have to explain why I was baking the beads our kids used to play with eons ago!).

I had found a small bag (only 400!) of perler beads (also called pony beads, but they are a bit larger) at the dollar store so I had plenty to work with.  Mine were actually called pony beads and I had learned that you should bake them at 400 degrees for about 8 to 10 minutes.  "They" also said that the pony beads smelled bad while baking, so I took my toaster oven out to the patio and baked there.  I put a piece of parchment paper on the tray and arranged the beads with the holes at the top and with some room between each bead. Then I started baking. I timed it for 8 minutes, but they weren't done until about 10 minutes.  They flatten out and the hole disappears.

I forgot to take photos along the way, but these were my finished beads. You can see that about 2/3 of them turned out. Maybe I didn't leave them in long enough. The red, yellow, dark blue and some of the green didn't bake perfectly round and some still have dimples at the top. The white and pink and lighter blue came out really well! I also didn't space some of them far enough apart, but this was a trial run. The good ones look just like the ones you can buy!

So, if you have any leftover from your kids and want to have a bit of fun, go try this out! 

Now, I must run - it's almost midnight and I still have to pack and then get up at 4 am to catch a flight to Albuquerque. We will be with two of our daughters and our two grand boys over the weekend to celebrate Mother's Day. 

An early Happy Mother's Day to all of you! See you again next week.

More Texture!

Still playing with loads of texture in my art journal. This is a double-page spread I created a few days ago. It's very textural! Take a look at the step-by-step photos I managed to take while making this. I have found it helpful to take photos along the way because often you can't remember what you did!

Here's the final spread:

And the process photos:

started with pages that had been previously painted and stained

added masking tape and gesso randomly applied with palette knife

added crumpled white tissue paper while gesso still wet

closeup showing tissue paper texture - also you can see where the distress stain (yellow) reactivated

joint tape added - love that texture

next came Whipped Spackle through a stencil (you can still see the yellow stain soaking through), raspberry and peacock Distress paints, torn book pages with blue gelato and white paint, and bubble wrap "stamped" on with white paint

hard to see in this pic, but I added bits of torn cheesecloth (see closeup below)

chipboard letters, painted and embossed with UTEE for extra texture

white fabric heart, a corrugate heart and added a "flower" cut from painted and heated Tyvek

here is a photo of the strip of Tyvek (used in construction but also is what the white, fibrous mailing envelopes are made of, recycled from PO) that I painted with metallic paint and heated with a heat gun  - can you see the "flower" shape just right of center?

I ended up cutting three flowers out of the Tyvek and added beads to all the centers

final step was adding twine to the three corrugate hearts

So there you have the anatomy of my page. In all, I think I used a total of about 20 textures!