Hollanders Excursion

Well, myself and "jackie" as I fondly call her, travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan this weekend. It was the usual, 3 hours of non-stop gabbing (contributions from both parties) as we drove like demons to get to our destination.

Once there, it was a shop-fest!!!!

The first image is the set of covers and signatures prior to "sewing". The second image is a close up (a little fuzzy) of the sewing procedure, which was confusing at first, but TOTALLY logical once you understood it. This next imageis the final product.Lastly a close up of the "Icicle Stitch"

Hollander's was a wonderful store. Beautiful building. Amazing selection. And the class was great.

Summer at Blue Mountain

Wow - we had a great adventure at Blue Mountain. Left on Monday; stayed in a beautiful 1 bedroom suite with a kitchenette. It was on the ground floor and faced the pool.

We swam A LOT. Walked around the "village", took in the music. At night they had a big screen that they played movies on (27 dresses when we were there). As a family we took the Family Hike up the Mountain. Thought I was gonna die. Had to carry Chase on my back, piggy back style. Got about half way up, and I had to pass her off to Fletcher.

The view was amazing.!!! We made it to the top. It was VERY muddy the last half of the journey.

We went on paddle boats; early morning walks; I spent a couple of hours in the BEAD store trying my hand at making a bracelet (see above). The chain was purchased as is, I added the heart clasp, and all the beads. I managed to make one for myself and for my daughter Chase.

The weather was great. We couldn't have asked for a better week!!

February ATC - Red and White

Well, I finished it...took me about a week to come up with the composition. As usual, I questioned myself and what i was doing. But, once the composition took shape I felt ok. It was soooo hard to restrict myself to just RED and White. Plus using nothing but stamps what even more difficult. Once the composition was finalized, I wanted to add depth, so I took the punched heart and placed material behind it to raise it off the card. Then deciding that I was going to sew a clear plastic cover onto the card, allowed me to put some red hearts floating within the sewn card.

Looks cool.....

I am glad I am posting my comments before I get to ATC night. This way I am not posting based on other peoples card.!!!

Monthly ATC night

On Friday night, I went to the Bizzy B's monthly ATC night. It was light as there were less than 10 of us. The theme was MEN/MALE. I did mine this past week. Tried not to be so critical of what I was doing and just did it..I felt freer than I had the other ATC nights. Wasn't as embarrassed.


But, I am mesmerized by all the other ATC's when we swap.....what am I not getting? I am told there are no rules but WHY do I leave there thinking mine didn't match the standard that everyone else created? Standard in terms of composition, interest. I don't know. I am hoping that one of these days I will break free and feel that the quality of what I have produced is on the same level as the other artists. I know that art is art, to each his own, but, looking at other artists ATC's I say to myself, hey, it has composition; mine seems unfinished. Not well thought out....Take it to the next level.


I will keep trying. I am not embarrased to show my art as it will help me to move forward. I need to keep trying.

Christmas Presents

Wow, what a wonderful Christmas. Not only did I enjoy the last ATC swap night of 2007, for 3 reasons: 1. because I finally was brave enough to attempt sewing on my cards. And 2. because of all the wonderful artists that I was honored to sit shoulder to shoulder with that night. Lastly, 3. I participated in my first exchange of ANYTHING other than ATC cards. I didn't take a picture of my ornaments, but here are the ones that I recieved in return.




Now for Christmas. My wonderful partner, James, and my son, Fletcher, went together and bought me a Japanese Caligraphy set along with a How-to book. PLUS, James bought me a paint by number of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. This is the FIRST time ANY MAN has bought anything resembling art for ANY occassion.!!!!! I am still in shock. Now I have NO EXCUSE!!!




Lastly, my gift to MYSELF from DJ Pettit arrived just prior to Christmas. I was sooooo excited, BUT, refrained from opening it....I waited....put it under the tree....until Christmas morning.....forgot about it....until the next day!!!!!!!!! Here was the wonderful package DJ sent to me. It was the first time I had ever purchased anything from an artist. The care she took in packaging the piece in old pattern paper, stitched it up; wrapped in colorful thread, topped with a copy of one of her recent paintings as a note card. Inside was this heavenly 2"x2" DANCING ANGELS ornament. The photos do not do it justice!!!!

I have lots to do for January. And, time is running out for me to figure out what I am going to do for Artfest ATC swap book and fat pages.........tick tock tick....

Domino Art Girlz

Today was a wonderful and full day!!!

After dropping my 10 month old daughter off at babysitting, trying not to feel too guilty (as all moms due), I fled Brampton for Toronto and visited a new friend in search of art experimentation!!!

There were four of us, and we talked and talked, exchanged ideas, our hostess was continuously scrambling up and down the stairs fetching items for us to use or to show us.

We had a blast. We ended up working with dominos and alcohol inks and stamps.The application of the inks and how they interacted on the domino was incredible. My favorite domino was the one that I used an orange inkpad to color the background and then used Silver alcohol ink and dripped onto the domino. The result was amazing.


I did stamp one domino, and it looks good.

The progress of all the dominos as we added more and more color resulted in very deep rich colors.

Thank you to our hostess for a wonderful visit!!

Xmas Thoughts

Wow, I was in Zellers today and they were playing XMAS music!!! How bizzare. The first comment that came to my mind was "it's not December 1st yet??!!"

Then in my email tonight I recieved my first POSTSCRIPT email from Stampington - this was the project of the month. And ohhhhhhh, what wonderful links I managed to find my way to.!!!

From this project I managed to get to Kristin Hubic's blog, and she was displaying some wonderful xmas mixed media. Another blog was by Audry Hernandez her cards are wonderful.

I ended up purchasing some stamps from Oxford Impressions. They have wonderful paper and Ephemera (including vintage prescriptiion sheets and French vocabulary cards.)

Can't wait for them to come in the mail!!!