Happy Thanksgiving

to all my friends in the US. I wish you all happiness, and love and being together on this special day.
Blessings to you all.
and....don't eat too much turkey. :)

Inchy by Inch Challenge

Over at Inchy by Inch this weeks challenge is present...so here is my little take on an inchie present.
This is an inchie cube and on all four sides I have put a santa, some with some very cute hats. You can't have presents unless you have a Santa to deliver them and of course he has to determine whether you have been "naughty or nice". In my case there shouldn't be any question to that statement, I am always nice...so I have not doubt in my mind that Santa will be visiting me this year. No lumps of coal for me.....tee hee.

Gifty idea....altered notepads

Last weekend while I was visiting my girlfriend we did a few of these notepads and thought I would share them with you here. These come 4 in a pack at the dollar store and very easy to alter. I have used images from the internet, different papers, old book pages, flowers, even real pansies from my garden and well you get the idea. I have since made a few more when I got home and plan to keep making them to have a few on hand. Make some holiday themed or a certain theme your recipient might like. This is a great way to use up those pieces you don't want to throw out, you never throw out if you are a crafter or paper artist. That small piece could come in handy some day......
These would make a great little teacher gift, a stocking stuffer or just a because gift. Look around and see what you can alter you may be surprised and a little handmade gifty is always appreciated, I know I sure love them when I receive them.
Thank you for looking and off to make some more button fairies.
To be contined another day and another time.

Spouting off.....

Well it was time for some new tires on my Monte Carlos and I shopped around for a deal. Well the deal was good but let me tell you I was not impressed with how long I had to wait to have them put on. I thought when I called and the guy asked me " what time are you coming" that signaled to me that I was making an appt so that when I came I would be taken at that time...would you not think???? I said to him I will be there for 11am (this was yesterday I called) and I was there but 11 am this morning.....well lets just say when I arrived it looked a bit busy but I got there and gave my info at the desk and the gentleman said it will be done by 1pm. So now I am stranded but good thing there was a store attached, (not going to mention the name of the store here but every city has one and this was a Superstore and it starts with W and endd in a T...) Ok you got it I am sure. So I wander around, then I go to another little plaza close by, come back my car is still on the hoist, I asked for a lube, oil and filter as well, so that is only a 15 minute job or so....At 2pm my car is just having it's tires put on. The old tires are just being removed.....are you kidding me???? how can that be.....I was not impressed and even tho the 4 tires were a good price and all season radials I was getting a little hot under the collar but I kept my cool. I didn't even ask what the problem was.....I just shook my head a few times, even called JB at work to let him know what was going on, JB said that 4 tires should only take about an hour, with balancing etc. The guy at the desk finally called my name and said to me to return to have the tires checked after 50km. I said well do I need to make an appt, because I don't want to wait 3 hours again just to have that done...oh no , in fact I can do that myself and you wont' have to wait. We are very sorry. Ok almost 400.00 later....no don't think I will be going back there again.
It would be ok if I had someone to drop me off and then I could get a ride back with someone but that wasn't happening, JB works arcross town and does deliveries etc so that just wasn't going to be possible.
Anyways that is my ramble for the day. I kept my cool but sorry W----Mart, you won't be getting my business again.

On a better note I will be posting my notebooks I altered after my batteries get charged up. This was a very inexpensive little project, a quick gift or great stocking stuffer idea. Some of these I even made special for some family members in the UK. Stay tuned for my next paper idea.

More Button Fairies with a twist and textured inchies

As promised in my post yesterday I mentioned I had a couple more button fairies but a little bit different.

I learned to quill from a good friend Kathy a few years ago, I was always amazed at what she would send me with quilled ornaments, cards etc. Our Friendly Pallette group met for the first time (we all met online) in Ottawa Ontario almost 3 years ago. Kathy brought each of us a starter quilling kit and I jumped right on it.  Vist Kathy's site here and see what kind of creations she does with quilling.

I have not done a lot of quilling of late but I am getting edgy to get back into it. These wings I got from an idea, I had   a  few dragon flies I had made and set aside for cards and so I thought these would be great  to make for my button fairies. I crimped the paper first then I made each individual wing then when the fairy was assembled I glued the wing pieces to the back and then flipped them over and put Stickles on the wings edges for that bit of shimmer.

I loved how these turned out. I wonder where these will end up. Who knows.....but I can always hangthem and enjoy them myself if all else fails.

And over at Inchy by Inch this weeks challenge is texture.

I thought the tissue paper technique and painted and stamped paper towel would fall into this category. The background of the tissue has been sprayed with a gold shimmer and really adds a nice sparkle to this glamorous inchie. The green painted paper towel has some gold paint applied and a green flourish stamp.

Well tonight is Stir Fry and I should go get a fire lit before the boy comes home from work.

Stay tuned and have a great evening my blog friends.

Button Fairies and inchies

These are so much fun to make and very addicting, these are Button Fairies that I am making for an upcoming swap for Christmas ornaments over at ATC for Beginners Yahoo Group.

I have always wanted to try to make them but always something else to do or get a swap done or just forgot about doing. I seem to have a never ending want-to-do list.

There are many resources out there to make these, they are relatively easy and a great way to use up buttons, and scraps, beads and a bit of bling.

I appologize for the poor pics, I scanned today instead of using the camera which does not do these any justice whatsoever.

I like to curl the tails on my fairies, they take on a whole new look.

Tomorrow I will complete some new fairies with a slightly different take on them.

Stay tuned

And here are some painted and stamped snowmen inchies for the Inchies onexone Yahoo Group.

These are for the month of November lottery. We have contributors to the lottery then those name are put into Random.Org and a winner is picked and they receive all the inchies. I only had to make 3 but when it comes to snowmen I can't stop. 3 are handpainted freehand by me and 2 are stamped.

I wonder who will be the lucky winner.

We have to wait to the end of the month to find out.

For every door that closes...

a window opens. This I believe to be true, this weekend I found out that the craft show that I submit to which is an open house concept has done it's last show. I found this out via email and was a little surprised but then again the hostess and her family and business partner have been doing this show for over 20 years.
So today I went to a local craft show which was small in nature but is close to a lot of craft shows going on in the area. I stopped in to take a look around and also to see the inside of this incredible house. It used to be an old stone school house and I was in total awe of it.
Anyways, to make a rather long story shorter, I met the woman who was kind enough to talk to me about the set up of her show and I submitted my name so that I hopefully can be a participant next year. I have left my blog addy with her also so perhaps after viewing some of my artwork here I will be a lucky girl. We can only hope and pray. :)
And....I picked up my inventory after 4pm today at the Victorian Splendor craft show and sale and I was pleasantly suprised at how little I had left over. I always do quite well but this year I didn't get started til after my hand surgery and just my lack of enthusiasm at the time and I had 2 small boxes of items left. So I was quite pleased. Now I just have to wait for my cheque, then, I have a new book I would like to purchase, afterall all that work and I deserve a little something, then Christmas shopping begins.
For all of you who have cheered me on and commented on my artwork, thanks so much, I really do appreciate all your kindness, it makes it all worth while.

And.....I was away Friday and part of Saturday to my girlfriend whom I became really great friends with when I worked at medical laboratory years ago. We have been great friends and are like minded, we share so much she is more like a sister than a friend. Anyways we did a little craft and I will be showing them another post but we did some altered notepads for either your purse or just a nice little stocking stuffer or even give to a teacher. They are just those ringed notebooks with lined pages, great for shopping or grocery lists etc.
It was fun but it sure was a whirlwind of a trip. A good time was had by all.

Lest We Forget....

Today I would like to pay tribute in keeping with Remebrance Day to all the men and women who have served our country and paid ultimate sacrifices so that we could live in a safe, free and democratic society.
I bowed my head in silence for 1 minute shortly after 11am and I would like to end this post with a very familiar poem....

 In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Please take a moment and pay tribute to our brave Soldiers past and present.

Ink resist background ATC's

My newest addiction for backgrounds is from that book we got and I did the Versamark ink resist backgrounds on glossy photo paper. I have never tried this before and when I got our ATC background book and read the directions I immediately was intrigued. Didn't take me long to get addicted to this one, thanks to Gwenny for the background.

Here I have done a cute little girl that has a Post Carde stamp on the background inked with distress dye ink in Cracked China and Frayed Burlap. Amazing how these ink colours work together.

This cute little girl is looking for someone to speak French to. Don't ask me girlie, I know very little.

And of course can't go without doing at least an Asian theme or two.

Here I used Fire Brick and Antique photo distress ink. Gives it a nice exotic background feel. I strung some beads I received in a swap recently with a few little asian coins as well.

The title of this card is " My 2 yens worth".

And this card I used Frayed Burlap distress ink and not as much Fired Brick. This woman doesn't have a clue what happened to the crow...a little mishap I would say??

She says....." See NO Evil"

Thank you for stopping by.

Have a great weekend.

ATC Background book and Inchie book

The first picture below is a combination of Artists that have done various backgrounds for ATC.

Our group ATC for Beginners were involved in doing a background swap. So we each did a background or several and then made the number of people that signed up and we each got a set. Here is a wonderful book of backgrounds that I have been admiring and even doing since I received my lovely gem.

The hostess, Jen from Australia and a new member Tina got the idea and took it from there.

It is amazing how far this book has travelled, how many hands worked on it and we all got a set.

The book is not together because I wanted to spread it out for you to see. I will be assembling it this weekend.

I forgot to mention that most of the backgrounds have instructions on the back to tell us how to do each technique.

Thank you for all who participated. We plan on adding to it in the future.

Having that said, I took some of the ideas from the book and played around with paper and stamps etc to make this nice little inchie book.

We recently had an inchie booklet swap over at Addicted to Inchies. so I was still in this frame of mind. I like working in small, it is relaxing and it really sparks my creativity.

All the pages in this book have been altered in some way, shape or form. I even added another technique not included in the book that Jen had on her blog using masking tape and pastels. I will explain that another time as there is just too much to tell you right now.

This is the Front and Back cover. The front has telephone book paper that has been glazed with a mix of acrylic paint to make it look sort of rusty, if you click on each picture you should get a better close up.

I then took my glue stick cap off and used it to stamp rusty coloured circles and a marker cap (smaller in diameter) to stamp antique white circles.

The back cover is the bubble technique, purple bubbles on  a very light purple paper. The crow is peeking out of her frame and I adorned her with a frilly neckline. Isn't she cute??

Next is the tissue paper background and I sprayed a bit of Radiant Rain and gave it a little shimmer with gold.The Asian beatuies are on masking tape with oil pastels sealed then the inchie beauties are glued on and some small butterlies fluttering here and there adorned with stickles for a shimmer.

Next is just a plain green paper that I sprayed with gold radiant rain ( love that stuff), punched a border on the end and where the hole is. Added some travel inchies, stamped a Poste Card stamp on some distressed inked paper.

The opposite page has painted paper towel, a crow with a crown, and some music he is singing to, perhaps to his girlfriend on  the back cover. She is rather pretty with her frilly collar.

And this last 2 pages, just an inked green paper with some stamps of numbers, Some versamark ink resist technique using dye inks, love that technique, thanks Gwenny! the clock in the top left corner is coated in Glossy Accents, they should have called it glassy accents, great stuff, gives it a more 3 D effect.

The opposite page is a full page of Versamark ink resist using purple and Frayed burlap (distress dye ink) rubbed on glossy photo paper. the stamp is a French script what I used and when you rub the ink on and blend the colours you get a lovely mutation of colours and the print is white from the original paper colour. 

I can see using this technique for Christmas cards this year.

Today I also received my inchie booklet from a swap I was in but stay tuned for that.

Thanks for dropping by and if you have any questions just comment or leave me an email. I would be happy to hear from you.

=^..^=

Inkjet transfers and what does Stodgy mean?

Ok first things first, I have heard somewhere either BBC or someone English use the term "Stodgy". I would like to know what that means...does it mean you feel stodgy, or something is stodgy and exactly how do you use this term. I have had this in my head for days now and want to know what it means. If you can help please leave me a comment because I like it and I want to know what it means.

2ndly.... today I tried for a couple of hours trying to do image transfers using the Bernie Berlin techniques in her ATC Workshop book. So far no luck. I used wet paper then tried to burnish the image with no luck at all.
Then I tried using gel medium and it stuck to my paper when I tried to remove the photo paper, so not only  did I waste material time and effort and much frustration. If you have any luck or can tell me how you do inkjet transfers please let me know.
I did however do a transfer using freezer paper attached to a sturdy piece of cardstock and then burnished the image onto some flat (not textured) paper. It seemed to work the best although I think the darker your image the better luck you will have. I have done the tape transfers but I am wanting the  aged look that this technique achieves. Well so far it hasn't and I need to know why and how to do it successfully.
I would appreciate anyone that could take a moment or two to explain it to me. I have researched it to death and perhaps it is the gel medium I am using. I put it on thick, I put it on thin but it wanted to act like a glue and stick to my paper. ugh....
I decided to turn my thoughts to painting so I did that instead after much frustration.
Til next time....

Someone has been playng with paper...

I know I have been absent for a few days. Been kind of taking it easy, got Hallowe'en over with, a total of 3 kids. Not to mention the one I live with every day, for a grown man he sure keeps me entertained.

I have been cleaning up a bit and putting things away from painting, but, not too far, just needed to put some books back in storage for next year etc.

These are some things I have been working on.

It has been forever it seems since I did a trade over on the ATC for beginners board and I was ready to dive in.

This card below was a tricky one to say the least.

I cut an ornament shape out of mylar, plastic sheeting they sell to make your own stencils. I layed the stencil down then stamped into it with my face inked up, then I took the middle part of the stencil that was cut out from the sheet and used it as a mask, covered the face and stamped the flourishes all around the back ground. The face was inked with Tea Stain distress ink.

The flourishes were stamped with a Jumbo Java Tsuenko ink pad then I added chunky distress stickes to it.

I cut a small flower using a punch, and a gold piece for the top of the ornament.

It was a fun project but I tried to repeat it several times and just did not come out the same, good thing this one did. I promptly put it up for trade on the ATC for beginners board. See if I can tempt any traders there.

The next 2 cards below are done with masking taper layered upon layer on Card stock then you scribble oil pastels over the tape and start blending. My friend Jen explains how she did it and when I was done painting I had to try it. I am not a huge fan of hallowe'en so I decided to call this full moon as I noticed last night we are currently experiencing a full moon.

The pin in her hair just happened....I was moving things around on my table and I looked down and the pin was in her hair and I said, I like that. A bit of my bizarre nature coming out but it just seemed to fit.

The crow with his crown is sitting observing the state of the evening.

This same background I have applied to this card called " Inferno" because of it't red background. Before I applied the gel medium to the background I scribbled the swirls in with the tip of a pen. One thing about pastels if you don't like your design just smudge over it and try again.

I also used a blue pastel to smudge around the image to make it look like a shadow cast behind it.

I rather like this card.....I didn't really want to add to much more to it. I love the texture feel to it.

Thanks Jen for sharing this with me.

And last but not least or my Addicted to Inchies, November challenge, the bubble technique.

My friend Jan in the UK has a quick tut on her blog and you can find it here.

Since we had no set theme I just stamped a few different things. We haven't seen any snow as of yet here in Ontario but it will come soon enough.

Well until next time, thanks for dropping in and stay tuned for some more arty creations by me.