It's been a long time coming,

but tonight,

because of what we did on this date

in this election

at this defining moment,

change has come to America.

BARACK OBAMA

Thanks to the Happy Zombie for this button.

Crusade 21 - Irresistible

My first attempt at posting for one of Michelle Ward's Crusades. This one is called Irresistible - make wax rubbings.


Tools: paper, crayons and rubbing templates.

Rubbing with black crayon.

For this one I used a 12 x 12 scrapbooking template.

Colored with acrylic paint.

Here are my first attempts.

The Painted Page part 3 - my new designer jeans!

One of my favorite parts of the workshop was Michelle spray painting a pair of my jeans. They ROCK!!!!

Michelle painting my jeans.

Michelle and I with my awesome Michelle Ward original jeans. Michelle's jeans ROCK too. (Her finger is black because I kept missing the paper when she was helping me with the spray paint. Did I mention that she's a good sport?)

The Class

Check out Michelle's blog for her post about the workshop. My jeans and I made her blog (my hands did too).

Thanks to Kathy and Bill for another fantastic weekend at Valley Ridge Art Studio. I met some wonderful people, learned a lot, listened to some fab music, had some great food, enjoyed the wonderful atmosphere, came home with my head full of ideas and the coolest pair of jeans!!!

This is just a little part of the great view from the Studio.


Did I tell you I love my jeans?!!

The Painted Page Day 2

Day 2 was spent working with materials that Michelle provided to start putting content on our pages. She also gave us a demonstration on using spray paint and stencils. We were able to spray paint some of our pages. I immediately bought some spray paint when I returned home and have been practicing. You can see all of my pages on my flickr site including pages I've done since I returned home.

Here are some examples of my work from Day 2.

Painted Page (aka A Trip To Valley Ridge) Day 1

I was very fortunate to be able to take a workshop called The Painted Page given by Michelle Ward at Valley Ridge Art Studio (thankfully someone cancelled and I was able to get in). We worked on painting pages for a visual journal. Day 1 was techniques to get some color down on the page. Michelle is a great instructor and had a wonderfull handout prepared. It has really helped me a home as I continue to work on my pages. You can see all of my pages on my flickr site.

Here are a couple of samples from my pages on Day 1.

Great song!

I just love this song.

MIA

Sorry I've been missing in action for a while. I've been having some health issues. I'm on the mend and hope to be back to blogging soon. Hope all is well with my blogging friends.

Deco Book #2

These pages are for the second deco book I received. The pages measure 2 5/8 x 2 7/8 inches. I used another background made with acrylic glazes and stamping. I painted the branch and leaves. Stamped the bird (Memory Box) on a page from a Korean book and colored it in with layers of fluid acrylics so the text shows through. The bird was cut out and glued on the page with gel medium. I stamped the Asian symbol (Hero Arts) for Sky. The egdes are done with oil pastels.

For the back page I stamped and embossed the symbol for Destiny (Stampabilities).


It feels calm and serene to me which I'm needing right now.

Deco Pages

These are pages I made for a deco book round robin. This is my first deco book and I was the first person to add to this book so I was a little nervous. I used one of my painted background pages.

I hope she likes them.

More Background Fun

I've been making more pages. I plan on using these for pages in a book I want to make.



The first two are actually front and back of one piece of paper. I just used a piece of plain, white paper from my printer.



Side 1: I stamped with a script stamp and my new favorite stamp (Stampabilities Crackle Berry F1141). I love the way this stamp looks and have been using it on everything. I even bought a second one because I've been using the first one with paint and wanted to keep one decent to use with ink. Anyway, after stamping I painted over it with acrylic glazes made using Satin Glazing Medium with Quinacrodone Magenta, Quinacrodone Nickel Azo Gold and Quinacrodone Burnt Orange. These are my three favorite colors at the moment. Each glaze was painted on and allowed to dry before the next layer was added. I used paint rollers I bought from Dick Blick to apply the glazes. My local Dick Blick store doesn't have the rollers so I ordered them on-line. The regular foam rollers from the craft store didn't work as well and fell apart fast. The corners were taped down with painters masking tape to hold the paper in place for the first coat of glaze that is why they are a different color. I just tape the paper to my table which is covered with a plastic table cloth that way I can paint over the edges of the paper to get good coverage for the entire sheet. (One of these days I'll have to post a picture of my table cloth. It is georgeous and changes every time I paint.)





Side 2: I painted over a stencil with gesso. I absolutely LOVE this stencil. I bought it a one of my local scrapbook stores in two different sizes, this is the large size. It is made by
TheCraftersWorkshop.com, the name for this size is Botanicals and the smaller one is Mini-Botanicals. Then I glazed over it with glazes using Quinacrodone Nickel Azo Gold and Quinacrodone Burnt Orange. I really love this one. It is very subtle and the color is awesome. I'll have a hard time covering it up.

This is one of my "waste" sheets. I always have one on my table to use up extra paint and clean off rollers, brushes and stamps. I stop when I decide I love it. If I don't love it then I keep adding to it. This one probably has 10-12 layers. These are becoming some of my favorite pages.

Chipboard Swap

These ATCs were made for a swap. We had to use chipboard. I thought the theme was appropriate for this time of year. The background is made with tissue paper, then glazed with acrylic paint and stamped. The chipboard hearts were colored with distress ink and then embossed with clear EP.

Simply Enjoy

This is another canvas that I had started with a tissue paper background and painted. I added peeling paper to the bottom third and painted it. The image is from Art Chix and the saying is from Lisa's Altered Art. I need to add something else. I just haven't found the right thing yet. Any suggestions?

(Thanks Aimeslee for fixing my bad picture.)

2x2 Canvas

These are a couple of 2x2 canvases I did for a "Square" Swap. The backgrounds are done with layers of glazes. I thought they were sweet and fun to do.

The Big 7-0!!!

At my weigh in this week I hit 70 pounds lost! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. I'm actually looking forward to Spring and Summer this year. I get a whole new wardrobe.





Mouse was pretty excited about it too!

New Years Resolution Swap

We did a swap on one of my groups that required using one of our resolutions. I chose my resolution to finish some of the projects I'd started. I've been working on background papers since taking some workshops last year at Valley Ridge Art Studio. One was with Traci Bautista (Collage Unleashed: Butterfly Flower Graffiti Journal) and another was with Robin Atkins (Acrylic Painting ~ Deluxe Decorative Papers!). The background I used for these ATCs was done for a chunky book swap. I made extra to use in other projects. I pulled it out and cut it up. A portion of the background is shown below the ATCs. I really liked how this turned out and didn't want to cover it up too much.

Images are pieced together from collage sheets I got from Teesha Moore and Lisa's Altered Arts.

Coffee Tags Step 2 - Add color DYE INK

The color was added to these with dye inks. I used Distress Inks.

Coffee Tags Step 2 - Add color MARBELING

We used the shaving cream marbeling technique for these. I really like how they turned out.

Coffee Tags Step 2 - Add color ACRYLIC WASH

These tags were done with a wash of watered down acrylic paint.

Coffee Tags Step 2 - Add color WATERCOLOR

We used four different methods to add color to our tags. The first was watercolor. I had some liquid watercolors in spray bottles so I used them for these tags.





Note: Tag on top Left - I added some stamping over the top of the coffee and color.

Coffee Tags Step 1

These were done for an on-line workshop by one of the Yahoo Groups I belong to. The first step was to use coffee to stain the tags. I used cups or bottles to make the circles. The spots are done by putting instant coffee grounds on the tags and dropping water on the grounds. I also tried painting the coffee on, sponging a little and even brushing it on.

Meet the Art Fairy

I finished one of my unfinished canvases. Images are pieced together from collage sheets I got from Teesha Moore and Lisa's Altered Arts.

Paint Scraping Background

Another technique from Trish. See her blog for instructions and a lot of other great ideas.


I used three colors of acrylic paint on cardstock.

I took it a little further and used a number stencil to add some interest.

Then I glazed over the top with a magenta glaze.

Glue Backgrounds

Trish has been posting background techniques for us to try. These are my Glue Backgrounds.

Glue painted on cardstock with a credit card, textured then left to dry. I used chalk inks to add color.

I used sequins waste (punchinella) as a stencil to put the glue on these sheets. Then let dry and added color with chalk inks. Have I told you I'm addicted to sequins waste?

I used a piece of a non-skid mat (the kind that you put under rugs) to make the pattern on these . The glue was a little runny so I didn't get good texture. Again I used chalk inks to add color.

I drew lines and wrote words on these (in case it isn't obvious) and after they were dry added color with chalk inks.