Girls Weekend

 Back in October, I spent a fantastic weekend at "the cottage" with some crafty friends. We love to get away at least twice a year and craft, sew, scrapbook... make stuff! I made this scarf by ripping strips of fabric and sandwiching between two layers of dissolvable interfacing. I added some bits of ribbon too. After sewing all over it with my sewing machine, I just soaked it in water for a minute to get rid of the interfacing. Here it is when it was still a little damp.

I love how it turned out and have been wearing it a lot lately.

 Love you girls! We need to do this again soon!

Tag Art

A couple of weeks ago I got busy messing up a bunch of tags with some gesso, glimmer mist, stencils, stamps and what not.

Then last week I added a little more and turned some of them into cards.  I love how this one turned out... I inked over punchinella with a Dazzle VersaMark ink pad and then clear embossed it.

Sometimes little works of art are a lot less overwhelming.

The small "how do I love thee" 3D sticker on this one is from a package I've had forever from K & Co. It's good to use up stuff!

Celebrating Life. just because

The truth is... " that feeling of growing big with possibility, that feeling you get when you are actively engaged in making things (anything!)... is pretty doggone good even when you're just all aloney or on your owny." I love that feeling! I get that feeling! I need that feeling!

Rock Your Life Your Way!

I created this 12x24" mixed media canvas for my oldest son. He liked the butterfly canvas that I made for his sister, and I rarely make artwork for my kids, so I thought I'd make something special for him. The only suggestion he gave me was something with a guitar. I immediately thought of Picasso...

so this ended up in sort of a Christy Tomlinson meets Picasso style. He loved it and so did I! This is how the background started out:

The canvas was already painted red. I adhered a variety of textured and book papers here and there, painted, slathered on texture medium (tinted green) through punchinella, and did a bit of stamping. The guitar was created with cardboard and scrapbooking papers. I went on to add lots more paint, glimmer mist, drips and drops of alcohol ink, charcoal and more. Here is a shot of the finished product without any additional filters or photo editing. (All of these photos were taken with my iPhone; most were "enhanced" with Instagram.)

And a few more details...





It's true, isn't it? Go and do something that makes you happy today! Life has enough dark; sometimes you need to create your own light.

"We should do our utmost to encourage the beautiful, for the useful encourages itself."

 Goethe