I Never Win Anything!

 In Anna Aspnes  newsletter  this week there was give away. All you had to do was enter your name for a Shutterfly Coupon . Now I never win anything but thought what the heck and entered my name. WooHoo, in this mornings email there was a coupon for a 8x8 hardcover book. I had pages for a book all ready to go and was waiting for a sale at Paper Kiwi where I have order books before. I've been very happy with what Paper Kiwi had done for me and it will be interesting to see if Shutterfly is as good.

The book is totally devoted to pages of my travels over the years converted into sketches using Photoshop. Below are some samples of the 30 pages which will make up the new book.

Portofino

One of my favorite places in the world is Portofino, Italy. It nestles between the hills and the Mediterranean and is beautiful beyond belief. I created the page above dreaming and hoping to be able to go back again.

There was a challenge at Oscraps to create a page about Spring.  Spring has not sprung in my part of the world but I can only hope it will arrive soon. The photo of the early blooming clematis was taken last Spring in my garden.

I'm a Guest

I have asked to be a AnnaGuest for Anna Aspens designs at Oscraps. I'm a bit blown over and delighted to be asked! What do I do while I'm a guest, well, I post some of my digital pages using Anna's wonderful products. Not very hard at all. And am terrifically flattered to be asked.

This is the first page that I posted as a AnnaGuest. I've used Anna's ArtPlayPalette_Truth, and ArtPlay_ArtsyKards Truth. Don't you just the love quirky frame? It another Anna product called Free Form Frames. The darling little girls are my granddaughters showing me what they learned at ballet. 

Envelope

Clever Alice over at Jessica Sprague.Com posted a page using a envelope to show photo's she had waiting to be scrapped without actually doing layout. I thought it would be a nice FREEBIE to give   a gift to those who read my blog an envelope can be used in the same way.

Check out Alice's page and download this envelope and let me know if you used it.

Digital Whisper

No matter how often it happens it always a thrill to me to have my work recognized. This week 2 of my fantasy pages are featured on Digital Whisper.

 

I Want to Fly

Sea Girl

 

Digital Whisper has just reopen and is a site that is "A community of dedicated loyal artist who make their art come alive with just a whisper".  I'm not sure about the whisper part, some times the art work I view on the site shouts out in it originality and beauty!

There is a lot going on over at Digital Whispers right now with the reopening. If you have a interest in fantasy art come over and have a look.





Rose Bowl Flea Market

 

Today we went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market. It's  3rd time that I have had the opportunity to visit this amazing market and see   of STUFF for sale!

We were greeted at the entrance by this fellow when we arrived about 9:30 am. Which is late the market opens at 5am. The parking lots were fairly full and we had to park quite a distance away from the entrance.

 We walked, and walked up and down the many aisles. It's unbelievable how many things are for sale, from antiques, old clothing, paper bits, and just downright junk. But one mans junk is another mans treasure.

 I loved this view of a wooden horse popping out of a truck.

 There were people of all ages searching for the perfect thing or bargain.

After  4 hours of walking and finding wonderful treasures which I hope will all fit into my suitcases we found the exit and headed for the long walk back to our car tired but happy.

Finishing Up

After a great day walking around La Brea Tar Pits, visiting the Folk Art Museum and lunch at The Grove Farmers Market, some of my very favorite place in LA we headed home mid afternoon. Tired but happy to work on finishing my journal I spend some time watching the videos Mary Ann Moss provided for us in her class Ticket to Venice on how to make the Diamond Cross Bookbinding stitch.
Once I watched the videos and Mary Ann's excellent instructions I went full steam ahead and completed binding  the journal.

I  really like to look of this type of binding and I am planing on making another journal  once I get home using it.   I'll add more signatures to the journal now that I am comfortable with the stitching.

Play Day in LA

 

 

This week I'm visiting my friend Nola in LA. Today we had a play day in her studio. Our project was to make a art journal. Joining us was Ute (see her blog on the sidebar) an old friend from Doll Camp and a wonderful artist. We started with brown wrapping paper and acrylic paint and the instruction from Nola to just doodle. Above is what I came up with

 

 



In this photo you can see the jars of the very bright acrylics that we used.

Ute hard at work

Nola, myself and Ute.

Nola with her interesting doodling

My journal almost completed.



 

After finishing putting the journal together I relized that I had not made the spine large enough to hold all my signatures. Rats!!! After some thinking I cut the spine out, made it larger and with a good suggestion from Ute, painted in the missing bits that I had to cut off. It hardly shows where the new paper had been attached.

My next step is to add the signatures to the book using a stitch that Mary Ann Moss taught us in her latest and fantastic class Ticket to Venice.

 

All in all a wonderful day with good friends.

School Memory Books

For the last several weeks I have been working on making school memory books for my 3 granddaughters. The project turned out to take a lot longer than I anticipated. I am nearing the end now and thought I would post a few photos.

Each book has pockets for JK through grade 12. In each of the pockets there is a tag that can be used to add notes or photos.

I spent some time thinking about how my daughter would store the books over the 14 years and came up with the idea of a box. Next thought was..where would I buy one that would fit all three books. I tried Michaels and office supply stores and could not find anything that would work. Next thought I had was maybe I could make one. Not ever having made a box before I checked to see if I could find instructions on the net. Nothing I found really suited me, next was YouTube and that was a bit more helpful. Finally I decided to just wing it. I cut chipboard for the sides and cover. I  used the same paper to cover the chipboard as I used on the books. I attached the sides using wide black book tape.

 Top

If you look closely at the front of the box you can see the two little knobs that I put on the hinged cover. The box is kept closed with  small squares of Velcro on the inside of the cover.

 

Side

 

The 3 books fit nicely inside.

My posting of Nov. 30, 2012 has links to the sites where I got my inspiration for the books. 



Blown Away!

One of the gallery's where I post my pages  is Oscraps. Each week there is a challenge by Anna Aspnes to copy a pages that is thought be be special. This week I was blown away, my page was chosen.
 Funny how things work out, I was not happy with the way this layout was working and in playing around with saturation using Photoshop I accidently came up this monochromatic palette.

The photo used here was taken in Dec. 2011 on a visit to St. Augustine with my friends Cynthia & Lorraine.We were touring the Dow Museum of Historic Houses. The site is over 400 years old was a treasure trove of interesting architectural elements I must have taken over 100 photos while there. The site has a  magical frozen in time feeling to it and if you are ever down that way it a good place to visit.

Simplify

After some thought I have chose one little word for the year. Simplify...

Now the challenge will be to do it!

Sketch

I love making sketches using Photoshop.  Mostly I have been using photos of landscapes to create the sketches. Today I tried a  new technique and made a sketch of a face.
I used a photo of my son taken several years ago. I'm quite please with how it turned out.

Crafting for Christmas

Now that all of my hand made Christmas cards have arrived at their destinations I can post photos of them. I was inspired to make cards this year by a video tutorial  that I watched on Joggles.com you can see it here.

The first card I made was of and gas lamp post, I  added a Christmas wreath, painted it and then sprinkled with glitter and it was good to go.

 The three cards above were  made with  3 new Tim Holtz stamps I treated myself to. I used watercolour to paint them and cut the edges with a rotary blade. Glitter was added as a last step to the card and background.

 In some of the cards I sent out I added this little Christmas bird. My friend Lorraine showed me how to make them one afternoon a few weeks ago. I had a wonderful time with my little granddaughters one day after school having them make their own.

I made a dozen of these round ornaments to give as gifts. Again it was Lorraine who show me how to make them. I used paper from an old book and the centers came from antique Christmas cards photos that I printed out. I kept a few for myself and they look wonderful hanging on our tree.

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas holiday.

Oh My!!

Oh Me, Oh My two in one week! This page was choosen as a Gallery Stand Out here.

 "The purpose of the Gallery Stand Out blog is very simple: to showcase some of the most outstanding digital scrapbooking layouts posted in the galleries, every single day."

 Wow! what an honour!!

Christmas Bells - Featured Today

It's a wonderful feeling to have a piece of  digital art that I created noticed and featured on a web page. It's always a thrill to have that recognition.

Today I am featured on Oscraps Blog for my digital page Christmas Bells.
The background paper I used came from Anna Aspnes Designs at Oscraps, the bells were found on the net and then digitally manipulated to give some dimension.

However you celebrate the holidays good wishes from me to you.

Stuff

Last night when I should have been  counting sheep I was counting the number of Christmas stockings we needed to hang up this year. Yikes, I realized that my youngest granddaughter did not have a stocking! What to do, what to do, as it was almost 3am I figured I should wait until morning to solve this problem.

Morning came too soon and after a quick breakfast I checked the Christmas box where we store the stockings. Sure enough there were only 8 stockings and we are 9 this year. I had made stockings for the two older girls and felt I could not possibly buy a stocking for the little one,  it might scar her for life if I did.

What to do, what to do? I checked the closet where I store my stash of fabric and what do I find, a beautiful plaid silk dupioni ( I have no idea what I originally bought it for), and the perfect piece of green silk dupioni to use as a lining. I checked the draw where I keep trim and  found  a piece of green and gold braid just the right size to use for the edging.

After a couple of hours I had a new Christmas stocking made and I did not have to buy a thing, every bit came from my stash of stuff!

 

This true story just goes to prove you can never have too much stuff!

As I was thinking about stuff  The Rule of Stuff came to mind:

 

The Rule of Stuff (as revealed to Susanna Oroyan)

You can never have too much stuff.

The stuff you have is never as good as the other guy's stuff.

The stuff you have is probably too good to use anyway, better save it.

Any stuff you need is always too expensive.

Your stuff is never where you thought it was.

Stuff multiplies exponentially on its own.
Stuff cannot resist gravity, it prefers being in piles on the floor.

Stuff mutates, the stuff you thought you had is not the stuff you do have.

The natural state of stuff is chaos, don't even try to organize it in plastic boxes.

Stuff stored in closets will always fall on your head.

If you see good stuff, better buy it because you will never find it
again....always buy twice as much stuff as you might need.
Really good stuff is irresistible to cats.

Copywrite 1997 Susannah Oroyan.

She who dies with the most stuff wins!!

Digital to Phyical

I have spent the last week in my studio with paper, glue and a exacto knife making school memory books for my 2 oldest granddaughters. The books were inspired by a  photo I saw on the Graphic 45 site made byLuv-Lee Scrappin.   Graphic 45 paper called ABC Primer was used on the cover and throughout the book.  The pockets were made with paper bags covered with the paper and chipboard was used for the covers and spines again covered with same Graphic 45 paper.

I am waiting for a order to arrive to finish  the front covers including locks and some kind of a closure. I still haven't figured that out yet.

As you can see from these photo's I made the spine very wide to be able to accommodate the photo's and other bits and pieces that will be added over the years.

                                                            Inside front cover and first pocket

 Each pocket contains a tag that can be used to record the name of the girls teacher and other information  about their school year.

There are pockets and tags for Junior Kindergarten through to grade 12 and I will be labeling each pocket.

My plan is to make a third book for my youngest granddaughter, but she is only 18 months old so there is no rush.