AHH, A Color Break

I did something I never thought was possible. I overloaded on color! I think it was when I filled the  journal page aside the doodling project in the last post with twinkling H2O's. So I decided to take a break this morning and make some ATC's for the ladies I will be seeing shortly in my monthly class at the Stamp Cache.

The one below was the first of the series and set the theme of "time". The other part of the challenge I set for myself was to use stuff that was either hanging around my desk or in the embellishment bin...some of which have been there for a very, very, long time. 

I had just gotten the new smaller size of the London and Paris stamps; they were lots of fun to play with!

Below are the Working Smaller class samples, loaded with lots of wooden goodies from Helga at Artchix Studio.

I might be ready to work larger for a while!! Enjoy.

Anything Goes so Dream HUGE

A very dear friend of mine is celebrating a zero birthday this year and she has been so encouraging about my art adventures that I thought it was safe to try something new for her gift.  This corresponds very nicely with this week's challenge at Simon Says Stamp which is anything goes.

I signed up for Lifebook 2013 this year and one of the first weeks classes was this great class from Christy Tomlinson. Not only was the class fun, but it introduced me to Christy's work which I just love. It's joyful, colorful, and fairly intuitive. So with a big thanks to Christy as my inspiration for the background, this is the canvas I came up with.

I am really happy with how the background turned out. It was a blast to work on...I just kind of threw caution to the wind and here's the thing: when you buy a really, really, really small paint brush, you can do fairly decent detail work. Hmmm. Who would have guessed?

I was a little less happy with the words...love the saying, but it was hard to convey. 

I do however love the idea of sparkling, so I thought I would add this ticket that was floating around on my desk so I could use the paperclip!

And of course she needed a birthday card....

You can't really tell the size, but this is one of Tim Holtz's small blueprint stamps, colored with distress markers and a heart from Helga at Artchix Studio...I just love her cut outs!! I colored it up with a few Copic makers and added a chit-caht sticker. 

So hard to photograph, but there is sparkle on the flame and between the frosting and the cupcake with one of my new FAVORITE things - a glitter pen. 

There we have it - a birthday gift for a wonderful friend. Happy Birthday...because when you have a birthday with a zero in it, you get to celebrate all year long!!

Enjoy. 

WOYWW #199

Wednesday rolls around once again, and so it's time for What's on Your Work Desk Wednesday, a weekly spin around the globe and a peak onto work spaces hosted by the amusing and lovely Julia of the Stamping Ground. My space can be described in two words: TABLE TIDY

As in, I did yet another table tidy last night and since my sweetie is leaving tonight on a sad family mission I haven't had a moment to make it messy yet.

This shows a couple of the things I've been working on - more progress on the April  class on "working smaller" -- need to finish the samples, YIKES;  six blueish ATC's for a swap at Helga's Artchix Blog, and a large canvas that is a start to birthday present for a dear friend who will be celebrating one of the "zero" birthdays in a few days.

In the background is a piece for Lifebook 2013 - a game board that I actually had a great time putting together. One of these weeks I'll pull my projects thus far together to share with my WOYWW friends.

Sorry so short, and sorry I wasn't able to get around to everyone last week. Lots going on in life; maybe one day it will be normal - yeah, right, huh?

Enjoy life - it's short. 

WOYWW #198

Zip, zip, another week is gone...where does time go? And why can't I bottle it? It's Wednesday in some parts of world...time for another tour around the world at our creative spaces, thanks to the lovely Julia and her blog,  the Stamping Ground. This week my desk is about average I would say.

A hot mess of a journal page...but as I remind myself it's a process and I have some learnin' to do. If you look at this in the larger picture view you'll see a BIG note to self at the bottom. If you are going to use watercolor, don't start the drawing with a stabio pencil - it will turn into a big ole' black mess.

I've been working things on the next class for the Stamp Cache which is called 'Working Smaller'. I love these little cut-outs that Helga makes at The ArtChix Studio so we'll be making a few of these in April. The little house is a magnet and the beach scene will be popped up onto a card. We'll see what else I can come up with in the next few days.

If you look hard you can see one of the new Tim Holtz rub-on sentiments at the bottom - sweet life. I love these because they're transparent!

And finally this was the major creative project over the last week. 

As you can see I have a thing for dress forms, so I knew it was a natural to combine that shape with Tim Holtz's floral dies for his Tattered Floral Challenge. For more details on my entry click here. I'm off to link up and head out! Have a great week everyone.

Foreign Jewelry

I am really beginning to like challenges. Somehow they lead me into doing things I've wanted to do, but just haven't gotten around to. This week on Grungy Monday 37 Linda chose the theme of Tim Holtz Wearable Art. Love it. A couple of years ago I made a charm bracelet out of some charms, Idealogy pieces and parts, fragments and whatnots. But I wasn't careful and kind of haphazard about the whole thing. It needed to be re-done. What better time than this??? AND as an added bonus, this weeks' Simon Says Stamp and Show theme was London, Paris or New York. Did I mention the charm bracelet was about Paris?? See. It was fate, karma, kismet, whatever you want to call it...

I had some map stickers I had picked up along the way and cut those to fit the fragments. One is backed in silver, one in clear tape, and the other has a different picture applied to the "back" side of the fragment and which is covered in Glossy Accents. I wanted the piece to feel like it was put together over time, maybe even from a Paris Flee Market. After I put it all together I realized the Eiffel Tower was missing so I popped in a little charm along with some beads for color. The dress represents the good shopping in Paris. I used Tim's type charms for the letters, and from Helga at ArtChix I cut a tiny little "spoil me". Because really, who doesn't want to be spoiled at least once and a while?

When I first met my husband we took a trip to Paris, and it really was a trip of a life time. I had wanted to go back again for so long, and it was a perfect vacation. Beautiful city, romantic trip, good weather, great food, laughter, shopping; so the heart and the muse token that says Lifetime reference that experience.

And when not adorning my wrist, it happily lives on top of this little light on my dresser, adding a bit of, well, something to the atmosphere.