Birthday Journal Page

Two of my granddaughters have just had birthdays. I got a
journal page made for one of them this morning. I made this from various bits of her giftwrap along with a pogo print of the party attendees and finished with a little ink. My granddaughter loves the monkey theme as she is a competitive gymnast.

Inchies are Back

The Inchybyinch blog has started up again. This
year we are going to work our way through the alphabet. So this week it's A for Alphabet!

Mandala Done

Well I made my mandala following the direction of that video I posted here. Now I realize they did it a bit differently. Oh boy, that shows how well I follow instructions! They changed pen color as they went along. I'll have to try that on the next one. This one is made with a Pitt pen and watercolor pencil. It was fun. Have you tried one yet?

Doodle Fun

My daughter and her husband gave me a daily calendar for Christmas. It's a doodling one. Every day there is something drawn or partially drawn and a prompt given for working the page. I figured I'd have fun with doing some VERY quick drawings and then I figured I'd post them for your enjoyment.

Since I can scan four at a time, I guess that's how I'll post them. This is me getting silly! I don't do that often.

Mandala Anyone?

I saw this video on Vicki Holdwick's blog Faint Heart Art . It looked wonderful and I just had to share - even before I tried it myself!

New Journal Cover

I'm taking a class with Mary Ann called Remains of the Day.
We make a journal cover and fill it with papers in her style. It's outside of my box as it is much more free-form than I usually am. Why don't you take a look here for the class as I believe it's ongoing although she'll be on vacation and won't allow more signups till she comes back on the 16th. You will enjoy it so do check it out.

This is my journal cover. I've still got to fill it which I am finally able to do. I wasn't going to prepare any till I finished the cover! The square of lace in the middle is from my wedding veil as it some gauzy fabric just above and to the left of that square as shown in the picture at right.
I added a pink poodle because I love poodles and want a teensy tine pink one someday when all my current fur babies are gone.
Later I'll show the full journal when it's done.

Happy New Year!

This year we end with a blue moon. Since I am not going to rush out early in the morning, this is the picture I am starting out the new year with. It was a tough year for many but things are beginning to look up a bit. I think ending with something special like a blue moon is a good sign of things to come. At least I am taking it that way. Hope everyone has a wonderful new year with good things to come.

Hi everyone. Hope you had lots of fun and will have some great

memories from Christmas. I had fun with my grandkids. I made a

page in my journal before heading out for the visit to show some crafts we could make. They looked at them and wanted to make the glittered stars. We had fun and it was a great way to show them the idea rather than just telling them about the crafts. I used Pitt pens and watercolor pencils to make the page. The second picture is a photo of what we all came up with.

The third photo was a way to procrastinate in my knitting. I thought I'd stop and draw the process before I finished the socks. I am not good at drawing from memory so needed them in front of me while I drew. This page was done on MiTientes paper with colored pencils.

My new year is starting off with lots of new classes. Hopefully I'll remember to share some of what I do in them here on my blog. I tend to get overwhelmed and forget to post things when I take on too much and I've gone and signed up for classes that overlap and

add up to about 9 of them at once for a little while! They just sound like so much fun I can't help but sign up and join in!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a great new year!

I took this picture in December last year. Yes, ALL that snow was one of our biggest snowstorms since we moved to Arizona eight years ago.

Inchy again

This is the last inchy for the year. The theme for this week at inchybyinch is "your favorite Christmas carol". I first heard Silver Bells when I was in my grade school glee club. I loved it. So this is my inchy with my favorite song of grade school.

They didn't have try-outs when I joined but they did when my sister tried to join two years later. I have always wondered if they heard me sing and decided to not let someone with a voice like mine join again! Yes, I am that bad. That's why I sing with my art and crafts instead.

Inchy

The theme at Inchybyinch this week is Yule. Not Christmas but a holiday celebrated by pre-Christian peoples. It conveniently transferred over as Christianity took hold. So I have a background of evergreens with a pine cone on top.

Two Inchies

The theme for this week was presents over at
Inchybyinch.

I ended up making two inchies for a change.
Mainly because the first one with the embossing
powder seemed too simple. With the static electricity we have right now I couldn't keep the particles from flying all over the piece either which I could see once it was enlarged.

So I made a second one. This one is a little bit
3-D with the tissue paper sticking out of the box. It was hard finding something small enough to put in this tiny package!

As an aside, I just signed up for the 2010 Bead Journal Project. If anyone loves to do bead embroidery and would like to join us in doing one piece (or page) a month for a year go to Bead Journal Project and check it out. The deadline to sign up is rapidly approaching - December 14th is the last day so hurry!

May BJP Page

Helloooo? Anyone still out here besides me? I got another
page done! May is finally finished. I'm not so far behind because I don't like my beads or the BJP anymore. I just can't see where the needle tip is when it's going into the fabric. It's driving me crazy. I think I have to not use dark fabrics anymore for one thing. I even have trouble under the magnifying lamp.

Well I have this one done at any rate and only three more to finish off this past year. I know, it's well past by now. Ok, I'll quit whining. If you read my blog you know I haven't been sitting doing nothing but worrying over my beading.

May is the month for the Mother's Day holiday so that is my theme. I took a broken earring of my mother's and glued her picture to it. I coated it with a good layer of Delta's Air-Dry PermEnamel Clear Gloss Glaze. It's wonderful stuff, more like a resin to give a nice shiny hard coat over something. Then I glued that to my fabric.

I took a heart bead (remember I am using gifted beads somewhere in my page) my sister gave me to symbolize me and added a banana for my son and a rabbit for my daughter. The banana was given to me by my grandchildren. I would have loved to have used a surfboard but didn't have one and did have the banana. My son eats a case of them a week so it fits. My daughter loves rabbits so that's why I picked it. If I'd had a baby bead I could have used it as she loves babies more than rabbits.

Then I took a mexican bead gifted to me by my daughter to symbolize her and added four little hearts for her children. Three generations represented here.

I started beading around my mother with blue since this is the month for blue on my color wheel - my other theme going through the year. All in all, I'm happy with how this turned out even though it took so long.

New Inchy

The theme for this week's inchy over at Inchybyinch is texture. The guest designer who suggested this and made samples for it is Jaine who has the blog Confessions of a Craftaholic here. This is my textured inchy. I figure burlap is a very textured material. (When I was little my mother made all five of us girls gathered skirts in colored panels of burlap. They were fun to wear).

Go ahead make a wish!

Looking in the Mirror

I thought I'd share a new page I've made in my journal with you. This one shows my grandson as he made faces for the camera this summer while swimming in his new pool. This page is from a class I am taking from Kelly Kilmer. The prompt was about looking in the mirror and this is my take on it. Hope you enjoy it.