I got behind on my IT girl swaps over the holidays but Finally caught up through January.
This book was for Pauline who's topic was womens faces. I Attempted to draw a Kelly Rae Roberts style face on the front. It was fun giving it a try, although I am certainly not great at it! Maybe with practice. :-)

This is the inside of the front & back covers.

This book was for Jessie who's topic was Time.

And this book was for Fiona who's topic was Inspiration.

I finally finished the back of my book to Carol and it is in the mail. :-)

CC Swaps Envelope book for Carol S

This is a book I made for an Envelope Book swap in CC Swaps. The only requirement was that we include at least 8 envelopes. I made 8 envelopes out of painted Lutradur, sewed them together, decorated them and added velcro as a closure.
A couple of weeks ago I joined several ladies in Brentwood for a local art group meeting. Diane Bouchard taught a technique for painting on freezer paper. I used this method on the Lutradur & really loved the results.
The technique is basically spreading paints on the background with a credit card, then rubbing a Golden metallic glaze over the colors. On the Lutradur particularly, the glaze seemed to pull the colors all together & make them feel really rich.
From there I used my typical painty techniques of using Stewart Gill paints & sequin waste to add color & texture. I overstamped with Golden tubed iridescent bronze fine and with Golden heavy bodied Titan Buff.
And I can only Hope Carol likes flowers because I find I have kind of caved in to the flowers that have massively shown up in scrapbook stores lately! I used little ones a bit in the past, but I found I love the layered ones....different colors, sizes, textures. I seem to have used quite a few of them on this. LOL

Holiday Hideaway December 2008 - Other Projects

It's nearly the end of February already (although I started this on January 18 as the date says! LOL) and I am Finally getting a chance to post pix of my other projects from Holiday Hideaway in December. The Christmas hangers are made with Ranger "Fragments". Tim's sample actually had crystals hanging from the hanger also...........I Still haven't gotten a chance to put mine on. But if I don't post these pix pretty soon, it will be Next December!!! ;-)

The Doors were a Lot of fun! These plug in & light up and the faux snow looks so realistic.

And The Birds!!! This I think was my Favorite Project! What FUN these were! And how many Different styles everyone did! This is my bird. I bought the metal iron in an atique store in Prescott & have attached my bird. I also went online & have ordered 5 more birds to Hopefully someday alter! I just Love this little guy!

And I Must Thank Tim for his input along the way. I didn't think I had painted it well enough. And I didn't like that orange showing through when we sanded. Tim said it would end up being my favorite part. And Yep......it Is! It makes it look the most distressed. I won't be so Finicky next time. LOL

Ahh, and these pictures have gotten all out of order from the way we did them. This was actually one of the first projects. I really Loved this project also! Tim's sample had doorknobs as feet to stand on and a door handle on the top. I Bought some.............just haven't had time to put them on yet. This was all made with Grungeboard alphabets and distress inks.

All I can say about the Holiday Hideaway is it is one of the most special events I've ever been fortunate to attend and I Thank Tim for welcoming me into the fold, Mario for all he does for us. And Always thanks to Michelle, Karen & Sharon who help make this all possible. I can't wait for next year! :-)

Holiday Hideaway projects

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• The necklace was a side project hosted by Karen "Keychain". There were 40 people attending (+3 counting Tim, Mario and Michelle). Everyone made a charm, no larger than 1" x 1". The first night we had dinner hosted by Mario, and then we all made charm Bracelets. I had seen several charm Necklaces at Art & Soul in Portland in October and Really Wanted one. So I brought my own necklace so I could add the charms to that instead. Everyone's charms were so wonderful & so different. It made a Fun necklace. :-)
  
  
  
  
  
• Our first project on Friday morning was a metal covered book using Ten Seconds metal sheets and embossing plates. We covered small canvases, then stitched the book & attached to the canvases. I used pesto alcohol ink to get the green color. I have nearly all of the Ten Seconds tools........I Love working with metal. But I actually learned How to work with the metal. I was just winging it before. Rather than just rub the paper stylus over the metal to get the pattern, we used a "defining tool" to really bring out the pattern. Also, rather than just using One pattern, we used many different patterns to create a patchwork look. I had never thought of that.

Since I Still can't seem to figure out how to get blog posts in the order I want and end up taking Forever to move pictures where I want them, I'm going to add the projects in different posts. SO, more to follow..........soon. ;-)

Holiday Hideaway 2008, Prescott, Arizona

I returned Wednesday night from 5 days in Prescott, Arizona at Tim Holtz's Holiday Hideaway 2008. What FUN we Had! Tim had name tags all ready for us at our tables. I went with my friend Phyllis, who invited me 3 years ago and I have been So Fortunate to have been able to go to Tim's Prescott retreat 3 times now.

I had the picture taken with Tim & Mario to send to my friend Trizzy, in Australia. :-) That of Course gave Me a picture of the 3 of us also. :-) I couldn't resist posting. I could go on for pages about the Wonders of this retreat, but I will not. I started a travel blog awhile back, but haven't quite gotten it really going. Maybe I will post more pix there as well as tales of the trip.

Meanwhile, I will post pictures of our projects next.

Art & Soul Portland October 2008

I am Finally getting a chance to update my blog. :-) The first week of October I went to Art & Soul in Portland. I took 4 classes.

I had signed up for a class with DJ Pettit, however she had to cancel due to illness. I hope someday soon to be able to take a class from her. I was sorry to miss that class.

Glenny was able to get Kelly Rae Roberts to teach classes in DJ's time spots. The class I took was really Wonderful! We used old letters, envelopes, junk mail.....whatever we could find to create a collage background. Then we began painting, stamping, and texturing that background to leave only parts of the collaged pieces showing through. We then drew in faces & bodies........YES, hand drew them in. Kelly Rae made this Easy actually. And I was Amazed that it Worked! :-) We then painted in the faces, embellished the clothes, continued to add more texture & color to our backgrounds to create our pictures.

Kelly Rae's book, "Taking Flight" shows these techniques and has many wonderful pictures of her work. I had purchased the book prior to class & had her sign it. It is a Great book!

Here are my projects in this class:

The next class I took was a watch case locket by Richard Salley. The only pictures I would want to share here were my blood blistered finger that I hit four times with the hammer on the dappling block. LOL Only 1 other person in class besides myself had Not had any metalsmithing experience. This class was over my head! Richard Salley was great! I just didn't have the right tools (I had girl tools LOL). I needed better quality tools to be able to do this project. But I Did learn a LOT!

So on to the 3rd class, Soldering for Virgins with Sally Jean Alexander. I Finally got a chance to take this class as it sells out in Seconds after registration opens! I found the class really Great! I thought Sally Jean presented everything very well, I liked her timing and I found her charming. As well as Mr. Sally Jean. I learned a lot and I have proceeded to make charms for a swap later in October and a couple of other projects. I now have 43 charms to make for a retreat in December and I am going to do soldered charms for this also. I think I have a new craft to pursue!

Here are some pix of my charms I did in class:

My final class was with Deb Trotter, "Riding the Paper trail". I really enjoyed this class. I have always admired her art work and finally got a chance to take a class from her. We basically created backgrounds with glue and tissue paper, then layered upon them with images, stamping, then cutting in around the images and tissue paper with pastels which brought out both the background and the images. I finished one project and one is still in progress: