Happy New Years Eve and welcome 2012!

As this year quickly comes to a close, I am stopping by to wish each and every one of you the most wonderful upcoming year.  2011 was a great year, especially if you remember to count ALL the good times, look at all the good days, and rethink all the good thoughts.  Yes, it was a good year, and good things can only get better ;)  Blessings to each of you this evening, be safe, be happy, and be blessed.  Happy New Year/2012!

Jamaican Bobsled!

Good morning blogworld!
    Yes, I know lately I have been gone from my blogging post.  But it has been with good reason, and those reasons you are going to see in the next few days.  I have been busy with some multi-media art work :)  I love to create, and a couple of weeks ago as I was continuing on my cleaning/organizing journey, I found a picture of our youngest son and DIL on their honeymoon in Jamaica.  The picture was so fun that it instantly told me that I needed to get all my "stuff" out and produce a memory for them that they could show off.  So the first thing I did was make a larger copy of the picture they had, grab a brand new fresh canvas, gesso of different sorts, all my many brushes, paints of all sorts and anything I could find that might fit the scene.
Here is the final piece of work, which I think my hubby is going to deliver this next weekend (when he goes to see his father.)

Hopefully as I do the close ups, you'll be able to see the vibrancy of this.  It is so bright sparkly and inviting.  While the kids were in Jamaica, they went to a theme park, and one of the rides was the Bobsled.  The picture itself was bright with colors, the sleds are black, chartreuse and yellow, the foliage is a myriad of greens with bright pink flowers interspersed throughout, and then touches of the blue sky peeking through the trees.  These are the colors I tried to mimic the most.

The canvas was painted with acrylic Luninaire paints - Green, purple and blue.  They were allowed to dry and then were sprayed on the following day with Lindsy's Cornflower blue, Fern green, and Tattered Angels purple.  The edges of the colored mica sprays were allowed to mingle, making the colors fade in and out of each other.  This was allowed to dry for half a day.  Later that evening I took string gel mixed with metallic silver acrylic paint and drizzled over the canvas in swirls and dots.  This was covered and sealed with a plain coat of gesso.  The flourish above is a Fancy Pants chip that was covered first with black and then with Tim Holtz DI Fired Brick.  After drying I took a Viva decor pearl pen and placed the bold highlights, then covered the flourish with goosebumps.  You will recognize the SB vine and foliage die cuts out of cereal box board.  Letters for Bobsled are some leftover things I found in my stash.  Again I tried to keep all letters in the same colors as the picture.  The small butterflies on the piece are from PizzazzAplenty.  The metal flowers are left over from the Oriental Trading company years ago.

As I work I like to wrap the media around the sides of the canvas, it just makes me feel like it's more 3D.
As I mounted the picture on the canvas, I wanted to muddy the definite edges.  So in keeping with the chevrons on the fronts of the bobsled, I put gesso chevrons on the sides of the picture.

I also let the foliage and flowers go over the edges of the picture to make it harder to distinguish between painted and captured.  Look at those faces -  They are having a blast :)  I smile every time I look into their faces.  You can see on the pink flower that the Gesso isn't quite completely dry yet, but by the end of the day it will be.

Above you can see the letters for Jamaica.  I chose a larger and different font for the J versus the rest of the letters.  I just felt it needed to be Big and Flamboyant like every thing you could see in this picture.  Needless to say, chartreuse was the natural color to fit the size and fun.  I chose to let the rest of the Chip Chatter letters be plain white and full of sparkle (sorry you can't really see the sparkle).  A little glitzy, but not overbearingly so.  I also felt I needed a balance in the colors without over doing it.  Here you can see the chevrons lining the edges as well.

The upper right corner has three metal bands, one silver, one an antique gold and the last is one bronze.  Lots of fern fronds every where (Cheery Lynn Dies) I've lived in the deep south(Naples/Marco Island, FL)  and ferns are just a natural thing to find in a jungle type setting. 
     I had a lot of fun with this even though it took a lot of time (not bad really, just more than I had planned on).  I am excited for them to get this, I wish I could be there to see their faces (Hubby has instructions to film as they open).  Oh well, I'll wait to hear and in the mean time, I am going to finish up another project I have been working on.  Until tomorrow :)

Blessings!

Happy Birthday Bret!

Today is my brother's birthday.  I have three brothers and they are all younger than me.  Bret is the oldest of them and he is 1 1/2 years younger than me.  Both of us are over 50 years old, so needless to say, when he went over 50, I began teasing him and his "old age'.   So, all that to say, this card is just another reminder to him that he is still getting old ;)  Age bothers him, and frankly half the time I don't know how old I am!  Seriously, in fact I am one of those people who feels that I am as old as I feel.  That means some days I am quite young, and others I am feeling very very old :)  So, here is his card:

I love to do work in multi media and this is a technique with Aluminum Foil scrunched up, pulled flat gently, then molded over items stuck down.  Normally this is done on wood or a very sturdy substance.  You generally see it done over wooden boxes, but I needed a card, so I did mine on cereal box cardboard.  Overall it worked pretty good.  It is definitely not as stable wood, but it worked.  My brother is a truck driver, so he more than understands the need for "SpareParts".  The items embossed over are fairly easy to pick out;

there is a ball chain w/ clasp, a regular type chain, a pop-top, 2 medium and 2 small washers, two small sprockets, a long spring, a jump ring, a tile spacer and the big circle is the ring left from an empty red sticky tape roll.  (He'll never guess that one!  lol)  The "header" is foil covered corrugated cardboard with some miscellaneous letters put together to spell spareparts.

The paper behind the black painted foil is a foiled cs that has had TH alcohol ink (mushroom) wiped on it to look like oil.  I am telling you - This is truly a Man Card!
The inside of the card has a verse in it that says:  I Thank God for Every Remembrance of you, (Stampin'Up) and a short note that I wrote about us all getting older and needing spare parts to replace the ones we have that aren't working quite so well anymore.
Well, I have to get back to my Christmas present making, lots going on in that department as far as multi-media art as well.  You'll get your peeks as they finish.  Thanks for looking.  For those of you who are traveling for the holidays, I pray for safe traveling mercies that you arrive safely at both your destinations (away and home).  To those that are staying home, I Pray that God blesses you and your family richly as you reflect on His love for us, so great, that He sent His perfect son to a place filled with evil and sin just to save us.  What a Gift!  Until later . . .

Blessings,

Sending you Hugs and Prayers

Good Evening Everyone!

Well, today was a beautiful day outside, quite cold, but the sun was shining and the wind was light. So I went outside and moved some mulch around on some of my flower beds.  Then I came inside and finished up this card I have been working on.   With all the Christmas cards I have been working on, I was getting sick of doing Christmas cards, so I strayed just a bit ;)  I did make a card (but I have a couple of other non-card projects going on) but I had a stamp from last year that I hadn't had a chance to get inky and thought it was time to do so. 
     The card is of a Praying little girl (I think I picked her up at SCAD) in her jammies, so needless to say, I felt it should be in pinks.  I have never done a card in pinks so I struggled a little with this, but all in all, I think it turned out pretty good. 

For the first time in years I pulled out my Circle Scissors.  I cut the large Circle with it and then cut the smaller Circle offset to one side.  Then took a darker color cs and did the same thing but made it thinner. Placed one on top of the other, glued them and then Embossed them with a folder.  After dry embossing, I rubbed some DI over the raised areas and then sprinkled on some Stampin Up Hologram EP.  Cs is PaperTrey Ink, Distress Inks used were Spun Sugar, Victorian Velvet, and Frayed Burlap.  I used SB's Labels 13 and Foliage dies, Cheery Lynn Victorian Flourish, and leaf dies,  My Favorite Things Flourish die and Marianne's Corner Flourish. 

Most of the flowers are Wild Orchid Crafts, the lace and most of the bling is PizzazzAplenty.

Sentiment is from Layers of Color, their Encouragement clear set.  That's all for tonight, tomorrow hopefully I'll have one of my first projects finished to show off.  So far I am very pleased with both - let's just hope they finish that way.  Hope you all had a wonderful Sunday, a perfect day to begin the week with :)

Blessings!

This card will be entered into the following challenges:  Totally Paper Crafts - Anything But Christmas

Just a quickie :)

It's past my bedtime, but I will quickly show you another Christmas card I have made and am sending out.

This is a quick and easy card, made with my cricut, copics, cuttlebug with embossing folders and stickles.  I used the copics to add the shadows and the stickles to make the star sparkle.  I had a little 4 year old boy that I watch who helped make the cards.  He loves to turn the handle of the cuttlebug (hopefully that is not against child labor laws  lol) so I would load up the papers (Stampin' Up) into the embossing folders and he would crank away.  These cards have a beautiful verse inside:

These cards will be used for our church's Christmas card exchange.  I didn't want to put to much time into them because we had to make over 75 but we got them finished.  (Whew!)  Tomorrow I'll show you the ones we made for family (brothers & sisters, sons, DIL's and Grands).  Now I need to get some sleep. Thanks for looking!

Blessings,

Well, it's time to get ready for . . .

that most wonderful time of the year.  I love to craft and make things that make people smile.  But in this day of money means all, it is hard to change people and their thoughts/wants/desires.  What do I want for Christmas?  To make people happy, to share a legacy with family who care about who we are, not what we can give monetarily.  So this year I have decided to begin making products that share my heritage/ancestry.  My grandmother left all of her recipe's behind in an old dinged up metal recipe box.  I have kept everything the way I received them years ago, but have decided to make them into something that hopefully one of my children will see and appreciate for what it truly is.  You will get to see more of my thoughts on this subject in the near future.  For now, you get to see some of the Christmas cards I have been working on and started sending out today.  For starters, here is the card that I sent to my parents:

My mother is a wonderful down to earth person.  She finds beauty in simplicity.  So my challenge was to make her a simple card that was at the same time elegant.  I seem to find the most elegant cards are those made with whites and golds, so that was where I was going to start.  With a white card base, I looked around for something to add depth for a background with.  As I began looking through my stencils, I found a beautiful ornate vintage medallion stencil from Layers of Color (LOC).  This was going to be my building block.  I layered the stencil outline with  Momento's Galaxy Gold and I liked what I saw.   Then I started looking for something that would be a perfect sentiment that would speak from my heart to hers.  It took a little while, but I found that too.  Embossed in Gold on pearl white Bazzil cs.  I layered that on a piece of matt gold cs and again, liked what I saw, but now I needed to find something that was a simple yet elevating addition that would bridge between the sentiment and base gold medallion.  After playing around for quite a while, I came across Spellbinder's Symbology dies and there found my answer.  The array around the oval is a single die cut ten times and then placed behind the oval so that it would radiate outward. 

I finished off the sentiment by adding in a gold glitter heart that I had gotten with an order from PizzazAplenty, it was obvious it belonged with what I had going on so far, and then I just needed to finish off underneath the sentiment with some pearls.  The card looked beautiful at this point, but it just needed a little bit more so I began to work a small flower corner in the lower corner.  Again, for mom, less is more, so keeping that in mind I ended with this:

A few flowers  from WOC (Wild Orchid Crafts) with a few leaves, all lightly spritzed in Lindsy's Cactus Gold Glitz Spritz.  Snuggled nice and neatly in an open corner gracing the bottom of the card.

  

Well, that's it for tonight folks :)  I will be back tomorrow to show you some of the other cards I've been working on. 

Blessings,

The above card will be entered into the following challenges:
Fab N Funky Challenges: Anything Goes, Paper Crafting Journey:  Anything Goes;