Busy in the background

Good evening everyone!  I know it has been a moment since I posted last, but I just wanted you to know that I have several things going on and in process.  I am also learning yet new finishing touches for some of the articles I am making.  So be patient, perhaps if I find a moment in time I will make a quick (haha) card, but with the weather we have been having (50+degrees almost daily Thank the Lord!) I just can't manage to keep myself in the house.  I wasn't made to be a housekeeper, I was made to design flower beds, and garden art as well as my indoor creations involving multi-media and paper.  So hold onto your horses, go out and enjoy the day if it's nice where you are, and I"ll be back as soon as possible to share the projects I have been working on.  Oh, by the way, Son and DIL loved thier painting!  Yea! for both me and them :)

Blessings!

Maple Walnut Pumpkin Pie

A quick post for those of you have have asked for my recipe for the Maple Walnut Pumpkin pie. Please forgive me for being so slow in getting it to you, sometimes I just let life get in the way.  So this one is for you.  You will really like this, and I will tell you it is the most diferent recipe I have ever made, but it tastes great!

Crust:
1 box Pillsbury Refriderated pie crust, softened
Filling:
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin (Not pumpkin pie mix)
1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)
2 eggs
2 Tbsp real Maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Streusel:
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts (I have tried this with pecans too - very good!)
2 Tbsp all purpose flour
2Tbsp. cold butter
Topping:
1 cup whipping cream
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar

Directions:
1.  Heat oven to 425 degrees F.  Place pie crust in 9 inch glass pie plate as directed on box for one crust filled pie.  In large bowl, beat filling ingredients with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth.  Pour into crust-lined pan.  Bake 10 minutes.
2.  Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix 1/4 cup brown sugar, the chopped walnuts and flower; cut in butter until crumbly.  Set aside.
3.  Reduce oven temp to 350F. Sprinkle streusel over pie.  Cover crust edge with 3 inch wide strips of foil to prevent excessive browing.
4.  Bake 30 - 35 minutes longer or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean.  Cool completely, about 2 hours.  Serve or refrigerate until serving time.
5.  To serve, in medium bowl, beat whipping cream and 2 Tbsp brown sugar with electic mixer on medium high speed until soft peaks form.  Serve pie with whipped cream; garnish with chopped walnuts as desired.  Store in refrigerator.

Enjoy!

Recipe book

Good Afternoon Everyone!
  Today I would like to share a recipe book that I made.  I wanted to try some new techniques and it just worked out that I needed to work with heavy paper and chipboard to be sure everything would hold up.  So I played and played and really liked what I came out with in the end.  I am not normally a big Orangey color fan, but this worked out just fine :)

The first thing I tried (or should I say went back and did after several years of not) was playing with fine glitter.  I found a stencil that had a beautiful rooster on it and I wanted this Paper and glitter rooster to look as beautiful as my real roosters outside, so I went to putting one color down and then another, letting each one blend gently into the first.  Once I had the rooster finished to my liking, I needed a background that would be as outstanding as he was.  I wanted to try and make my colors/papers look somewhat like leather.  So starting with a medium yellow/orange print paper I began blending, distressing and blending again.  Until I finally had a back ground that I was happy with.  So my cover finished off looking like this:

A close up of the rooster at a different angle so you might be able to see all the colors and not quite so much glitter reflection:

The flower is a papertreyink flower die.  After the flowers were put together they were brushed with Lindsy's Gang mica magicals paints.
Page 1 with and without a recipe card:

Page 2  w/o recipe card:

The next page and the previous page have a new embossing technique I found on YouTube.  Using a stencil and stencil gel, you put your embossing powder on the gel and then heat to emboss the two together.  The result is phenomenal, check out this texture!  I love texture so this made me really happy :)



Again, playing with things, I put the dark EP on first, then put on the lighter, then put on the lightest to get the gradation of colors you see.  Here you can see the whole page both with and without a recipe card.

The flower is oil paint stenciled on canvas.

If you are looking close right now, you probably are noticing that I am using the same recipe card on each page, don't worry, when I finally give the book out, each page will have at least one different recipe per the type listed on top.  The next page looks much simpler, but you'll notice that I have yet again used the stencil gel/embossing powder technique on the medallions (I've added a close up at a different angle to hopefully make it easier to see.  I also tried distressing around it to make the stenciling/embossing more prevalent:

In addition to the Embossing, I also strung some waxed string through the small holes from the MS edge puncher, and also added some magic mesh in the upper right hand corner. The pocket as aged with distress inks as well. 
The next page shown with and w/o recipe card:

This page is just a lattice work set on a page and then embossing frost on the bottom.  Eyelash fringe lines the upper edge of the lattice.  I am not sure why the second picture washed out so much, but as you can tell by the previous pages, the first post of this page is the more correct color.  This page also has one of the PaperTreyInk flowers on it as well, and also a sizzix branch.  The stripes of darker color behind the lattice is washi tape that compliments all the colors of this album quite well.

The paper that I used had some areas that were more pink than orange, so I used them right along and just added some pink mica to the embossing on the more orangey page, then tied a piece of ribbon near the base of the open pocket.  The "dots" that you see are yet again some more stencil/gel/EP technique, the upper right corner is a pergamonno  stencil that I have embossed into the paper then lightly rubbed with Dried Marigold distress ink, the hen had to fit in somewhere for the handsome rooster on the front ;) and the flower is again a mica painted Papertreyink flower.
The back cover is just plain and "Sweet"  The recipes that I am putting in here are some of my fav's and have been recipes that I have honed until I can say that they are mine.  Recipes that my kids grew up with and will remind them of "Home Sweet Home".   Done again in the raised stencil gel with embossing powder.

The stamps of the chicken wire and the hens are from Layers of Color, the banners are SB, wording in  banners is from Recipe set obtained Years ago.  Most of the ribbon came from RRR, the rest I am not sure.  I haven't figured out who is going to get this yet, but I am sure now that it is made, someone will express a desire for it and will get it.  I had tons of fun experimenting with colors and techniques.  And can't wait to try some of them on cards.  Thanks for stopping by and looking, hopefully you enjoyed looking as  much as I enjoyed making.  Have a great day!

Blessings,

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!