Friday, May 25, 2012

Mom's Day Art for My MIL

Just wanted to get this documented for the record.  I love shopping for my mother-in-law.  I find it real easy to get her cutsey, girly stuff.  She usually likes what I get her.  This year, for her birthday, I decided to make her a couple of mixed media 5X5 canvases.  They turned out real cute:


In hind sight, the only thing I would have changed is I should have added a ribbon to both canvases for hanging purposes.  I was thinking she could stand them side by side on a shelf, but I think she'd rather hang them.  Shawn called her on her birthday and I didn't get to talk to her, so don't know if she liked them or not.  She didn't mention them to Shawn. 

Here is the birthday day card I made her:


I made a small pocket on the inside to hold a handmade bookmark--she loves to read, so I hope she liked the bookmark!


I made a real nice Mother's day card,  Here's the outside:


And the inside: 

That's all for now. 



It's Almost Beach Time!

Yes, indeed!  I love the beach.  I could just sit there for hours, listening to the ocean, and catching the winds blowing, and relaxing with a good book or magazine!  It forces me to slow down.  I truly dream of living on a beach someday!

My dear friend's birthday was yesterday, and this year, I decided to make her a She Art painting with a beach scene.  Karen and her family love the great outdoors.  They usually go to lakes a lot in the summer and truly enjoy all the boating and frolicking by the water.  I thought she'd enjoy this summer painting.

I started by decoupaging some vellum paper and some patterned paper on my 8X10 canvas:


Sorry about the awful lighting.  The pics were taken down in my studio, late at night, with my cell phone cuz that was handy.  I also had very tacky hands from all the gluing!  

Next, I spent some time making the elements that would go on my canvas, including my two She Art girls.  The canvas is small, so the girls had to be tiny.  So that made the details difficult to cut and paint.  But here are some of the pieces I put together:


All these pieces were cut from either fabric (the umbrella and towels) or stickers placed on chipboard (the surf board and palm tree), or paper (girls. plane [stamped], sun, and banner).

Then the fun part was putting everything on and stamping and painting some more!  Here is the finished project!


I was really under the gun to get this mailed to her in time for her bday, so I didn't take the time to take close up pics, but you get the jist.  

Here are pic of the birthday card I made to go with the painting.  It was one of my all-time favorite cards.  Took forever to make cuz of all the pieces:



And the inside of the card: 



Happy Memorial day to you!  


Saturday, May 5, 2012

Elliott's Mini Album - Junior Year 2011-2012

I had a lot of fun making this Junior Year album for my son.  He is already experiencing some great stuff in anticipation of his Senior Year, and I love capturing some of in in the mini album.



I used Tim Holtz Retro patterned paper and a bunch of kraft paper to print the mini-Calendars.  A lot of my tags are also on kraft paper.

Studio Calico Challenge

Hey friends, I love Studio Calico, so when I saw today's challenge to include a link to their upcoming summer class, that was a no-brainer, easy peasy thing to do:


one winner will win a FREE ACCESS to our SUMMER CAMP 2012 online class
GET A CHANCE TO WIN A FREE SPOT ON OUR SUMMER CAMP ONLINE CLASS!
+++
Bannière Summer Camp2012


Hope you'll click on the link and play along!!

It's National Scrapbooking Day 2012!

Yahoo!  
What a great day to be alive and to CREATE and RECORD memories!

I'm going to try to post things today but will also be busy making stuff, so don't hold me to my own posts.  Instead, visit the links on Nancy Nally's site and come play along with us!

Oh, since I did start my projects last night, AND took a picture, I will post that.  It is two 4.5X4.5 canvases that I painted for Shawn's mom for her birthday next Wednesday:


And I also made this cute little bookmark because she loves to read real books:


It's hard to capture the true richness of the colors when I'm photographing in the studio, even with extra lights!!!  The blue is a deep teal, very nice.  I used Claudine Hellmuth Studio paints.  I love them because they are translucent.  The tag has a stamp of flowers in the back which shows through in person, but not on this photo.  Hmmmmm!  Maybe it's the photographer and her cell phone camera that are the real problems here, not the lighting!!  Ha ha.  Oh Well!  It would take a thousand years for me to upload my Canon pics, so I guess we will just have to live with the lackluster quality of the HTC Incredible cameraphone, so you can see my work quickly. 

Bye bye for now!  
Off to craft away the day, and to grab a box of kleenix--I have a cold!!