Listen

I was feeling a bit Dylusional for this weeks Compendium of Curiosities II challenge! Linda at Studio L3 has challenged us this week with page 49, Brushless Watercolor based on the book by t!m and this week sponsored by eclectic paperie who is offering a $25 gift certificate to one lucky player.

I started with Dylusions Spray inks and added some random stamping using both Dyan's and Christy Tomlinson's stamps. I used the "eyelashes lady" as I've taken to calling her from Dyan's Bits and Pieces stamp set. The quote is from Christy Tomlinson's SheArt line.

Honor

In honor and memory of those who served. Happy Memorial Day.

I am

I've joined a new FB page, headed up by Dyan Reaveley. She challenged all of the members to make a page in their journals saying, I am an Artist. So here is my interpretation of that challenge. It's funny that I put myself in a dress. I NEVER wear dresses! I used Dyan's Spray Inks, stencils and stamps. Lots of doodling with my white and black pens.

'Mater Pickin' Time

Ruskin is a large farming community about an hour or so south of us. There is a tomato farm that after the fields have been picked, open it up to U-Pick for the general public. I went last year and picked 30 gallons and made spagetti sauce and it was so good, when they opened the fields again this year, John said he'd like to go with me this time (he was working last year) and do sauce again. So yesterday morning we made the drive south and picked another 30 gallons. Came home and went to work making sauce. It's an all day process to make one batch. I skin and core the tomatoes and the chickens get all the scraps! They love them some 'maters! Then I cut up the tomatoes and let them cook down for at least 4 hours all by themselves in the pot. Their water content is very high and if I did the sauce straightaway, it would be too watery. Once they have reduced the water content, then I add all the other schtuff to the pot for sauce and let it cook down again. I never turned the stove off last night til well past 7 PM. The sauce was too hot to put in plastic Ziploc bags, so I put pot and all in the fridge after it cooled down some and have already bagged it up this morning. I got 6 quart size Ziploc bags from one pot. That will vary a bit from pot to pot, but 6 bags per pot is a good average. I have enough tomatoes to do at least 4 more batches. John has also requested a batch of Sue's World Famous Salsa and even though I told him these are not the best for salsa, he assured me he'd eat it, watery or not, so I'll be making salsa as well! And now it's time for me to head to the kitchen to start today's batch of sauce.

 tomatoes on the vine

 Looooooong rows of tomatoes. They have three huge fields like this. You can just make out the farm stand in the distance where you get your buckets for picking and pay once you're done. (and no I didn't walk all that way! We drove!! I would not have wanted to carry those buckets all the way back.)

 John in the field, ready to pick.

 What 30 gallons of tomatoes look like!

 These two sinks of tomatoes became...

One pot of spagetti sauce with mushrooms and meatballs. I'll do about half with meatballs and half without. The the one without, I will have to do things other than spagetti with. (Lasagna and stuffed shells come to mind!)

Courage

Dyan posted this quote on her FB page this morning and I shared it on mine. I knew I had to do an art journal page using the quote. I took my journal the other night when I went for the shadow box class at Posh Scraps and when Michelle handed me my Spring Distress Inks, I knew I had to put ink pad to paper and see what they looked like in Real Life! So I used the direct to paper technique and just smooshed ink on two pages straight from the pads. That was my starting point for the quote. I had a few pieces of 7Gypsies tissue wrap on my table, so I applied them with some Multi-Medium. I used the diamonds stamp from Dyan's Basic Backgrounds and stamped them using the new Peacock Feathers pad from the Spring Distress Inks.  Then I pulled out a bunch of CTMH alpha's (I think I may have mentioned a time or twenty that I'ma bit of an alpha ho!) and went to town! I used Dyan's Around the Edge stamps for the edging and after I had stamped the quote, I went in with both my black and white pens and doodled. The little blingy star that is beside the word "to" was apparently stuck on one of the stamp envies and it fell off and that's where it fell, so I took that to mean that the Happy Little Star had found a new home! A bit of Glossy Accents and it's there for good!

Peace, love and...

It's Compendium of Curiosities time again at Linda's and as always, it's based on the wonderful book by the man himself! And this week we have a new sponsor, The Funkie Junkie and they are offering a $25 gift certificate to one lucky winner.

This challenge, located on page 38 of the book, WAS a challenge for me! I have yet to get any of t!m's tissue wrap. Every time I try to order it, it's out of stock. And I am cheap and I refuse to pay S&H on ONE item because the S&H is generally more than the item itself. I do have some 7Gypsies and some Christy Tomlinson tissue wrap, so I started with 7Gypsies. But you couldn't really see thru it since it is a yellowish-brown color. So I pulled out a piece of plain white tissue paper and decided I'd try that instead.

I FINALLY got my Spring Limited Edition Distress Inks after a major snafu at Ranger. Apparently someone mistook the WINTER inks for SPRING inks and my lss got a shipment of all Winter inks!! A quick call to Ranger, and they overnighted a shipment of the correct inks, so I HAD to play with them. I inked my tag using all three inks and I also used them on my heart and letters. I used my favorite t!m chicken wire stamp on my white tissue paper.

Maybe now I need to do a "happiness" tag so I'll have Peace, Love and Happiness!!

Beachy Shadow Box

Cheryl Mezetti, Design Team member and Education Coordinator for Creative Imaginations came to Posh Scraps last night to teach a shadow box class. There were 15 ladies in attendance and even though we didn't get our boxes finished in the 3 hours because Cheryl added an extra accordian album to the class, no two boxes looked alike and we were all using the same products! Even the ones who tried to make it just. like. the. sample. (yawn!) ended up with theirs being slightly different. We started with a 7Gypsies 6.5 x 6.5 shadow box then made our own covers for it using chipboard and covered it with papers from Creative Imaginations. Then we had all sorts of embellishments to add to our boxes to personalize it even more. I finished up my accordian album this morning and now I have my first completed Christmas gift for this year! Now...who to give it to!!!

Best of all, Cheryl's coming back to FL in August and she agreed last night to teach another class. Yippee!! I'll be there, for sure!

 Cheryl gets ready to start the class. She's a Bahstan gihl, but we tried not to hold it against her! But we sure did have fun making fun of her pahking her cah in the yahd! ANd she in turn made fun of us as we were "fixin to" do our boxes. She said, you fix dinner, but I don't undahstand how you are fixin' to finish these boxes!!

 Plain white shadow box...but not for long!!!

 Front of completed box

 Inside without the accordian album in place

 Inside with accordian album added

 first two pages of accordian album

 next two pages

 first two pages on the backside of accordian album

 last two pages of album

back of completed box

Little Houses

Playing in my art journal again, using Dyan's Spray Inks and stamps. I'm also entering this in the Simon Says challenge for this week with the theme of "anything goes!" One lucky player will win a $50 shopping spree this week.

I used Right Up Your Street, Around the Edge, How Does Your Garden Grow and Bits and Bats stamp sets. Also did a lot of hand doodling with both black and white pens.

Fragile

Time for the 12 tags of 2012 for May over on t!m's blog.

I decided to use butterflies instead of the flowers that he used dipped in UTEE. I cut the gears out of GrungePaper and inked them with Rusty Hinge and Broken China Distress Inks. The butterflies were sprayed with Dyan's Spray Inks in Vivid Turquoise, Lemon Zest and Bubblegum Pink. I used CTMH BItty Alphabet and stamped the "Life is fragile Handle with care" sentiment.

Shattered Stains

Week 5 of Compendium of Curiosities II challenges at Linda's is, as always, based on the latest book by t!m and this week sponsored by the wonderful Simon Says Stamp with a $25 gift certificate to one lucky player.

This week it's all about Shattered Stains. This technique can be found on page 48 of CofC II. I used the birdcage and bird die and cut my GrungePaper and also the Ornate On The Edge die which I used Broken China on. I used some of Claudine Hellmuth's Sticky Back Canvas to cut out the flourish and inked it using Shabby Shutters. The birdcage I used Pumice Stone and Shabby Shutters on to make it look old and worn. The bird is done with Spun Sugar and Victorian Velvet on the wing. I used Mustard Seed, Fired Brick and Broken China distress inks to color my tag then with a spin on t!m's spritz and flick method, I used Dyan's Diamond of a Border stencil and sprayed water thru the stencil and then wiped the excess water off and dried with my heat gun. 

Faded Layers

It's week 4 already at Linda's where we are exploring the techniques of t!m and his wonderful Compendium of Curiosities II. This week, our challenge is on page 43 and is called Faded layers.

I started with Distress Inks in Shabby Shutters, Victorian Velvet and Blue Jeans and then came back in with Rusty Hinge on my masks. I used one of the stamps from his Mixed Media set along with Time. I added a clock face and hands as well.

Skull-duggery

Paula at One Lucky Day decided to go and mix up her mixed media the other day and use some Molding Paste with Dyan's Spray inks. Now whoda thunk?! I have been bugging the snot outta Paula for over a YEAR now to come and teach me some of her goodness. Apparently she thinks I'm the stalkerish type because she has yet to take me up on my offer of teaching at Whim So Doodle in St Pete. She even made a comment to Jill, the owner of WSD at CHA this winter about me, but still won't come. It's ok though. I am the persistant type and will continue to be a pain in her as...side til she DOES come see us!

I thought I needed to have a play with Molding Paste and Dyan's goodness, so I pulled out my Diamond of a Border stencil and edged my journal page with Molding Paste. Then I set to with London Blue and Pure Sunshine Spray Inks and spritzed with water and let them run together and make some green. Then went in with all of the critters from Bits of This and the scalloped edge from Around the Edge and stamped the images. I used the skull from Bits of This and used Concord Grape, Postbox Red and Vibrant Turquoise and a paint brush to paint their hats. A little Gunmetal Stickles gives just a bit of bling! I highlighted some of the insects and scalloped edge with my Signo Uniball white pen. I used some CTMH Durables brads and some "diamonds" for the eyes on the skulls. I like the added texture that the Molding Paste gives!

Now if I could just convince Paula that we don't bite here in FL so she will come teach a class or twelve!!

Happy Birthday

My mother in law will be 90 next week. A milestone birthday to be sure! And even though she had a series of strokes 2 years ago and can't go and do like she once did, she's still a mighty fiesty woman! John and I will be going to take his folks out for a nice steak dinner next week, but I wanted her to have her birthday card a little early. I can share it because they don't read my blog!

I used some of Claudine Hellmuth's Sticky Back canvas and stamped the cake using (retired) CTMH It's Your Day stamp set. Colors used were Creme Brulee, Tulip, Juniper and Sorbet. I frayed the edges a bit before attaching it with pop dots for a bit of dimension.

Happy Birthday, Mom. We love you!

Edit: I have been informed that after 50+ years of marriage that my father in law still doesn't know how old mom is! HE is the one who told John that mom was gonna be 90. So I wrote Happy 90th Birthday in her card when I sent it. And she was incensed that we made her older than she is. (Which any woman in her right mind would be!) She is in fact going to be 88. So I stand corrected!

Black and White

I saw a page in Dyan's latest journal and fell in love with the look. I thought she had drawn the entire thing, but Anna informed me that the image of the woman was taken from a magazine was scanned then printed in black and white and the background images were done by hand! Well THAT changes things since I can't draw a stick figure straight! So I went out and bought myself my first ever fashion magazine! And I found an image I liked and I scanned it and printed it out in black and white. And while my attempt is not as bold as Dyan's is, I'm happy with it. I don't know as I'll keep doing these, but it was a fun experiment, and that's what my journal is all about. Attempting new things!

 Dyan's image

 My interpretation

Close up of the model with white dots done with my Signo Uniball white pen.