A Groovy Birthday

Next week, my favorite Aunt Groovy is having a birthday. Yesterday I got my new Summer Limited Edition t!m Holtz Distress inks. Ohhh so pretty! So I had to play with them this morning and make Groovy a cool birthday tag. I smushed all three colors on my kraft mat and spritzed both the inks and my tag with water and ran the tag (and two others!) thru the inky puddle. Then I dried it and re-inked thru the puddle for more depth. I distressed the edges and used my Vintage Photo ink pad and inked the edges. I used Eyelash Lady for my main image and used my red and brown Dylusions inks and hand painted her eyebrows and mouth. I used Fruit Punch Stickles on the tips of her eyelashes. I used the leaf stamp from Around The Edge stamp set at the top and highlighted usign my Signo Uniball white pen and I sprayed water thru a stencil on the bottom.

More rain

I dumped another 4.50" of rain out of the gauge this morning. Had to go buy the newspaper because apparently the delivery guy decided I was the only one in the neighborhood who didn't need one today. So I took the camera along with me and took pics while I was out of our flooded streets.

We are currently rain-free, but there is more heading in our direction. And for those asking, the chickens are fine! They are high and dry. The little girls were upset because it rained all day yesterday and they couldn't go in the breezeway without getting wet! They don't like having their feathers wet. Thanks to everyone for being concerned about them!

 curve on our street that always floods

 intersection of the two streets in the subdivision.

 House on the corner of the two streets. Water all in their front yard. Proabably in the garage, if not in the house as well. Sooooo glad we don't live there!

 Neighbors crepe myrtle tree that fell over from water saturation at the roots.

end of our street. Driveway on left is our next door neighbor. This is where neighborhood kids were pulling each other on inner tubes with their 4 wheelers yesterday. The water goes all the way around the corner to the other street.

Rain, rain, and more rain

So we are currently being inundated with rain from Tropical Storm Debby who is sitting about 150 miles off the coast of Tampa. You notice I said sitting. As in not moving. At. All. Kinda like dejavu all over again. Hurricane Elena sat 60 miles off the coast of Tampa in 83, I believe it was. For THREE days. With Category 3 winds of over 100 MPH. It rained. And it rained. And it blew. And it blew. And people were flooded in their homes. Pinellas County was an ISLAND. You could not leave and you could not get to Pinellas County from anywhere in the Tampa Bay area unless you had a boat. They had sheriff's deputies at the county lines with barricades. Emergency personel only could get thru. I think Debby has bobbled about 5 miles in a 24 hour period. Yesterday we had no measurable rain here at the house. So far today, I have dumped 10.25" of rain out of my gauge. Yes, over 10" of rain in less than 24 hours. That's a FAT LOT of rain, I don't care where you live. And there is more to come. The weather forecasters are saying that Debby may not pick up stakes and move til sometime on TUESDAY! That's two days away. So lets see. Ten plus inches of rain times three days. That's THIRTY inches people! I know I've said I'll take all I can get, but seriously. What's that old saying about be careful what you wish for! Our street is already flooded in two places and there will be a third before morning. Good thing John's truck sits up high, otherwise he might not be able to make it out to go to work. Hopefully tomorrow the rain will let up some and I can go take some pics of the flooded road. For now, these will have to do!

 rain pouring thru the rain chain at the back door

 out lakeBACK property! Most people will pay a premium for lakefront property. We have lakeBACK at no extra charge!

4.75" of rain that I dumped less than an hour ago. I dumped 2" at 6:30 this morning. That's what we got overnight. Then I dumped 3.50" at 2:30 this afternoon and the 4.75" at 4:45. And it's poured since I dumped it. I'll bet there's at least another inch in there now. Stay tuned! Updates coming tomorrow!

Color...

...and LOTS of it! I saw something on Pinterest the other day. An all white background with pops of color using die-cut flowers. So this is kinda my take on that. Lots of Dylusions Spray Inks and Dyan's stamps. All stamped images are hand painted.

And on a completely unrelated note. Linda at Studio L3 who is doing the Compendium of Curiosities II is overwhelemed at work right now and said she has forgotten how to use a glue stick! So there will be no challenge this week if you've come here looking for my entry. She said we could do another tissue tape entry if we wished, but I am choosing not to. So hopefully next week will calm down for her and there will be a new challenge.

Gettin Inky with Dina Wakley

I had the BEST time Wednesday night at Whim So Doodle in St Pete. Got to meet and get inkified with Dina Wakley. She is just awesome! We got Dylusional and made a mini album in the style of Dyan Reaveley with some of Dina's own charm and style thrown in. We sprayed and splattered and gesso'd and modeling pasted and stenciled and stamped and fussy cut and had a glorious time. Course I don't think any of the students finished up their albums, but we all had fun.

 Plain tags. First one is acrylic crayon resist, middle is Modeling Paste, third is Gesso. Ready for inky goodness!

 Dina works her magic!

 Inked tags, ready to go

 This will be the tag book.

 Front cover

 Side one of the first tag

 Left side first page

 side two of first tag

 Right side first page

 side one second tag. Image, "Lonely Girl" by Dina Wakley

 left side third page

 side two second tag

 right side fourth page

 first side third tag. And it's hard to see, but I hand wrote "is in everyone" underneath the word "art."

 left side fifth page

 side two third tag. Bottom flower is the "kitchen roll" as Dyan calls them (paper towels to us Stateside peeps!) I took the sheets from the roll I used and stamped flowers directly on it and cut out. Love the diverse colors!

 right side sixth page

 side one fourth tag. I LOVE this one! I cut the hat off the girl and gave her a "tiara" from a different stamp set and a pair of Wellies for her "sparkly" shoes done with Xmas Red Stickles and Black Enamel Accents.

 Last (back) page

 Side two fourth tag. Stop. Look. Remember. Claudine Hellmuth Sticky Back Canvas along the right hand side. Sprayed with Cut Grass Dylusions Spray Ink and stamped with an On The Edge stamp.

Dina and I in our inky gloriousness after class!

Footloose (and fancy free!)

On a roll with my scrapping! Although I did have to walk away from this one yesterday. My mojo went away mid-page and I've learned not to force it. Walk away and come back later and hopefully the mojo has returned and it had this morning. Once I sat down and started playing with the different elements, it came together really quickly.

Jan sent this pic of the kids in my Mother's Day card. She took it when they were on Spring Break in St Augustine. Jan, Kathy and I were about the same age as Jake and Joy when we first went to St Augustine, so hopefully they will have some of the same memories that we do.

I used CTMH Footloose paper pack for this layout. The chipboard are more hoarded Deluxe Designs (and they aren't even in business any more!) that I used CTMH inks and sponged on the colors. The title uses the CTMH Newsprint Rub-Ons and I went around them with my Broken China Distress Marker to make them pop just a bit.

It's a guy thing!

I decided I needed to get back to scrapping those pics of John's we found when we were cleaning closets before the holidays last year. This is the first, in what I hope will be many more to come!

John thinks he was 4 or 5 in these pics. He got to go spend a couple of weeks with his dad's folks in PA and Grandfather started teaching him about guns. He said he remembers the shotgun knocking him out of the back tof the truck when it went off. AND he missed the turkey he was shooting at!

The background cs is Creative Impressions and it has a resist on it, so I used my Vintage Photo Distress Ink and covered it. The circles cs is from the CTMH Dotty For You collection. I used a now retired CTMH stamp set called Stitched Together for the faux stitching around the edge of the circle cs and the stars. The conchos are long retired from CTMH. So I'm using some of my HOARDED (Anna!) stash!!! I think it still needs something under the "guys" title, which is CTMH retired Irresistables Eclectic Alphabet, so I'm thinking I may journal a bit about John's memory of getting knocked out of the truck. And he also proudly told me that he has that gun that is in the pictures. It was given to him after his Grandfather passed away.

Today...

I choose Joy! Playing in my art journal once again. I hand cut the flower "petals" so no two are alike. I used the SheArt line of papers from Christy Tomlinson for the flower. Dylusions Spray Inks for the background. Dyan Reaveley and t!m Holtz stamps and a few peices of 7Gypsies tissue paper that was laying on my scrap table. Lots of hand doodling in, on, and around the stamping with my white Signo Uniball pen.

Paper Posies

For those of you old enough to remember, my title is a play on the old Anita Bryant and later Marie Osmond song, Paper Roses. And you're welcome if you did remember it! Now you'll have the song in your haid for the rest of the day!!

It's week 10 over at Linda's and as always, it's based on the wonderful Compendium of Curiosities II by Tim who is enjoying some vacation AND work time down under in Australia. This week we are sponsored by The Funkie Junkie who will be providing a $25 gift certificate to one lucky player. This week's challenge is all about tissue paper flowers and can be found on page 37 if you're playing at home.

I used plain white tissue paper since I STILL (I KNOW, I KNOW!) don't have any of t!m's. I used some of t!m's stamps on my Squeezed Lemonade flower, random stamping on the tissue paper. For the Shaded Lilac flower, I used Christy Tomlinson's SheArt word stamp. And for the Peacock Feathers flower, I used one of Dyan Reaveley's stamp sets with flowers. I used Dylusions Spray Inks to color my tag.

Brawk, brawk

That's chicken speak for "dang it's been a long time since you had pics of US on your blog!"

We had some maintenence to to in the coop this morning. We had used scraps for the roost in the side where the (not so) little (anymore) girls are and it was falling apart. So while John fixed the roost so the girls could roost safely, I cleaned both sides and refilled waterers and feeders and took pictures!

Feeding frenzy!

 BREAD! We have BREAD for a treat! Nom, nom, nom!

 Queen Biotch Survivor in the big girls side is jealous because I give the little girls "better" bread than I do the big girls. At least in her humble opinion!

 Miss Els and her feathered feets! She will lay  chocolate colored eggs. Hopefully in about 3 more months!

I kicked some grass that was growing outside the coop over against the wire, so they are eating it thru the chicken wire.