Gobble gobble....!

As i go to sleep on thanksgiving eve, praying that the turkey thaws out in time to stuff and roast and serve tomorrow, i want to send a special message of thanks to all my friends and family and fellow artists and crafters. Thank you for all the inspiration and the kind thoughts. I hope you have a wonderful day with great food and great people to share it with. Enjoy!

Mixed Media Monday

Here are my entries for Mixed Media Monday's weekly challenge:


The Eyes Have It!
Check out more EYES on ATC's, cards and more here.


The Green Eyed Lady was done in a spread in an altered book with the theme of Green. That's a picture of Twiggy of course - with extra green marker on her eyes to make them pop.

The FROG page was done in a book titled Woodland Ecology. I had the frog postcard i had saved. I copied it onto a transparency. I knew i wanted to layer it over a face somehow. I found this freckled girl in a magazine. The eyes of the frog align perfectly to her nostrils.

At the time i thought that was cool!

Fall Theme Altered Book Workshop

Sunday i met with my altered book group at Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley, CA. I have to say that the paper craft community sure does a great job of coming out with new and exciting papers, patterns and imagery to provide visual stimulation for the altered book enthusiaste.
I happened to have a supply of small green books, called the Underachiever's Manifesto. I did not buy them to read, although it is an interesting concept. I bought them because i thought they would be the perfect quick altered book project!
I started by scouring the store for thanksgiving themed paper. When the girls arrived, i thought, why should i have all the fun? Let them pick out some paper too!
Next we picked out ribbon from the vast wall of choices. I never asked, but it turns out EVERYTHING is $1 a yard! You cannot beat that! We attached the ribbon inside the cover - by gluing the first two blank pages shut. Repeat with the last two. This created a solid hold for the decorative ribbon that can be used to close the books.
We prepped the books by sanding the covers and removing the label on the back. A bit if sanding screen worked great for removing the gold printed title from the book's spine. I had templates prepared for the dimensions of the front and back cover, so we cut those out next. I went ahead and covered the middle of the book too - to create a large "greeting card" out of the book. I added a print of a vintage thanksgiving postcard on one side and left the other side for a message.
Well, then a funny thing happened. Dorothy and Carol actually wanted to READ the books, so decided NOT to cover up the text. Go figure!
The girls thought the books would make perfect little journals. You can see that Dorothy chose "NADA" for her title, whil Carol chose "2009". There were plenty of blank pages, or illustrations inside they could cover with blank paper and use for journalling.

(psst - i'll be using mine as party favours at our thanksgiving dinner!)

I also wanted to share with you this awesome picture of Dorothy's craft studio. Check out her great idea for storing rubber stamps. She nailed metal silverware trays to the wall. Isn't that a great idea?

Love

Isn't this lovely? I created it with just what was lying around on the bench in Muir Woods, where i went with my sister and niece for a hike through the old growth redwood forest last week.

I'm baaacckk.

So sorry for the long absence. I had some visitors so i did not have time to blog. My mom, my sister and my niece came to California from frosty Canada for a 5 day stay. Unfortunately it was pretty chilly here, and of course now that they are gone it is back in the 80's!
My niece is quite interested in crafts - so we had fun doing a few techniques. We did a paper collage a la Lisa Kaus. You can see the pieces we did above. My sister (a self proclaimed un-artistic person) did the one in the middle - it came out quite good! My niece did the one on the right. She turned her house into a castle and added a bird on the roof. Next we did a shadow box with butterflies with the tim holtz adirondak ink techniques. We did rubber stamping on cards since it was both my mom's and my husband's birthdays. This was in between all the shopping and sightseeing. Then I showed Erica how to use a sewing machine. She made three cushions and hemmed a new dress and shortened some sweat pants.

Tomorrow my altered book group meets up so i am hard at work completing three spreads in Dorothy's book "Kissing". It is a cute book filled with photos of people, animals and art, small size, so the spreads go fast.
The first spread is called "How to French Kiss". I googled "KISS" to see what i would get for some ideas - and a very serious article from a medical health and well being site had these intructions. I just copied it into a word doc and changed to a type writer font. Cut it out, and glued it to the page in the book where there was a couple kissing in Paris, under the glow of Sacre Coeur. When i trimmed the instructions to fit - a sentence fell out - "If you have bad breath, check with your doctor." - well, i knew there had to be a medical link in there somewhere!
My second spread uses my husband's girlfriend Scarlett Johansson. Not really, but you know. Anyway - i picked her because of her kissy pink lips. It was cut from a magazine ad. I matched her with the song, "Sealed with a Kiss".(swak). I typed up a letter with the lyrics and tied it with a pink vintage ribbon, to match her lips. It does, "Dear Scarlett, So we gotta say goodbye for the summer...." I coated her lips with dimensional glue to make them even more "kissable". A dreamy sky background and a vintage beach photo complete the simple summery spread.
My third spread uses Gustav Klimpt's The Kiss. I found the image and blew it up to fit the book - turned sideways. There was a space at the bottom, which i filled with three patterned papers. Next i cut little squares of metallic paper and glued them randomly over the image. Coated the whole thing with gel medium. Add The Kiss in big metal letters.
I also have to prepare our workshop - which hasn't quite gelled yet in my head - but it will soon. My class tomorrow was cancelled - so it isn't the usual panic to get ready for everything.
On the job front, i have had a few interviews, including one with Cavallini & Co. - the paper company. I did not get the job - but oh man, they were the nicest people and their offices are filled with vintage furniture, collectibles and of course paper. It would have been my dream come true to work for them and be surrounded by that, but alas, it was not the right job for me. I have many irons in the fire, so something should come my way soon.

FYI - Cavallini & Co. is having a warehouse sale at their South San Francisco offices Nov 22nd. Check them out!