Altered Calendar September - Garden Theme

Here are my pages from the September for the altered calendar swap.  The theme was "Gardens"  But the starting point is racy romance novel images -so you have to work them into your design. Since these calenders are going around "twice" you can see the pages i did last March here.

On this spread i painted around the female on the right with a copper paint pen.  I had just purchased a roll of copper metallic organza ribbon - so i wanted to use that somehow.  I decided to create a subtle ruffle down the left side of the page and add a bunch of yellow flowers glued on top with sticky dots.

A fall themed napkin cut into strips provided the borders.  Another yellow flower helped to frame the ladies face.

 On this spread i did some journaling but then decided to cover it with green mulberry paper.  I framed the pages with colourful borders from a Dover book.  A few butterflies and sticker quotes complete the pages.

For this saucy wench, i gave her a gown of red flowers.  Let me explain about all these blooms!  I went to an estate sale with another creative buddy.  The apartment was owned by an artist and was filled to the brim with fabric and sculptures and painting and photography and all sorts of evidence of her creative life.    Not wanted to go "crazy" i only bought a few things - a baggie filled with foreign stamps. a few books.  And a giant stack of flower photographs that had been meticulously cut out.  You can see the yellow flowers above how much time must have been put into this task.  Not something i would ever care to do!!
But i certainly enjoyed using them in this garden themed altered calendar!

Halloween Matchbox Swap

A bit overdue! - but here are some pictures from the petite matchbox swap i did with Heather at the Speckled Egg blog.   
The theme was black and white - not necessarily halloween.  But i did throw in some spooky elements. 

I covered the box with a black and cream swirly napkin and added a black felt chandelier die cut.  I don't seem to have a picture of the final presentation - i added a beaded hat pin with ribbons and lace.

 I painted the box inside and out - which caused a lopt of problems with sticking!  best to avoid this step next time!  A large button and some rayon seam binding finish off the end.

 Here is an assortment of the papers and stamps i included.

 And some of the doodads

 Buttons and typewriter keys - all black and white or cream.

 Some of these things did not make it - but it sure was fun pulling it all together.  above are some black and white images printed on transparencies.

 Dominoes! Flash Cards!  Paint chips!

And here is the delightful box i received from Heather.  Don't you LOVE the giant velvety spider? It is topped with a button and rhinestone gems.

And here are all the goodies it contained - it is so much fun to receive and open these litttle treat boxes! There was some millinery flowers, vintage lace, a cameo, a prize ribbon and even a jar of black glitter!

Here is the link to the bird nest themed swap i did last spring.  Thanks Heather for these fabulous themed swaps!!

Check out more images on flickr.

A fresh start....

A couple of weeks ago we moved back to our old house in northern California.  Here is my craft room after the strong moving guys carried everything in:

 The room is about 12 ft by 11ft - bigger than my former craft room in the other smaller bedroom.  It was about 10 x 10.  Here i have room to line two walls with black metal shelves and have a ton of space in the middle.

As you can see you can barely even go INTO the room because of all the boxes. Turns out (despite being properly labeled) a box of toiletries was in the middle of this pile - there was my missing hairdryer!

My BLANK work surface is under a nice east facing window with views of the vintage oaks.  Well, and the roof of the garage.  But also nice trees and sky.

Can here it is now:

 Ok - so everything is OUT of the boxes and literally thrown up onto the shelves.  It still very much needs to be organized. This will be the PAPER wall - all ephemera, clippings, scrapbook paper, books and magazines will fill this wall.

 This wall will have all the doodads, ribbon and fibres in drawers, images and cards, buttons ands stamps.  Thanks to my friend Mary for the comfy new chair!

 Here is the desktop - already spilling forth with stuff i am collecting for my latest swap.

Another view of the paper wall - toward the door.

And finally a peak into the closet.  For now i just moved in some drawer towers filled with tools and other supplies.  I am very excited to get to work.

On the move....

Tomorrow i will bid adieu to Sunny Pasadena and beautiful South Orange Grove Boulevard.  I am starting a new job in San Francisco and we are moving back to our home in Marin County. My craft room is all packed up ready to be unfurled next week in my old art space.  I am looking forward to reconnecting with my creative buddies, having crafty play dates and hopefully teaching again.


See you soon.....!

Altered Calendar August = France

Terrie's French themed calender made it back down to southern California for the month of August. I created three and a half spreads in the Van Gogh art calendar.  My first page came from a Marie Claire magazine and is actually an ad for a large craft festival in Paris.  It is in November if you are interested in attending!  I just cropped off the legs from the large image and juxtaposed them along the left edge.  and added some flowers and leaves and some floral printed paper to act as borders. The final touch is some bits of tape with poetry written on it on the white pant legs.

The next spread had a painting of lemons in a bowl on the right - so i created a French feast with cheese and wine. Another image from Marie Claire creates the mood on the left - then i added some grape cluster stickers.  Finally text from a french dictionary accented with wine charms - vin, raisin and fromage!

For this last "half spread" of the month i just found an interesting illustration from my Larouse dictionary - of an assortment of chapeaux! Scraps of paper create the borders.

And finally - i was running out of ideas for the paris theme that had not already been used!

(already used by other artists included Degas, Picasso, Monet, Piaf, Eiffel tower, Moulin Rouge, art nouveau, and Marie Antoniette!)

So i thought i would do some research into the three Louis!  The kings, XIV, XV and XVI and the furniture styles they made famous.  I used a rose coloured toile patterend paper for the background and google images of their portraits and chairs.  I had all sorts of other info about their wives and mistresses, but well - there is only so much you can fit on an altered book spread!

altered calendar mid year break

Well, July marked the return of my very own calender, which has been touring California since the end of January. Here are some of the images from when it started its journey here and here. Along the way my very talented friends created some fabulous collage on the pages i'd love to share with you!

This is one of Aileen's crazy colourful pages - full of texture and detail. The illustration on the left was in the book - and she created the frame and opposing page to tie it all together.

This is one of Shelley's spreads.  I think the image on the right was original - but maybe not.  You can see how she is a master of colour and pattern mixing.

This is one of Dorothy's pages.  Her spreads almost always include words - poems, thoughts, quotes.

This is one of Marie's whimsical spreads.  Check out all those groovy backgrounds.

This is by Terrie who found the perfect images to echo the soft colours of the existing illustration.

So i had the book the whole month of July - but chose not to bring it on vacation lest it get lost or ruined.  So yeah, i worked on it the first week of August.

The illustration on the left was in the book, unframed.  I added the soft patterned paper since the colours worked.  The lady on the right was from a Nordstrom ad.  The bottom of her dress was cut off - so i used it to create a bra top for the corset on the left! Tucked into a pocket is a card with all the things we did on vacation.

The smoking jacketed piano playing gentleman on the left gave me a playboy vibe, so i added a frilly bed from the Anthropologie catalog and a couple of ladies wearing chiffon and lace.

The tree on the left had goats on the branches. Yeah. Goats.  So on the right i added a tree with a peacock on the branches. The next town over, Arcadia actually has live free-range peacocks meandering the towns lush lawns and flitting about the roof's and tree tops!

This page had the taxi illustration.  I added the checkerboard and street sign stickers.

Finally - i took a page from a Zen calendar and added it to the last page of the July section of the calendar. No embellishment necessary.  Off it goes for another round - 5 artists, 4 spreads each, 5 months, and at the end of the year - it will come back to me filled with artistic friendship.

Back from vacation and what have i been doing?

Happy August everyone! I was in Montreal for our annual vacation of relaxing by day by the lake or the pool.  And enjoying food, wine, friends and family by night. And music!  There always seems to be a spontaneous jam wherever Jim and I go. Such talented friends we have...!

I brought along some beading supplies and made a few things.  I also taught my niece Erica what i know about wire wrapping beads.  Even my sister got in the act.

Erica made the one above.

I made this.

My sister kept this one.

And this one.

And this one.  

Okay - she did pay me for them.  She also made a bracelet - don't think i have a pic.

I also made this one that my sister's mother in law, Muriel bought from me. ("don't get my face")

I was kind of sad to sell it - hardly had time to enjoy it, you know?  I used some cool vintage beads.  But it was actually her birthday and she said she wanted to buy herself a present - so how could i refuse her!
Now back to the sunshine and the lake....

Hubby Jim and brother-in-law Anthony chillin' on the doc.

Top photo are his brother Mike's girls.