Little Bird Beauties

One of my swap groups has a continuing swap called "Little Beauties." These are embellishments that one could use for altered books, greeting cards, or whatever. Each should focus on the month's theme, in this case "Birds," and be relatively small, no larger than about 2"X3". This month's theme is "Birds," and here is what I created. Since I am sending to someone who introduced me to the artistic side of Cuttle Bug (and I subsequently purchased one and a lot of folders as well!), some of the Little Beauties were created in part by using either a Cuttle Bug die cut or embossing folder. I have also been encouraged (or is it seduced?) by two other artsy friends who also have the CB. Thanks to all three, I am having fun adding texture and interest to my work as well as die cutting tags, etc. Enjoy!!!!!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day in the US occurs on Sunday, May 11, this year, so I made a card for my mom who always likes receiving the things I have made. I created a simple card using a photo of her mother, my grandmother Maude Gillis Lovejoy, which was taken when she was quite young (I wish I knew the date.) I kept it simple so the focus is on the photo, and I added some gold peel-offs to accent the picture. The big surprise is that I had an old, damaged photo of Mom's sisters, my aunts, restored and sent a copy of that picture and a CD with the picture on it so she can make as many copies as she likes. I plan to work with that image in the next few days and will post later. A big weekend with our sons, DIL's, and grand kids is coming up, so I'll be busy, busy, busy!

Maude Gillis Lovejoy

This and That

Even though I wasn't blogging, I was busy creating a number of projects. I belong to a couple of Yahoo groups which offer swaps, challenges, round robins, etc. I am currently involved in three round robin deco swaps. Each of us creates a blank book which is then sent around to the other members. Each person creates art in the book. Sometimes the book has a definite theme, and others don't. The two scans following this were made for deco which has the theme of "Art." I used paper towel that had been used to clean up another project and created the background for this page. The first scan is the front, and the second the back of the same page.

Another big swap is the "Tall and Skinny" book. Each page is 3" wide and 7" tall. It will be bound on the top. Each participant had to create 26 of the same page and send it to the hostess who will sort, bind, and then return to each of this. My friend Kathy "SweetPea" Beringer is the hostess of this one (she has done more books than I can count!) and chose the theme - we were to combine pictures of animals and humans in a whimsical manner. It turned out to be a real challenge, but here's the page I created. It will be interesting to get the book back in a few weeks.

I participated in a number of swaps in the last few months. The challenge here was to create an art paper doll. I used a paper doll parts stamp from Paula Best and "real" butterfly wings.

Another swap that I joined (and it is a continuing swap with a different theme each month) is to make tip-ins. The challenge is to make a page, front and back,which can either be tipped (glued, adhered, or?) into an altered book OR to create some other way of making a book out of the tip-ins received. Many of us are punching holes and binding, either for a notebook or by using some other binding method. Here are the front and back of one of the three tip-in pages I made for the theme "Birds." Can you tell that I like poetry and songs???

Here's a two page spread in a deco book for my friend Trish Bayley who lives in the UK. She made the book using envelopes and bound it with her Bind-It-All (which I encouraged her to buy!) She had started the black and white theme, so we have followed along. I think the look is striking.

These colorful fish were created by applying alcohol inks to a transparency, then overstamping with a large Koi stamp. I layered it over bright scrapbook paper. It has the look of peering into the Koi pool.

Another tip-in theme was nature. I made three pages again and this is the front of one. I had received some lovely embellishments in a "Little Beauty" swap and used them on each front. The middle one is made of air dry black clay.

Finally, I have been playing with my Cuttle Bug and created this using the thin metal and running it through the CB using one of the new folders. I colored the embossed piece with alcohol inks.

Where's Waldo???

Guess I've been suffering from "blog fever" and haven't updated my blog for quite awhile. I have been busy and will upload some pictures of my adventures including a trip to the Baltimore area (Columbia, MD) to vist my dear friends the Bakers. My other "fabo" trip was to Artiscape held in Sandusky, Ohio, sponsored by European Papers. My friend Barbara Hahn and I attended, not knowing much about the event, but confident that it would be great fun. And it was!!! One of the highlights of the event was meeting the Queen of Skybluepink. Many of us have purchased wonderful goodies, charms, doo-dads, punchinella, ad infinitum, from the Queen. I found out that she would be attending, and I requested a special audience which she most humbly granted. For the royal picture she wore her dress crown. Here we are -I'm the crownless one!!!!





She is as delightful as her weekly newsletters and full of energy and ideas. We spent some time discussing our mutual new passion - knitting socks! What fun!



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Besides wonderful classes and outstanding evening entertainment complete with great food (and a few glasses of wine as well), Barbara and I also enjoyed viewing the display of hundreds of ATC's. The picture below doesn't do the exhibit justice. The ATC's were left in the plastic pages and hung in strips to create a wall of beauty. This is only a portion of the display. Enjoy!!! More later on the classes.