Happy Chinese-y, I Mean Cheesy New Year!

Just a little ridiculous humor for my Artists of Chubbyville on Yahoo- All Originals January page swap with the theme "Year of the Rat." It made the home page here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chubbyville/.

I was having trouble getting an idea until I saw the picture below, as I much prefer cats to rats. And certainly cheese rates right up there with cats. I understand our hostess this month was born in the Year of the Rat and likes rats, and apparently fostered one, although I don't know that story. I hope she will find humor in my page. Don't want to be sent packing from Chubbyville! Chubbyville is part of altered artists on-line and deals with 4 x 4 pages for fat books. I am about to bind all my pages for 2007, and will have to post pages of my first fat book soon! It also happens that I participate in 4 x 4 Friday, which is a weekly challenge to make art that is 4 x 4, so sometimes my pages can do double duty for that!

Imagine and Believe, 4 x 4 Friday

I created this 4-inch by 4-inch book page, front and back for the weekly challenge at http://4x4friday.wordpress.com/. The challenge was to create a 4 x 4 piece of art using blue and silver. Being active also in The Artists of Chubbyville on Yahoo!- a fat book group, I always like to make my 4 x 4's into double-sided pages so I can swap or bind them later.

Like blue and silver, I like the contrast of "Imagine" and "Believe," and I certainly think you can do both. As well, this is no commercial for anything. I say: Believe Whatever Works for You. But, the little turquoise cross charm came in a swap from Dale http://dalemclain.blogspot.com/, so it seemed perfect for this once I had drawn the earth.

Peace on Earth to everyone.

The 4 x 4 Friday Theme is the Always Popular Miss Mona Lisa

The theme for 4 x 4 Friday http://4x4friday.wordpress.com/ is Mona Lisa, always a fun countenance to work with. Leonardo obviously thought so, and she's endured for about 500 years-pretty popular, I'd say. I rubber stamped her on a transparency and mounted that over patterned paper. I found the word "create" already in funky type and added the typewriter key stickers. You can follow the link above to see interpretations from all over the world.

This is about all the art that got done this weekend as I had to do some actual Christmas shopping. I also packed up boxes for swaps with Miss Vicky http://www.cut-it-up.com/ and Linda J for our Blythe swap. She has a wonderful blog at http://adventuresofmolli.blogspot.com/. Her Blythes, Molli and Zelda, went shopping for mine, Lilly and Maggy. More at http://bly-me.blogspot.com/.

Now back to the studio for me. I have a project due tomorrow for Shabby Cottage Studios. http://www.shabbycottagestudio.com/. Go check them out- the design team is busy making samples of something cool you can buy to alter.

P.S. Here's a weird thing: My 17-year-old cleaned his room today- sweeper, dust rag, the whole thing, even the feather duster. Is he sick? I wondered. But no, his girlfriend was there directing the show. How cute and wonderful. I was so glad she found the stray laundry behind the dresser, too! Hopefully, he won't do that again.

Blythe Obsession Comes in Handy

The 4 x 4 Friday challenge this week was "lace," so I thought why not incorporate my newest obsession of Blythe dolls since they are so sweet. The pictures are from a paper fan sent from Tokyo with my first Blythe, Lilly, aka Star Dancer. The fan was distributed by a Japanese hair coloring company (for real peeps, not dolls), but they used Blythe images on all of the packaging. Think Clairol Nice 'N Easy boxes with Blythe heads instead. Anyway, to make a long story short, here is my page, and now I've got to hop on over to Wordpress to link it. 4 x 4 Friday gets participants from all over the world, which is cool. Blythes are much more well known in Japan and the rest of Asia.

4 x 4 Theme Friday: TREE and a Very Zetti Christmas To You and You and You

It was another busy night in artland....the theme from 11-16 for 4 x 4 Friday was "Tree," so here you have my "Tree." I got the idea from an article by Cherl Hussman in Somerset Studio magazine about "newsies." She uses newspaper or book pages with text to cut out basic shapes for card-making and collage. My tree is going with the red "package" to the Chubbyville All Originals December 4 x 4 page swap. The tree is for hostess and birthday girl Debbie Metti. Meanwhile the package is for the theme "Memories" and opens to reveal a 1962 Christmas scene and old color photo of someone who was then two years old.

The Zetti style ATCs, and you just have to appreciate Zetti style to even begin to understand these, are for a swap in Monroe, MI next week. I'm going to meet up with some ARTchix in person: Jade, Vonda and Coral at Crafts 2000 to do a Zetti Holiday ATC swap. These are two of the three cards I made. Looking forward to meeting these talented ladies in person!

A Project A Day....

So, let's not go there. Let's go here http://4x4friday.wordpress.com/ and here http://www.inspiremethursday.com/ and here http://fftwistedtuesdays.blogspot.com/. There are so many excellent sites on the internet for artists and writers who need a jump-start or a kick-start (whatever your preference). Between blogs and websites and photo-sharing communities, there are literally thousands of prompts and challenges.

I've been watching the three mentioned here for awhile and decided to take the 4 x4 challenge of "Faces" last Friday. The idea is to created a relevant piece of art within the requirements, blog about it and link your blog on the site. So this is my first effort. Only regular rubber stampers and collage artists may get it, but that's okay.

One of my other faves, because it is a bit off the wall, is fellow ZNE member Suzan Buckner's site Fluffy Fatbottom's Twisted Tuesdays at http://fftwistedtuesdays.blogspot.com/. Suzan and her partner in crime for this challenge, Heather Robinson of http://creativesolace.blogspot.com/ come up with the greatest themes. There's lots of great art to see. I love looking at Suzan's art wherever I run into it. She's active in a challenge group for every day of the week and more. You can learn about them all at her blog http://thriftycollageartist.blogspot.com/.

So much to see and do! Barely time to post this Lamb Chop photo. Gotta love Lamb Chop.

Also, Happy Birthday this week and soon thereafter to the dear and published! Lisa Kettell (she of a million blogs and sites and groups) but mostly fearless leader of The Faerie Zine http://thefaeriezine.blogspot.com/; my sister-in-law Judi and her husband Doug, my boss Michelle, the glamorous Caroline (of the beaded necklace post), and my neice Suzanne, well on the hill at 45.

A Good and Crafty Weekend

Saturday started early, and I was going to pull the covers back over my head until I remembered it was Stamp Camp weekend. Cris http://sassafraslass.blogspot.com/and Angie of Creative Cottage put on a free three-hour card-making fest for those in their monthly Stampin' Up order group. So I went to North Webster to see what they came up with. We decorated candles by melting tissue paper on them, and we made some great Holiday cards.

I followed this with a trip to the local rubber stamp store to see Jan here http://www.stamp-n-toys.com/, and then to the antique mall for a quick peek. I came home with a Lamb Chop (as in Sherrie Lewis) and another printer's tray to embellish later. I figure Lamb Chop is nearly extinct now, and for $3.50 I felt like saving her. I have become rather attached to dolls, books and figure from my childhood- a sure sign of growing old.

The drive through the lakes, past Tippecanoe, Irish, Sechrist and Barbee to North Webster was absolutely beautiful with the sun on the trees, and of course I forgot my camera! I figured I'd go back Sunday, but today has been very wet and gloomy. A good day for sweats and potato soup for sure! And a nap. Always a nap.

Between all of the that, I finished my cottage for http://thelittlebluebirddiaries.typepad.com/Lil Bluebird's Charming Cottage Swap for my partner Priscilla at http://sweetremembrance1.blogspot.com/. It is due Dec. 1, but there's not very many weekends between now and then, and weekends are reserved for art.

The chipboard papier mache cottage, seen here, has wallpaper, flooring, curtains, a rug, artwork, a bottle brush tree with non-working lights, and the outside includes German scrap, background papers, a wreath with "lights," spray snow, tinsel, liquid applique snow and glitter. It does not have a fire extinguisher.

Fire extinguisher? Yes, while heat-setting the liquid applique snow I accidentally set the flocked wallpaper and the tinsel garland on fire. My little cottage was smokin' and not in a good way. Back to square one. Anyway, now it is done and drying.

On to my mermaid swap, pink ornament swap, snowman swap, 4 x 4 Friday Face challenge and Chubbyville 4 x 4 Holiday Memories book page. I bought a Zutter book binder, so I am looking forward to putting my pages together into my first fat book.

Here's a look at some great Flickr photos from my contacts. More info here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12448123@N07/1971134265/. Happy Sunday! My Betseys are on the way from Sadie Lou http://craftilyeverafter.blogspot.com/, my Star Dancer is on the way from Tokyo. See her as Zelda here at the cutest blog ever http://adventuresofmolli.blogspot.com/. I don't have to be me 'til Monday. Thank you, country music.