Published Again- Always a Thrill!

I was excited to find this greeting card I made on page 54 of the latest Stampers' Sampler magazine by Stampington and Co. (April/May 2009). It is one of the first pieces of 'art' I ever made back when I started this blog nearly two years ago. The Mona is a rubber art stamp by Tim Holtz stamped with Staz-On ink onto a heat-resistant transparency. It is layered over various papers. There's a couple more layers to the card that you can't see here, so....go buy the magazine!

There's so much art I've been waiting to do: I am in a Marie Antoinette swap hosted by The Junkk Drawer's Maria Rodarte and I am partnered with the talented Kathy Jacobson of a Bit of Serendipity, who is also featured on the COVER of the stamping magazine I just mentioned. Intimidating? Maybe!

The 12 ladies behind Creative Therapy on Wordpress have also asked me to be a guest artist for August 22, so I have a piece of art to create for a prompt they will supply that will in turn prompt their readers to create art from my art/prompt. Follow that?

Book reviews are due to Gabreial, the heart and soul of Vintage Indie, for my friend Rebecca's French by Heart, and The Artist Within: A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit by Whitney Ferre'.

I celebrated my first Passover, and I have to say, matzoh and I have to get better acquainted. I hear there's chocolate-covered. That would be a good way to start!

Meanwhile, my art journal is gathering dust. My beads are not being beaded. I did plant some pansies, and whipped my crochet hook a few rows through a new afghan, but there's so much to do and so little (free) time. If time were for sale, I'd like to buy some! I guess I'll just have to adopt Mona's mellow countenance for now. Enough blogging! Off to the studio.

Fruitcake Page Featured on Kit Club

While enduring another sleepless night, or I guess I should say morning since I woke up at 3 a.m. ready to go (where?), I found some of my art featured on Paula's Kit Club http://www.paulaskitclub.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=KIT_COMMENTS. Paula Montgomery, formerly of Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers has absolutely the best scrapbooking, stamping and card-making club around!

She offers several choices of kit size and frequency as well as stamp options of mounted, unmounted, etc. But they key is, her kits are cool! No cutesy crap, no foo-f00. Instead, there are cool retro, chic, kitsch-y and otherwise funky elements. Plus, you just have to read Enzo's Report Card on her site.

I used her recent kit to make a 6 x 6 book page for an ebay group BkNq page swap. Haven't done a lot yet with my November kit, but I am enjoying the vintage cheese labels. Now, my December kit is winging its way to me. More motivation and inspiration, in a box.

Here's a pic of what I made or go check the link and see more cool stuff. The page now belongs to Rainbow869 Betty in Wisconsin.

Stamp Camp Card Bonanza!

I was doing some birthday cards today, and remembered I did not give a shout out to Cris and Angie of Creative Cottage for their excellent stamp camp Nov. 10. These are some of the cards we made with their Stampin' Up products. The Birthday Buttons and the No Pouting were two I made before but am getting ready to mail, so figured it is now or never to photograph them! Cris' blog is here: http://sassafraslass.blogspot.com. I love the silver embossed card! Can't wait to get my next Stampin' Up goodies.

Finally! Time to Get My Hands Dirty Again!

Yippee! Finally some time to spend on art after a one-week hiatus. Where to start? It actually took me awhile to get going. Everything I started on looked bad. I just didn't feel like anything was working. So, I took a break and hooked up my new color copier, scanner, printer which had been sitting in the box for two weeks. It was super easy to set up, but my laptop died, then my second battery died, then I discovered my power cord went missing from my suitcase, having been right on top when I left Florida. So I hooked it to our other computer, and being wireless, it will be easy to hook to my laptop when I getting it going again.

With that accomplishment out of the way, I went on to finish my page for the All Originals Fat Book monthly theme swap. As the theme is pink and breast cancer awareness, you can see my contribution. Be sure to visit www.savethetatas.com. I also photographed two of my entries for the ARTchix Pink Post contest. Can't wait to hear the results of the Pet Post contest!

Still on a mini-roll, I assembled nine of my background pages for the Altered Abbey Skinny Book swap. I have 27 finished (obvy) double-sided pages due in less than 3 weeks. So, a lot of pages left to make, and finishing these pages is yet to come. Don't have any idea yet what I am going to do. A lot of the coolest pages I've seen have birds on them, but I'd like to think of something myself. Maybe I'll think of birds!

Finally, these rubber stamps were on my work table, just asking to be photographed. My Stampin' Up monthly club order came, as well as a cute crow in a dress from Invoke Arts. So much to do!

I'm a Happy Camper

What a great day! Started with two hours of thorough house cleaning, always a good feeling, and then a trip to the rubber stamp store, consignment shop, antique mall and a trip to Stamp Camp.

Cris Marsh http://sassafraslass.blogspot.com/, my Stampin' Up demonstrator, and her sister Angie Higginbotham, collectively Creative Cottage, offer a monthly stamp camp for their customers. All the pieces and parts are provided, along with refreshments and door prizes, while attendees go table to table, making various cards and things.

Here you can see the cards I made. One is actually perforated and includes a tear-off book mark as a thank-you. There is a darling Halloween card, and then we decorated a bottle of bubbles for a great gift. Finally, we rolled a pen in decorative paper and micro beads for a cool result. Such fun!

Fairy Dreams ARTchix Swap

Art Treasures and More

When checking for my next book club assignment with the international ZNE book club, I was thrilled to see my results from assignment #1 posted on the home page of the Book Club http://www.znebookclub.info/. It not only is gratifying and makes me feel my art can't be that bad, but it helps to bring other visitors to my blog. So, the art world continues to go 'round and 'round. I was pleased to have this same artwork featured on another related site ZNEBlogz. Also, a great new feature at the bottom of this page on my blog is the ZNE Site Ring. Click on next or random to be directed to other wonderful ZNE members' blogs.

If you're loooking for other inspiration, Stamping Day and Night, in Fort Wayne, Indiana (linked at right) is having a week-long garage sale of other artists' and crafters' cast-offs of supplies, rubber stamps and scrapbook materials, publications, etc. The sale started today and lasts a week. I am trying to keep myself out of there, so I can just show up next week and reap (and spend) my rewards. I took a great batch of stuff, so hopefully someone will want it all!

Speaking of shopping (I should blog just about that!)....I had the opportunity to go to Schoolcraft, MI yesterday. The cute old downtown is lined with antique malls and shoppes. I hit the jackpot with a box of antique dominoes still sealed in their original package for $2 and three old magazines, including Better Homes and Gardens from 1933 and a fabulous McCall's from 1955. I was sad the Betsy McCall paper doll page was missing - that was a monthly highlight from my childhood. I don't know who looked more forward to the subscription arriving each month- my mother or me. I also found a glass baby bottle and a very old hair dye box.

My other treasure, which arrived today, was a package of ephemera I had ordered from ArtChix Studio, possibly the most wonderful source of collage and ATC supplies ever! Check it out: http://www.artchixstudio.com/.

I will post some pictures here soon. I just took a break from reading the old magazines and tearing out pages for collage (which I sort of felt bad about, but that was always the plan). The reading is so entertaining as well....BH&G in 1933 was encouraging readers to break out of their ration habits and start spending more to beautify their home and yard, to help the overall economy after the war and crash...little did they suspect another war in the offing.

For a Good Cause!

I just shipped off 30 hand-made cards to my office in Michigan for their fund-raiser/craft sale at the American Cancer Society Relay for Life this Fri and Sat in Hastings, MI. I am scheduled to walk for an hour on Friday, and am having walkers' remorse with the weather! But it is all for a good cause. I also made five 12 x 12 scrapbook layouts for cancer survivors and families who don't have time to scrap. All they have to do is add pictures and journal. Everything else is done-photo mats, embellishments, etc. I spent a lot of time to make them nice. I would also have to guesstimate I spent at least 30 hours on the cards. Hope they will help raise some $$. We will also have bracelets for sale and baked goods. Our little staff of 30 makes some great efforts for philanthropy! Here is our team link http://www.acsevents.org/faf/r.asp?t=12&i=205901&g=1702584.

Speaking of shipping, who doesn't love their UPS man- bringer of treasures?! Besides, has anyone ever seen an ugly UPS man? I just got the next big Memory-Works order from http://www.memory-works.com that everyone has been clamoring for. I've been getting calls and texts, and it's barely been a week! Anyway, all the goodies for creating are here, and now I've got to deliver them and make some happy campers.

I received some gorgeous Lola papers from the Love, Elsie line for Crafts, Etc. I cannot wait to use them. Elsie has a challenge on her blog for "24 things I want to do before I am 25." I would have to edit the age a little (a lot), but the prizes are worth it! She has the best products!

I also got some fabulous vintage bathing beauty clip art from Paula's Kit Club, which I am in and highly recommend- and I don't even have my first kit yet! She's so busy, my membership doesn't start until Oct. Check it out: http://www.paulaskitclub.com.

Once again, so many things to make; so little time....sounds like art/collage/scrapping could run in the family....a 'shout out' and Happy Birthday tomorrow to my great-niece Abigail Spradlin whose 4H rabbit care poster made champion at her local county fair (Johnson County) and will be going to the Indiana State Fair! Tres magnifique! I'll post a photo if I get one from her dad Terry, my nephew. He's the brainchild/politico of the family-formerly working for the Dept of Ed and now employed at his dear Indiana University.

So now that I have my nifty new banner that says Crazy Creative Musings, I feel like I should muse about something. Afterall, my background is writing. Not art. So why is it so hard to write for an audience of perhaps no one about basically nothing- and then expect anyone to want to read it? I guess that explains why I spent the first two days of my life as a blogatrix (blogger sounds so bloated and kind of bogged down) uploading stuff and tinkering with my colors and layout. It's much less revealing- showing pictures, that is, instead of saying what is on one's mind.
That seems like a perfect segue to say I need to go get my hands dirty and play with my stamps and paints and papers and my favorite- watercolor crayons. I need to make some new stuff so I'll have something more to upload. So, instead of 11 posts in one day, I'm going to challenge myself to write two posts a week that say something. No why is the sky blue stuff or my cat is staring at me. Something profound.
Meanwhile, while I think on that, the ZNE website, variaZioNE, http://www.zneart.com/ for artists/artisans of mixed media, collage, altered art, and assemblage has wonderful examples from super-talented artists as well as great links for shopping, discussion and much more. Enjoy!
PS-Just got the most exciting email! Christine Adolph, http://christineadolph.typepad.com, creator of the nautical collection stamps and much more at Stampington.com said she liked my nautical cards I've submitted! That's an amazing compliment. She has a recent new collection of garden motif stamps for Stampington and new foil paper coming out, that were revealed at July's CHA in Chicago.

Speaking of the beach...