Sally Jean's Pretty Little Things - for Me!

I was so pleased to finally receive the charms I ordered from Sally Jean, author of Pretty Little Things. I had been coveting these miniature silver soldered collages for months, and then to my surprise, the book was our ZNE August Book Club assignment. After a month of pouring over the book and completing writing and art assignments, my charms arrived, as if to reward me for "graduating." I added the four small ones (G, create, home and chocolate chip fairy) to a silver charm bracelet where I also added danglies I made out of "that" turquoise as Sally Jean calls that shade of robin's egg blue. The larger pendant, the Shopping Fairy, could make a necklace or I am hoping to find a tiny silver easel for it. It is about 1 x 3 inches. The charms are much tinier. Love it!

ZNE Book Club for a Good Cause

I am so excited to be joining the ZNE book club for August. We are studying Sally Jean Alexander's Pretty Little Things http://www.sallyjean.com, already one of MY favorite books! I already have assignments in reading, writing about my studio space, posting a photo and have a collage assignment to create and post. Sheesh! Just like school- only better!
Even nicer is that the book club fee goes to support an animal rescue farm site, a Place to Bark (see the right side of my blog), run by Bernie Berlin, a collage and ATC artist.
Besides this little bit of work, my ATC/ACEO group on ebay has given out individual dares for an ACEO to complete and post, and I am waiting to get my assignment. ACEO stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals and ATC stands for Artist Trading Cards.
An example of another dare was "What would Medusa look like if snakes didn't exist." So, you get the idea...
As well, my ebay "Respect-Artists who Love Art" group has a challenge due tomorrow based on the word "rock"- any interpretation/any medium. I have a couple of ideas but nothing done yet, plus I am off to Michigan for the cancer walk. Sheesh again!

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.