Merry Christmas Cardinal Cone

I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates (You've Got a Brand New Key)

OMG...I stumbled across these on eBay. Underneath the rust and dirt is a little slice heaven. I wore out a pair of these exact same roller skates when I was a little girl. I can still hear the sound of those metal wheels barreling down the alley at blazing speed trying to make it home before the street lights came on. When I was down to my last skate, my dad took it apart and made me a wooden scooter with it. It did not take me long before I was back barreling down the alley at blazing speed on my scooter.

Memories in Bloom

A Christmas Cactus of my moms......what a wonderful treasure! Thank you Barb for taking such tender care of it all of these years!

Crafternoon Fun!

Every so many months my friend Becky hosts a fun crafternoon at her place. About a dozen or so gather for a playday of a delicous lunch, followed by a few hours of paper, glue, & scissors. Becky always choses the best of projects to make and this time was no exception. I met Becky a few years back while she was teaching art techniques and doing product demos at Red Lead, my favorite local place to shop. Thank you Becky for another great afternoon!

BCS Two Years and Counting!

"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew." ......St. Francis de Sales

Lesson C6 - Layers w/Glazed Background

Lesson C5 - Packing Tape Transfer

Lesson C4 - 3 x 3 Composition

Lesson C3 - Shapes

The background is reassembled. Looking it over, I wish I would have reassembled the label as well. I tried to stick with rectangles and circles.

Lesson C2 - Color & Contrast

Lesson C1 - Blended Background

A bit heavy handed with the gesso.

Lesson 9 Background

(Under construction)

Lesson 8 Making It Work

Lesson 7 - Paper

The Lesson 7 challenge was to create a gluebook page with ONLY original paper. No copies but vintage papers, phone book, newspaper, magazines or whatever we have around. I looked through my cabinet cards, old magazines and books and just had trouble wanting to cut into anything. I mentioned to my husband how difficult this was for me. He said if you never use up the things you have, you will never have room for or need any new and fun stuff. I was shocked to hear such sound reasoning coming from someone who thinks 'shop' is an ugly 4 letter word.

For this page I used a not-to-old dictionary page for the background. The picture I found in an old magazine. I tore a piece of blue wrapping paper to use along the left border. I have a 1949 World Atlas book. From that I took the little map on the lower right. Behind that is a torn piece of the library pocket. There was a hand written note tucked in between 2 of the pages. I tore a piece of the note for the right side.

Lesson 6 - Visual Weight

Lesson 5 - Pieces in Composition

Lesson 4 - Positions in Composition

Lesson 3 - Patterns

Lesson three is a two page spread. This was fun. Fighting the urge to pull out paint, buttons or embellishments is much harder than I thought. I moved everything around at least a dozen times. I like it... but I still need to loosen up a little. I think I will try to do another spread using no people pics and make the background the main focal. Oops... that might be the reason for Lesson 3.

Gluebook Lesson 2 - Size

This is a 3 piece challenge... a background and two others. I made two pages. With the elements I chose they almost look as much like a scrapbook page as a collage, but that's okay. I like the one on the right the best. It must be the softer colors. Need to chose them more often. Having fun learning!

Miss Mary - Green Paper Challenge

Mary at Green Paper issued a challenge to make an ATC, assemblage, gluebook or journal page using three pieces or elements of the 3 pieces. The rest is up to us to use what we wish. Since I am just beginning my lessons, I decided to work on a gluebook page. Drop by Green Paper download a "Miss Mary Hayes Challenge Sheet" and play along.