Cheerful Picture Frame

I was home for about two weeks for the holidays and got in lots of crafty time with my Mom and my BFF. Here's a shot of the supplies that I packed up to take. Maybe I went a bit overboard!! I packed all this up WAY before I even thought about packing clothes, so I guess that shows something about my priorities :-)

And here's a pic of one of the bigger projects I did while I was there, a bright happy picture frame. We found wooden picture frames at the craft store and worked on them while our guys were watching a movie.
The first thing that I did was the checkerboard pattern in the lower right corner. I penciled in a grid, then used a woodburner to go over the lines. Then I used Portfolio water-soluble pastels to add color. I colored hard, then used just a bit of water on top. I drew the flowers and swirls with colored pencils and the pastels, then used gel pens and acrylic paints to add accents. Finally, I slipped in a picture - that's me and my husband right after we got engaged. Here's a close up of the woodburned section -- I really like how the burnt wood looks with the white pastel.

I had so much fun with this frame that I picked up a couple more to play with. This square frame comes with an extra piece of wood that lets the frame stand up, but I also found some rectangle ones that I think would be nice hanging on the wall.

Random Music Video

I don't understand a word, but this song made me smile:

Surprise Ball

I saw the instructions for making surprise balls a while back on Go Make Something, and have been wanting to make one for a while. I finally got around to it over Christmas and took pics of the process.

First I made up some ATC blanks to put in the center of the ball. I cut the blanks from white cardstock and used black permanent ink to stamp the ATC blank - it's a great stamp from Catslife Press. I wrapped the blanks in some ribbon to keep them together.

Then I added the other large-ish items: a rubber eraser and mini compasses on one side, a few stickers and red electrical tape on the other. This 'yarn' is more like ribbon, but stretchy. I decided to use different fibers to wrap this ball because I'm trying to tempt my friend into doing chunky books with me. I figure she'll be more likely to do it if she has a little stash of fibers to chunk up the pages. After these bigger items were securely attached, I switched to another funky yarn.



I used some birght, fuzzy yarn to stick in a few small things - scrabble tiles and mini dominoes perfect for altering and some fabric flowers to use in ATCs or cards or other projects. Once I started using the fuzzy yarn the ball really started to take shape. It began to get rounder and rounder, and the corners of the ATC blanks started to get covered up.



The corners disappeared for good with the next layer - blue sparkly yarn. I stuck in a few more flowers in this layer. Then it all got covered up with pink. I sprinkled in a little star confetti too.

It was fun to make, and also fun to watch my friend unwrap it all.

A Mixed Up Girl

Yesterday my hubby showed me this video - I noticed some of the lyrics are "I'm a mixed up girl in a mixed up world."

29 Days of Giving

Chrysti of the Altered Abbey is having a month of giveaways on her blog, Art By Chrysti. How generous of her! I remember seeing Chrysti in Cloth Paper Scissors, but only recently stumbled on to her blog via another blog (don't you just love finding new-to-you blogs that way!?). It has been a lot of fun reading her posts and seeing artwork by her and the artists that she features on the blog. Lots of inspiration there! After reading her post about Suzi Blu's workshop and filling up journals with sweet petite dolls, I got out my journal and started another girl.

Good luck charms

now that I know how to take macro photos, I can show some close ups from my journal! I did the photo editing for these pics in iPhoto, and I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to do it.

The latest pages that I finished feature a Suzi Blu girl. I drew her with colored pencils and watercolor pencils, then did different color washes in the background. I used a dye-based ink to stamp in the background, so when I added water to the water soluble crayon in the background, the stamping blurred a bit and the brown color bled out into the blue and green.

Here's a close up of one stamped clover, showing the bleed into the background. You can see a little bit of the texture of the watercolor paper as well. Here the blue is watercolor crayon and a little bit of water soluble oil pastel. The heart in the center is gel pen, and is a little metallic IRL.

The clover is a new stamp for me -- got it in a super fun round robin box via ATCsforall.com. The box has gone from person to person, and each one takes supplies/ephemera and adds in something new. My kind of fun :-)

My little doll-girl is wearing cutesy stockings (wish I could remember what I did with MY pink and white stockings, can't find them in any of the usual places!) and holding a horseshoe for good luck. I was thinking about lucky things, and I included the horseshoe, four leaf clovers, and a chipmunk. I dunno why I think chipmunks mean good luck, but I do :-)

So, here are some pieces of my journal pages on luck. I'm feeling extremely lucky at the moment, because Christmas vacation has finally begun!! Hoping that you've got good luck coming your way, too.

Face Inchies

Here are some inchies I did. First I drew leetle faces on marker paper with a Copic multiliner. Then I colored them in with markers, and cut the faces out. Next I cut them right in half -- ouch! I glued half a face on each inchie. I cut the inchie blanks from boxes and then glued on a background paper. After I put the face on, I put on a few accents with gel pens. I traded some of the inchies and kept some to put on the big inchie canvas I was working on.