Tag 12, the final tag...

So sad that this was the last of the tags :(  Now I am going to have
to get on with everything I need to do for my son's birthday this
weekend followed by Christmas the following weekend. Just hope
I have enough time left, lol!

Well this tag took me a while because I had a major disaster with
the blue paint. I had no idea I had got blue paint all down the side

of my hand, which then transferred to my desk, then my sleeve
and then finally all over my new sweater that I was wearing today.
I have now finished washing it for the third time and I am hopeful
the paint came out!

As for the tag, again I was missing lots of the supplies so had to
improvise with my Umbrella Man yet again. This is a record for
me having used him 3 times this year. Maybe next year I will use
him in every tag, or maybe I will have to buy some of the xmas
dies and stamps :)

Ok Tim I hope you will be doing this again next year, pretty please!

Day 11 Tag...

Here is my tag for today, had to do more improvising again.
Today's technique called for the use of shrink plastic. Well I
had some a while ago but had used it all,  I improvised by
using some of the tiles I had made months ago with the

shrink plastic I had then. Of course being seriously lacking in
holiday stamps and dies I had to make do with the same
choices. However I think this is the first time this year that I
used the snowman, it was either him or my favourite

umbrella man again!!

Day 10 Tag...

Gosh I have done more blogging this week than in the last few
months. Here is today's tag with another simple but very elegant
looking technique. I have to say that the thing that took me the
most time with this was trying to find the foil tape I had bought
earlier this week!! Spent over half an hour trying to find it then
gave up and then of course it appeared somewhere I had already looked.

I really like using the plastic letters and adding paint or glossy
accents to them to make them really stand out. I really have
enjoyed the last 4 days tags, only 2 more days and then it is
over :(   All the details for the tag are on Tim's blog.

Day 9 Tag...

Yay! I am on time today!! So you may have noticed that I do not
have a lot of the Sizzix Dies that are being used for the 12 Tags.
Well I really don't own many dies at all which is why I have a
hard time doing the tags and have to improvise a lot.

Today's technique was another fun one, for all the details go and
visit Tim's blog.

One thing I have been doing this year that is really cool is using
the Distress Stains to die some white seam binding type ribbon
to use at the top of some of my tags. They work beautifully for
this and so I had to go and buy myself a huge roll of it so I can
make lots of pretty coloured ribbons :)

Tags 7 & 8...

Spent today working on these 2 tags and really had a lot of fun
with them, I think I have got my mojo back! Above is day 7's
tag which was simple but so fun to do.
If you have not tried the Kraft Glassine yet you need to run out
and get some. I made flowers with mine unlike the greenery that
Tim showed in his example here. The background was a quick
technique although I guess I didn't read the directions until after
I had done part of it so I did not do the water spritzing before I
dried it. I really like the simplicity and style of this tag.

This is today's Steampunk style tag and I absolutely love all the
details involved in this one. There was a lot of steps involved
and this is really the first tag this year that I have mostly copied
from Tim. I have to admit that the reason I was able to copy it is
that I actually went out and bought this stamp set today (I did

use a 40% off coupon though!). Looking forward to seeing what

is in store tomorrow :)

Day 6 Tag...

So glad that I was able to finish this tag on the same day. It was a
fun new technique to try, for all the details go to Tim's blog.

It actually took quite a while to do this one as there was a lot of
waiting around for paint to dry and I had to keep going back
and forth from my craft desk to the room where my computer is.
I am glad that I am up to date now and glad this only took 1 attempt :)

Days 4 & 5 tags...

Well I finally finished yesterday's tag this evening, sensing a
pattern here :)  I did not have the dies that Tim had yet again,
to see what they were go here. I did just recently get the
house dies and cut out a heart shape from it. Not really
holiday-ish but I am improvising. This took time as I had
to wait a long time for all the crackle paint to dry.

This is the tag for today which again was a lot of improvisation. It
is about this time that I am kicking myself for not buying all of the
wonderful new products that Tim Holtz released this fall. Anyway,
I did not have the Holiday Reflections stamp but I had the first
Reflections stamp that he came out with. The technique for the
background was really cool, not sure I got it to work as well as
Tim did but I am very happy with it. Looking forward to see
what tomorrow's challenge will be for me :)

Day 3 Tag...

Finally finished this tag!! It is now Sunday and the Day 4 tag is up
but I have just finished day 3, aarghh! the pressure :)

My son is home from college this weekend and so I have been
trying to sneak in time to do these tags. This is my 3rd attempt at
this tag, just do not have all the supplies that Tim Holtz uses and
trying to adapt to what I had for this tag seemed so hard even
though it was a simpler tag. Well it is done, not 100% in love
with it but need to move on now. 

Day 2 Tag...

It is 8:20pm and I finally finished today's tag! I did not start until
late as I had to really think about how to do this tag without
having anything close to the die that Tim used. I reverted back to
a favourite of mine, the umbrella man, sorry if you recognize him
from previous tags :) For all the details on todays tag go to Tim's blog.

The colours did not show up too well due to the fact I took this at
night and the lighting is awful at night. I found a piece of cream
coloured seam binding to use as the trim and used one of the
Distress Stains to colour it.
This is a quick and easy way to colour your own ribbons, love this
idea, in fact I did it for yesterdays tag too!

12 Tags of Christmas...

Yes it is that time again already! Tim Holtz is doing his 12 Tags of
Christmas for 2011, you can read all about todays tag on his
website. This will be my 3rd year following along with this and
the photo is my take on Day No.1 today.

Just like last year I am not feeling the love for the first
tag, mainly because I have very few of the supplies
that Tim used this time and also last year. I do not do
a lot of holiday stuff in my art so buying all the dies he
uses is just not in my budget (especially now I have a child in college!).

I did have the embossing folder he used and the tattered banner
die too so had to improvise with everything else. I am not 100%
happy with it but it is done and I am looking forward to seeing
what he comes up with for tomorrow.

Bloom True & Be Bold...

This weekend I went to California to take the "Bloom True" class
with Flora Bowley. The 2 day workshop was hosted by the
fabulous Jenny Doh at her brand new location in Santa Ana,
California. She is lining up more fabulous art classes!!

What a wonderful experience this was, 17
women all learning how to be brave and be true and let go in their
painting. Flora started the day off by getting us all together and we
all shared what brought us there and what we wanted to get out
of the class.
After a little stretching and breathing we got to watch her demo
how to start out on our paintings. Throughout the day we did
various exercises on our canvases and had several other
demonstrations. It was a wonderful process and over the first day
our pieces changed dramatically.

Here is Flora working on her piece, this changed quite a lot over
the course of the weekend. She used this piece for all of her
demonstrations and even used it to show us how to fix what we
thought were mistakes, at one point she made everyone gasp
in horror as she put a huge splash of green paint over the face!

Here is how her piece ended up, well I think this is the final piece
but honestly I wasn't very good at taking photos as I was so
immersed in the painting process. It was a good feeling to be
so involved in the painting :)

Now this is a picture of one of my canvases, (we worked on 2),
after a couple of layers had been added to it. I had a very hard
time letting go at first but on the 2nd day of the class I was bold
and let go of the part of the painting I liked the most.
This was the wonderful thing that I got from the class, to be
bold and let go, to trust it would be ok and it was only paint!

This is how that canvas ended up, a totally different thing for me,
my friend Michelle who took this class with me was surprised at
how it turned out. I usually go with blues, greens and a dash of
purple in any of my art work, also doing an organic kind of shape
is unusual for me. I am still working on my 2nd canvas and I
know I will be able to make it into something wonderful.

Thanks Flora for a wonderful experience. I really appreciate
all of the help and advice you gave during the class. It is so 

great to take a class with a small group as we got a lot of

one on one advice and made some new art friends.

The Sketchbook Project 2012...

Well I finally finished the whole thing and now I need to mail it off.
I had actually finished all of it except for the front cover back in
July. For some reason I was stuck on doing the cover, I think I was
intimidated by it, lol! Anyway last week I just decided I had to do
it whatever it ended up like and get my book mailed off. Last year
I signed up late and finished it just a few weeks before the deadline.
This year I signed up within a week or so of them opening up the
project and I wanted it done quickly.

My theme for this year was "Monochromatic", I had no plan for
this when I chose the theme and even had the book a month or
so before starting it. The book has 15 double page spreads
and then front and back pages. I am only showing a couple of
pages here but am hoping to upload them all on the website for the
Sketchbook Project.

When I finally got my book on my desk to work on it I just came up
with the idea of using varying shades of a colour on each page and
seeing what happened. I used some great border stamps and filled
them in using coloured pencils. I found out last year that the pages
were much too thin to use any kind of paints or inks and even
markers bled through. Hard to tell but for each colour I used
about 10-12 different coloured pencils on the page.

When I had done all the pages I had a thought of turning it into
some kind of maze, although some of my pages did not really
work for that. One day whilst browsing on the internet I found
a really cool little story and ended up using that through
the pages of my book. I honestly have no idea where I saw it
or who to attribute it to and I am sorry about that as it was a fun story.

So now we get to the back page which has the last line of the story.
I am glad I finished it early and hope to mail it off this week. I am
not sure if I will do it again next year or not. Anyone else out there
doing this project this year??

Catch up post...

This last week was busy as we were getting ready to go to the
Family Weekend at my son's college. Lots of e-mails and phone
calls trying to figure out things that he wanted/needed us to bring
for him. In the end even with a big box of stuff and a last minute
call for a pair of black jeans hanging in his closet, he still forgot to
tell us to bring a couple of other things he needed. Oh well that
will be for the next time.
We did have a really nice time visiting with him and spending
family time together, something his younger brother needed.

As you can see we obviously did a lot and needed to rest up after
our hard work of visiting with him, eating good food and being out
in the heat of Arizona.

My younger son has started learning to drive so my husband
decided it would be good for him to drive us down to Tucson,
on the freeway at 75mph!! I was a little nervous to say the
least but he did an excellent job considering it was his first time
on the freeway and has only had his learners permit about
6 weeks. He actually asked if he could drive back even though
he thought driving on the freeway was incredibly boring.

And here is the young man himself. This week he went in front of
the Eagle Scout Board of Review for the final review on his
Eagle Scout project and ultimately being awarded the rank of
Eagle Scout. We are so proud of him and now I need to get
working on an album to be ready when we have his Eagle Court
of Honor. That will be my next project.

What I did this weekend...

I got to take a really fun class with Dina Wakley this Saturday. I
made the trek up to Glendale, AZ to the Creative Quest with my
friends Lisa and Anjie where Dina was teaching this class. The
cover was made from canvas which we decorated graffiti style
and Dina had very kindly sewn covers for us already.

We had fun with paint and stamps and got to use Dina's new line of
stamps, they are really fun and so I had to buy a couple of them :)

We did do all of our pages in class but some of us decided to do the
assembly of it back home. It was a really grungy fun binding, just
sewing straight which even I could manage. So my book is done
apart from what I am going to put in it, thinking maybe some fun
quotes, any other suggestions???

Still journaling...

Yes I am still art journaling and I am so happy to say that I am
keeping up with my Layout A Day class. This is a page I worked
on just recently, again trying to do the Teesha Moore style, this
is really hard for me as I am not good at lettering so I cheated
with this page :) I have been wanting to try this style for
a long time and this is the 3rd page I have done in this journal.
I have been spending most of my time doing my LOAD class and
am really pleased that I am using up some older photos. Also I
have decided that some of my photos are just not scrap-worthy,
it is so freeing to just toss them out!

This is a very abstract page I did at the end of last year that I
really, really like and I do not know why, I just do. I am hoping
to really get back on track with my art journaling once my class
is over, although I am really enjoying the fact that I am making

layouts to go in my albums :)

Get a LOAD of this...

So here is what I have been doing the last few days, actually making scrapbook layouts!
I signed up to take "The Mother LOAD" class on Big Picture Classes.
The class started at the beginning of July with basic training which
was to get us ready for our marathon of doing a LayOut A Day for
the month of September. I started out as a scrapbooker 15 years
ago but have slowly lost interest in it over the last year or so to do
other things. I have taken so many pictures that are waiting here
for me to do something with so I thought this may help me get
back into scrapbooking. I was very naughty and really did not
do any of the basic training but I have to say so far I have been
able to do my layout every day, so pleased that I am keeping up
so far. Today's prompt was to use a self-portrait that we had
taken recently, I had the idea to find a couple of others and voila!
my hair through the years page was done!

This layout was yesterday's prompt, so funny that this was just 3
years ago and my youngest son looks so grown up now. He said
he did not like these photo's that he looked terrible. I think he said
that because he looks so young in them.

This is actually the first prompt we got which was to document our
goals/aspirations. My goal was to have a child, took me a while but
I was blessed to have 2 healthy boys and this is something that I
really have not documented in a scrapbook yet, now was the time. 

Now I really hope I can keep this up for the rest of the month!

I'm Back....

lol! Well I really, really wanted to find an easier way to blog more 

regularly but I am having issues with Tumblr and they have not
been very helpful. In the past I have looked at the other 2 main
blog sites but despite the painful issues sometimes, Blogger is the easiest.

So what has been going on with me? well we had a visit from our
son this weekend, 2 weeks away at college and he wanted to come
and visit us :) It was a good visit but hard to say goodbye again.

I have been trying to find time to work in my art journals, have
started a few pages but they are in progress. I finally managed
to do a page influenced by the style of Teesha Moore. I love
her style and have tried many times but have never liked what
I did and ended up covering over them. Finally I did a page that
I actually like and think isn't that bad! So now I feel that perhaps

I can do more of this style I am working on a couple more pages

similar to this. So what are you working on this week??

Trying something new...

I have found it difficult over the last few months to do regular
updates on my blog, I know that happens to lots of people,
life gets busy. I have decided to try out a new blog on
Tumblr as it seems to be the kind of thing that you can do much
quicker and shorter postings on. This blog will remain open for
the foreseeable future but I will try to do more regular posts
on my Tumblr blog. You can click the link above or go here.

Life changes...

I feel like I have been in the Twilight Zone the last 10 days or so. It
has been a whirlwind of trying to get everything together for the
day Alex left for college, something we have all been dreading. We
seemed to be getting things done and Alex had a little free time to
make plans with friends before leaving. That was until last
Thursday, Alex cut off part of his finger using a mandoline to
slice an apple (be warned, those things are very sharp and
dangerous). He did not want me to take him to the Emergency
Room as he said there was nothing they could do,  his finger would
not stop bleeding, just pouring and pouring. I tried something
called Liquid Bandage, he screamed when I put it on, it was so
incredibly painful. It did not stop and I kept putting more on as I
did not know how to get the blood to stop. I told him again we
needed to go, he said no as it would cost too much money to go
there!! After 35 mins of non stop bleeding I put him in the car and
drove as fast as I could to the Urgent Care. They took one look
at the masses of blood soaked paper towels covering his hand and
took him straight in. Seems that this was an injury they had seen
many times, nothing left to stitch or glue together so they just had
to dress it and bandage it. No pain medicine or antibiotics were
prescribed, and we know it will be a long healing process.

Alex is a very positive person and we still had to get everything
packed and ready for our drive to the University of Arizona on
Sunday. We got everything packed and headed out early Sunday
morning. After spending most of the day there we got his dorm
room all set up and ready. We tried to do as much as we could
for him as we did not know how much he could tolerate with his
finger, after all it is really an open wound under his bandage.

Here he is waving goodbye from his room as we left him there. I
managed to keep it together until we got back to our car, and then shed a few tears.

We are all feeling a little lost around here without Alex, my
younger son is really missing him, they are very close.
I tried to get some of my feelings down on an art journal page
and I think it helped a little.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Hoping that there are no
more major drama's in my life for a while...