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...

Back from Art Unraveled...

Last week I was able to get away and spend a couple of days at the
Art Unraveled event held here in Phoenix. My friend Michelle
came in from Oregon for the week and we took just a couple of
classes together. This is the two of us after we completed our
books in Daniel Essig's class.

This is a closer look at my book, although I had a hard time getting
a good photo of it. The front and back covers are made with mica
so whatever paper you use underneath it looks very old and aged.
Hard to believe but the papers I used were black and white from
the 7 Gypsies Paddington line. The binding looks tricky but once
you did one set of stitches it all seemed to fall into place. I liked
the relaxed pace of the class and Daniel was a great teacher. If you
are at all into bookmaking I highly recommend taking one of his classes.

This is from my class with Chris Cozen, she is an educator for
Golden Paints and an absolutely wonderful teacher. I highly
recommend taking any class with her if you get the chance. In this
class we had to make 4 small collages on 4"x4" canvases. Everyone

was given the same small packet of materials to use and you could
choose all, or some of the supplies. Of course we all got to use the
fabulous Golden paints to first paint our canvas. We had to use the
same elements in a different way on all 4 of the canvases.

At the end we chose one to swap with someone and got to keep the
other 3, that was the hardest part of the class!

I also took classes with Traci Bautista and Kelly Kilmer which were
technique classes and not finished projects, but lots of fun!

I had a good time even though I was only there 2 days, if

you are in Phoenix next August you should look into taking a
couple of classes there.