Fabulous Mail Day!!!

Yesterday would have to be one of my best mail days ever!!! I received an absolutely fantastic canvas art piece from a friend who's shifted up North of Western Australia to Tom Price (yeah, I know, sounds like a bloke's name, but it's actually a town!)....the wonderful Natalie Briney's piece of artwork just for me .......da daaaaaaaaaa........

There was another package for me to open, this one from Luxembourg.....another super-talented girl - Belinda Schneider. I had sent her some atc's to swap and her return atc's arrived to much anticipation.....absolutely worth the wait! They are so textural and layered even though you can't tell this much from the flat scan, there are numerous layers of painted paper in the backgrounds. LOVE her images too and those white wings on the gothic art piece are just to die for!!! So these first 3 are the atc's that she sent to me....

and this is the absolutely gorgeous gothic arch piece that Belinda sent to me.....DEFINITELY going to make a gothic arch book to hold this piece!

Must try and find some time today to make some atc's for trading at the Art Retreat this weekend. I have my good pal Barb Thomas arriving tomorrow from Wagga (over East). We are all pretty excited about spending some quality time soaking up all the techniques and absorbing inspiration from Lesley Riley, Michael de Meng, Nina Bagley & our very own Dale Rollerson (The Thread Studio), should be a blast! Taking my camera so you girls had better be on your best behaviour or you MIGHT find yourself on "youtube"!!! hahahaha Speaking of youtube, Michelle Ward has got me well & truly hooked on the very delectable Ville Valo from HIM....take a look at this clip

Retro chunky page & #@**$! soldering

The chunky theme for our Altered Book Club this month is Retro. Here's my contribution to our little book. Both the front is pictured (with the girl on it) and the back as well (with the boys on it....hehehe).

I went to Jen's (Jones) place last night to have a go at soldering....Julie (van Oosten) was there as well as a neighbour of Jen's, Jackie (or Jacqui??). Both Jules & Jen are experts at soldering and Jackie has done it once before....well, that's once more than me! Hmmmm, it certainly seems that it's going to be a "practice makes perfect", or at least "practice makes presentable"! So amidst a few glasses of wine, some take-away Thai food and discussions on the pros & cons of Brazilians (not the people!). I only did one but got a few valuable tips from the Masters and will definitely be having another go at it.

Another friend of mine, who's also a Jen, does pretty darn good soldering too and I really like the style that she does, sort of chunky & blobby but really well balanced and beautifully done....think that's the style that I like....I'm not really a smooth, perfect sort of gal....blobby & chunky....that's me! lol So here's my little attempt, both front and back......take note of the beautiful pictures and ignore the sh*tty soldering ;-)

Poppet canvas & raffle atc's

Okay, so it's been a while.....been busy.....so what else is new!

I was talking with a girl I work with the other day (Melissa - no, no blog....yet!), she does scrapbooking (very well I might add!)...anyway, she was saying she was going to do a Poppet layout and I asked was it a la Claudine Hellmuth Poppet style. Melissa hadn't heard of Claudine Hellmuth so I told her I'd take my 2 books in to show her.....great stuff in them! Claudine's Poppet style is very whimsical and fun. I relayed to Melissa a story about a little girl who I knew quite well who's father had died a few years ago when she was only 3 or 4. She was the daughter of a close friend of my Auntie, so my Mum and I, both being sewers, used to enjoy making costumes & clothes for her at Christmas time as gifts.....tutu's and little summer outfits and the like. So when her Dad died (he was in his early 30's), I made Aisha a Poppet style canvas called "The Angel and the Princess" which hangs in her room and I'm really happy that it's such a positive reminder of happier times with her Dad. This is an 8" x 10" canvas.

I've been asked why they only have one arm each....my reply?....you only need one hand to hold another's hand, but if you can keep a secret......it's because hands are darn hard to draw and I was happy to do one, didn't want to do another! lol No, really, it's the first reason, honest!

My atc class that I'm teaching on Saturday is the foil tape technique and this is the atc that I've made to give away as the raffle prize. Sorry it's so blurry but the heart is a 3-dimensional wooden heart that is covered in the tape and it just throws the whole scanner into conniptions! Can't handle the depth!

This next one is the raffle atc for Tuesday night's "smoosh" technique class. It's using the fabulous Distress Inks for the background as well as Julie van Oosten's wonderful little Collection tiles. (which we sell at the shop in case you were wondering! hehehe)

Only another week plus a bit 'til we have Michael de Meng, Lesley Riley & Nina Bagley down to Perth for a fantastic Art Retreat!!! Can't wait!!!

Backgrounds & more Sheer Heaven atc's

Tonight I'm teaching another atc technique class at Scraptivate, credit card technique....and no, it's not how to magically make it into one that has unlimited credit that someone else pays for....I WISH! Good ol' basic techniques are something that you can always fall back on when you're in a slump or you just can't be bothered thinking! Do a few pages of backgrounds on A4 paper and each sheet has enough for 9 atc backgrounds....try colours that you wouldn't normally use together....for a fantastic copper look try Aqua (Jo Sonja) first, followed by FolkArt Antique Metallic Copper....this is what it looks like...

..........gorgeous huh!

Another nice one is Hooker's Green (Jo Sonja) and then FolkArt Metallic Copper (not the antique one) and lastly Celadon (Jo Sonja) - all credit card technique. I used this colour combo for the cover of my altered book some time ago. This is a little sample of it...

Anyway, as I'm working tonight I don't start until 1pm this afternoon so I've had a little time to play this morning. Finished off a couple of atc's from the Sheer Heaven transfer episode last Friday night as well as worked on a new atc that's not my colour at all....pink! I still decided to complete it though as I really liked the ghostly image that was a mistake, sorry, not a mistake... a serendipitious moment!!! No such thing as mistakes...you just make them differently than you thought is all! I had pressed a little hard on the acrylic block with the stamp on it and it slipped, leaving me with a slight double-image, as it was Stazon I grabbed a baby-wipe with some cleaner on it and wiped it over....of course, being Stazon, it didn't all come off but it left a much paler version on the paler pink background...very nice effect! Here she is...

These other 2 are Sheer Heaven transfers again...still have a couple more to do but they're a little stuck on what they need at this point, they'll get over it!!! lol

One more.....love my new stamp!!! Go Lina!!!

birthday treat & Melbourne Cup Treat

I never got around to my arty time yesterday (Wednesday) nor my usual grocery shopping....and I REALLY missed that!!!! (yeah right!)


What I DID do though was spend a couple of blissful hours being pampered at a day spa! One of my brother's gave me a $500 gift voucher for a day spa on my last birthday. I think he felt sorry for me.....it was our 25th wedding anniversary, hubby's 50th, oldest son's 21st and youngest son's 18th....my birthday??? just a boring ol'......ha! thought I was going to TELL you didn't you!!!...suffice to say it wasn't a significant number.

What fun is there in being pampered by yourself and have no-one to share it with? No fun in that. So I rang the day spa and gave them a sob story about my closest girlfriend who had a battle with breast cancer recently and I'd really like to share this gift with her...blah, blah, blah....laid it on sufficiently thick and they were quite happy to split the voucher between the two of us. Don't worry, she knows I do this and it's all for a good cause.

We had our feet exfoliated & cuticles on our toes tortured, skin sloughed away & moisturised the heck out of. Then it was onto a fantastic hand and nail treatment - more cuticle torture, hand massage, more moisturising & a little polish. Lastly a H2O facial with more cream than you can drown in, a weird steam machine that puffed out warm/hot steam onto your face, a little painful neck and shoulder massage - not her fault - our fault for having knots in our neck & shoulders.

All in all, a fantastically relaxing few hours.....oh, and it took us quite a while to get used to walking in our sandals with our extremely moisturised feet, toes gripping on for dear life lest we kick a sandal off 10 feet in front of where we were walking! lol Glad you could join me my best buddy. Plus I have $100 left over from my voucher for another little quick visit!!! Bonus!!!

So consequently no art (and no food for another couple of days) but I will show you what before-mentioned friend and I did last year on Melbourne Cup Day (big horse race here in Australia).......a little body-painting.....she got to moisturise and hold the brushes for me.......I have had numerous requests from friends to hold the brushes again this coming Melbourne Cup! This was true and did happen - some girls don't believe me....my brother got me the gig (he has his own entertainment company that provides people for events). The boys were used to announce the designer's name by parading on the catwalk with a sign before the models came out at a fashion parade at a restaurant in the Burswood Casino here in Perth. Needless to say the 99% women crowd went a little berserk, hot bods & champagne - what a combination!!! ANYWAY..... on to the pics.....

Meet Ben.......






and this is Mark.... wonder if these boys read blogs??? Probably not, they'd be horrified if they knew...hehehe Though I did tell them I was going to send the pics to all of my friends! lol

Fruitful weekend!

For the first time I actually did something constructive at SAJ's on Friday night....not that chatting and buying goodies in the shop and doing demo's is not constructive, but I mean I actually worked on something. I spent some time doing some Sheer Heaven transfers onto watercolour paper, did a little bit of colouring around them with watercolour crayons and finished them off at home over the weekend. I also made up my 8 atc's for our ATC (Art Tarts Club) "ABC" swap....I sent an email to the girls in the group about this particular swap and in the subject line was "atc abc atc's"...wondered if they'd figure it out! lol
This first atc is the letter "A" that I had to do... (ATC girls....... don't look!)

These are Sheer Heaven transfer atc's...

and another one using an image that I just LOVE (you can tell this because I have used it a lot! lol) Surrounding the image is one of the fantastic silver artchix german scrap windows, it's very shiny silver but I darkened it with black paint - it actually shows up a lot more silver in real life...it looks really dark here! We are getting these in at the shop where I work and teach (Scraptivate), they come in both gold & silver and they have sections across them to make them look like a window, I cut those out to make it look more like a door or shrine. Yes, there is the lightning stamp....AGAIN!!!

I really like the effect of the watercolour crayons on these atc's. There's something so freeing about scribbling with crayons, then using your transdermal applicator (nudge, nudge) to blend the colours and make it all harmonious ~ okay, so I TRY to make it harmonious...lol

So the last two....El Corazon means "The Heart", this particular stamp is from a Mexican game of chance called La Loteria...sort of like Bingo but using images, love the heart! The other one is just a weird little guy that I really like, he reminds me of a junior Edward Scissorhands.

I've opened another email address just for this blog (actually, I just typed "blot" and fixed it...though maybe blogs are a blot on society...some people think so! I digress...). Some people have said they've had trouble posting a comment, if you want to contact me you can use the address at the top of the page.

still here...

Yes, still here....haven't fallen off the face of the earth....working on atc's today....will have some to post tomorrow.

To my friends who have blogs and haven't posted in a while (you know who you are!!!! lol), pop in and at least put some words up.....sheesh!

....back tomorrow...