Exciting News to SHARE!!

I confess that I've been keeping a little secret from you all...but today - no more secrets...ha ha ha. Where to begin...well at the beginning I guess. My dear friend Vicki Chrisman instroduced me to Tammy Tutterow last year sometime. If you follow the link to her blog you'll see that she is one crazy talented artist. She designs for Basic Grey (yes....BG the lucky duck) and Pink Paislee. My first business with Tammy was Heart in Hand Scraps. After a while Tammy asked me if I would be interested in contributing art to her new site, Fairy Davis. Fairy Davis is right up my alley as it features individual high res images to purchase for download for a minimal fee. Yes, you can get just ONE image instead of a whole collage sheet. And the price, well it's pretty dang reasonable and the image quality is awesome! This is going to be a very popular place!! This is what Tammy has to say about Fairy Davis:

Fairy Davis (born 1908) was a lovely young woman who lived in the West Frankfort area in southern Illinois. I met Fairy through the pages of her photo albums which I found in a flea market in Springfield, Mo several years ago. I fell in love instantly with the captured moments of her life and that of her family and friends.

In the years that I have owned Fairy's albums I have looked through the pages many times wondering about her life. Though I have found out a little about her through internet genealogy searches, much of her life is a mystery to me.

At FairyDavis and Friends we not only love vintage paper goods and photos, we celebrate them. We find delight and inspiration in them. The items you find in our boutique are high resolution digital copies of images from our own personal collections. Every item is truly a unique treasure that you won't likely find elsewhere.

Fairy's albums and photos have been a true treasure to me and a prized part of my personal vintage photo collection. It is with love for her memory that I offer her photos as well those of others to other papercraft artists so that her beauty may live on through other's art.

I hope you will visit Fairy and download her and her family and friends to use in your vintage art inspired projects! Stay tuned for some some images and projects from me in the near future. AND - the details for the give away of one copy of Art from the Heart will be posted either later today or tomorrow. I PROMISE!

Home from Colonial Williamsburg

and what a great week we had. The weather was bad the first couple of days and then things turned beautiful and hot, which is a great contrast to the weather here right now! Cold and damp. We had a long train ride through the night on the way down to VA, little V. kept sliding out of his reclining seat and I'd wake up and get him situated. We also mistakenly chose seats near the front of the car, so all the trips to the bathroom from the other passengers kept us awake. Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful couple of traveling days. We went to Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown Victory Center and the Jamestown Settlement. Wow. How amazing. I can't imagine living in those times of hardship - we have everything we need and then some.... The only bummer was coming home....to find out that our banking information has been compromised and we've got a huge mess to figure out. Thankfully our bank suspected fraudulent activity and cut off the accounts before things got really bad. Though, there is still several thousand dollars worth of charges and over draft fees that need to be sorted through. I hope we can get this figured out AND SOON. I need to order credit reports and make sure that no other personal information was compromised....oh gosh. This bites! Anyway, because of this banking business I haven't been able to wrap my brain around the give away of a copy of Art from the Heart, but I'll get to it and SOON - I promise! TTFN.....

I'll be back...

I've been pretty busy, and pretty un-inspired to blog or even do much of anything. Right now I am running around like a chicken with no head to finish up some projects before we go on vacation next week...but I'll be back to my regular blogging when we come back, around April 28th - ish..he he. Our house/dog sitter comes on Saturday and we're leaving on Sunday...and we are all looking forward to some good, quality time away from here. Little V has asked me a million times how long until Sunday....it's almost here dude, almost here!

When I come back I'll also be giving away another copy of Art from the Heart....I think it will be to celebrate my 250th post...so keep checking back - but not until after next week if you would like to get yourself one!

Congratulations....

The Winner of the Friendship postcard is:

Happiness, is the word!

Ewa-Christine

Christine, reply to this thread with your email address and I'll get in touch with to get your address so I can send out your lovely postcard across the ocean to you over there in Sweden! THANKS for visiting.

I've been buried under my big assignment, you know -the one that I was trimming 175 photos for, so no Golden State challenge for me today. Plus I made eggplant vegetarian lasagna (yummm!!) with tomato salad. It was a great dinner! Anyway, since I didn't take any pictures of the lasagna, I thought I'd leave you with these lovely pictures of the Little Valentine eating smoked eel sushi. YUCK>I think I'll stick to my california rolls and the adventurous fried sweet potato roll.

The Golden State of Friendship

The Golden State of Friendship, originally uploaded by CatherineScanlon.

Just a quick post to share this little postcard I made this morning. Continuing with my Golden State challenge...everyone needs the blessing and comfort that a good friendship offers!

I've decided to send this little postcard to the 10th person to post on this thread..I'm doing some delurking today!!

Well, I need to get my buttocks in gear!! Have a great day and a great weekend. It's pajama day in the Scanlon house!

The Golden State of Love...but not with Wal-Mart

The Golden State of Love, originally uploaded by CatherineScanlon.

I spent a good portion of my day working on prepping 175 x 3 wallet sized photos (yes that's 525 photos) that I had printed at Wallie World. When I say prepping I mean trimming to the size that will fit on the mats that were cut by Prism.

Let me say that BEFORE I ORDERED my photographs - and before I filled out the spreadsheat to order my my pre-cut mats that came from Prism I called WALLIE WORLD to find out exactly what size the wallet sized photos would be. THAT'S BEFORE I STARTED DESIGNING, AND ORDERING.

The answer to my question what size are your wallet photographs - that the fine Danielle at the Brunswick Wal-Mart told me was 2 1/2 x 3 1/4. I designed my whole project AROUND WHAT this DANIELLE TOLD ME, because I thought that she had actually measured the wallet sized photo so she knew she was giving me accurate information. I told her how important it was that this be the correct measurement. She said she understood and this WAS THE EXACT measurement.

In the event that you have to order 175 of 3 styles of wallet sized photos to fit a particular size of pre-cut mat, make sure that you don't order from your local Wal-Mart - and spend nearly $200.00 on said images - to save yourself some work. Because. well. To be honest = WAL-MART SUCKS. I spent all damn day trimming these freakin' images to fit the mats because some idiot at Wal-Mart couldn't be bothered to measure the damn size of the wallet sized photo. It would n't have bothered me so much if I it was my mistake! Also, the 4 x 6 photographs are NOT 4 x 6. I asked her that too...and I had to cut 175 of those down to fit on the mat that was cut for that too!

Anyway, because I was so sick of trimming my photos I took a break in the afternoon and made this little gem - trying to stick to my Golden State challenge. My dearest friend Vic sent me the leaves and the Fancy Pants card...isn't she lovely??

TGIF people, TTFN!

Paper Making Escapade with Loretta

Tuesday I went to Loretta's house to make paper. When I got there the kitchen was warm and steamy from all the wonderful things she had getting ready on the stove - though silly me thought she was making soup or something...LOL. We quickly got busy getting our ideas out for the sheets we wanted to make. The first image above shows the small screen that her wonderful husband made for her, I'm trying to make a collage IN the fibers using cut up bits of vintage book paper and blue easter basket filling stuff. I thought that pouring some of the white pulp on top of my collage would help secure the confetti bits to my paper - and I was right... The second shot shows the sheet before it is taken of the screen and couched with paper towels. The third image is just a plain white sheet with the vintage book paper confetti, I love the way this looks. The last image is Loretta pulling her sheet - she put crumbled bits of Chinese lantern, some onion skin and something else orange but I can't remember. I love the way that one turned out. My next challenge is to use that paper - and BTW - using that paper will qualify for my Golden State Challenge because I used pages from the book for my confetti...he he he. BTW - it's almost 53 degrees today and my river has melted so much that I think there should be a complete "ice out" state by the middle of next week. YAhoo - but not a yahoo for tomorrows weather because snow and mixed precip is forcasted. Come on people, it's almost April 4th!! :-)

the GOLDEN State, Journal Revolution Challenge

the GOLDEN State, originally uploaded by CatherineScanlon.

I've been enjoying reading the Journal Revolution blog lately, that Linda Woods is hysterical - if you haven't visited, you must. Yesterday she posted a challenge for the members of Tally Scrapper to do a journal page and include a picture of yourself.

I'm not a member of Tally Scrapper and don't feel like joining another community and feeling my way around. so I just played along and posted it here and at 2PS, I was happy to see that I actually got some comments for a change over there too, that was a pleasant surprise because I usually don't get much for comments. Anyway, this page was a continuation of my Golden State challenge that I came up with for myself, only it's a scrapbook page and not an ATC...but I used something from the book....so in my eyes it still qualifies as meeting my rather LOOSE requirements! LOL.

anywhoo, this did take all of a half an hour. No laboring over elements and placement and straightness, and visual triangles and journaling or exact mat sizes and catalog numbers and writing instructions and signing photo releases. Just me, some paint, some scissors, some good vintage stuff and putting it all together to make this. {I DID NOT USE MY PAPER TRIMMER TO MAKE THIS PAGE, and it felt great!!}

I don't have any more of those airplanes and I'm bummed! Isn't that Daisy D's patterned paper just the best? TTFN....I'll post some pictures of my paper making escapade with Loretta tomorrow!

My River on All Fools Day

My River, originally uploaded by CatherineScanlon.

This was my river yesterday afternoon!! ICK!!

The Golden State "True Love" ATC

The Golden State "True Love" ATC, originally uploaded by CatherineScanlon.

I whipped up these little gems this afternoon, after I got home from making paper at Loretta's house...but more on that later.

I have this little book about California - of course the title is "The Golden State" but there are other types of golden states, don't you think?? Like the Golden State of being a child learning to ride a bike, spreading their wings and growing up. Or the Golden State of being in love - whether it's with a person, pet or place, love is love and it makes you feel good, right? Or the Golden State of being at one with yourself....this is just the beginning of my ATC series of the Golden State. It's my creative prompt - my 10 minute art exercise that I want to do every day...WANT to do and ACTUALLY doing is another thing, but it's my goal!

I would like to give credit to where I got these images from, but in all honesty I can't remember. Art Zine maybe, I've had them forever - and can't remember.

I know it's been a long time since I blogged - or at least it feels like it's been a long time. To be honest, the weather is getting me down. The constant snow (yes more yesterday though no accumulation) is driving me bonkers. Totally crazy. I find myself wandering around my house - GRAZING in the kitchen all day. Bored. Sick of the weather. All in due time I suppose, all in due time.

Yesterday there was NO School due to a Teacher's Workshop, so I took the little Valentine to Borders...just want to recommend the new Somerset Studio...lots of good things in there this time - LOVE IT. I had to choose though, because I wanted to pick up Somerset Life (Rebecca Sower's article is awesome, btw) but I had to make a choice and Studio was the I can't live without choice this month. Maybe next time!!

So, la te da, it's April 1. All Fool's Day. Are you a fool? I do believe I am a fool for art....TTFN.

PS: I just listed those two ATC's in my Etsy shoppe!! I'm hoping they don't last long!