Sneak Peak for World Card Making Day

Click on the picture to go to the Stamp n' Scrap blog.

Just a QUICK post to share this card....I'm so tired I can't type. this is one of the 6 cards I made as an example for my Demo Table on Saturday at Stamp n' Scrap in Gardiner. Three feature hand stitching and 3 feature machine sewing. All papers use Graphic 45 papers (aren't they gorgeous) and some have vintage papers too.

So, if you're coming out on Saturday, I'll be starting at 11 - and just as a little treat - I made up 2 card kits to give away along with some give aways that the ower is giving. It's going to be a fun filled day.

I'm headed off to bed, staying up past midnight last night nearly wiped me out. thanks for stopping by!

Projects from the Weekend

I almost forgot to post these projects from the weekend....I've been so busy with my classes for MCC and some Sewing on Paper cards I've been working on for a demo this weekend at Stamp-n-Scrap in Gardiner. I'll share them, but not until they're finished - like maybe tomorrow or Thursday.

Anyway, Friday night when we first got to the College Discovery Workshop with Claudine we worked on a pretty cool project. It was a fun color exercise using her new paint line, and it was a little a round robin for our table. We each chose two colors to work with, they could be mixed colors or not, and made one tag. Then we passed the tag on to another person at the table and they made a tag using your colors. And on until each person in your pod had made a tag for you. It was a lot of fun, and really broke the ice if everyone in your group was a complete stranger.

Here's my set:

On Saturday we worked on a ripped paper technique - which you can't see underneath the center canvas, but it's there. The little canvas on the left shows what the ripped paper technique looks like without anything added on top of it. The tag with my dog on it is a gel medium transfer - I think it came out perfect!

The three pieces below didn't get any further than this, I hope to do some cool collages on them for my hall. Not sure what will go on them - until I do they'll remain this way. I love the way they look just like this.

Not everyone made ATC's to trade, but for those that did - they totally rocked! I love the ones I got, THANKS everyone!

The ATC below with Claudine peaking out is actually an interactive one - she's on a wire and moves up and down with the bead hanging down underneath. SUPER cute!

Well, that's all I've got to share right now. Hope to get pictures of my cards for this weekend finished and photographed tomorrow to share. THANKS for stopping by!!

A Great Weekend was had by All!

Me, Hannah, Leslie and Claudine at the studio window

Catherine Bickford, owner of Artascope and Claudine Helmuth

Caryn

With our new kindred spirit Shoshanna.

The College Discovery Workshop was great, I FINALLY mastered a gel medium transfer thanks to Claudine. The trick really, is patience. And dry gel medium. And Claudine's gel medium. I need to get another tub - went through almost 4 ounces in 2 days. yeah, we were busy!

With the exception of one thing, I wouldn't change a bit about the weekend. We enjoyed the company of our new friend Shoshanna who sat at our little table pod - and met some really lovely women from other rooms. Caryn is a lovely mixed media artist from Dover, NH who was very lovely to talk with. I also enjoyed chatting with Sarah and many others.

The ladies at Artoscope looked after every detail that could be looked after - fresh home made food for lunch both days, baked goods, delicious wine Friday and Saturday evenings, plus tea and coffee and snacks out all day yesterday and today. Every person that worked at the studio was lovely to chat with, and you could tell they really enjoyed being there. It was just a lovely atmosphere to be in. It encouraged our creativity - as did Claudine. of all the classes and workshops that I've ever taken - this was BY far the absolute BEST. If you ever have a chance to take a woekshop at Artoscope or from Claudine - I highly recommend it - you won't be disappointed!

Thanks for stopping by, I'll share some pictures of things I worked on tomorrow, have got a million other things to do right now!

Artascope Here I come!

I made 25 ATC's yesterday to swap at my workshop this weekend. I'm really looking forward to this, and hoping we learn some image transfer techniques!

I had fun with these ATC's...they weren't really that hard - here's how I made them. First, I scanned in a little Bingo card from a set that I have and changed the words on the top to say Artascope, added the details of the weekend at the bottom and printed 25 of them out.

Then I took a photo of myself and added a filter to it in Photoshop Elements so it looks like a photocopy and printed 25 of them out.

Then I made a dress from an old book page. To make it easier to color the dresses, I swabbed the entire page with red ink and then cut out the dress and glued it over the top of the photo. Then I cut them both out and scalloped the edge of the dress with scalloped scissors. Before I glued me and my new red dress to the bingo card I used some punchinella and blue ink to add a little blue background texture to the card.

A quick stitch around the dress and the border, add the details to the back of the card and I'm almost done! Hot glue a bingo piece to the side of my dress - and about 3 hours later I'm done with 25 custom made Artist Trading Cards to swap with the other people attending the workshop.

I'll be posting pictures as I can over the weekend.....thanks for stopping by!

Funky Funkin' Punkin!!

When you work in the craft industry (as well as fashion and I'm sure others) you have to think MONTHS ahead of time. Sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around a Halloween project when there's 2 feet of snow on the ground - but after a while you learn to work with it and then when Halloween comes around you're all dried up in the creative department, LOL.

Take this little project I did that's featured in a little flyer at my local JoAnn's Craft Store - (and I'm sure yours too). I'm not the only one with a funkin, there are lots of creative funkin' punkin's in the flyer.

JoAnn's calls it a gorgeous gourd. I call it funky.

You can see from the snow in the background that there was still a LOT of snow on the ground, so I'm guessing I worked on this sometime last February/March time. If I remember right, it was a challenge to think fall in the midst of all that cold snow.

You can download the instructions for this "Gorgeous Gourd" and all the others featured in the flyer from JoAnn's.com.

Thanks for stopping by, I'm thinking about doing a give-away soon, so check back and let me know you're still around!

Featured FaceBook FRIEND

I recently saw a post on Altered Arts FaceBook that they were looking for unpublished ATC's, so I contacted Cyndi and sent her a bunch of ATC's to choose from. Since they all had been published in galleries or other places that I am in she couldn't publish them. Last weekend I made a couple fresh batches for her to publish. This is the Halloween batch she put in the Altered Arts e-mag - Issue 18. It's free with any 9.99 purchase from Altered Arts, or just $2.99. I'm not sure where she's going to put the other batch, but they were really fun to make.

Anyway, this is a nice little e-zine. My pal Vicki Chrisman is in there with a cute little book she made. Definetly worth the $2.99 if you purchase it - and a sweet little gift if you purchase something from the store! Thanks for stopping by!

priceless.....

My boy celebrated his 10th birthday on Saturday with a couple of his good friends - his birthday wasn't on that day, it's actually this Thursday. Since I'm going to a Claudine Helmuth workshop this weekend we wanted him to have a party with his friends on Saturday since we can't do it this coming weekend. (I'm really looking forward to my workshop this weekend with two of my good friends - Hannah and Leslie.) It was a pretty low-key evening, Friendly's for dinner (yuck) and then a movie. I fell asleep after about 45 minutes of it, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but they all liked it and that is all that mattered. My husband liked it too!

You can see from the picture above that my boy is looking at the one and only gift we gave him with a look of awe. Yes, I can say that I think this is the best birthday present he's ever gotten. He has said thank you to us MANY times since he opened the box - and has mentioned how happy he is to have it. I'll also say that he downloaded an App for it from the Apple Store - called Boggle. OMG, I am addicted to it. I love it. Can't stop playing it. Want one of my own. Want one. Love it. Boggle rocks!!

In other news, check out this way cool mystery contest over at Spotted Canary. If you're the first one to solve the mystery you'll win 500.00 worth of EK Success Brands products (Inkadinkado, K & Co., EK Success, Dimensions, Wilton, Martha Stewart, phew) imagine all the cool new tools, stamps and papers you could add to your collection!! Here's a little bit of info from the Spotted Canary Website:

The CAT Who Caught the Canary Mystery Contest Help us find our feathered friend! Our devoted Creative Artist Team (CAT) designers love Spotted Canary so much that they created six amazing projects featuring our beloved canary. Unfortunately, one rogue CAT designer got so carried away that she kidnapped the Spotted Canary!

How to Participate:

1. JOIN the Spotted Canary community 2. FOLLOW the CAT Who Caught the Canary Mystery Contest forum 3. FIND weekly clues, hidden somewhere on Spotted Canary 4. UNCOVER the kidnapper, the project she created and the tool she used

Good LUCK!!

I hope to see you over there!! In more crafty news, I'll be doing a couple of demos at Scrap-n-Stamp for World Cardmaking Day on October 3rd. There are quite a few other artists doing demos there that day, so if you are in the area stop by and say hello....it just may be your lucky day - looks like they are giving lots of goodies away that day.

In still more crafty news, sign up for both of my classes over at My Creative Classroom and save $10.00 on your registration fees, that's $5.00 off each class. Hope you are enjoying the fall weather in your neck of the woods.

It's been a glorious fall here so far, I guess we've gotten some makeup time for the nasty summer we had here. THANKS for visiting!!

don't hate me because my tools are BEAUTIFUL

I've been holding off on buying good jewelry making tools because I was going to put them on my Christmas Wish list. Really, waiting until December 25th almost seems like agony if you have a sneak peak at what I've been working with, but there will be agony no more my friends.

Yesterday when I got home from running my child around here there and everywhere I discovered a lovely box full of goodies, samples and even a t-shirt from EK Success. I admit, I was anticipating the arrival of this box because I knew I had some things coming that I wanted to start playing with. You know that EK is an industry the leader in craft tools (I’m not sure it that’s a FACT, but in my world they are) and they also are a leader in making cool embellishments, right???

What do you think happens when you mix great tools with cool, sparkly embellishments?? You get snappy, blingy tools that rock! I’m serious, I love these new tools, and they are so purty, I don’t have to worry about my husband stealing, I mean borrowing these bad girls. I love ‘em. They totally rock. Wish I was goin’ someplace to show them off besides camping out at the coffee table so I can watch a movie and work at the same time. Don't you just love that little crystal each one?? And, there's a spot to hang a charm or something if I want to....or just my name so no one steals I mean borrows them from me.

Did I mention that I love ‘em??

Also, in between working on my class projects over at My Creative Classroom I worked on a little Thanksgiving project....a little glitter, a little stitching, some pretty papers and stamps...and voila, a pretty Thanksgiving deco, but not even a sneakie today, you'll see the completed projects soon enough on the Inkadinka do website.

Somerset Holidays & Celebrations

I was flipping through a magazine at the local Joann's today and remembered that I forgot to post that Somerset Holidays & Celebrations issue from Stampington hit the newsstands around the beginning of the month. I was really happy again (I'm always happy when it comes to Stampington) that they put me in the front of the magazine.

If you've never seen anything that this publishing company has put out, you are seriously missing out on a really classy, inspirational and creative group of publications. I love everything they put out, and each month each I see at Border's is amazing and creative.

I'd love to hear what is your favorite publication from Stampington! Hope you're having a great week.....I've got to get to bed, so thanks for visiting and have a wonderful WEDNESDAY!

My Creative Classroom - Giveaway Reminder

Just wanted to remind you all that I'll be giving one of these pieces of jewelry away to one lucky winner. All you need to do to qualify is take my Magic of Mixed Media class at My Creative Classroom. I decided today (as I was finishing up another creation for another lesson later on in the class) that I think I’ll let the winner decide which of the three they would like to have. I also think I’ll announce the winner at the end of the 4 weeks!!

I did manage to spend two evening over the weekend working on trading cards, now they just need some stitching to finish them up. Can't share them though, bummer. But you'll see them eventually!

I had a pretty productive day - even though I got up at 5:45 to do an early morning Yoga class on tv. When we lived in Washington and my boy was just little that was the only time I could fit one in during the day - and I just loved those early morning devotionals. it was refreshing and set the stage for a productive and awesome day. Today was one of those. Worked on stuff. Brain stormed stuff. made lists. thinking about doing it all over again tomorrow - though I should be in bed at the moment.

Hope to share a sneak peak with you tomorrow of the project I finished up today, thanks for visiting....

too busy to work on ATC's........

and that's all I want to do right now!! LOL, isn't that the way it always works out? I've got so much to do these days - and all I want to do is make a new batch of ATC's - for swaps and for something else ;-) but I've got to much going on right now with preparing my classes for My Creative Classroom. Thinking I might sneak in a few hours for ATC's tonight after the boy goes to bed. maybe I'll send him to bed the minute he gets home from school :-) just kidding.

I also thought I'd share this batch of 9 ATC's with you...they are from a long time ago, but still some of my favorites and I think these are the first ATC's I ever made!

Enjoy your weekend, gonna be pretty low key around here.

ETA: today most everyone old enough to remember what happened in 2001 has had a day full of thoughtful moments on 9/11/01. In my yoga class this morning we had several reflective thoughts of this day, it was very healing.

It was eight years ago today and I was in Maine and my husband was on an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. It was a long time (several weeks) before I was able to talk to him on the phone, or have any contact with him at all. He was not really in any danger, it was a very hard time to be apart. I'm so thankful he has retired from the military, and send thoughts and prayers to those that are still serving our country - THANK you from the bottom of my heart for your sacrifice for us.

I pray that that the children of this generation don't have anything this tragic happen to them in their lifetime!

A Letterboxing Story....

I mentioned that my friend Karen wanted to find a letterbox while we were on our trip to Ikea last week and I thought I'd share the pictures with you. But first, I wanted to share a little bit of information about the Letterboxing Craze in case you don't know anything about it.

I found this information about Letterboxing on the Letterboxing.info site:

Letterboxing is growing hobby that combines elements of hiking, treasure hunting and creative expression into an activity that the whole family can enjoy. Participants seek out hidden letterboxes by following clues that are posted on the Internet (see the Web sites listed below), and then record their discovery in their personal journal with the help of a rubber stamp that's part of the letterbox. In addition, letterboxers have their own personal stamps which they use to stamp into the letterbox's log book.

According to legend, letterboxing began in southwestern England in the mid-1800s when a Victorian gentleman hid his calling card in a bottle. Today, the nearby area is the Dartmoor National Park, and there are several thousand letterboxes hidden there! (As a result, Dartmoor is akin to the Holy Grail for American letterboxers.)

The hobby came to the U.S. in 1998, following the publication of an article in Smithsonian magazine about Dartmoor. Soon, a loose confederation of letterboxers began to plant boxes in the U.S., using the Internet to exchange information and clues. Letterboxing North America is host to a web site and discussion list where new clues are posted nearly daily! (See the letterboxing links for more details.)

Getting Started

Keep reading! There's plenty of information on this site and the sites linked from here.

Equip yourself: at the minimum, you'll need a journal, a rubber stamp, a stamp pad, and a pen or pencil. Part of the fun of letterboxing is to make your own stamp; it can be easily carved with an eraser and a X-acto knife. (If this sounds challenging, you may be surprised at how easy it really is.) If you'd rather, you can buy a ready-made stamp at a stationary or crafts store. You'll use your personal journal to record all the letterboxes you've found -- at last count, there were more than 10,000 boxes in the U.S. You may also need a compass for some clues. More on Getting Started.

Get a clue! Those 10,000 letterboxes were created and hidden by other letterboxers, and you can find the clues for boxes in your area on the Letterboxing North America Web site. I've hidden a few boxes in the Northeast and you're welcome to search for Silent Doug's letterboxes.

Create and hide your own letterboxes. Once you've been hooked, you'll start to think of parks near you that would be perfect for a letterbox. Then you can create a stamp and come up with the perfect clues to your letterbox's hiding place.

So, now that you know all about Letterboxing, here's Karen finding the hiding spot at Ikea:

Well, thanks for visiting...and don't forget to check out the classes at My Creative Classroom. My first class, which starts on October 4th is the Magic of Mixed Media Jewelry. I've been working on lesson 2 today.....and finally took a picture of myself wearing Lesson 1 :-)

Creativity has many forms....

Sometimes I don't have the time or am not in a place where I can create in the traditional way that I like to. Yesterday and today are the perfect example of that. Since I had my camera with me I chose to look through the lens with my creative eye to see what cool shots I could find.

My favorite one is the bright green fern floating on the water. My second favorite is the reflection of my boy in the water....the rocks in the stream are placed at his head. I also like the tiny bug wing that was floating on the water, it was really tiny, around a 1/2" or so - but with the macro lens turned on I was able to get it.

My favorite picture of the weekend is on my husband's camera. My Mom gave him a bendable little tripod for his camera last year for Christmas and I decided to attach it to my ballcap with my camera on it - and called it the Catherine cAm. It was funny, at least I thought it was funny.

Well, thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoy this long weekend!

GiVeAwAy of My Creative Classroom Lesson SAMPLE!

Since it's Friday, and I'm in a really good mood before our camping trip, I've decided to give one of the samples I made for my Mixed Media Jewelry class AWAY.

Now, this is not a regular BLOG give away, you'll have to do more than comment on this post. In order to qualify for the drawing you'll have to sign up and take my Mixed Media Jewelry class at My Creative Classroom. I'll hold the drawing AFTER the completion of the class (which starts October 4th) and anyone in the class is eligible. That's it, that's ALL you have to do. How easy is that??

I'm pretty sure that the piece I'm going to give away is the bracelet - the one that is shown in the top left of the first picture. It's very cool and wraps around your wrist TWICE.