Monday, December 10, 2018

Holiday show!


It was a nice day so having the show out on the patio worked out perfectly.  I had enough merchandise to fit both tables.  Overall the show went well and it was so much fun seeing friends.  I'm so grateful for their support of my art!  The only new jewelry was earrings made from recycle metals and loose beads.  



Wooden bead garland.

Vintage music pages used to make these cool trees.  The bases are  disc cut from our trees.

Recycle medicine bottle with a hand punched  metal disc.

Ornaments fun to make!


Fabric tree in all kinds of fabrics!

Love these pillows.  They were popular and all sold.  Making a few extras this week  on order.

Recycled frames with holiday greeting words.

Chalk art

Some of my handmade cards.  Not really a holiday item, but what the heck.

Vintage book pages with a printed "Merry Christmas" as a garland.

These turned out to be the best idea.  

Sunday, December 9, 2018

House prep before the show!

The Open House went well.  I didn't realize how much stuff I had to sell.  A couple of friends helped decorate the house to get ready for the show.

Used greenery with couple glass jars.  Wooden trees I cut out last year.  I also decorated a  soy bean screen with a glitter reindeer  and a fabric tag.  Added my wooden bead garland, a evergreen garland and finally my vintage book page garland.

Using my metal tub for the tree was perfect.  My friend decorated the tree with what I supplied him with.  It's beautiful!  I made a burlap fabric star tree topper.   The metal was a bed spring and the fabric was an old coffee bag.  It came together so well!

Loved the tin filled with gold ornaments and a vintage postcard.


Saturday, November 10, 2018

Holiday Open House!

It's been awhile since I've had a craft show.  This year I thought "why not", so here we go.  I have a number of stuff I've made these past few holiday seasons and have them stored away.  Time to clear out the bins.  I'm excited to get the house all dressed up for the season and share it with friends.  I'm working on earrings, holiday diorama boxes, holiday garlands, signs, snowmen, etc.  I'll post photos once I get stuff out of storage.


Friday, August 31, 2018

A tribute to my friend.

A friend, Linda, I hadn't seen in awhile, passed away not too long ago.  She was beautiful, fierce, strong, loving and always smiling.  She loves her animals.  I'm in shock and it's gonna take a bit to let this sink in.  When I first met her I fell in love with her spirit.  She always made me feel good..."Hey beautiful woman" was her greeting.   My fur babies, Mookie, Colby dog and my crazy Maximus will be happy to see you!

Linda Rampersaud, Rest in Peace my dear love.

Busy in Life...

I've  been busy with life these past six months.  Traveling, traveling and more traveling.  In between the travel I've been socializing and having studio time.   I would like to show you where I've been and I promise to post once I return from my next trip.  I have tons of photos and so many cool places I've visited including interesting shops I've stepped into.  On my travels I've been adding to my junk journal stash.  Too many things so many things I'm planning on sharing the goodies some how.  I've been working on holiday theme crafts and projects.  I've taken some fun on-line classes which have opened up my creative soul.  I've been working on my handwriting skills by taking a few on-line classes from pretty talented women.  I love using all my pens!  Don't be too surprised to get a letter from me in the near future because it's a good way to practice.  I wish letter writing could become the new big thing!  I realized how I haven't made the time to fit in blog time.  "Outa sight, outa mind" kinda thing or a Jobi time thing?

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

New projects

I took an online class called Dainty Dioramas offered on the Jeanne Oliver website.  Here's my first dainty diorama box.  It's not as easy as it looks.  It's using shrink film.  I'm loving the process and especially loving the look.   It has opened up the creative brain as to all the ways I can use shrink film!  The other awesome idea is using old photos.  Recently, I've come across old photographs of family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc that family has posted on Facebook.  There's something about using faces that look like me.  I'm loving the idea of holiday themed dioramas using the shrink film technique.  I'll post more boxes as I get them finished!  Thanks for checking in on my blog, I really appreciate your support!!


Friday, June 8, 2018

What I've been up to...

These past few months I've been learning new stuff.  I took an on line class learning about shrink art projects.  I love it and I love the possibilities of what can be done with shrink art sheets.   I plan to use the method on this year's christmas card.  I'll post photos when I get the project done.   I made a commitment to work on my lettering skills this year.  I practice daily and boy I'm learning daily.  As I was watching YouTube videos about lettering I came across a foiling DIY video and it caught my interest.  Way cool process to use this method on my cards and junk journals. There's this app called Procreate for iPad Pro.  It's very much like Photoshop.  It's a great way to practice my lettering.  I can make all kinds of things using all kinds of stuff in my studio and office.  Geez, I'm overflowing with creative ideas for my junk journals, greeting cards, and all paper crafts.  I have to admit I've not been getting lots of sleep lately....just can't seem to stop creating and learning new things.  I'll post on each creative process in individual posts on the blog here soon.  Stay tune!

Thursday, April 19, 2018

My thrift store finds!

I decided to go thrift store hunting.  I went to the local senior community town.  They have four or five thrifts stores right next to each other.  I probably spend $12 total for all this stuff!  It was 50% off day at all of the shops!  I'm going to sort through all of it and make swap packs.   I don't need it all.  I got ledger paper, old sewing patterns, books, music books, fax paper, fasteners, tabs, reinforcement circles, stencils, and two vintage fabric pieces.  One of the artist of junk journals uses clip art of her vintage linens, which are so cool.  I plan to fax most of the stuff to have digital images to print if needed.    It was a fun day.  I even found a monopoly game for $1  All the pieces are there.  I honestly hate to play Monopoly so I'm going to break it up to use in my junk journals.






Sunday, April 15, 2018

Pendants

Geez I can't seem to get motivated to work on my pendants!  I'm having a block!   How do you get motivated and inspired?  I'm gonna step out of the studio and go explore with eyes wide open!

Junk Journal Ephemera

I found a post on Craigslist for a garage sale advertising they had ephemera!  I headed over and boy did he have ephemera, tons of stuff!  I didn't even know where to start.  I checked out his books, he really didn't have a lot of books but he wanted $1 each, I was kinda surprised but they were nice books.  He had magazines, records, electronics, newspapers, and lots of vintage papers.  Everything I picked  out he mention how rare or expensive it was...ugh.  So I went to a smaller box of various papers and started to sort through them.  Omg!  so cool.  I showed his this railroad receipt book, he said all the railroad stuff is expensive!  So I'm thinking my $20 isn't gonna go far as his prices!  He didn't have anything marked and I don't like to barter at garage sales.  Because most of the time things are priced cheap to get rid of.  i got a small pile of stuff and five books for $10 and I said "cool" and then he said I should of said $15 knowing you aren't gonna barter!  My impression is he was not having a garage sale to empty out his garage but to kill some time and see what he could make.  He did tell me he was a dealer.  The other thing he told me was his wife makes junk journals with all this cool stuff.



A page from my journal I use in my travel journal.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Pendant making


It's about time I got back into jewelry creating!  I have all these design ideas in my head and I've been sitting here sketching them out.  So now I'm done with the pendants...round and heart shapes!  I will be adding beads and chain to them!   I'm working on the actual design of each piece and then will set with resin.  I'll keep you updated!






Monday, March 5, 2018

Art Journal Mondays

Today I begin an art journal journey with my young friend, Reagan.  


She is a academically gifted smart young lady with an artistic side.  She loves to read and has been reading since she was probably three years old!   We began with a kid's book, of course and she was assigned to gesso the pages.  The plan is to paint, paint, paint the whole time she is in the studio.  The goal is let her be free to express her creative style.


Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Art Journal





I didn't know what paints I had so this was a way to remind me of what I have.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Homemade Gesso

I made gesso when I worked on my holiday snowman.  It worked great.  I decided to use my vintage journal as my art journal.  It's best to paint with gesso.  I was out of gesso and decided to make my own.


I used equal parts white glue and drywall compound and added white paint.  It seem thick but translucent.  It was gritty and not as smooth as I wanted.




Today I did some research on gesso recipes and found a different one. 

One part plaster of paris (1/2 cup)
One part white glue.  (1/2 cup)

Two parts white paint.  (1 cup)

The recipe.  It needs to be stored in an air tight container.

Not a very good photo of the gesso painted page.  It went on smoother and less grainy.  I think next batch I make i will mix a little water in with the plaster of paris to get the powder wet.  I noticed the powder left grains but once I painted it over and it smooth out in a nice coverage.  I liked this gesso recipe for painting.  It wasn't as translucent as the other recipe and it wasn't as thick.  I'll have to see how it is to paint on.

Art Journals


I had signed up for an art journal online class a month or so ago.  Yesterday I finally sat down and began the class.  I loved it!  I was reminded why I love mix medial art and art journals.  It's a way to use up all those cool pieces of paper and different paint mediums.  I didn't want to use a "journal book" so I dug through my vintage ledgers and found the perfect one.  Not a lot of pages and no writing in it.  I think who ever found it before me ripped out the ledger pages that were used.  I can't blame them since the handwriting was probably awesome.  

In my class she recommends painting the pages with white gesso to give all the paints and papers a good base to adhere to.  I didn't have any gesso so I made some.  

Painting gesso on the pages.

In the class she used various papers and images to glue on to the pages after the gesso layer.  I didn't have any gel medium either! I'm not a fan of mod podge, which I could of use. So on her next video she used oil pastels and pencils.  Here's my page and once I get some gel medium I'll add images.  Once process she used was taking tracing paper and tracing a sketch of the image and gluing it to the page to use as the basis of the painting.  Real cool method.   I have an idea to use a photo of my mom and her friends when she was young  with the tracing paper.  Another idea she gave was to use a color pallet you don't use too often.  I'm drawn to blues so I may challenge myself to oranges and pinks.


This is the pages so far.  I can't wait to add my images and papers!

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Valentine's Day wishes

Normally I make Valentine treats for my little friends.  I have no idea where the time went and I have not made one Valentine theme craft, cookies, etc. and tomorrow is Valentine's Day!  Here's some Valentine stuff I like and will make another time.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL OF  YOU!





Monday, January 15, 2018

Welcome to 2018!

Saying goodbye to 2017 is hard since it brought so much to my life.

January began in Lucca, Italy!  Visited Rome and Pisa, too.  The Woman's March, which gave me hope.
February we learned Maximus had cancer and needed surgery.  It also sent us to Nebraska for the farm sale!  On the way to Nebraska with my friend, Alice we got my grand niece Anaya to travel with us.  Also got to  my first Nebraska men's basketball game!
March got back from Nebraska with a UHaul full of treasures.  Tom celebrated 30 years on his job. Traveled to Las Vegas with a good friend.
April, Gabi turned 21, wow.  Spend all my time planning my next trips.
May was the longest road trip, 7000 miles!  Started out with Jason, my brother from Arizona to Nebraska...my sister, Melinda from Nebraska to Lincoln, Omaha, Kansas City, St Louis, Memphis, Nashville, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Richmond, Detroit, Omaha, Yankton, SD, Lincoln, North Platte, dropped off my sister and headed home.  Tom joined my thought the trip.  May also gave me the greatest gift, we met my nephew, Antwein for the first time in 25 years!  What joy that was for my soul.  Also a visit with my good for my soul friend, Cathy was the best.  Can't forget Joni time, sister time with all my sisters and my Mom and Dad time!  Blue boy was a big part of our trip...antique shops all along the way.  
June we drove my camper home!  I'm in love!
July both sad and exciting.  I had to say bye to my Maximus!  I have tears just thinking about him.  I miss him daily.  July also brought a trip of a lifetime...river rafting trip down the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon with good friends!
August was the lunar eclipse in Idaho!  Frida exhibit at the Heard Museum.
September we got a visit from my nephew Zachariah!  Another highlight...U2 Joshua Tour concert!!!
October sent us to Nebraska to spend precious time with my father-in-law, Irvin Arens before he passed at the age of 91.   Visited with so much family.  Highlight time with my nephew Tommy.  Then there was time with Patrick, Nate, Amelia, Dana, Brenda and meeting her son, Clay!  Just to name a few.
November was a quiet and reflecting time.  I really needed the down time.
December brought birthday fun and my love for the holidays and fun projects.

I need to take some time here soon to write down my thoughts about this past year and the life changing events.  I would have to say the Colorado River trip was the most impactful experience.  I took so much away from that experience.  FAITH OVER FEAR was so true and you CAN do anything!  The loss of my dog Maximus turned out to be harder than I thought.  I am blessed.

Bring on 2018!