Monday thoughts

Hello 2019,

Let's see where do I start.  December was a busy month.  I had a open house the first weekend of December.  It went well and I had fun putting it all together.  Lots of work but well worth the time.  The night of the show I was putting things away and moving patio furniture.  I made the mistake of not using my legs to lift a couch and pulled my back out!  A trip to urgent care with the rest of the week resting.  I have never had a back problem other than some minor soreness that a good nights sleep heals me right up.  Not this time.   But, once it healed it was amazing how the pain just goes away.   Then it was time for  the holidays!  Christmas was quite around my house.  Traditional tamale making on Christmas Eve.  New Year's was fun, we had a visit from a college friend.  On January  3rd we headed out to sight see and have breakfast.  It had been cold overnight in the Phoenix area and we had some freezing.  As I walked from the parking lot to the restaurant I stepped on some ice and fell right on my back!   Wow!  I'll tell ya, that hurt a lot!  I could hardly move.  We had breakfast but to be honest I could hardly concentrate on eating because my back was killing me.  My friend noticed a used bookstore he wanted to go into, so I stayed in the car and turned on my seat warmer!  Yep, my car has seat warmers!   I decided to video call my sister to cry on her shoulder....she answers and before I can say a word she tells me she is in the ER with my mom and that it was very serious.  OMG!  She wasn't able to talk and I then sat in my car stunned.  As the day went on my back got worse and back to a muscle relaxers, heat and ice and to bed.  I later found out my mom suffered a heart attack and needed surgery.  Fast forward a week...I'm heading to Nebraska to help with my mom.  The weird thing was the 18 hour drive in a car saved my back pain.  I was completely pain free by the time I got to Nebraska.  I think I needed to sit and do nothing in order for my back to heal.  I stayed in Nebraska for over three weeks and have just returned to warmer Arizona.  Yep, the deep freeze weather hit my hometown.  I haven't been in that kind of freezing ice cold weather in a long long time.  Good thing I had seat warmers in my car, lol.  While in Nebraska there a lot of time spent on rearranging, reorganizing, educating ourselves on my mom's needs.  My mom's recovery was amazing. She is a fighter and boy did she show us what determination was.  It was nice seeing her do so well and leaving her was not as bad as I thought it would be.  She is in good hands with my family.  I was reminded ... rest is important, self care is important, saying NO is good, prayer is powerful, family is important, having fun and smiling heals, love, love and more love is good.  Here's to 2019!

Me and my Mom, Kay

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.  

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.

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.

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?

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!!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

Art journal

Art journal pages in progress....  

Art Journal

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