Buttons and Bows

The  group I am with ARTHavenCreations_Friendships has several swaps every month.  Another one that I signed up to participate in is Button Fairies.   It is such a simple project.  You take a picture of anybody – it can be family, friend or unknown.   Make some wings however you wish, place your picture on the wings and attach some buttons or other little embellishments.  Attached is my interpretation of my button fairy --

Hope you enjoy my button fairy.  Thank you for stopping by. 

Weekend of Fun

I had a lot of time this weekend to work on a few items.  The group I belong to ARTHaven has several swaps for the month of June that I signed up to participate in.  The first is a Tag – of any size, but must be in green and embellished with green.   Below is a picture of my entry. 

The next swap was the June Lottery.  Our task was to create anything of our liking, but the theme must be of Nature.   I had a lot of ideas, a ton of pictures that I could use but just couldn’t figure out how until I started rummaging through my boxes of treasures!  I had bid on a box of boxes on eBay a couple of years ago.  A huge box came filled with all kinds of tins, containers and one little wooden box.  I looked at that and new exactly what I was going to do.  It took some cleaning up, I sanded it down, took the hinges off to clean them up and painted it a deep green.   I then covered it with gold butterflies and sealed with Mod Podge.  It still has several coats of Mod Podge to go, you paint, sand, paint and sand and eventually end with a shiny, glassy surface.  Below is a picture of my entry in the June Lottery. 

I ended my weekend working on a couple more tags.  These have quickly become a favorite of mine to do – there are so many variations!  

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Would love to hear from you.  Until the next time!

Sunday’s Best

Awoke this morning to bright sunshine, blue skies and warm temps.  Predictions for a chance of rain again, but as par for the course, they’ve passed right by.  We are under a tornado warning until 10:00pm.  I’m not a happy camper when bad weather!

Today I worked on catching up on e-mails, selecting papers to be used for the Green Tag Swap, the Mariposa Gift Tag and looking for fairies to use for the Button Fairy Swap.  I had a hard time narrowing my selection for the fairies they were all so cute!  I can see I’ll be making quite a few of those. 

I worked a bit on my Altered Book.  I painted another couple of pages, collaged a couple and impatiently waited for them to dry. 

O ne of the pages I painted yesterday I was going to try for some texture.  I had seen a project where they used clear caulking and you can mold it to whatever you want.  Alas, it didn’t work and I ended up with sticky pages.  So, I collaged over that!  

Fortunately you can do that, cover up or hide something that doesn’t quite work.   This is definitely a work in progress.  

I’ve also been making cards for OWH – this has become a really fun project.  I had a set of cards I bought years ago and I’m using those and then I’ll really dig into my stacks of supplies. 

Technorati Tags: Altered Book,OWH,texture

Please let me know you’ve stopped by.  Thanks. 

What a Journey!

Today dawned so sunny and such a blue sky. It is close to 90 degrees but so very humid and no breeze. For several days we've been under severe weather but it seems to pass all around us and all we get is a very little rain. Oh well - its just the beginnings of summer.

I worked on my AB this afternoon for a little bit. I started gathering my collage papers and tearing the edges. I like the natural look. I've decided my book will be about several periods of my life. The first part will be a little jaunt through the states when my grandparents took my cousin and I out west for the summer of 1963. When in high school, I dreamed of visiting those romantic places in Europe, Austria, Switzerland, Germany. So I figured the only way I would be able to see Europe was on Uncle Sam's dime - so I joined the Air Force. From 1974 through 1984 I spent those years in Europe. Unfortunately, many of those pictures were lost in albums that were made before archival safe products were available and my photos did disintegrate! The pictures may have faded, but so far my memory is intact! The last part are the travels my husband and I are doing in our RV upon our retirement. This may end up in another volume but for now, enjoy the beginnings of my Altered Book - the start! As always, please let me know you've been here.

End of Week

It was the perfect ending of a busy week. I couldn't have asked for a better time. I was able to work on my AB (Altered Book) and get a few pages prepared. The attached photos show the difference in paints used: the blue pages I used a gel medium matte with a beautiful blue acrylic paint. I absolutely love the color. I also used the gel medium gloss and a yellow acrylic and came up with a beautiful glaze. I then used Adirondack Acrylic paint daubers, red and loved the even texture and last I first covered a page with gesso, partially dried it and then used a green pigment ink pad and wiped the page. Not sure if I like that coverage or not. But the object of this AB is to learn about more about art and myself, then it's all about learning.

I also worked on cards for Operation Write Home (OWH) and have a few prepared to send to Celeste. Celeste gathers all the cards and sends them from ARTHaven to the OWH address.

The last project I worked on today was a birthday card and journal for the daughter of a friend. The young lady is turning 10 (as she says double digits) and several of us decided to send her cards. I'm also sending a little journal. I took pictures, but can't find them-actually I see them in the camera but can't get them to upload to the album!

That's about it for today. Thanks for looking. Please leave a comment.

The Start of My AB Journey

The wonderful group ARTHavenCreations_Friendships that I belong has a project this month called the Altered Book Journey. Those that want to follow along and do an altered book will have the guidance of Diann Scholl and Eileen Bellomo. Diann and Eileen will show us techniques to use and how to do them. We can work at our own pace, do as much or as little as we want.

This has been something I've been very interested in doing. I've collected all kinds of "stuff" over the years from ticket stubs, and old photos to Green Savings stamps! So what I'm going to do is show you my progress as the project moves along. I'll post a picture or two of what I'm doing. I hope you enjoy the process and project as much as I'm going to. Attached are the first of two photos, my book after I've ripped out a large chunk of pages, and a picture of the pages and my next job - to prime my pages with gesso.