I made this star tag for a gift for my husband. I love using crayons in my art.  

A collage gift tag I made last week when I was not at home ~ therefore I had limited art-resources to work with. Sometimes the challenge of creating something out of "not much" is a good one. 

My star "Love" 

Christmas is fast approaching

It seems like there aren't enough hours in the day at the moment as we try to get everything ready for Christmas. I haven't done much art lately ~ the arts are always the first to suffer, ya know. Here's one of the stars I've made lately. I'm actually keeping this one ~ it's on my tree.

Zach's yummy looking mail art 

Altered Art 101 ~ Class 2

In the 2nd class of Altered Art 101, we discussed mail art and everyone was given a chance to produce an altered postcard to mail to whomever they wanted to. My son who is in the class decided to create one for his dad. He figured that way, he'd be able to keep his first piece of mail art that way. You will see his chocolate collage in the above photo. If you look real close, you will see a beaver camouflaged among all the chocolate!

Hope to see lots of creative ATCs created in the upcoming Altered Art 101 classes I teach. 

Getting ready for classes

My foray into teaching altered art starts soon ~ November 6th. A couple days ago I went down to the library to decorate the main display case which was a lot of fun. Hopefully it'll spawn a lot of interest for Altered Art 101. I love what the library wrote as the age group for the sessions: 12-99 years. Wonder how many 99 year olds will attend ~ hehe. I want the 4 classes to be a real hands on experience for the people who take it. I don't want to give a bunch of instruction ~ I'd rather be a facilitator for their artist process. Wish me luck!

Some of our bottlecap creations 

What is GEMMS?

Saturday, September 10th, my friend Arlene and I plan to have a table at a local fall fair and sell some artsy bottlecap jewellery. We call our little venture General Eclectic Mixed Media Sistas ~ GEMMS for short. We pulled an all-nighter Friday and created a whole bunch of fun bottlecap stuff including necklaces, brooches, bracelettes, keychains, dog & cat tags and cellphone charms.

We're hoping that the event will be well attended since this is the first year that this nursery is holding this event. It'll be interesting to see if we are able to sell our goodies. Guess we'll keep any we don't sell for Christmas craft sales.

For a personal ATC swap 

Summer madness

Now that the summer's drawing to a close, I hope to get down to doing some more art here. Today I made a pointy hat for the Pointy Hat ART Posse, a local altered art group I'm in, and I've made a few odds and ends including the ATC pictured here and some bottlecap jewellery.

In November, I'm teaching Altered Art 101 at my local library. It's a class for ages 12-99. I wonder how many 99 year olds I'll have in the class. It will be a great experience I'm sure to do this. More about the class in following blogs.

Port Moody Submission 

ATC submission

So I've put together 9 ATCs to submit to a Port Moody (British Columbia) ATC exhibit. My stash of ATCs that I have of my own is dwindling down, but at least I will be getting these cards returned to me after the show. I'm pretty excited because this is the first time my ATCs are being exhibited.I did have some mail art shown at an art gallery in Victoria, BC last year, but that was just one postcard. If I can beat the procrastination bug, perhaps I can share more of my work. For now, I've got to re-stock my personal ATC collection. It's so hard to keep them when there's so many talented ATCers out there willing and ready to swap!

Question: What do you get when you cross Zetti-style with Raphael? Answer: These ATCs 

Zetti Royals is the title of my deco (June 2005) 

My first ever DECO

I decided that I wanted to create a Zetti-style deco ~ and having no idea of what to do, I thought I would procrastinate. Then, the other day, Arlene came over with her ready-to-swap deco. It's got a cool Zetti-vintagey feel to it. I loved the way she made the pages into pockets. Shamelessly, I stole the pocket idea off of her and she was gracious enough to show me how to construct the pockets. Well! I got inspired. That night, I started my deco and got carried away in my usual manner. (teehee) I'll post the cover of the deco for you to look at now and I'll post the rest of the book in my Yahoo Photo Album. Stay tuned!

Red 3/3 ATC swap 

Yellow 3/3 ATC swap 

Back to ART

I'm getting back into the groove again after a hiatus from art making. See the above photo for my Yellow Swap. That was an easy one because I only had to create 3. The upcoming Beatles swap hosted by Nicolette Anderson will take a little more planning ~ it's a 9/9. I'm also hope to drive into the world of art decos. Stay tuned for that. I don't a lot to say today, but felt guilty that I haven't been posting on here very much lately.

Forever Remembered ~ Forever Loved 

In Heaven

Dad passed away on Tuesday, May 17th at 3:30 p.m. The last three days of his life, he had his wife and all his children (as well as some grandchildren and great grandchildren) around him. He died peacefully, squeezing my mom's hand as he went. He will be forever remembered ~ forever loved.

Hackers!! Ugh!

I'm writing this blog from my local library as our home computer's been hit with a very damaging virus. I'm so upset! I hope my hubby can fix the problem.

What joy does it give these vandals to play with complete strangers' computers and mess up their lives by creating these viruses? Surely people who can write these programs could put their computer talents to GOOD use? Grrrrr! I'm not a happy camper at the moment.

Is this what we'll look like in our ever-fashionable pointy hats? 

We have a name ... I think

Last night's get-together of Edmonton-area mixed media artists was great. First we spilled out our goodies (everything from buttons to handmade paper to rusted stars) that we wanted to exchange. It was just like Christmas and we were like a bunch of little kids!! Then we drooled over each other's art and exchanged ATCs ~ so much talent. A few of us brought rubber stamps to let other people stamp some images to use in their work ~ only problem is is that no one brought a stamp pad except for a tiny-teeny little black one. Doh! Finally we sat around and discussed a name for our little group of artists ... and I think we decided on Pointy Hat Art Posse. I don't know ~ does this mean we're bringing Art Justice to an Uncreative World?? We hope to meet the last Monday of every month, and next month, we're all supposed to create dunce cap-like pointy hats for the occasion. This is all wayyyyy too much fun!!

A couple Zetti ATCs I created today. Left: Things to Do, Zetti Style Right: She was in the School Play 

Going to Lexie's tonight

Tonight a bunch of us mixed-media artists-types are getting together at Lexie's Latte, here in Edmonton, to show & tell, swap etc. I'm looking forward to this ~ it's always fun, educational and inspiring to be with other artists. Yay!! Tomorrow I'll share what we did!

Dad's probably in his early 30s in this photograph 

Dad

Dad was always a quick thinker, well read and extremely intelligent. Now he isn't well. For the past week, he's been sleeping most of the time, and when he is awake, he doesn't communicate much. It's been about 10 years since we noticed his dementia. About 4 years ago, he wandered once when he was visiting in Calgary with Mom. (A kind stranger alerted EMS that he seemed to be lost, he was taken to a hospital, and when my brother Dave phoned police to report his disappearance [at 5 or 6 a.m.], they checked with the hospitals and located him). That is when we realized that we really had to be in a protective environment.

Although it's been a long time since Dad hasn't really been DAD, it's hard to see his continuing decline. We all know he is ready to meet his Father in Heaven, but sometimes I think he's just holding on to this earthly shell for my mother's sake. She'd be lost without him.

It's been difficult to find out what's happening with Dad physically, but yesterday, I left a note on his file to get the doctor to contact me when he comes in so that I can ask him what's going on.

4 Chagallish ATCs ~ pretty much copied from some of Marc Chagall's paintings. Very good exercise to do. 

Copy cat ART

I had fun tonight with doing some "Van Goghish" and some "Chagallish" artwork. How did these artists make their work look so effortless? simple? almost childlike? I loved copying some of their stuff ~ it's a great exercise. I'm pretty happy with the ATCs that I created in their "styles". Time for bed ~ it's almost midnight.

ATC I created at Arlene's April 19th 2005 

We shopped, ate and played

Grrr! I typed this whole blog out and then didn't save, so this is me writing my blog today for the SECOND time ...

Yesterday I went to my art buddy, Arlene Travnik's house. From her place, we drove to the local Antique Mall to see if we could find some ephemera for our art. Arlene found a collection of old 78s in book format which she is planning use as an Round Robin Altered Book (AB). I can't wait to create something in it!

Arlene and I have similar tastes in home decorating, so we were checking out all the retro/collectible/antiquish things there. We loved the paint-by-number paintins (yes, we realize they're tacky), parking meters, a jukebox radio and little-old-lady-hats!

After the mall, we headed over to the Leduc Library. Arlene is currently teaching an AB teen class. She decorated two display cubes with all sorts of Altered Art to spark interest in the class. The art is by Arlene, Cindy, Corinne and myself. The cubes looked great and I'm sure stirred a lot of curiosity!

After returning to the house again, we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed down to her studio to play. She was gracious enough to give me about a 10 inch square of space to work on ~ way more than my usual 4x4 inch space I use to create my ATCs! I will post one of the ATCs I created while at her place. It was a fun day, but of course, we didn't have nearly enough time!

Drunk or a Dwarf 

Where I've been ...

It's been a long time since I've posted a blog, but a lot has been happening. First I was working ever so diligently on my Wacky Photo Booth Swap 2 ATCs (and by the way I'm very pleased with the results). And then my dad who has advanced dementia has taken a turn for the worse in the last while, so I've been very pre-occupied with all that entails. But! I thought that I would upload one of the pics that I made for the swap. I am in the pic along with my art buddy Arlene. If you ever want to feel the pure joy that childhood offers, simply head off to a photo booth and make all sorts of silly faces and take home a strip of almost instant insanity! Fun!!

"Beauty Behind Blinds" I used some ripply plastic material that I received from someone in a swap for this ATC. I thought it made it look like Venetian blinds. 

One of the seven ATCs I made today.  

7 ATCs made today!

I'm amazed that I actually produced 7 ATCs today. Some day I should really get down to actually cleaning up my work space. But making art is so much more interesting!

3 ATCs for a personal trade I'm mailing out tomorrow. 

My adventures today

Early this a.m., I took off to Leduc to visit with fellow-artist Arlene at her home. She is going to be teaching an AB class for teenagers at her local library, and she was looking for altered art to display at the library. I took her some of my stuff including 10 ATCs, an altered tray, altered clock and 3 ABs. She showed me some of the cool work she's done as well as her very neat-and-tidy (yes, I'm impressed and jealous) studio. She had some other altered artwork done by Cindy of Wetaskwin. Everyone has so much creativity to share ~ this is just way too much fun! Arlene served me some delicious coffee and brownies (great brunch, I must confess). After leaving her place, I went to visit my niece Thina who also lives in Leduc. I also stopped in quickly at Sally Ann to see if there was anything that I couldn't live without ~ but no such luck. Unfortunately, it was early dismissal for my sons, so I had to get back to Edmonton before I could visit the Leduc Antique Mall. Next time, for sure!

Tonight we watched "Finding Neverland" starring Johnny Depp. He sure is an excellent actor ~ he takes on such versatile roles. I enjoyed the movie a lot. It was nominated for Best Picture and Johnny Depp for Best Actor. If you get a chance, watch it.

I made this ATC last night ~ I like it. 

My livingroom window view 

Last Blast

I sincerely hope that this is the last blast of winter that we're experiencing now. March came in like a lamb and it is going out like a lion. I think everyone is just sick and tired of winter. I have got some art done with the weather being lousy though, so there's a plus. The photo show the view I have out my window when I'm sitting at the computer...

Instant Human Altered Book completed March 19, 2005