No camera therefore you get some old stuff to look at

It's like this. Presently, I am without a camera. Sad, I know. Therefore I haven't been blogging because I don't have any fun "eye candy" to entice you with. So for your viewing pleasure, I'm gonna look back at some stuff that I have on my computer picture files and share em with you. Now let's see, what would you like to see first?

PHOTO: Shelly taking a look at a train case that I altered into a Titanic theme. It is supposed to be the case of perfumer, Adolphe Saalfeld, who was an actual passenger who survived. Some of the things I included in the case were, several vials of perfume (which I gave 1912 era appropriate names), a letter with an actual quote Saalfeld wrote to his wife after his rescue, a Oriental themed silk and brass ornament that is wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and pretend Titanic gift shop receipt, and for a comic twist, I included a an actual present day tabloid with a headline: NUKES SANK TITANIC. One can always depend on Weekly World News for accurate reporting! *smile* This project was great fun from start to finish, and to make things better, Shelly was thrilled to .

By the way, in 2000, Saalfeld's perfumes were found on the sea floor there was talk that a manufacture would sell modern copies.

Judging the book by its cover!

A CHarminG ExCHanGe (25 Jewelry Projects to Create and Share) is the title of the book that I was privileged enough to create in, along with authors Kelly Smelling, Ruth Rae and several other artists. This book of collaborative mixed media jewelry will hit stores in July 2008. I think the cover looks awesome and can hardly wait to see all the gorgeous stuff inside. Make sure you run out and snatch up a copy when it comes out ~ I'll autograph it for you ;)

Poppies

I took a photo this morning of my poppies ... and I've also added "Poppies" by van Gogh. I wish I had had a clearer copy of his Poppies (painted in 1886) to copy. There are some things I would have improved upon if I had. Anyway, it was fun. Painting is fun; I've done so little of it since high school. Can you tell which painting is mine, and which is Vincent's? (that WAS a joke, people)!

A Saturday Painting

Here are some shots from the "Paint like van Gogh" class that Zach and I took today. The class was from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. with a short break for lunch. It was great fun, and I'm pretty happy with the painting I did.

Most people opted to reproduce a Starry Night, but others of us decided on copying other less known van Gogh paintings.

I'll have to post a close up of my finished painting ~ sorry I forgot to take a photo of it during the daylight hours.

Fun upcoming SWAP

I will be hosting a Wacky Photo Booth swap through art-e-zine and hope you will join. It should be a hoot! Click on the link above, and scroll down to the Wacky Photo Booth Swap section for details and to sign up ~ don't delay!

Slapped out ATCs

Van Gogh & me

Van Gogh on Facing a Blank Canvas: "Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.”

Well I took Vincent's challenge and toddled off to my art room and slapped literally anything down on some 3-1/2x 2-1/2 inch cards. I won't even admit to how long it's been since I actually created some Artist Trading Cards. So tonight at the Pointy Hat ART Posse (PHAP) meeting, I'll be able to trade some new art .. finally.

These ATCs (I made 11 in total) are probably not my best work, but hey! at least I created some art and it felt good.

Speaking of PHAP, I see the Dumpster Diva aka Arlene won't be with us tonight as she is camping with her family, but I understand a couple new folks may join us.

THE Latest!

This sweet face is my newest GREAT Nephew, Blake. Isn't he a cutie pie?

He was born last night to my niece Carla and her hubby Shane. I think he looks a lot like his big brother, Ben. There's another photo where Benji is looking at Blake with an expression like: Who are you, and do you really think you're gonna come home with us?!

Congratulations to Carla, Shane, Ben and Grammie Marmar. I know you'll enjoy this little life that has been entrusted into your care.

Today's mail

Look what I got in today's mail.

It's a pair of cool Jack Earrings from the very talented Maija.

Thank you Maija!

I am the Bravest artist ANYwhere!

Some of the titles for this post could have been Truth in ART, Help Wanted ... badly, Outta Control Studio etc. etc. Suffice it to say that my art studio is wayyyyyy beyond the point of needing a clean. How many of you Mixed Media types ~ or should I say Mixed-up Media types ~ would be brave enough to post photos like this on their blogs?! [Here's a challenge to ya'll to show your messiest studiosI figure the sheer shame of it all should entice me into getting down to the nitty gritty job of cleaning this disaster zone up!

Anyone brave enough to help me out to actually discover whether there really is a work surface down there would be welcome to join me. **BIG SMILE**
I've got a goal for getting this artroom cleaned up too. May 26th, I'm having a garage sale, so I'd like to get down business down in the studio by then and hopefully have a bunch of "valuable merchandise" to sell to the unsuspecting public.

Stupid Sock Creature

Okay, so I'm slowwww in updating my blog. I apologize to my fans [**namely, Arlene**] that I've been so lax in blogging as of late. Anyway, here is a photo of my creature that I created and named Virgil. I attached him to a pointy hat for the Posse meeting last Monday night.

I promise to try to do better on the blogging thing.

It's snowing ... again!

Look at how beautiful this snowflake is. I need to look at this and try to appreciate its beauty because I'm really sick and tired of winter and I just want it to go away. Last week was spring. The snow had nearly melted everywhere around us. We weren't wearing our winter coats anymore. Then it started snowing .. again (even though the sun is shining ~ weird, I know). The last hurrah of winter? Probably. But it's the hardest snow of the year to take. It's April, people!!

Did you know that ...

every snowflake has its own unique six-sided shape and is different than all other snowflakes.

in the province of Prince Edward Island, where the soil is red clay, snowflakes often look pink because red dust from the soil is blown into the air and absorbed by the clouds.

... and the largest snowflakes ever recorded fell in Montana. The snowflakes were 15 inches in diameter.

Okay, I'll quit my griping now. Maybe I'll go to the store for some retail therapy today, and buy myself some garden seeds.

Cool jewels

These spring green asymmetrical earrings I just created are ready to mail out for a little swap with Maija. Hope she'll like them. I love the colour because it reminds me of spring. And spring is what I'm eagerly anticipating at the moment. Enough with winter already!

What does one do on their 47th birthday?

My friend Shelly turned 47 yesterday. Earlier in the day she'd found out that her van had "died" and needed a $1,200 engine job done. Lousy start to a birthday, wouldn'tcha say?

I decided that I would try to help her have a happy birthday anyway, so off we set to celebrate her big 4-7. First we went to Rosie's Grill to share a Nacho Grande platter. Then, it was off to see The Queen. Not that we flew off to London or anything ~ we took in the movie, which we enjoyed. Then I decide to treat Shelly to dessert at Montana's Cookhouse. Once she realized we were going to Montana's, she made me promise NOT to let them know that it was her birthday. Silly girl didn't wish to be the centre of attention. After Montana's we headed to Chuck E. Cheese's just before 10 p.m. We had the place to ourselves. At that time of the night, for some reason, there weren't any kids in the establishment. We played a few games, had our photo taken together (Me on left, Shelly on right) to remember the evening by and then I drove her home. Happy Birthday Shelly ~ hope the year ahead is your best yet!

A couple more ...

Take a look at all the wonderful goodies that we received in the Be My Valentine swap! How fun it was to be spoiled like this in the middle of a cold, lonnnnng Canadian winter! On Valentine's Day, we were given a puffy fabric heart with embellies from Melissa David and a whimsical paper collaged heart by Kristen Robinson. What a great way to wind things up.

Thanks to Lelainia Lloyd for hosting another great swap.

More gifties!

Just look at all the goodies I've received in the past few days in the Valentine Swap. Day 6 and 7 are pictured to the left. They are the handiwork of Caren McNee and Amy Huff . I'm just blown away by the variety of talented represented in this group of artists. Can you believe the yummy things that I was blessed with on Day 10, 11, 12 and 13. Day 10 was from the ever talented Linda Koch. It's a sweet little frame to put a special photo or piece of art in. I think I'm going to save it to put on my Christmas tree this year. Or perhaps I'm going to have to rig up something to hang some of my treasures on year round. Jennifer Rowland spoiled me with one of her gorgeous soldered doily necklace for Day 11. It's so delicate and shimmery. On the 12th day, Liz Smith offered a collaged heart ornament. She sent her gift in a trendy plastic container thingie too ~ extra spoiled! And today being Day 13, Penelope Harris (sorry I don't have a link for her at the moment) sent me a small poetic tag book entitled Heart of Red. She cleverly used paint sample cards throughout the book All good things must come to an end. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and the last hurrah of this awesome swap. I shall miss it ~ whaaa!

Valentine Swap 2, 3, 4 & 5

The Be My Valentine swap organized by Lelaina Lloyd is in full swing now. We're up to Day 5 of opening wonderful artsy Valentine treats from all over the world. Unfortunately, I still haven't received Day 1's gift, but I'm hoping it may arrive today. Here are Days 2, 3, 4 and 5. It is so much fun opening these awesome little surprises every day. What talented folks!

Today's gift was from my dear friend and art buddy Arlene Travnik. She created a luxuriously padded embossed satin heart with a little pocket which holds a soldered charm with an accompanying little message on a piece of paper. One side of the charm reads: My Secret Valentine 2007, while the other side reads: She alters her heart. Beautiful. Thanks Arlene ~ your work always inspires me.

Welcome home!

Look at this ~ my calendar made it's way home this week!! What a treasure of art it is.
It's so thick and chock-full of wonderful textures, colour and fantastic art by some of altered art's best-est mixed mediaists!

Thank you Beth, Sue, Liz, Caren, Christine, Lorraine, Sharon, Jennifer, Cece, Ruth, and Marci.

You guys have created a wonderful piece of art that I shall always be cherished. Thank you Marci for sending the calendars on to me in rotation without delay. Also I'd like to give a big thank you to Kathy Wasilewski for putting this year-long swap together. It's been a wonderful journey together. I've experimented, stretched, made mistakes, grown and learnt so much from the other talented artists, mentioned above, in the process.

Please note: Thanks to my art buddy Arlene who is so incredibly computer savvy NOT! but who helped me add links to people I mention in my blog. Would that make you computer literate now, Arlene?

Love em ATCs

Four ATCs for Ruth Rae's Valentine ATC swap are now complete. It took me forever to start working on them, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. January and February always seem to be such a difficult month to produce art after the big Christmas rush. I feel artistically drained.

Anyhoo, here's "Love Bug", one of the ATCs. Material used include: copies of photos of me at ages 1 and 2, DYMO labels, chandelier danglies, glitter and more.

I'll be very exciting to receive 4 ATCs in return for these babies. It's been a long time since I've been in an ATC swap.

After completing these ATCs, yesterday, I continued making Valentine ATCs for an upcoming PHAP ATC swap. I'll post one or two of those ATCs soon for you to have a look.

Be my Valentine

I'm in a 14 day swap with the artists I participated with in the 12 Days of Christmas. This time around, we made 15 Valentine gifties for each other. We need to mail the gifts out to each participant directly. I love getting Snail Mail ~ it's such an event in this fast paced computer age.

Here's a photo of my WRAPPED gifts ~ What? You thought I'd show you what I made before February 8th, when my gift will be opened by the group? Silly you!

My art buddy, Arlene and I plan to mail out our things together. (Her gift will be opened on February 5th) This is soooo much fun ~ I can't wait to see what these wonderfully talented friends will create for this swap. Other swaps I'm in right now include a 4 for 4 Valentine ATC swap ~ which I really have to get moving on! Plus, I'm also working on a collaborative publishing effort with the artists of the Charm swap. More about that exciting subject yet to come ....

Happy New Year!

ABOVE: Two inserts tucked into page one of Beth's December calendar
RIGHT: Page 4 & 5 spread of the calendar

I apologize for the lull in posting blogs ... I see it was December 7th last time I actually put something out there. Thanks to the nagging of a nameless art buddy (Hi ARLENE), I'm FINALLY getting around to getting something done on here.

I've completed the last month of calendar pages ~ hard to believe a whole year has passed since we started this project. December's calendar is Beth's and her theme, Journeys. I created 10 pages, count em, in her book. I won't post all the photos here, but you can check out ALL the pages I completed in other people's calendars in 2006. Now I just have to sit back and patiently (NOT!) wait for my calendar to return home to me. This has been an awesome experience. Thanks to Kathy for heading up this project. I don't have one regret in signing up for this swap. It's been such an awesome learning experience for me all year through.

Next on the agenda ... I need to work on a Valentine Swap and a 5 for 5 ATC swap. It's kind of hard to get back into the artwork mode after Christmas. I need some inspiration ~ quick!

12 Days of Christmas almost here

Here's gift #12 from the 12 Days of Christmas swap I'm participating in. It starts on December 13th ~ I can't wait! How do you like my PINK Christmas tree? When I saw it at Winner's I just knew I had to buy it ~ it was calling my name! I literally laughed out loud when I first saw it. What fun!

On the 10th day of Christmas ...

I just completed my Christmas ornaments for the 12 Days of Christmas swap which Lelainia Lloyd is hosting. I had to make 12 ornaments which I'll mail out tomorrow morning to the US, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Each one has the basic same design with slight differences (I don't enjoy making "assembly line art"!).

My ornament is for the 10th day. It is made almost entirely of recycled materials because I love to reuse stuff in new ways. Unfortunately, I can't show you what it looks like, but here is a little teaser ... what it looks
like ... wrapped.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser ...

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser" is a quote that appears on page 2 of the October calendar I completed for Liz.

This month has been a busy month for me ... my mom is seriously ill and was admitted to hospital on the 14th due to complications of a diabetic foot (she's still there), I've took a 3 week personal development career course and started a new job, so I haven't been blogging very much. However, I have completed some tasks.

** received my charm bracelette ~ yay!! See blog: http://justsimplycharming.blogspot.com/

** started working on my 12 Days of Christmas ornaments

** started collecting goodies for PHAP Secret Santa gift

Here are some photos of October calendar. I tried to use lush "autumn-y" colours and rich fabrics. For a close up peek at these pages, check out my Picture Trail at: http://picturetrail.com/canada_eh

I made 26 charms like this for a charm bracelette swap I'm participating in, hosted by Ruth Rae.

My charms are made from squished old bottle caps ~ with maple leaves on the backs. The photo on the charm is of my great aunt (she's on the right) taken in the 1920s. It says "CHUMS" and an antique-looking key adorns the side of the charm.

Here's a photo too of what the bracelette that Ruth is making for me will look like (imagine 25 little totally unique, artsy charms on it!) I can't wait ~ wheee!!

And ... September's Calendar

For September's calendar, Caren has a theme of Color and "A dream I have for myself." I like some of the pages I created for her calendar. I hope she'll like em too!

These are my two favourite pages. What do you think?


(Wow, did you notice, I'm posting twice in one night .. isn't that some sort of record or something?)

Here's August's pages

I just noticed that I didn't post August's calendar pages yet. This calendar had a New York theme with a Portal sub-theme. Pictured here is page 1, with a door opened to page 3. Also, a slide holder that I used on the sign in page which frames a postage stamp that reads: Greetings from New York.

I used the Statue of Liberty several time on the 6 pages I completed, including a bottle cap dangly attached to the bottom of page 1.

This was a challenge for me to work with this theme as it is one I wouldn't choose for myself. I still enjoyed working on it.

Mailmania2

I recently submitted some mail art for Mailmania2 in Victoria, Showing at the Fran Willis Gallery #200-1619 Store Street Victoria, BC, Canada, from 4 September until 21 September 2006. I noticed the other day that they'd posted my entry on the Mailmania blog. http://mailmania2.blogspot.com/

I painted the canvas and then added several layers of tissue paper and other papers, gold leaf and a photo transparency. The transparency I used on this 4"x6" canvas is of my Great Grandfather and my mother's cousin.

Zach also sent a postcard with a copy of a drawing he did of a imaginary creature named "Purple". His postcard, front and back is shown above.

Must blog!

I was just taking a look at my friend Arlene's blog and noticed how faithfully she's been blogging lately. It's really interesting to read. http://artdeme.blogspot.com/ Then I took a peek at my blog and realized that I've been "loafing on the job"! Sorry folks.

In other news ... I've signed up for several swaps as of late.
1. Charm Bracelette Swap (I have them done & ready to mail, but can't post them until they've been sent out to the participants)
2. Vintage Postcards
3. Altered Cabinet Cards
4. Twelve Days of Christmas (need to make 12 small gifts to send out to 12 other participants ~ I still haven't decided what to make for this

The circular art here is a photo repro of my mother with her mother in the 1920s. I used this piece for a recipe book that I made for my niece Sharon recently.

New York, New York

Rest easy ~ I'm not going to New York. I just got back from there. Sort of ... thanks to Christine's August calendar. I found this one to be a struggle, but I perservered and it's finally done. For page 6, I used a tip in that I made in 2003 ~ a little old, but it fit, so I used it. I've been trying to save photos here, but it doesn't seem to want to work, so hopefully I'm eventually able to upload some of the NY pages.

Bright Idea Award

This is the trophy that I recently created for PHAP. I began with an old trophy base (stuck on a pendant that said "BEST", and stuck on black-on-gold stickers reading "PHAP"). Then I attached a large cardboard thread spool to it. Then I covered the spool with silver tape. The award is topped with a red Christmas light with copper wire wrapped around it. To gussy up the award, I added a Zetti-like face and gave him a pointy hat, as well as a mini ATC, a rusty screw (Posse members often have a screw or two loose!), a small pencil, a red tag that reads "Bright Idea Trophy" and rhinestones. At the base of the award: blue, green and silver pipecleaners add some pizzazz, as do four marbles (just in case someone thinks they may have lost their marbles!).

The first winner of the award was Corrinne who created a very cool ART doll for the July Posse meetin'.

July pages done already!

Believe it or not, I'm actually ahead in the calendar swap! I received the July calendar soon after the June one arrived.

I decided to go with three different themes. 1. Canada Day
2. Humour
3. Travel

Pictured here is the Canada spread. I used transparent packing tape with Canadian flags on it on the backgrounds. If you look closely, you'll see the crossword puzzle pages ~ the original calendar were New York Times Crosswords. I like having some of the original book show through my pages. The library card holder contains some interesting facts about Canada in it. The soup tin can swing back and forth ~ a little kinetic art for you.

By the way, I messed up when I uploaded these pages. The moose page should actually be on the left side, because it's page one. Oh well. Happy Canada Day, eh!?