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