A gift for a friend 

Valentine Hanger

This is a 4x4 Valentine decoration that I created for a gift to put in a package for a MMCA Valentine exchange. Hope the person that I sent it to will like it!

Valentine Angel of Maple Ridge ATC 

A belated Happy New Year!

I'm ever so slow in getting back into the groove of creating again after the Christmas holidays here. I've found that this is the hardest time of the year to be productive in the creativity department.

Finally, though, I'm getting some art done. I've started in on altering a 2006 Desk Calendar for a round robin through Mixed Media Collage Artists' (MMCA) group. I have to have that ready to mail out by the 27th of each month.

The other thing I was working on last night was some Valentine ATCs. In fact, I made 5 cards in one evening. I want to have some on hand when we have our regular meeting of the Pointy Hat ART Posse (PHAP) meeting on the 30th.

On the 20th, I'm hoping to get some work done too when I go to the PHAP all-nighter create-a-thon. Hmm ... I'll have to think of something spectacular to work on then. We may do a group project for possible submission to Somerset that night if enough of the group shows up.

I'll post a photo of one of my Valentine's for you here. It is much nicer "in person" but you can get the general gist of the card.

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)