Happy Holly Daze !!!!

I hope you are all having a fabulous holiday enjoying traditions with your family and friends.

I thought I'd share a few snapshots of my Christmas Eve celebration at our house.
This is a snowman I made out of the Crayola Model Magic and Martha Stewart glitter. My son claimed it, so he'll be taking it home with him. The second photo shows the scale. The base is made from a glass candle lid I'd saved and it made a perfect stand.

My sister, Melanie, in front of my 4 foot pink tree. I decorated it with cupcake ornaments and have my friend,Beth, to thank for buying it for me! Thank you Beth, you rock!
My nephew, Kyle, is peeking through the decorations on my kitchen island.
My mom and Kyle's wife, Mimi are in front of the white tree in the great room.
Melanie, my cousin Tina and I are posing in front of the biggest tree in the front room.
Here we are again! We were enjoying the Key Lime Pie martinis I made for the party!

Fun Holiday Project !

I found a cool project to do with my art students in the book, Adventures in Mixed Media by Jane Davies. First, I made scribble painted paper and after it dried, I made these cute bird ornaments. My art club kids made the paper in one afternoon and the next meeting we made the birds. My friend, Sherrill, had her 3rd graders make them out of scrapbook patterned papers. She made sure the wings contrasted with the bodies and they turned out adorable.

The kids thought my face on the bird looked a little creepy. But, given the choice to add their face, many of them decided to go for it. You can make the bird's eye on one side and add a face on the other and hang it either way!

Christmas Creations 2011

Happy Holidays to everyone! I have not posted in a loooong time. But I'm back and I hope I can be a better blogger. Here are some of the Christmas card designs I came up with this year. I had my annual card party for my friends at work. This year the theme was "Semi-homemade cards". I used cards that I got on clearance last year and we embellished them. Sometimes I covered the entire front of the card, but the sentiment inside and the envelopes were already done!

Giveaway Coming Soon!

I am so excited about the newest publication from Stampington. It's called Mingle and it features all kinds of artistic gatherings. Since I started on the mixed-media art journey in 2006, some of my most cherished times have been getting together with my artist friends and creating together. Keep on the look-out for a giveaway coming in October. I will send out a copy of the new magazine to a lucky winner who comments on a future post. I have been pretty consumed with starting a new school year and dealing with a class size of thirty 6 and 7 year olds. I have started my after school art group and they are as enthusiastic as ever!

I will be posting new art very soon. Make sure to click on the Mingle badge on the right side of my blog and check out the preview pages.

Goodbye Samson!

Yesterday we had to make the decision to say goodbye to our beautiful lab Samson after trying desperately to save him. He spent 5 nights at the vets and didn't get any better. He had stopped eating and didn't even respond after the first time we visited him. We found him 5 years ago and he had been a street dog for awhile. He was so skinny and was used to begging for food. We took him to our vet and he had a microchip. They contacted the previous owners and they said, "That dog ran away months ago, you can keep him". He was housebroken and had been fixed. He walked on the leash much better than our pedigreed, trained lab, Maggie May! He was so pretty but we all learned that Maggie was the brains of the operation. We called Samson our male model. He still thought of himself as a cute little puppy and would try to actually climb up on people's laps! All 95 pounds of him!Our family and friends will miss him, but I am glad we had him for 5 years and he had a nice life with us!

New journal pages from old paintings

In one of my artist yahoo groups we were exchanging 8 x 8 journal pages. I was behind the

deadline and I needed to get on the ball. I had recently dug out my portfolio from the one and only college art class I had taken. It was filled with large watercolor and acrylic paintings.

They were done on quality paper but the results were not frame-worthy! So....I stole someone else's idea of cutting up old artwork to make journal pages. They made great backgrounds to get started. I used stencils and spray inks and added collage elements and words. I also made 26 tags to send out and they actually got sent BEFORE the due date, miracles never cease!
I will share more of the tags in another post. I tried to leave plenty of room on the pages for the artist's to add their own journaling . If you can't read the tiny collage phrases click on the photos to enlarge them.

July Journaling!!!!

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• I have been journaling like crazy in my short time off of work. Jumping off the crazy carousel of year-round teaching left me drained and exhausted! I am trying to slow down, enjoy my family and just BREATHE!!! My journal becomes a happy place where I illustrate positive messages to myself. I recently sent off 5 finished journals to be considered for the Art Journaling publication. They were completed in the past three years. I could definitely see a HUGE learning curve. I had to cringe a little over my first visual journal. But, hey, baby steps right? I loved a few of those pages and hopefully won't be judged too harshly on my first awkward attempts. I am now working on 5 different journals that differ in size and paper type. It's fun to skip around and work in whatever journal I feel like grabbing ( or that fits into my purse, beach bag, etc.). I am hoping to start a journaling group with my friends at work as a stress management tool. I know it works for me and I am totally hooked on this form of self-expression.

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A Day At The Beach!

Ahhhh! Just what we needed around here a lovely relaxing day at the beach yesterday.Dave, Sera, Weston and I spent the day at Balboa Beach Wednesday. It was sunny and clear with a slight breeze. The surf was too rough for surfing or swimming, but it was great ti sit on the sand and watch the waves.
See that big huge wave behind me? I stayed on the beach.
That tall guy is my baby who just turned 17. His big sister just graduated from college!
This was the view from my chair while I drew in my sketchbook and read magazines.

If you haven't been to the beach lately and you are close enough to get there. Go lay on the beach and put your toes in the sand.

Awesome Class with Teesha Moore!

Yesterday I drove to Carson to the Rubber Stamp Convention all by myself because I couldn't get anyone to go with me. I tried begging, bribing, whining...NOTHIN'! So... I got adventurous because I really wanted to take the 2 hour visual journaling class with Teesha Moore. I had taken a mini-workshop several years ago and I knew I liked Teesha's artistic and teaching style.

I was not disappointed! We got to work on a single journal page which I put right into the journal I brought with me and did a double page spread! Teesha talked about the steps she uses and her take on paper, paints,markers, pens, journaling,etc. It is always fun to work alongside creative people.
The first two photos are the pages I worked on at the workshop.

The pages below are some recent journal pages I've done.





After spending most of my time and energy on work and hosting my nephew's wedding reception last week, it was great to spend some time journaling! Art rocks!!!

It's Heeeeeerrrrrrreeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

I got a wonderful surprise in the mail this week! A brand new publication from Stampington called Create With Me. This magazine is dedicated to celebrating artistic experiences with children. I have a four- page piece featuring the artwork of my after-school art club students. I am going to present them with their own copies at our year-end party next week. The magazine is just gorgeous and is filled with inspirational

ideas for art adventures with young artists. It is going to available July 1st.

You can order a copy at Stampington.com. If you do check out my article on page 52 and let me know what you think! My kids are going to be so jazzed about seeing their art and names in print!

Stamp Carving Workshop Fun!

Last Sunday I had a stamp carving workshop at my house. My friend, Wendy Gault, is a master stamp carver and she volunteered to teach us how to get started. She gave us a ton of information on the history, tools, letterboxing, as well as stamp carving tips.

Melanie, Kaylee, Julie, Sera, and I carved our first stamps and made ATCs for everyone to take home with them. Wendy made an ATC from her hand-carved stamp ( but I think she had already carved it before the workshop). Can you tell which ACWendy carved? She likes to take photos of landscapes and turn them into intricate line drawings that she carves into stamps. Everyone had a great time and we took a break to eat lunch together. Wendy is a great teacher and we were all impressed with our amateur efforts. That night I carved 2 more stamps. I made the little fairy baby and then I

carved a self-portrait stamp from a Photo Booth pic I printed out. I experiemented with different combinations of ink and tracing the stamped image with black fine line marker. Thanks Wendy for a wonderful workshop! I am excited about all the ideas I have to carve my own original stamps.