Off With Her Head

While shopping at one of my favorite scrapbooking stores in Mesa, called Mystic Paper, I spotted the most enchanting dolls made out of paper clay.

I knew from the class schedules that the artist occasionally will teach a class in how to make these dolls.  I wasn't that interested in learning how to make them, but I was curious if the artist would possibly make me an Alice in Wonderland doll.

Thankfully from there everything fell into place and I received my Alice and Queen of Hearts dolls earlier this week.

Enchanting!!

A Little Fairy With A Tude

I was inspired to make a fairy paper doll for my 10 year old Great Niece

Elaina this week.  She is coming over with my in-laws for dinner tonight, to help me with my first attempt at making a Puerto Rican dish.

I thought it would be fun to give the doll a little attitude.

Perfected??  Or perhaps it would be better if she had a frying pan in her hand???

Till next time...

Lots Of Paper Dolls

I am in love with Character Contructions paper doll stamps.  The idea of creating paper dolls for my grand daughters, great nieces and even for myself inspires me to play.

I had several sets already but when I took stock of what I had, I realized that I didn't have the necessary components to turn them all into dolls.  Okay, okay, this is an obvious ploy, but it is one that I have successfully used over time to talk myself into a stamp purchasing frenzy. 

I purchased directly from Character Constructions.  Look at how cute they packaged my purchase.  The catalog of mermaid images in the upper left corner are the newest sets and are something to wish for down the road.

Voici, à l'intérieur du paquet

 

Aren't these cool?

I can't wait to play with them.

Walking On The Creative Side

Lately, I have been in a creative mood which is resulting in more pages in my Art Journal.  Take a peek.

Next up, paper dolls for the grand daughters and great nieces.

Christmas Crafting

The following items were crafted by my sister. 

Distressed tag with German scrap Santa.

Embossed metal ornament with sparkles.

Beautiful treasures that will be among my Christmas ornaments for years to come.  Thank you Sis!!

Pumpkin Head Paper Dolls

This year for Halloween, I was inspired to make Pumpkin Head paper dolls for my grand daughters and great grand nieces.  I had such a fun time creating these little dolls and accompanying envelopes.

I was inspired by the recent purchase of these little dears while my sister was visiting this Fall.  The dolls also served as Halloween cards for my little dears.

The dolls are from Character Constructions, Paperdoll pARTs.

The banners are from the Martha Stewart craft line.

The images on the envelop and tag are Tim Holtz and Zettiology.

What happened on this day in history?

I don't normally think along the lines of "what happened on this day in history", but like most people, when you here about stuff, I always listen.  For some reason, I thought about it today, did a Google search and found an interesting website.  I picked out a few things that happened on August 1st that meant something to me.

August 1, 1960: Aretha Franklin records four demos in New York City, which lead to a contract with Columbia Records.

Some of my favorite tunes by Aretha Franklin are:
Think
Respect
Freeway of Love
I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Loved You)
Chain of Fools

August 1, 1982: Rock in a Hard Place is the seventh studio album by American hard rock band Aerosmith and was released in 1982. This is the only Aerosmith album to not feature Joe Perry. Perry had left in 1979 while Whitford left in 1981, during the recording of this album. Whitford is billed as an "additional musician" as he can be heard playing rhythm guitar on "Lightning Strikes." This was also Aerosmith's last studio album released on Columbia Records until 1997.

Some of my favorite Aerosmith tunes are:
Never Loved a Girl (same tune as above, slightly altered)
You Gotta Move
Toys in the Attic
Sweet Emotion
Walk this Way
Dream On

One last thing, that is too funny to pass up.  On August 1, 2001: South Park Episode 507 - "Proper Condom Use".  Thanks to Stan's "handy" work, the children of South Park must endure sex education from the unlikely duo of Mr. Mackey and Ms. Choksondik. While the two adults take their lessons to heart, the children are left frightened, mis-informed, and armed for battle against the opposite sex. Much hilarity ensues. 

Has anyone seen my marbles??

Is it obvious that I was enamored with this little boat of marbles?  As a child I loved playing with marbles and I think it was more because I was drawn to the designs in the glass than the game itself. 

In 2008, we attended the Chihuly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden, see my Chihuly page for more pictures of this amazing exhibit.

If only I could have that boat of marbles...

Don't you just love the smell of freshly sharpened pencils?

Over the last few days, I have been working in my Art Journal where the pages I am working on are currently serving as a coloring book. Whenever I am in the mood to color colored pencils are my medium of choice. I love to color for a number of reasons, I love the rich color of the medium and I also love that it gets me into that Zen like state quicker than anything else. Anyway, to get into those tight little detailed spaces, I have been sharpening my colored pencils like crazy and for the past few mornings when I walk into my craft room I am hit with a wonderful smell of freshly sharpened pencils.

Hopefully this is relatable, but for me, the smell of freshly sharpened pencils reminds me of going back to school where in every classroom there was a pencil sharpener mounted to the wall that I frequently used (can’t stand dull points). This smell also makes me want to watch one of my favorite movies, You’ve Got Mail because it reminds me of one of my favorite dialogs from the movie.  The scene is an email conversation between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s characters that takes place at the beginning of the movie.  They are having a “secret / anonymous” online relationship and Tom’s character, NY152 emails to Meg’s character, Shopgirl (their online handles) about how New York in the fall makes him want to buy school supplies and that if he knew her real name and address, he would send her a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils.

I love this movie on so many levels, and I love this dialog because I totally get the reference. I have many sensory triggers about fall and going back to school myself. Like the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, the smell of books and more subtle triggers like the sun angles at the beginning of September. Sometimes I get so caught up from these triggers that I want to run out and buy school supplies, new clothes and shoes just for the heck of it.

On an emotional level, I am reminded by these sensory triggers and what I see as the subtle message in You’ve Got Mail is more about how remembrances provide us an important emotional connection to the past and can even serve as a bridge to our future. Acknowledging honor and what is true in memories that for some, is sadness or longing and for others is comfort.

If you would like to share what triggers memories for you, I would love to hear them. Or if you know the movie and want to share your favorite scene or dialog that would be great too.

For me, I think I will continue to find things to color for a while and let myself get filled up with my memories.

Inspiration and The Rolling Stones??

This past week I blogged about big differences I noticed in myself between two days earlier in the week. One day was all rainy and gloomy and the next day was all sunshine without any clouds in site. The inspiration I found in how good the sun made me feel then is still going strong today, granted there have been no cloudy days since.

I decided that I shouldn’t let my sun inspired inspirations go to waste so I set to work on a couple of sun themed projects. My first project was to plant sunflower seeds recently purchased from my last visit to Home Depot’s lawn and garden center. Sunflowers are great plants that help stimulate nature. They entice bees into the garden which is a good thing because bees pollinate other plants giving more plants the ability to pollinate and bloom. Sunflowers also attract birds into the yard to snack on their seeds which is also good because birds help keep the mosquito population down which is important to me. Aside from these benefits, sunflowers are fantastically cheery.

My other sun themed project took me into my art journal. Over the years I purchased many rubber stamps depicting the sun. I pulled out several that I wanted to use, turned on some Rolling Stones, made some tea and set to work on my pages. Have I mentioned before how listening to The Rolling Stones while crafting takes me to a Zen like place?

If you are wondering why the sun in the center of the right page looks blurred it’s because it was intended to look that way. Sometimes when there is a lot of permanent ink built up on the rubber; I will twist the stamp on scratch paper to help remove the build up. While doing that with this stamp, I thought the effect was kind of cool, sort of like it added movement to an otherwise still image.

I love that I found inspiration from the sun to feel better, garden, create some art, and just be in nature this week. I would love to hear what inspires you; whether it’s crafting, getting through a day, decides your reading choice, decides your travels, etc.

Cheers!!

“You've got the sun, you've got the moon, and you've got the Rolling Stones.” Keith Richards

Field of Dreams

After I finished my 'Fly' project, I was feeling a little lost. I knew I wanted to keep my creative juices flowing, but I didn’t have any ideas in mind for another project.

As it turned out, when I purchased the canvas for Fly, I had also purchased a large jar of Gesso. When I got home I discovered that the canvas was already covered in Gesso and then I found my old jar of the stuff. Since I had been feeling like I wasted money, an inspirational spark fired and I thought I should get busy covering things with all this Gesso. I found my stash of old children’s board books and some cool chipboard pieces that I purchased several years ago and I covered them.

Maybe it was the meditative like state I was in while covering these items or my own version of Field of Dreams, but I began to develop some ideas on how I wanted to alter them. I went through my stamps and several themes began jumping out at me with their possibilities.

I am thrilled that all it took to find inspiration was to start covering stuff and the ideas came through the corn field. There is a moral in this for sure. Hmm??

Check back for how these pieces turn out and for other possible revelations that might walk out of the corn field.

Cheers!!

Shall we fly?

My inspiration this past week came in the form of an assemblage project.  I chose Fly as my theme which is symbolic for this period in my life.

This first photo is the layout of materials I picked to use resting on top of a 12x12 canvas that I painted and stamped earlier in the week.  I used a variety of Golden Acrylics for the background and Memories black ink for the stamped corners.  I then applied a Tea Dyed varnish over the canvas to seal it.  The paper images are from various companies. 

This next picture is after I grunged up the graphics a bit, glued them in place, applied beeswax and added some of the dimensional objects.

I never used beeswax before and I had a blast.  It took about 90 minutes to apply it using my Melting Pot and tiny long handled iron. 

This last picture is the final product with the addition of a dimensional birds nest at the bottom of the piece.  Now to find a place to hang it...

Check out my art journal

I never kept a journal or diary in my life but over the past few years I found myself gravitating towards journaling. So why now? If I analyze this I would say that given life’s circumstances that it is becoming important for me to have a creative outlet where I can express myself. This blog is very much evident of that need as is my art journal.

I have been working on my art journal off and on for a couple of years. It is a place where I can take or find my inspiration, take out frustrations or let it all hang out.

I invite you to take a peek inside...

My Art Journal

Rated R for Language, Adult Content and Nudity.

Cheers!

February Crafting

Inspiration arrived just in time last week and I found myself enthusiastically making Valentines and Paper Tag Dolls for family. It was so much fun planning the designs and I loved playing around with the wonderful papers. I especially loved playing with the Sizzix BIGkick using my dies and texture plates. The flowers on the card and also around the faces on the paper tag dolls are from the Sizzix Spring Flower Set sold by Stampin’ Up. The strip of pink paper behind the green stem ribbon on the card is embossed using the Sizzix True Love Texture Plates. Click on the photo to enlarge and see the embossed images.

I made the Valentine cards first and while I was cutting the flowers I thought they would also work well layered behind paper doll faces. For a while now I wanted to make some paper dolls for my Grand Nieces, Natalie and Naomi, so I decided to use this inspiration and made them the paper tag dolls shown below. I was further inspired to use my new Alice in Wonderland stamps which seemed perfect for this project.

The project was quick and easy because this was my second time making the paper tag dolls. The first paper tag dolls I made were for my Grand Daughters, Alexis and Taylor.

I thoroughly enjoyed doing both of these projects and the Zen like place where I could dwell. I am optimistically looking forward to revisiting this place again, very soon.

Cheers!!

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Several years ago I took a couple of classes at my local stamp store to make cigar box purses. I was inspired to design my own cigar box purse after taking those classes. The theme is a twist on the phrase, Eat, Drink and Be Merry.

Eat (notice the handle at the top of the box is a fork)

Drink (here is a clue about the twist)

Food (I had a 4 sided cigar box to fill and it goes well with Eat)

I substituted Wine for Merry (goes with Drink.. as in Drink Wine)

Cheers!

My Inner Child

Project made at Frenzy Stamper - My Inner Child

Paper Dolls for Alexis and Taylor

I have a fascination with paper dolls and one day this past summer, I decided that my granddaughters, Alexis and Taylor, needed to have some very cute and quirky paper dolls. Here they are.