I won!

I won one of Chrysti's prizes! It is the workshop from Pam Carriker called Visual Journalism 101. I am so excited! It starts January 12th, which is fabulous, just in time for the new year, and fits right in with my goals for the new year to do something artistic everyday.

I have been really working on art journaling this last year, and am loving it. I am hoping this workshop will help take me to even greater heights.

With one of my goals for the new year being to do something artistic everyday I think that I will be able to take my art to new places, as well as learn things about myself that I never really knew before. If it is only as simple as a doodle or a sketch, at least I am putting forth effort to create something everyday. I also want to work on really looking deep inside of myself, and arting from my heart. I know that some of the things that I might create may not be all that "attractive" to others, but I really want to create introspectively. I don't want to give up all that I have learned so far by any means, but I want to explore new avenues, and experience new things. I don't feel like I have really found my niche yet. I hope to post pictures of my progress through the workshop, I will keep you posted on that.

YEAH- Merry Christmas to ME!

29 Days of Sharing

Chrysti of Art By Chrysti is Celebrating with 29 Days of Giveaways.
The detail of the give-aways are at the link here:
http://chrysti.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/29-days-of-giveaways-for-you/
Don't forget to check it out you may just win some awesome stuff- you can't win if you don't enter!!!

Cutie Two Shoes

I participated in a swap with Paper Traders, called Cutie Two shoes. Connie was the hostess, and all the shoes I got back were FABULOUS!!!

Here are the ones I sent out.

Playing Catch-Up

Well, I have been busy creating art, I just have not been posting here on my blog. I guess I have just been busy. I feel bad for not posting, so I am going to try to catch-up and share a bit.

Here are my journal pages and projects that are still "in progress" for my Artist Dates on the Milliande Creativity Club for women.

This is a journal page, that I started by water coloring and then using a rubber band printing over the top. The challenge was to use rubber bands in your art process in some way. I plan to alter it still, and then to journal on it.

The next challenge was to make painted papers. We were able to do anything we wanted with the painted papers. I plan to adhere mine to some journal pages.
At the time I was working on a swap for another group, Paper Traders, the swap was Anything Zetti, so I used a bit of my painted papers for the backgrounds of my ATC's.

This last one is the Artist Date challenge called Belle of the Ball, and it was to invite the Strawberry Princess to the Christmas Ball. I am still working on mine, but I have my Princess drawn, and I am not sure yet how I will finish painting her, or making a background. It might just stay as a solo princess painting.

New Freebie Starts TODAY!

Check out the link to the RIGHT>>>>
It is Lisa's link from Go Make Something and Ten Two Studios, Countdown to Christmas. She so kindly has given us a freebie for each day from now until Christmas Day. Go to the link and read the instructions. Get your freebies from now til the big day!
Thank you Lisa!!!!

Art is in my Heart

A sweet friend sent me the link to this video, the message really touched me, that I felt I had to share.

White Rabbit

I have finished Teri's Round Robin Journal pages. Her topic was the journey of the White Rabbit. I am not terribly familiar with the story of Alice in Wonderland, other than that Alice is lost and wants help getting home, runs across the white rabbit who can't help her because he is always running late for something or another.

Well, I twisted it around a bit, and made a little play on the words of him being late for a very important date, and he is now late for his important date with Alice!

I had this "great" idea to make this little love birds page, and I found the cutest papers and embellishments, that all coordinated, but they were pink, hot pink, silver, black, gray, totally modern if you know what I mean. Not vintage at all, which is what Teri's journal is. But they were all coordinating, and they had the "feel" that I was after. So I was trying to think of a way to make them work and I was throwing ideas around with my mom, and we decided that a bit of gesso and some distress ink would do the trick. What do you know- It worked! Would you ever guess those background papers were hot pink, black and silver???

These are the close-ups of the pages, and the right page with the door open to show Alice. The pages are painted over the gesso and distress ink treatment with both watercolor crayons and watercolor pencils. The path is mostly crayon, and the weeds are mostly pencil. The mushroom is done with the watercolor pencils.

I have then added some paper flowers that were actually a gift from Teri herself, and then added some seed beads for centers and set them with crystal lacquer. The White Rabbit is carrying a bouquet of peach flowers for his "sweety". The teacup is the sign-in that we were asked to put our name and email on.

I've Been Tagged

I've been tagged by my friends Brenda in Australia and Trish in Ohio.

Here are the rules...
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules.
3. Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.
5. Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that lets them know they've been tagged.

OK, on to my six quirky or boring things:

1. I am a night owl- I could stay up til 4 in the morning, and sleep til noon everyday if someone would let me.
2. I really don't like chocolate very much. Once in awhile, I will eat it, but I don't "crave" it like most women.
3. I HATE to cook. I don't like anything about it. If I have to cook a meal, I usually don't eat then, because after I have looked at it while I have had to cook it, it is no longer appetizing to me. Needless to say my husband does 99 percent of the cooking in our house.
4. I am a habitual procrastinator. I don't think that needs any explanation. LOL
5. I am a clutter bug.
6. I taunt my husband in his sleep because he snores really bad, and I can't sleep because of it, so I will pull his arm hair or poke him til he wakes up (which can take quite awhile). I don't think he ever really realizes that my taunting is what woke him. (tee-hee)

OK- here are my six friends:

Milliande- my lovely friend from the UK - I am sure she is far to cool to be boring, but I am sure she will try.
Connie- my mom (she has a lot of funny boring stuff to share)
Beckie- my big sis- she is also a great friend and I am sure has learned to be boring over the past few years?
Ruby Claire- I want to see if she can come up with something!
Kimmie- This is Wyoming- I am sure you can find lots to share- lol.
Leslie- Lie if you have too. :0)

Can't wait to see what fun things you come up with to share!

Out to Art Door Hanger

I forgot to post my door hanger, so I thought I would post it now. Basically if this is hanging up, it means: BUG OFF- I'M BUSY WORKING ON ART! I CAN NOT BE DISTURBED!






















It is supposed to be hung on the door to were you have your art space. I have a designated "art room" but it is in shambles, and has not been set up yet as a work room, so I have been working on my art in my recliner. My family is very familiar with how this all works, so when my "door" hanger is applied to the side of my chair, there is one mama that needs to be left alone.
I have to admit it works!
The only one allowed near my chair is Kota, who is my "art buddy" There is no keeping him away. You can see a tiny bit of his fuzzy paw in the upper right corner if you look really closely.
My door hanger is very dimensional. The bee is a very large embroidered patch, in a bright purple, orange and yellow. I added a gold metal crown... It is a Queen of course! All the flowers at the bottom are silk and/or paper and are about 3/8" thick. The little caterpillar is a printed chipboard piece hidden amongst the flowers. The butterflies are an embossed fabric foam, which is an interesting textural addition to the piece~ their color seems extremely bright in this picture, but they are the exact colors as the orange and yellow in the bee. I had to add the round epoxy word token because of the colors and it says "Happy Time" how perfect is that? To top it all off I added a tiny metal crown to the Artist Date Queen~ she must have decoration too! So this is my magical flower garden, and I am the Queen Bee!

Purple Tree

My first Page for the Milliande Artist Dates, is Purple Trees.

















I started by drawing my tree and then coloring it with watercolor crayons. I am really trying to use these more. I like the soft look of them. I then covered it all up- go figure. :0)

I added a fluffy sparky eyelash type fiber for the large branches, and then seed beads for the smaller branches. I used dyed purple cultured pearl beads for leaves. I think they were really fun to use for this project, as they are just different and unique. I used the brown fibers below the tree, because all the grass has died off for the winter here.

I am trying really hard to work on my sketchings, so I wanted to add an owl in the tree. It is late fall here, and if you listen carefully just before night hits you can hear an owl hoot from one of the trees near our house.

Funky Birds

I have finally gotten a bit of my muse back. I have had a bunch of things that I have been needing to get finished, and I just couldn't get my head around them. I think I just had to keep at it until I got through the slump.

I created these two pages for Pam- she is in the Tip-In Round Robin project with Paper Traders. Her theme is Birds, Nests and Eggs. I did not include any nests or eggs, but I did the birds instead.

These birds are made with a real feather coming out the top of their head, and flourish stamps for the tails and decoration on the wings. They have little black brads for eyes. The background is done on heavyweight watercolor paper with watercolor crayons. I have not done a lot with watercolor crayons yet, but am really learning to like them, and the look that they create. Inspired by Claudine Hellmuth, the background is highlighted with penning.

Look What Happened At Our House

Wow! We knew we were having puppies, but for some reason we were not as prepared as we had hoped to be. I think things have just been so busy around our place, that I got sidetracked, and forgot to look at the calendar. Anyway, when we took her into the Doc, he told us 4 possibly 5 but not likely.

Well- Doc was WRONG!!!!!

We had a lovely batch of 6!!! And to top it all off 5 of them are boys.

We have a huge list of people who want girls- of course.

Meiya is doing swimmingly, but man, I didn't expect such a big litter. I know that there will be several happy families for Christmas, as these babies will be ready just a few days before the Big Day! I bet we have a few late deliveries on Christmas Eve :0)

And The WINNER Is...

KIMMIE!!!

I wrapped every one's name in a puppy treat and let Kota go crazy! The first treat he went after was the winner- and Kimmie was it. I am surprised he didn't eat the paper :0) I couldn't get a picture of him actually picking the winner, because it was so fast, but here he is sniffing the paper to make sure there isn't any treat left on it.















Kimmie- If you will go to my "view complete profile" you can find my email button there, and if you will email me your address, I will get all your goodies out to you!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!
From Letha AND Kota

SuziBlu Revoblution! Give-away

Here is a sketch I did in celebration of the SuziBlu Revoblution Weekend Party!

AND I decided as part of the party festivities, I am going to do a PARTY BLOW-OUT GIVE-AWAY!!!

SO ANYONE who leaves a comment on my silly little sketch of "Kota" my little man, will be entered in the drawing for a magical 9X12" envelope of surprise goodies! (Believe me it will be good! I can guarantee there will be packages of new products in there from several high-end scrapbook and paper arts stores as well as other collage items!!!) I will do the drawing on FRIDAY OCTOBER 17th, 2008, so tell ALL your friends... let's see who will win!

Party on!

Letha

Be Brave

Inspired by a quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt:
"Do one thing every day the scares you"

The Be Brave Project was started to encourage artists and to help them get out of that rut that we sometimes get ourselves into.

If you want to participate in The Be Brave Project click on the link below to check out all the information on the project.

So remember:

"Do one thing every day the scares you"

~Eleanor Roosevelt

More Snow

The difference a day makes:
I am not sure I need to say much, I think a picture is worth a thousand words as they say, but it has not stopped snowing in the last 24 hours. We have had a few inches of accumulation, and it is staying cold.
















The funny thing about this whole snowing thing- last week it was really warm... almost 80 degrees, I was out with my mom, and we were listening to the radio when a blizzard warning came on. It was the strangest thing. Then in the middle of it, they announced that it was a test warning for the county to prepare our cars, homes, schools and businesses for winter. I just thought it was interesting because I have lived in Cody for 20 years, and have only heard these warnings a couple of times. We have hard winters occasionally, but not regularly. I am thinking that this is going to be one of those years when winter comes early, fast, hard and sticks around for awhile. I guess we have been warned to be prepared.

UPDATE 10/12/08:

When it was all said and done we got 9" of snow! Now that is a lot of snow!!!

It's COLD

I think it may be WINTER!

It is definitely cold outside here in Cody, Wyoming. Yesterday it started to snow, and last night is just got COLD. It stayed cold all night and has been snowing all day. It is not snowing hard mind you, but it is still snowing. It is so hard to tell in Wyoming if it is going to be 20 degrees in October or if it is going to be 75. The weather is just so unpredictable.

I went out just before lunch and took this picture of the our back yard. The sun is trying so hard to shine, but it is just SO cloudy that it can't peek through. You can see the neighbor's tree is blowing in the wind. That wind is just plain Nippy!

I actually wore socks today!- Now that is saying something, 'cause I absolutely Hate socks.

(I still have some of the same pairs of socks that I had from when I was in High school, because they aren't worn out - and that was - oh my - almost 20 years ago.)

I guess it is time to curl up with a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate and watch a great movie!

Slowly Getting There

I have been working on getting my Paper Traders Round Robin Journal ready to go out for more than a month now, and it just has not been coming together as I had planned, but that is just how things work for me. When I am down to the wire, and I don't have enough time for the paint to dry, then that is when my muse shows up, and it all falls into place.

My Round Robin book is titled:

Monochromatic Me

The gist of it is for each person to create a two page spread in a color scheme that best describes who they are, or that they best relate to. If they don't FEEL a specific color, then to pick their favorite color or to just go to the paint store and grab a paint chip and design a page around that paint chip. It should be interesting to see what colors show up!

I have my cover finished and I finished my sample pages today-whew!

(I am green- and Chunky- tee-hee)

I love green, I always have, and I absolutely love, love, love a ton of junky, chunky stuff all over my pages. The more junk and ribbons the better. I seriously don't think you can have too much. I hope that everyone working in my book will enjoy junking it up as much as I have.

(If you click on the picture above which is the left page or the picture below which is the right page, it will get bigger and you can see the detail much better)

:0)

Super Hero

In an effort to try and catch up, I have finished the pages for Fred's RR Journal from last year. This is one of the journals that was lost somewhere in transit, and has finally shown up. Now if the other 3 would just get here, we could get them finished and back to the rightful owners.

Fred's topic was super heroes. This was a really hard subject for me, because I never watched tv cartoons about super heroes, or read comic books, I never even saw the Spider Man movies! I know I am probably strange, but it is just not my thing, and my husband really doesn't know much about super heroes either... so I was a little blocked but I did the best I could think of.

The best super hero I could think of was my little man- Kota... He is my 7 lb. Shih Tzu. He is a tiny little thing, but mighty. He wears his bowtie with pride. He will bound several feet in the air if he smells a french fry, and will talk to you plain as day "nummy, nummy" if you have his green jar of "nacker begger" treats.

He has some very special tools of power- his fruity & sketti spiders, (they are actually kitty toys, but the cat had NO interest- so Kota, "Bubby" claimed them as his own) woven potholders that my girls have made- great teathing toys I might add & of course his shop towel that he wears as a cape, that has been worn out and has holes in it so it has now been named "Holey Shop Towel".

His favorite place to sleep is definitely under the bed covers. I think that comes from when he was a puppy and I was trying to potty train him and he would not stay in his little box next to the side of my bed. He would jump out of it and onto my bed and under my blanket. When I would force him to stay in it he would just cry. He has been sleeping under my blankets ever since.

Help Support Breast Cancer

A blog give-away & help stop Breast Cancer all in one! Check it out!

First try at Zetti

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I actually wrote something on the 16th, but I just couldn't post it. I just figured noone wanted to hear me rant and rave about my mundane life crap, so I deleted it before I posted it, and yes, everything worked itself out like it normally does, and I am over it for now.

Anywho-
Here are the pages that I have made for Marion's Tip-In Round Robin Journal. I will be mailing them out to her today, so I thought I should post them for you all to see. This is the first time I have ever done anything with Zetti. It was interesting to say the least, but was really fun. At first I planned everything out, and decided basically how I wanted everything to look, then as I started to put it all together, I started changing things. Now that is how I think Zetti is supposed to work. At least that is how I think it will work for me, because I had so much fun letting it just take it's own shape, and boy did it come out weird, and in a good way I think.























I love the way the rock/egg eye with the face turned out- that was probably the hardest part. It took several trys to get that right, but the final result is exactly what I was after. I wanted that eye to look like it was coming right out of her lips, and the rock/egg eye, is cut out of cardstock and adhered to the background paper, but the stamp of the face with the ribbon hair is over the top of the rock/egg eye, and onto the background. Then another partial image (just the face part) is cut out of another piece of cardstock and adhered on top of the original stamped image, so it would be a perfectly clear image with none of the rock image showing through. It was pretty involved, for as simple of a look as you get, but when you see it in person, you can see that it is not just a simple process. The background is done with watercolor crayons and a wet paper towel, and the border is a Zetti stamp block of eyes. I stamped it several times and cut each image out, so that I could place all the faces with the noses pointing in wrapping around the pages.























One of the things that Marion asked was that we include a number somewhere on the pages, so I used 7 and 13. They are my two favorite numbers. So these pages are titled appropriately 7 & 13!
This was so fun! I can see how this can be addicting- I will definitely be making more Zetti art.

Artist's Creed

These were posted about a year ago, but are definitely worth revisiting.
They are amazing videos! Thank you Jan Phillips!

Patriots Day

In Honor of All Our HEROS, those who continue to fight for our Country, those who have fallen, and those who have fought for our freedom.

In Hope of PEACE:

I WON, I WON, I WON!

I can not believe it!

I won the Paper Imagery Designs, Anniversary Halloween Collage Package give-a-way! I am the most unlucky person on the planet, and for me to win something big like this is so absolutely AWESOME!!!!! I always enter every contest. I guess it goes to show if you don't enter you won't win.

Well, if you want to get some of these great images for Halloween, Paper Imagery Designs has some awesome new stuff!

Even if you are not into Halloween, they have a great variety of other designs as well, so go check it out.

Thank you again, Lori! I am still in shock!

Here is what I won-

The wonderful Collage Sheets, and the Stamp Set from Tim Holtz

Yippie!!!

Spooktacular Give-a-way

Check out another great give-a-way. A great Halloween package is up for grabs at Paper Imagery Designs, in celebration of their first year anniversary!

Fairy Tip In Pages

Finally Finished! Well, I guess stewing over things seems to be a regular for me lately. I guess my muse is on VACATION!
I am so frustrated that I can't get things together like I have planned. I have a picture in my head, but I go to get it out on the paper and it turns out like crap. I can tell you I have printed the base image at least 6 times, because when I went to paint the wings, I messed them up so many times I couldn't fix it, I had to start over, then I got the wings right, and messed up the leaves on the tree! What a nightmare!
That is just the way things have been going for me lately. I just can't seem to get my art to come together the way I want it to.
Now that it is finished I am happy with it, but getting there was rediculous.

Anyway, the wings are painted with shimmer paint, VERY thin! I won't go into detail- LOL.
The leaves are individually painted with metalic green watercolor, and then I streaked metalic copper watercolor into the water, to give it that dimmensional shimmer that you see when the sun hits water as it is going down. (if you know what I mean)
The quote and the flourishes are printed on transparency and layered over the top of everything else. I think the transparency makes it hard to see the sparkle of the metalic paint, but it is there, and I think Linda will really like it. (I hope so anyway) ;0)

Another Give-A-Way

Here's another fun one! Shari is giving away her collection of ATC's and one of her paintings!
http://sharibeaubien.typepad.com/myblog/2008/08/a-give-away.html#comments
You might want to check it out quick, there isn't much time.
:0)

Soul Journey Bookmark

I am a little late posting my pictures of my Soul Journey Bookmark, because I forgot to scan it before I sent it off to Sarah. She so kindly scanned it for me, so- THANK YOU SARAH!
I can't wait to see what bookmark I get in return. It is so fun to do swaps, because it is like a little surprise gift in the mail. I am not really big on surprises, but art surprises are great. I really had a super fun time making this bookmark- I really junked it up. Sometimes I think I go overboard, but hey- that's the fun part right?






















Some of the things on my bookmark are: Twill tape letters (soul) with pastel baby pins, epoxy letters (journey), pink german scrap. On the other side I used several white rub-ons, some felt adhesive lace, rhinestone trim, and then embelished with white and black pen. I then added lots of fibers, a key, moon and a couple of pieces of natural mother of pearl charms. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. It was interesting how different it looks from the original art pages it came from.

Row House Swap

I finally got my houses finished for Lenna's Row House Swap. They go in the mail in the morning. Well, I guess, it is morning, but they will go in the mail when the Post Office opens, LOL. I have been so busy with all the life stuff that I have been having to deal with that I have not had the time I have wanted to devote to making art. I have had these little houses on my mind for quite some time. I had such great plans for them, but when I started to create them, my muse was gone- it must be on vacation!

The kids are getting ready to go back to school on Monday, and there are a million things that need to be done. I feel so overwhelmed, but yet I can't really put my finger on what exactly is weighing me down right now. It is weird that way with me. I know if I just hold out for a little while, it will pass, and all will be well again. I just have to keep creating- keep my mind on the good stuff :0)

Well, here are my houses:

*The first one is actually my daughter, Quincy's- she is so awesome! I have to brag, because we love to play together, and I was so blocked with these houses and was bouncing ideas off of her, and she put this one together completely by herself, so I told her it was hers, and she gets to keep it!

*The next one I just couldn't give up- It just spoke to me. I love the shimmer of the pale pink roof and the image is so sweet. The flower in

the corner is hard to see, but it is also a shimmery white.

I just loved this one.

*******This one has a picture of my two daughters from several years back when they were little, so I made it to give to my mom. She loves to have things that are handmade with her grandchildren in them! What grandmother doesn't right? I love these vintage pictures of my kids- they are my very favorite.

************************************************************************

These are the rest of the houses that I made and the ones I am sending in for the swap.

Beeswax ATC's

Well, enough blog drama! Even though it is still a mess, I think I am just going to get some art up. I am try to just work on it a little at a time, and hope you all just work through it with me :0)

I hosted a swap with Paper Traders, where the only requirement was to include natural beeswax in the ATC somewhere, or in some way, shape or form. That's it. It was amazing the wonderful pieces everyone made.

I had never worked with beeswax before, and did not have the best success the first go round.

But,

Here are the results of my second attempt, and the ATC's that I ended up making for the swap.

Hey check it out

I think I am getting my blog under control. I still don't have a piece of art created for my header, and I have a ton of commitments right now, and with my kids starting school again, it might take awhile.
If you like something alot, or hate particular parts- leave me comments- I can use all the help I can get. (Feedback is great!) This is definitely going to be a work in progress. LOL

Bear With Me

Please be patient... I am having a case of indecision. In other words... I JUST CAN'T MAKE UP MY SILLY MIND!!! I know- I shouldn't shout on the internet, it is rude, and it annoys people. I keep changing my blog background, because I get bored with it, or it drives me crazy. I don't like this one either. I am so determined to have a 3 column, with a darker background, or a "classy" background, that I won't get bored with, or that won't annoy me after awhile. The little red butterfly was just driving me crazy fluttering around there, but doing nothing. And to top it all off, the "older posts" link was at the top of the posts section. Well, then I changed to a new template, and some how the HTML transferred, UGH. That is so annoying. I guess I am going to just have to do some searching til I find something I like, so stick with me till I get it figured out.
Thanks!
Letha

More Collage Potpourri (Day 18)

These were pages 5 and 6 of the six pages we did of the collage pages. I have to say at first I HATED these ones. I did all the prompts, and at first I thought it was going along just fine. I got to the point where I was doing the color wash, and everything went down hill in a hurry. I just kept going with the idea that it would work itself out, and I just tried to not think about it.
Well, then I added my stencil of the face. Oh my- things just were not going well- I tried to wipe it off, and it just got worse. I broke out the gesso, and started covering part of it up. I loved my number 5, so I worked around it as best I could. I noticed that the sharpie "things I did today" started bleeding through the gesso, so that was an interesting development.
The whole thing was still ICK. So, I stole my daughters "teeny bopper" magazines and started cutting them up- I found the cutest purfume bottles in an advertisement, and the little doll bottles are awesome so I thought I would just cover up as much of my ugly as I could. I am much happier with it now. I had to put some crowns on them, just 'cause- that's what girls are all about right?

Collage Potpourri (Day 17)

I am drowning in numbers- Save me!!!!!
Just kidding, I actually had a ton of fun finding numbers to fill these pages. The three best things I found were the crossword puzzle, the "sexiest men of the year" listing by ages- 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, and then the 1-2-3 baby blocks. They all got covered up with paint, and you can barely see them, but it is still cool that they are there.
I had a great time smearing paint with the fork, and getting sharpie all over my hands from drawing around them.
I think the hardest part of this page was finding just the perfect "meaningful words" to add to it. I added them with white out around the outside of the pages and then also added the "I CAN" inside the hand shape, just to remind myself of that fact!

Stencil Pages (day 16)

Ok,
I am a few days late in getting this posted, for one the paint took like~ TWO whole days to dry! I will definitely do that different next time. I blopped it on directly from the bottle. I think next time I am going to try to splatter it from a brush, or maybe sprinkle it off a toothbrush- messier, but not so thick.
The other reason is, I was gone all day on Thursday, out of town picking my girls up from the airport. They were out of town all week visiting their grandparents. I am so glad to have them home. I missed them so much, but they had such a wonderful time, and really miss seeing their grandparents, and their Aunt. It was only for a week.
Here are the pages I did, and I love the stencil technique that Sarah has taught us. It turned out great. I think I will be using that one again.

I have to tell you a little funny- one of the things we were supposed to add was some pencil somewhere on the page. I decided that since I used a child's hand, that I was going to put a beak, eye and gobble on the thumb and make it a turkey like I used to do when I was a kid. (it is really hard to see in the picture, but if you click the pictures they will get really big, and you can kind of see it.)

My Soul Journey

I have been working on a project the last few weeks, that I have not talked about on my blog. I have had a few friends on one of the groups I am on encourage me to share, so here goes.
I have been working on the Soul Journal Project hosted by
Sarah Whitmire.
It is an awesome project, and has already been an amazing journey for me, that is why I am calling it my "Soul Journey" and not my "soul journal".
I am finding out many things about myself while doing this. I am learning so many really fun techniques, and getting outside of my comfort zone. Especially with paint! For some unknown reason, I fear paint, and the whole mess of it all.
It is almost as bad as when my kids were little and I had anxiety attacks when they would play with PlayDoh. I was mortified that it would get on the carpet. (I am so NOT a neat freak, but that would just really get me riled up.)
I am learning to open the seals on my bottles of paint, and dip the brushes in. It's still a little stressful, but I am doing it none the less.
I have used more gesso than I thought was possible, and gel medium - everywhere. I am loving it. What an adventure!
Here are my pages so far... I started a day late, so I am still a day behind, so I won't have my pages posted as quickly as I hoped. (Maybe I can get caught up- we'll have to see how busy things get)
The first picture is of my "Identification" page and my "Guard My Journey" page.

This next page was really fun, it took awhile to find all the pictures in magazines, because I had three magazines laying around in my house, and two were Family Circle and one was a Better Homes and Gardens. Not much variety. I refuse to cut up my Somerset Studios, or Cloth Paper Scissors- I don't subscribe to anything else, and I couldn't think of anywhere to get old magazines. I usually find my muse late at night too, so I just kept digging til I found something to work with. It turned out ok.

WOW-
This next one was a hard page for me... I was dealing with some strong feelings at the time when I was working on this page, so the journal prompt of "I forgot to tell you..." was really good for me. I was able to just release. Then I could cover it all up, and be done with it. I used several kinds of tapes. I was able to find some bandage tape, which I specifically used as a "healing aide". I am not sure that this page is complete yet, but I am also not sure yet where I want to go with it, so it will have to sit til I feel inspired about it.

Lastly this is my House/Family page, it was so fun, there are two pictures of my house page, and then a third of just my doll family.
The house is a pocket for my family. It is only a symbol, and not a true representation of our actual home, but that was not the point. I added a big tree, because the neighbors have a big tree up against the fence between our yard and their's and then the corner of their house.

This is a photo of my family in the house, and then a picture of the complete paper dolls. I had so much fun making the dolls. I have only made paper dolls one other time, and it is great fun.


Thanks for those of you lovely ladies that have encouraged me to share- it is hard sometimes to feel like you are going to be criticized for being new, inexperienced, or just sometimes unoriginal, but you have to learn somehow. I am grateful for the creative, welcoming, inspiring artists who are so willing to share their knowledge, kindness, and passion for this art form. You are priceless.