Catching up and More Art

Ornery finally got the oven installed at the rental property last night. The electrician recommended by the property manager helped him in the morning to wire it in, but he had to go back after work to finish remodeling the cabinet because of course the oven was not the same size as the old one.

He started working on the new couch table for the living room this weekend, and actually made quite a bit of progress despite not really getting started on it until Saturday afternoon.  He spent most of the morning helping me rearrange the kitchen cabinet contents to make my work space more functional. I am pleased with the results, but still have a bit more to do to finish it up.  After four hours of working on it, I was more than done!

I am not sure why we were in the house over the weekend. The weather was incredible with the high on Sunday 78 degrees! I opened my studio window and enjoyed the day--except for the yappy dogs...

Here are some of the things I worked on from Friday through Sunday.

Pages for a traveling art journal

Pages for a friendship journal.  These are sent alone, not with the journal.

back sides of the pages above.

Altered Rolodex card. I used pieces of art journal pages I had trimmed off to weave the background.

another altered rolodex card. This one is called Family Game Night.

Happy Art Swap cards for February. (#haswap)

An ATC I made for a swap using Fibers

More scraps cut from Art Journal pages, and I added some embellishments I had in my stash.

Metal ATC for a swapbot swap. I have tiny cuts all over my hands from weaving that background!

Junk Journal/Letter for a pen pal

This last item is a conglomeration of odds and ends that people have sent me as extras in swaps and with letters.  It gathers in a couple of piles, and before long I have a huge mess. The pen friend to whom I am sending this always sends me lots of extra fun stuff in her letters, so I decided to do something new and different for her and created this journal. There is writing on all eight pages, plus a wide variety of ephemera and other things tucked in here and there. The back cover has a pocket with string closure and it contains an altered Rolodex card and an ATC. One page has a little envelope on it with a washi feather inside.  The whole thing will take her longer than a minute to read and since she says she re-reads my letters several times, I figured I'd give her more to look at.  :)  I do the same with her letters, and I have really enjoyed the things she has made for me. Hopefully she will have fun with this.

This week we are saying our last goodbyes to wheat. We'll see if the loss will be sustainable, but for now we are hopeful that it will help us to lose some unwanted pounds and improve our health.  Of course on Saturday a neighbor came by selling Girl Scout cookies, but we only bought one box of thin mints and decided they just don't taste as good to us as they used to.  That's a good thing!  It is amazing the number of foods that list wheat as an ingredient. I don't plan to give up all grains, and I am not going to try to maintain "gluten free" practices, but giving up just this one ingredient will be a significant change and require a dramatic lifestyle adjustment.

Tags and Postcards

I spent two glorious days last week with my gelliplate.

Then I used some of them in various projects.

 All these above are post cards except the second one which is a5x7 for a monthly art swap called Happy Art Swap (#haswap)

This one is a tag I made for someone on Instagram. My sweet daughter was feeling generous and ordered a few items from my Etsy favorites, just because. One of the items was the new Dina Wakely scribble birds stamp set. Another was the Tim Holtz layering stencil with splatters. I'm pleased with the projects so far, and I have a pretty hefty pile of prints to create with..

In the printing sessions I used file folders to clean my brayer and stencils and have had fun altering them as well. I am sending one off today in a mail art swap with a variety of little ephemera pieces, and I used three others to organize my mail and swap groups. As time goes by, I plan to add more things to the fronts, but at least I have a place to store my various swaps while in progress.

It feels great to be back making art (besides washi tape postcards)

Those are a tremendous amount of fun to make, and I am making a valiant effort to use up my washi tape samples by the end of summer. Several have already been sent out either naked with stamps on them, or as a little note in another mailing. Don't those fun strips of color just make you happy? :-)

Happy Art Swap

One of the things I have recently started participating in is a swap I found on Instagram called Happy Art Swap.  Once a month, each participant sends in 4 cards 5X7 size with original art on it.  The organizer shuffles them up and sends out three to each participant, keeps a set for herself, then sends extras to various people.  Here are the cards I made for the December #haswap.

 This first card reflects my love for the written word--snail-mail, pen-pals and the like.  The "letter" is stamped on, then I hand wrote the text.  The other little post card image is also stamped, as is the metallic embossing on the upper left and lower right corners.  The pen was an embellishment in a packet from K&Co, the stamps from my stash, and the green seal I put on with sealing wax.  There is a tiny bit of washi tape on the top of the letter--because almost every single letter I send has washi on it somewhere!

 The background didn't turn out quite like I had wanted it to, so I added the edge of the map to cover some of it up.  No problem!  It set the tone for the seaside feel of this card.  Again, the trees, and I think the letters if I recall correctly are all K&Co embellishments.  I added distress stickles glitter to the palm trees.

 This card, framed in washi tape, has a little card in the upper corner from a winery and is written in Russian.  The flowers were all white when I started, but I painted them all with twinks.  I used little rhinestones for the centers as I didn't want to put brads through the heavy illustration board that I made these cards from.

 This last one is all about the new year.  Lots of fortune cookie strips in the pocket, and all of them offer good wishes.  The words were all cut from junk mail. :)

I don't think I posted the November cards, and since they got deleted before I was able to download them, I borrowed the picture Sandie posted on her blog.  Here is the November set--my first ones ever. :)