It's June 20th!!

Happy Father's Day to all dads no matter what form they take.

Techniques book

Recently I've been doing up these technique books - actually more of a technique journal. I'll play and experiment with different mediums and tools to see how something looks and how it changes if I try something new. My problem was that something that works on paper didn't work the same way on a different surface like canvas or acrylic so I made up this book that has different mediums as pages to try it out.


The text block is made of 5 signatures. One signature was made with one pre gessoed canvas leaf and one vinyl leaf, each sandwiched between 2 sheets of drawing weight cardstock. The text block was then stitched into a hand bound cover.

This one has black gessoed canvas


Canvas and Vinyl page. Vinyl lets me see what acrylic would look like but without the rigidity.

Tip: Don't use yarn when using the Secret Belgian Binding. It stretches too much and you end up getting frustrated and throwing things.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Day to anyone that takes care of anyone.

Roses glow

These were made using the Tim Holtz Tattered Flowers die and My Mind's Eye flocked paper and while I thought they were pretty cool before I glazed them, I really like how they turned out after being coated with UTEE. The UTEE thing has a bit of a learning curve, I've found. One of my peeps and I were playing with her mom's melting pot and almost a whole pound of UTEE to learn that

1. Work fast, this stuff cools quickly
2. Work fast, it scorches in the pot and turns yellow
3. Don't work too fast, it's really hot and burns are a bitch
4. Make sure you use the right setting on the pot
5. Don't use the heat gun to speed up the melting process, it makes a HUGE mess
6. Not everything looks good dipped in the stuff - felt for instance. Flocked paper leaves fuzzies behind too

Books, books and more books

So...I've been slack. Actually more like so busy I don't even have time to sleep. I think I've done 6 layouts since last summer? I've still managed to collect more stuff though and over the last couple weeks I've made the attempt to use my new toys AND try to reduce my stash by making books. I've been able to use up 4 whole paper collections, including the die cuts, use all my brand new Tim Holtz Sizzix dies, stabbed my fingers repeatedly AND spill an entire bottle of PVA glue across my table. Now it's time for show and tell...

Books with Japanese Stab Binding
I used My Mind's Eye Ooh La La collections for these and I stabbed fingers twice and broke 2 needles doing these.





Flat spine casing and hand sewn signatures

This one is the end result of an entire Basic Grey collection pack, 3 bloody fingertips and a whole cup of spilt PVA glue to clean up off the table and floor.

This was kinda fun, I played with the individual page edges and sizes. I want to use it for an art journal so I'm going to cut windows into some of the pages at a later date.






Last but not least, my Star Book.

I got my hot little paws on the new Tim Holtz dies from Sizzix and I was so geeked by them. I'm not a fan of die cuts, I actually have a hard time scrapping with them since I never think of using them but I'm in loooove with these. I especially like how the finished die cut edges turned out and Marah Johnaon's Chivalry line is to die for. All the edges, the flourishes and the flower are die cut from the collection. What I learned doing this one is that 8 points is too many, it gets too heavy for the book to support so when you hang it, it's bottom heavy and the star isn't symmetrical, that and if you have ink on your fingers while managing to stab yourself, you might end up with a permanent tattoo...

To Infinity and Beyond!!

HAHAHA, we just came back from the 3D double feature of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. You have to love a company that can produce movies where kids will sit and watch, totally engrossed for 4 hours. They even added in extra scenes through the movies, I have to admit I enjoyed it. Only thing is that I'm not completely sold in this 3-D thing. I really don't think it's all that, I mean, to me, these 3D movies just look like high end HD/Blu-ray movies. I think I was spoiled by the 3D spiderman ride at Universal because that really made you feel like things were coming to get you. These "3D" movies just don't have the same feel.

I have to share these...

These photos are crazy mad. My friend in Sydney sent them to me this morning. They woke up to find Sydney completely enveloped in a dust cloud. The dust storm originated in the Northern Territory and blew south to Sydney. That's like a dust storm in the Dakotas blowing south to Miami.

Been trying new things...

Well, I was inspired by a really good friend of mine to play with a blank canvas book. Only problem was that I couldn't actually get my hands on one so I decided to make mine. With about $2. worth of artist's canvas, about $1.50 in tabletop vinyl and a couple packs of grommets and interfacing that I had lying around anyway, I stitched one together. A bit of gesso, paint and glimmer mist later, I'm pretty happy with the results. Most of the embellishments are buttons, I really like that silver 3/4 profile facial button.



The bling on the cover is another new toy I got. I forget who it's by but it looks like a soldering iron and it heat sets the stones onto the fabric. It's very cool but really requires a bit of patience. It took a little longer than I was expecting to get the cover done.

My last cool purchase is my felter! After countlessly stabbing my fingers by hand felting, I happened across a bargain I couldn't pass. I've been playing with it and came up with these beauties. Oh, and the ribbon on the book cover is felted on as well.





I've also got some new papers that I'm working with now. Will post when done...

AARRRRGGGGGHH!!

Why can't there be just 1 @#$%&* version of Windows that can work??? I've just about had it with Vista!! &%&*($^ explorer keeps freezing so I can't even see my hard drive and apparently, the "fix" in the service pack is hit or miss. I won't ever find out because I refuse to install the little virus that they want to push to make sure that I have a "good" copy of Vista installed.

I seriously need to install Linux...

Presents!!!

Well, it wasn't as bad as I was led to believe.

I got my 2nd fridge which I'm really chuffed over :) I've been wanting one for a while now and yes I know it's more a "family" present, I get veto power over everything that goes in it.

Meanwhile, DD picked out this...



Which is a lot better than I was imagining, apparently something with faux fur was a close 2nd because "this feels really nice Dad"

DS came up with...




He's been wanting me to get a "slider station" ever since they started peddling them on TV. For those unfamiliar with the concept, check it out here. Beware, you're going to be yelled at so turn your speaker volume down. Dad, being a good dad, used the burger thing to make dinner that night because I was sleeping off the effects of drinking a blenderful of something frosty and adult flavoured :)

It was a VERY good day.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I'm being pro-active since I can barely keep up with everything else.

Happy Mother's day to everyone out there in a mom role. Moms are the coolest, most patient people on the face of the earth. If they weren't, humans would be extinct in a generation.

Can't wait to see all the stuff that Dh has apologized for in advance, apparently my kids think my style is having no style...

Happy dance

Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! School today, quiet house. Doing a bit of code, finishing off a hat for felting and hoping to paint a bit.

Happy days are here again...

Bleeaacchh!!

Spring break is almost over, 3 more sleeps and it's back to school. Yay! DS is definitely feeling his oats these days too, talk about defiant 4yrs olds! To top it off, you can really tell when he makes the effort to be good and when he's "in a mood", I guess there are some days when he figures it's no use so he may as well let it rip since he's getting into trouble anyway.

No scrapping for the past couple weeks either, I'm hoping to get some done today but it's too early to tell at this point. Hopefully, I can get some Easter pictures this weekend too.

Scrapping!!!

Scrap4Life had their cyber crop last weekend and I did manage to get a few of the challenges done. Where I have been slack is with my girls on the Australian Top 50 board. With the time difference and just day to day stuff, I haven't been by in quite a long time. ASBT50 had their CC last weekend too and I'll be good and drop by to check out the challenges.

Anyhoo, here's what I managed to do. I'm really pleased with them.







BTW, good luck to Jodie and Judy at S4L. Jodie's moving out to Hawaii to start a new adventure and Judy is going to take over the business. Can't wait to get my box of goodies from them.

We've got big things coming down the track too...

Project Appalachian

I get emails from my LYS and this week, they announced that they're collecting sweaters for Project Appalachian. I'd personally never heard of it but they were inspired by a story on the news over the weekend about poverty in the Appalachian mountains.

To be honest, I still don't know much about it or have bothered to research the article - my bad - but in this day and age, I truly believe that poverty, true poverty, not relative poverty in the USA should not exist. Anyway, their initiative is to collect sweaters for children and they are looking for any and all knitters and crocheters to get involved. I packed up the few that I could put my hands on and took them down and volunteered to make more as they were getting some yarn donated.

Having said that, I'm putting out a call to any that can help. My LYS is A Stitcher's Haven and unfortunately, they haven't updated the website with the details yet but their contact information is on the link.

The Cat in the Hat came Back

I had to share this...

In honour of Dr Seuss' birthday - at least I think it's the birthday, DS's class did this getup, which I had a helluva time trying to get him out of.


I couldn't imagine trying to control 21 of these things - it really was a day of herding cats.

3 more days til school

There's been no school this week for "Family and Friends Week" which means that I've had 2 feral children for the past 5 days. 3 more days to school and at this point, hours are worth counting.

It all started off with the Garlic Festival in Delray Beach on Valentine's day and yes there actually is a garlic festival, it's their 10th one and I was quite surprised how extensive it was. All the food of course was garlic themed - garlic pulled pork, garlic chicken skewers, garlic pizza, garlic sausages, london broil in garlic sauce...garlic ice cream which was surprisingly tasty. Kids had a blast, got their faces painted and got on the rides and a couple hours later, it was time to leave with much lighter pockets.

DS had a custom paint job, it was so worth the money. He wanted spidey and I asked for venom since it wasn't on the list. I think it got them a bunch more business as everyone that saw him wanted to know where to get it done and I believe they made the local evening news. I had to get them hats since they left the house without theirs and the sun was beating down pretty hard. Anyways, there was a local camera reporter at the tent where I got the hats and she thought they "were just too cute" and asked to interview them. The boy, just went to town with it. I don't know if it was aired or not, it's not local to us but it was funny watching them and all I could do was shake my head. Don't I have the most beautiful DD?



And look out, here comes Venom and his mild mannered alter ego; Stupendous Man

DD had her first spa experience too, one of her friends had a spa birthday party and I was really pleased that they had age appropriate activities. The girls got their hair done, a bit of glitter and eyeshadow and manicure and pedicures. It was very cute, loud but cute. We dropped her off and wandered around the mall while it was going on. They were running a little late when we got back and I went in to find about 15 giggling and talking 6 and 7 year olds parading around in their little spa robes and pedi-slippers. It really was trying to herd cats.

Oooooh!!! Tagged again :)

Hi!! Long time no see huh?

I got tagged by Vicky and since I'm soooo slack, I just found out.

*****Photo Memory Game****
Here are the RULES:
1.Go to where you store you pictures on your computer.
2.Go to the SIXTH folder and pick the SIXTH picture.
3.Post that picture on your blog along with a SHORT story about it.
4.You know the rest. Tag SIX people and leave a comment on their blog or email then letting them know you chose them.

Here's my picture:



This is actually from DS's camera. He got one of those kid-proof Diego cameras for Christmas and this is from his first play with it. We were outside playing with a bubble machine so his excitement was two-fold. The bubble machine was actually working - I had confiscated it the week before because they swirled the thing around and got the motor wet so I had to clean and dry it. Second, he has "my OWN camera". He's very button happy too, I had to dump the card a couple times that day. Too bad most of the pictures were of the floor or his fingers. I believe those are my feet in the shot.

My turn now...who to tag?

I tag

1. Kylie
2. Jude
3. Jen
4. Kayla - if you get the chance but I figure you're taking lots of pictures now anyway

Glad that's over

The germs have left the building!!!

I'm still not on full appetite but that pain's stopped and my body isn't protesting to everything that enters my stomach.

One of my favourite cyber crops is on tonight too. Scrap4Life's January CC has started for the weekend and the challenges are so nice and I'm going to take the challenges with me to my not-so-LSS's Friday night get together with the girls. I'm realy liking scrapping at the store since it helps me stick to the scrap diet. I only get what I need for the layout and I'm not picking up stuff for the sake of it. Mind you in a couple months when all the new stuff from CHA hits the shelves, that might change.

Having said that, my pal Vicky has awarded me with a blog award and I have yet to collect it. I will be doing that soon, I promise and I'll be paying it forward, I need to have more than 5 min blog time every 3 days or so.

Big things to come....

My kids love me

They were very insistent on sharing their germs with me. I'm not feeling good...