Is it Autumn yet?

Summer has to be my least favorite season. Yes, we have flowers but they come with pollen! And we have vegetable gardens, which I love, but they are a lot of work and mine did not grow well at all this year. And the heat! Yuk!

I am an Autumn person. I love the weather, the colors and the PUMPKINS! I am anxiously awaiting fall!!!  :-)

I didn't have a whole lot of crafting time this week but what I did have I made the most of...

Last Saturday evening, while hubby was grilling dinner, I wanted to see if I could whip up a little something.
I grabbed my Simply Charmed cartridge and some scrap paper and made this little guy. He is cut at 2 1/2 inches and shaded with chalks.

And since hubby wasn't quite ready to serve dinner, I headed back into my play art room and made him a tag to live on. This was cut from Tags, Bags, Boxes and More at 3 1/2 inches and 'aged' with distress inks. I typed up the text with Word and cut it with decorative scissors.

Isn't he cute? I am thinking I might send it to my mom to use as a bookmark as she randomly tells me she is craving a cupcake.....although looking at one all the time might not help that problem lol

Sunday morning as hubby was cooking breakfast (no he doesn't do all the cooking lol) I stamped this fellow from the Happy Fall Y'all Stampin' Up set, colored him with Prismacolor pencils and then inked up the 6" tag with distress inks.

I had to wait until later in the week before I had time to work on this again.
I ran the tag through my Cuttlebug using Tim Holtz Texture Fades folder called Sheet Music. I then rubbed distress ink on the embossing to make it show up more. And finally mounted the tag on some paper that looked like peeling paint.

A couple days later I headed back to my Cricut.  :-) I was in the mood to make an ATC. I used Create a Critter for the adorable panda and stamped the bamboo with a stamp from VivaLasVegas Stamps.

And finally, this morning, I made my Thanksgiving cards! I told you I made the most of what little time I had lol

This dapper turkey also comes from the Create A Critter cartridge cut at 2 inches. He is shaded with chalks and mounted on a background that I embossed with Cuttlebug's Autumn Type folder. The 'gobble' was resized a bit in the Cricut Craft Room before cutting.

Just another little project that I threw together one evening.....Hubby saw me browsing through the Teddy Bear Parade leaflet and thought I needed to make a bear with a camera. There is a bear on that cartridge that has a camera but he is dressed for a Hawaiian vacation. I mixed and matched the clothes (a great feature about this cartridge), switching out his shirt for a plain one, adding a baseball cap and glasses. Now he looks just like my hubby....who collects and restores vintage cameras and is NEVER seen without a baseball cap lol

I hope you all have a wonderful week!
I am already thinking about Christmas cards!!!! And Pumpkins! lol

So Little Time - So Many Projects

I was thinking that I had been a slug over the past week but when I got out everything I made this week to photograph it, I realized I really got a lot done! :-)

I am signed up for an ATC swap with the Bad Babies. They are not due until August but I am determined to not get behind on projects this year....so mine are done!!! WooHoo.

Up first, you might say this is Steampunkish....maybe not lol I did the background with alcohol inks and loved the metallic look so I added the watch parts.
The stamps both came from Tim Holtz (yes, I am totally hooked on his stuff right now!)
Now, off in another direction! I love this woman stamp! She is from Posh Impressions and one of my favorites. But I had no clue what I was going to do with her. But sticking with another of my 'resolutions' I dug through my drawer of old ads and found this one for hat patterns. Since my woman isn't wearing one, maybe she needs to make one?

And changing directions AGAIN! I went to Paris....one of my favorite themes. :-)

I just got the Eiffel Tower stamp (Tim Holtz of course lol) and combined it with my Oxford Impressions french stamps. I really like this (and might have to keep it for myself)

I also signed up for a bookmark swap over at Parabolic Muse blog. You really need to go check out Chris's blog! She is a fellow bad baby and loads of fun! http://parabolicmuse.blogspot.com/

So, here I am, Me in 2 swaps at the same time!!! This one is due in mid July.....and I am already done! I am SO on fire!!!! LOL

Using my seaside Oxford Impressions set, I created the bookmark below. There is a grand hotel, deck chairs, seashells stamped on clear acetate with a film border (Tim Holtz) to mimic negatives and the lovely bathing beauty.

I used the fun fur yarn because it has a seaweed look to me.

For my next trick, I went back to my stash of vintage photos. :-)

I tinted it with distress inks and then layered the bookmark with paper scraps.

I distressed some seam binding and bias tape as well and added some beaded dangles. C'mon, who doesn't love danglies? lol

Here is a close-up of the photo. I think grandma looks nice in pink. :-)

But I am not done!!!! There was also a new prompt posted this week for the journal challenge. The theme is Zentangle.

Now, if you have been here long enough, you know that I zentangle. I haven't posted any in a while but I do still dabble...especially when I feel stressed. I have found it to be a great stress reliever!

But I didn't want to do a typical tangle....got enough of those hanging around. I wanted something that worked with a photo. I had this vision of a dancer and zentangles swirling around.

See below what I came up with.

So, that was my week! It looks very exhausting when I look back on it but oddly enough, the time flew by and I had a blast!

Speaking of blasts, tomorrow is July 4th! A day for eating way too much BBQ and blowing things up. I highly doubt this is what our forefathers had in mind lol

No matter, have a safe and wonderful holiday!

Gardening, Doodling and ATCs, Oh My!

Am I the only one that finds it facinating the way peas with grap hold of something to balance themselves?

Below are some macro photos of my sugar snap peas.

A recent lesson in my Creative Doodles class had us finding our signature character doodle.

I am still doodling Mignonette (Minnie) Here she is using Prismacolor pencils on black paper.

I call this Urban Minnie. lol

And ATCs!

I am still in the monthly ATC swap at BadBabies. This month we have a challenge. Use the postcard below in your ATC(s). This card is a hotel at Cannon Beach, OR. I cut it down and made 2 cards.

I sanded the postcard to get rid of the slick finish and then rubbed Distress Ink all over. The 'bathing beauties' are from the LunaGirl panorama images CD.

Same treatment of the postcard. Here I stamped the girl with umbrella (Tin Can Mail) on white cardstock then cut her out and glued her to the card.

I'm taking a class!

But before I get to that....here is the last of my 3 ATCs for April. I know the colors don't seem very spring-like but it depicts spring for me...at least this year! lol It is has been rainy and dreary since Feb 1! I think we have only seen the sun a total of 5 days since then!!!!!
And now, for the class. I am taking Traci Bautista's Creative Doodles class! It is an online, work at your own pace deal....which is what I need with my crazy work hours and back pain issues lol

Not only is this the first online class I have ever taken but I decided to move way outside my comfort zone and go big (well big for me). I am using an 8.5 x 11 journal. I normally work very small....I used to drive my teachers and professors up a wall! lol They wanted 36" or 48" canvases and I was working at around 8"-10". haha

So, here is Day 1. We have 'prompts' like 'draw circles' and we doodle. Being a real control freak, it is hard for me to just let go....my doodling has always been very controlled lol As you can see, nothing wild and crazy here! haha And I have to say, it drives me nuts that my squares are not perfectly square! lol

Day 2....More prompts. I tried to be freer, not sure I succeeded...how to do you force yourself to let go and not be your normal, tense, uptight self? lol Notice, no squares so no distress about that issue. Ha!

We also had to do this "what do you see" page. Obviously, I see a mess lol I made another print of the page so I will try this again tomorrow....and the day after... until I see something I like. :-)

You can check out Traci's classes here. And there is still time to join! Classes continue until July.

Spring has Sprung!

I work from home which is great except when the sun is shining and I can see the trees blooming outside my window. Then it becomes very hard to concentrate! Last week I snapped several shots of our flowering plum and this week, some of those shots are doubling as cherry blossoms. :-) I need to get my 3 ATCs done for the monthly swap so first up is Cherry Blossom Time. The woman is from Stone House Stamps. They have the most gorgeous Asian stamps I have ever seen! Next we have April in Paris. The Eiffel Tower stamp is from Postmodern Design and is huge! As you can see, I only used a portion of the stamp. The can-can dancer is one I carved about 15 years ago for a RubberStampMadness submission (and it was published. Yay!)

For both of these ATCs, I colored the women with watercolor pencils.

Even though our temperatures have not been overly warm this past week AND we had some serious snow and hail, the goldfinches are coming into full color. They are just so cute and a beautiful bright flash of color on these cold and dreary days!

This was a slow moment at the feeder. I have actually looked out and not been able to see the mesh at times with so many birds crowded together enjoying the feast. And Minnie loves to watch her birds...she makes sure to let us all know when the feeders are active with her squeals of delight. lol

Isn't he a handsome fellow?! He is almost done molting into his bright yellow feathers!

Tangling

I have found, much to my surprise, that creating Zentangles relieves my back pain (my mind is no longer thinking about the pain, thus I relax and it disappears)

I had to create 5 zentangle ATCs for a swap. I ended up with about 30! Here are a few of them. They are standard 2.5x3.5

Then I thought....what about square for a change. These are 4"x4"

And of course, since I cut the above squares from 4x6 cardstock, I had to use up the leftovers so these are 2x2