I'm playing with stuff again

I've been playing around with some of my real life (non-digital) art supplies and finally dug into my light modeling paste. This stuff is WAY cool to play with. It gives me ideas every time I use it.

The big project I am working on is the altering of a children's book cover to make it look like a cave wall. So far so good. The inside pages are rough watercolor pages that will be run through my printer. Ever try that? It's a neat effect.

Anyway, as usual when I get a cool texture I try to reproduce it digitally. I think I did it. This little set of letters, numbers and a couple of frames is gloppy looking stuff on corrugated cardboard. The edges are really rough and they look best on a pale background. But play around with it and see what you can come up with. Have fun!!

Here's the preview:


Download Trashed Cardboard here

This is too fun

No sooner do I finish one Mish-Mash set then up springs another one! And I already have stuff made up for the next set! Yikes! This is seriously fun, though. I hope you all are enjoying these sets as much as I am enjoying their creation.

I really am having more fun doing things this way instead of trying to come up with a set of coordinating stuff. It's stressful to me trying to make everything match. Now I find myself giggling a little bit more when I'm at the computer. And that's as it should be.

Art should be fun. It should make you giggle. You should look at your project at all phases of creation and smile. And lately my creations have been making me smile.

I've got a few quickpages included in this set. One very interesting one includes a green glass bottle from Marta Van Eck. I embellished the bottle with paint splotches and it turned out well.

Another quickpage started out as a study in circles that looked very space-like. I'm going to use it myself when I go out to star-gaze within the next couple of weeks. The Taurid meteor shower starts Nov 5 and runs through Nov 12 and I've been told they are spectacular. And according to the star map it looks like I'll have a fantastic view of the show. Especially with all of the leaves gone from the trees.

I haven't got a proper camera for photographing the meteors but DH is going to take some pictures of me watching them. You see, the sight of me out there on the back deck is quite amusing. I bundle myself up in warm clothes, I take two afghans and lay them on the picnic table, then I lay on the afghans and DH takes a quilt and tucks me in. So there I am...all laid out on the back deck, in the freezing cold, watching meteors and comets. I'll show you when it's all done. LOL

Then there's the day that I just got it into my head to make a brick wall. That was sort of easy so I took out some of the bricks and it got more interesting after that. There's a full sheet of brick, a half sheet of bricks and the quickpage with the bricks missing and a little graffiti added.

The little finish nail is really little. I mean really little. But the creative application of drop shadows makes the little bugger show up very nicely. It's just that I needed a really tiny nail...

Although what I could really use right now is some water. As I'm writing this we've been without water since 8am. I had plans for a shower and a really nice fish dinner today. I'm just about caught up on laundry and THIS happens. *sigh* It appears there was a really big water main break and it took out the water supply for the whole township. Well, it's good that we have a pool full of relatively clean water. I just have to figure out how to siphon it without removing the winter cover. hmmm.... I think that might be the best use of that pool all year. It sure didn't see much swimming.

I'll be happy just to wash my hands with something other than wet wipes. Of all days I decided that today would be the day to ModPodge an 8 foot board for a shelf that I'm putting up. I'll be doing the same with another board the same size. I have a bunch of old Reader's Digest condensed novels and I'm tearing out the pages to cover the wood. I really hate having to sand when I can't do it outside so I'm just gluing and papering over the whole thing. Voila! No rough edges or splinters and no sawdust up my nose for a week. Over all it'd be a win-win if I could wash this extra glue off my fingers.

Well no matter what, I HAVE to cook the fish for dinner. I'm going to go do some recipe hunting...maybe I might try one of the recipes in my Indian home cooking book. I LOVE the chicken recipes and the pastries are all wonderful. mmm...


Well, anyway let me show you the preview for this set:



Download Mish-Mash plus Quickpages here

This file took a really long time to upload. That's unusual for Box.net unless there's a high amount of traffic. It is a larger than usual file so let me know if it's taking too long to download and I can go split it up.

Fun with a new template

Designs by Sine has some really fabulous templates. What else is there to say, the templates are unusual and inspiring. I just love them and more often than not I end up making a layout with the templates the same day that I download them.

And today was one of those days. And today she had two templates so it was really difficult to decide which one to do first. I decided to do the one that hadn't been scrapped by other artists yet. I used all of my Mish-Mash stuff for this template layout. I had a blast!!

I naturally scrapped my favorite subject....my adorable kid. She has just been expanding in her knowledge and reference base lately. She is truly an information sponge and she's been using all of this learning in very creative ways. She makes her own books because from the beginning she's seen me making books. She's working on a book right now that when it's done it is going to be photographed and posted here. It is GORGEOUS! I wish I had made it. I love it and I'm already studying her designs so that I might improve my work. My wish for her to be better than me is coming true.


I just love that wonderful girl of mine.

Doing a little family history scrapping

I might have mentioned that my brain doesn't work the same as everyone else's. For the life of me I can't figure out why I can watch Dr. Who and come up with Pennsylvania Dutch style designs.

How did I get there? LOL I wonder what I'd come up with if I watched Little House on the Prairie? I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that one right now. LOL

I had a couple of pictures I wanted to set up in a layout and this style seemed to suit.



The pictures are of my Uncle Jimmie, Uncle Max, Aunt Carole and my mom in the winter of, I think, 1945. It's pretty common to get really bad ice storms in NE Arkansas but snow is rare. The full photo shows that they had about 4 inches of snow that day. I bet they were ecstatic.

I got the layout done and thought that it might make a nice quickpage for you so I copied it before merging it with the pictures.

I kinda like the modern application of Pennsylvania Dutch. I went to the Library last week and checked out a book on the history of American design. Fascinating book. It's a great reference for designs going back to Colonial times.

So now that I've rambled on, I'll put up the preview and link and head off to sleep. I'm getting over a cold and I still feel a little loopy.

Here's the preview:

Download Pennsylvania Dutch Quickpage here

A Halloween Layout

I just got this from Daynaba and I LOVE it! I love seeing what lovelies can be made with my kits.

SWEET!

I am not normal

But that seems to be why everyone likes me. LOL I do seem to make a lot of stuff that walks WAY off the beaten path.

We're a house full of sickos this week. Just colds, nothing to worry about. But it is making the prospect of Trick or Treating a bit of a nail biter. I have the wings for DD's costume almost ready. Actually I just have to wait for her to wake up so I can position the velcro and then I can work on the embellishments. The only indoor trick or treating around here is at the mall and it's tonight. Well, she's not well enough to drag around a mall for two hours so we'll hope for the weather to cooperate on Saturday. Yeah right. I'm going to buy her new snow boots tomorrow. LOL

But she'll be so cute as a flower fairy and I have plenty of warmies for her to wear under her costume so that everyone can see how pretty she is. I made the costume with the warmies in mind so it'll fit well enough, too.

And once I have the pictures of her in her costume I'll make the papers and elements I need for the Halloween layouts and show her off to you.

But for now....the weird and wild papers!



Download Wild Papers here

Rabbit news

Some of you may remember earlier this year we had a nest of baby rabbits in our backyard. You might also remember that we found it because it was being attacked by a Northern Short-tailed Shrew that had killed one baby and was trying to get another.

We did our best to help the nest to safety and we can finally report that one of the baby rabbits has survived. We took this picture of the two rabbits, one is the mother rabbit, back in July. I never got around to doing anything about it until now because the next day after this picture was taken my dog, Kodi died.

I finally got around to making something so that you could all know that at least one of the baby rabbits has survived to adulthood. He'll probably eat my grapes next year if the vine survives this winter.




And that's probably it for tonight though I'm still up watching DD through her cold. It does seem to be easing up as far as her feeling hot. Her skin feels completely normal and cool. Not sweaty or hot like earlier so that can be written off as her normal blast furnace mode at bedtime.

I'm sure glad I don't have to cook breakfast in the morning. I think I'm barely going to manage the box of raisin bran. LOL