It's Showtime!

Into the trailer they go!

I take my business on the road to Art Shows throughout Florida in the Spring, Fall and Winter.  I don’t do Summer shows. Are you kidding? Summer in South Florida?  Besides, when would I create?  I used to do about 14 shows a year.  I’m down to 4.  I set up, tear down and man the show by myself.  It ‘s usually a 3 to 4 day process. Takes me a couple days to recover, and then I do it all over again.  Thus, the slim show schedule this year.  Too tiring and I was always behind in stock.  Not a good thing! 

From the storage spot in the pantry to the garage and then to the trailer. Long haul!

 This weekend I was at Art in the Park in Plantation. Gorgeous weather in a lovely park with meandering walkways and lots of trees.  Couldn’t ask for more.

Art In the Park, Plantation. There were shoppers while I was still setting up!

This coming weekend I’ll be in South Dade County at the Fairgrounds for The Harvest.  People actually pay extra money to get into the show 2 hours early to shop. It’s insane! Love this show.  It’s indoors so I don’t have to worry about the weather and the set-up is all day on Friday.  I can take my time and get it perfect.  Parking’s close by and it’s over asphalt and concrete, not grass. Love it.  If you’re close, stop by. It’s a great show.

Holiday Candles Revisited

     Paper Niche is hosting a three day Christmas Workshop the first weekend in December and I was asked to participate.  Hummm.......... Brought in the candles for Tami to look at.  Wonderful! Added some bling to them and it's now a class for that weekend.  Here's what the final project looks like.

Class is Sunday, December 4

     The Christmas Workshop happens to be the SAME weekend of my daughter's bridal shower (yikes!) and I'll be a little busy on Friday and Saturday, so my class will be on Sunday. I have an Art Show this weekend (Art in the Park) in Plantation, Florida and next weekend ( The Harvest) in Dade County at the Fair Grounds.  Is my plate full?  No, bring it on!

     Hope you can be part of the Fun at Paper Niche December 2-4. Look for a post soon with a link to sign up.   

     If you can't break away that weekend, I'll be there on Wednesday, December 7 teaching my Holiday Frames Class.  The base is the new 7 Gypsies Solo Shadowbox Tray and i've used MME Lost & Found Christmas Paper along with lots of seasonal embellishments.  These trays come together fast and they're affordable enough to make lots for the holidays! They make great gifts if you can bear to part with them.  I've already attached favorite photos to my samples, so I guess I'll be making more for presents before Christmas. Enjoy!

Holiday Frames Class Wednesday, December 7 at 11:00

Simple Holiday Candles

simple supplies

     I always read One Lucky Day’s  Blog (Love those Gypsies) and awhile back  the idea of using tissue paper to dress up candles was addressed.  Hummm, hadn’t ever done that before.  So I headed over to Heidi Swapp’s blog and found her video for making them.  A quick trip to Ikea for some candles and I was off to play. I used 7 Gypsies Tissue but there's also some just out from Tim Holtz with musical notes on it that would be stunning too.  

      

Heidi’s video is great but I thought I’d share some tips I learned while making mine. 

Tissue paper has little weight to it. Make sure your cuts are straight if you’re covering the whole candle as I did. I found using my big cutting surface and large straight edge, I got the best cut.

I held the paper to the candle with a very small amount of tape from a tape runner. Make sure your candle is parallel to the tissue paper, even the slightest angle will throw off your symmetry.  Test before you tape and commit.

Start heating on one side of the seam and work your way around in 1 inch increments.  Adhesion takes very little heat, keep the gun moving and smooth as you go. The very last thing I did was heat the bottom and top edges to make sure everything was adhered.

About $11.00 worth of material and I think I’ve got a smashing holiday gift for someone.  Then again, it may never leave my mantle!

Hey Noah, cancel the Ark!

Well, the sun is finally shining again in South Florida after an abysmal week of rain, flooding, water spouts and an unheard of tornado that touched down about 5 miles from home.  I was starting to feel like I lived in Seattle! The sun is never gone from my landscape for more than 3 hours and to not see it for a week was REALLY depressing.  But it's over and I woke to sunshine and a 20 degree drop in temperature this morning so all is good.

The rain made it just about impossible to take picture of what I'm working on but I did take a few yesterday    on some fun I had in the studio.  I'll download and post them later today, but right now, I'm off to load the trailer.  Leaving tomorrow bright and early for the Mount Dora Craft Fair.  I love this show and it's the largest one I do all year so the butterflies have started in my tummy. Set up is Friday afternoon and the show runs Saturday from 9-6 and Sunday from 9-5.  Stop by and say hi if you attend, I'd love to show you what I bring to shows!

Tim Holtz Cruise Recap

I’m Baaaaaaack!  A week in the Caribbean does wonders for creativity, especially when you spend it with Tim Holtz!  Had a wonderful time, learned a LOT, and made a ton of new friends. 

Here’s the recap:

Freedom of the Seas, my home for the week.

CocoCay and Freedom in the background 8:15 Am on Monday 

CocoCay Spirit Transport

The Man signing my apron(again)!

Too funny -Transportation on St. Thomas!

We're the big one in the middle!

from my balcony in St. Maartin

From the Beach on St. Maartin

New Friends - and a Happy Birthday!

Let's get busy!

Touring St. Thomas with Liz Thogersen, the Charm Swap Organizer Extrordinaire.

Liz and me in class

Shirley Hall - Beautiful charm necklaces! and Tammy Tutterow's mom!

Working on the Printer's Tray

Just some of the Loot we got!

Class Update: Because of the shop move, My Traveler's Tray Class at Paper Niche is now scheduled for Saturday, October 29.  I'll be teaching the Candy Dish and Treat Holder on Friday, October 14 @ 11:00.Hope you can join me for the fun!

I'm Caribbean Bound

                                   

                            Bags Packed ?                          Check

                            Charms Made?                         Check

                            Journal started ?                       Check

                            Passport?                                  Check

                            Set Sail Pass ?                          Check           

I’ll be gone for a week. I’ll be on the Freedom of the Seas with 149 crafters taking classes from Tim Holtz. Am I a lucky girl or what! 

Not my first cruise.  (or my second or even eighth for that matter)

Not my first class with Tim (or my second or even eighth for that matter).

I’m gonna have a GREAT time!  See ya on the third of October. I’m sure I’ll have some pictures to share!

Gosh, It’s a Ghost!

So I promised you the reveal of the Fall Project I’ve been working on. This piece is about 25 inches long and 8 inches tall.  It sits on a bookcase or can be hung on the wall.  I’ve got one sitting on my mantle where it will be joined by the rest of my Halloween decorations when they come down from the attic! 

It’s one of a series of three that I created for the Fall show season that starts soon.  They’ll all be listed on my ETSY site too so you can take a look at all of them there. 

Don’t forget that I’ll be teaching the Travel Photo Tray at Paper Niche. Class has been moved to Saturday, October 8 to accommodate the move to the new location!You can sign up for the class here. Come join us and take home a great wall hanging for your travel or family photos.

Making My Own Embellishments

   Halloween’s coming and I’ve been working on some items for my ETSY shop.  I really like to make as many of the embellishments I use as I can so I thought I’d share with you some of the embellishments. 

    It’s amazing what you can do with burlap!  I cut some flowers out of the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die with the burlap.  The weave was fairly loose and I didn’t want the flowers to fray so I went around all the petals with Fray-check, both front and back. Added some copper wire for plant tendrils and made some hat-pin embellishments to finish it. 

  I had some raw wood witches hats so I painted one purple and went back over it with Rock Candy Crackle Paint. When it dried I rubbed in some Black Soot ink and wiped the excess off.  It’s hard to capture the look of the piece on camera but it fits the piece it’s going on really well. 

    I Printed BOO! Out a few times on cream cardstock and distressed it by swiping it through Tea Dye and Vintage Photo ink diluted with some water on a craft sheet.  After it dried, it was spritzed with Sunflower Sparkle Perfect Pearls Mist  and left to dry.  It became the center of the bookplate.

     The last embellishment was the most fun to make.  I started with a Wilton Skulls Ice Mold.  Because they’re made of silicone, they’re also good for embossing powder.  I melted some clear UTEE and tinted it with To Dye For Orange. That created the transparent orange skulls. Cool, but not enough of a WOW factor.  I used UTEE Britz in Tiger Lily for my next set. That’s it!  Works for me. 

Stay tuned for the reveal of the project tomorrow!

Travel Journal reveal

Yummy Resist Paper!

One of the pockets, I've started
journaling on it already!

Cool embossed map stamp
and a sticker.

 I get so much scrapping inspiration from Life on the (Scrap) Beach Blog and video series. Kathryn comes up with the most interesting techniques and her projects are amazing! She’s even been featured on Graphic 45’s blog, that’s where I first discovered her. You can visit her here:

http://thescrapbeach.blogspot.com/

Early in the summer, one of her projects was a make-ahead travel journal. This idea had been simmering in my head since I got back from the Rhine Cruise.  I had been journaling on the program the cruise ship gave us every day and then had to put it all together with my pictures when I got home.  I kept thinking that it would have been so much easier if I had a real journal with me that I could write in as we went and then add pictures after we got home.  Then I could have added in my ephemera as I went, labeling and commenting about it. Instead I had to try to remember where I got what. It wasn’t pretty. 

Acetate, pocket and journaling
tag.  Gotta love it!

One of T!m's stamps embossed
on the back of an envelope.

So now I’m not only prepared for the Tim Holtz Cruise coming up at the end of this month (be still my heart!), but any other traveling I do.  I made it neutral enough to fit any travel I do. 

 This project was VERY liberating.  Thanks Kathy! I usually need to work within a certain palette with a specific theme attached.  Check out the ETSY shop for how my work usually evolves. For this project, because it was just for me, I didn’t feel the need to be bound by anything.  I started by picking paper.  I wasn’t too concerned with color because on a lot of pages I misted it a different color, distressed it with ink or stamped travel icons into it.  I didn’t buy any paper for the project, just went through my stash and picked paper I liked.  There’s a combination of MME Celebration Tracker (love that stack!), Tim Holtz paper (of course, silly question!)

Thanks, Kathryn, for teaching me how to add a pen to my journal!!

I started with 12x 12 sheets.  The papers that weren’t 2 sided I stuck together with a spray glue ad then cut everything down to 8.5 x 11”.  The surplus I used for dividers.  I used my Cricut to create some pockets from some of the papers and threw in a couple of acetates, just to break things up.   I liked it so much; I created another one just to keep track of my daughter’s wedding.  Love it! Click on any of the photos for a closer view and tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you.

Blogger isn't cooperating today.  Excuse the layout, she just doesn't want to work and, after three tries at formatting, I'm done!

 

Charms, Charms everywhere!

Let the madness begin!

I’m counting down the days until I’m on Freedom of the Seas and Crafting with Tim Holtz and all my friends.  While I’m counting, I’m creating . . charms, that is!

Almost done!

I’ve joined the charm swap (really out of my comfort zone, but I’m challenging myself) and at last count we’re up to 31 swappers!  Thought you might like to see what I’m creating.  One of the rules of the swap was that we had to use Tim Holtz products in our charms.  Here’s what I came up with.

I used 1inch memory frames and cut up some Idea-Ology paper from the Lost & Found Stack.   Tore a strip of solid paper and adhered it to one edge and stuck a tiny flower down with Stickles. Printed one of my favorite sayings from one of his stamps to use on the back of the charm and added a bead at the bottom.   I can’t wait to see what every one else made!  I know just where the charms are going.  More about that in the next post. 

Adding beads

There’s also a general swap going on that’s a little less structured.  You just sign up, create what you want and meet to swap.  There are ATC’s, charms, tags and mini-albums coming to be traded.  That should be fun too.  I created something different for this swap.  It didn’t need to be a Tim product, and since I wanted to play with Shrinky Dinks, I did shrinky-dink charms.  I used the image from the Scrap Map page that advertised the Holtz Cruise, jammed a bunch of them together on one page and printed it. Experimented with shrinking these down with my heat gun instead of a toaster oven.  I won’t be using the oven any more. Like the control I have when I do it with the heat gun! 

Before they get shrunk, the still need holes for the jump ring

As they came out of the printer

in the box to get a spray protective coat!

Had to play with it a while to get it right but now that I know what I’m doing, I’m thinking it’ll make a cool class for Paper Niche. 

Florida State Album

Cover with the Tattered Florals flower

Finished the FSU Photo album and I promised I’d show it to you.  It was really fun to put together, and it was the first time I’d done a gatefold album.  Really Cool, opens from both the left and the right. 

It’s a chipboard album and I used black chipboard for the base.

 The back page measures 6x9”.  There are 4 pages that measure 6 x 8” and two pages that measure 6 x 4 ½”.

  All of the papers co-ordinate, I used some from 7 Gypsies, Teresa Collins, and Graphic 45.

 The flower on the front was made from really wide ribbon I got at a scrapbook convention about 9 months ago.  I die cut them with Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die, added some black netting and finished it off with a button sewed to the middle

 I like it!