Back from Yellowstone and Hanna's Giveaway

I just got back from Yellowstone this afternoon and of course I am busy catching up on a thousand things. It is amazing how many emails you can get in five days. I wanted to do a quick post to let you know about the giveaway over at Hanna's blog. Its a spot in my Bodacious Backgrounds class.  Hanna has written a lovely post so head on over and you can read her wonderful words and also enter the contest too. Here is the link iHanna's Blog  I have had some lovely bloggers give away classes on their blogs for me and I really do appreciate it, thanks Hanna and Violette.

If you have never been to Hanna's blog you are in for a real treat.  She is from Sweden, hosted the International postcard swap and has a wonderful creativity blog just full of inspiration.

The Snake River Fiber Festival is tomorrow. I have friends from all over who come to it and some even stay with me.  Its a two day event with classes in spinning, knitting, weaving and felting and of course vendors.  So my focus for the weekend will not be on art but on spinning, weaving, knitting etc. Its all creativity, just a different form this time.  The festival is always a lot of fun. Stay tuned for pictures of a different kind of event.  

Would you believe I went to Yellowstone without my camera.  Hubby and daughter brought theirs so I'll be stealing some of their pictures to show you sometime next week.  

The Winners Are....

The winner of Pam Carriker's  book Art at the Speed of Life is Sophie. Sophie I have your address so I'll be sending the book out as soon as I can get it packaged up.

The winner of the spot in my class Mixed Media 101 is Lisa. Lisa I will be sending you class information shortly. Winners were picked by random number generator.   Thanks to all of you who participated. Now back to the regularly scheduled blog.

I made this page yesterday. First I tried out the dauber caps that I had recently bought on some folk art paints to make the ATC. Just a little stamping on top and I was done.  I had picked up a scrapbook paper pad on the Far East just the other day and used one of the papers from it. I stamped bamboo and asian coins on top and added some Japanese fabric tape on the edge. After adding a little journaling I call it done.

I did some playing yesterday. I was trying the technique  I talked about in a this post. I tried it on 3 papers and it never turned out exactly as I planned. I still got interesting papers.  I am using the Colorwash Sprays and not the inks she used in the video. That may be part of the problem, I will probably play some more with the technique cause I think its so cool.

I cut my papers into post card sizes.  I think they will make great backgrounds. I am doing the postcard swap with iHanna again this year.    It is pretty cool to receive arty post cards from all over the world. You make 10 of them which may sound like a lot but once you get started they are so much fun you won't want to stop. These are the postcards I got last year, and the ones I made. You can find out more and sign up here .

Winter Blues

Today I was feeling the winter blues so I knew I had to do something before I slip into a full blown depression. So I know that art heals so I headed down to the studio. I had those sheets of paper that I made over the weekend and thought what can I do with them.

First I decided to try a journal page so I took the first page and sewed it right into my paper bag journal. Then I added an image and paint and so forth and journaled all about wanting it to be spring.

So that had been fun, then I decided I would cut the paper up and make postcards. Using a postcard as a template, I traced on the back and cut them out. Then I sewed a piece of cardstock to the back for mailing.










Then I did another one and added this bird by gluing first and then sewing it down, before doing the backing.

 Then I added some collage elements to the next one.










Oh this was starting to get addicting and so much fun.

Now I had only one sheet of paper left. I really find red hard to work with. I should do it more often and maybe I will get over that color hump.














and here is the last one. Gee now I need to make more paper.

after doing all these I thought I may as well sign up for iHanna's postcard swap. I only need to make 4 more and that will be a cinch. You can sign up here.

The next time you are feeling down, try doing some Art, its might be just the thing you need to do to get back to feeling great again.