something completely sketchy thursday different!

yes, you've guessed it, i've combined two challenges for this one, and i think it has made the card in question twice as cool! :) but then, if you have a plan from sketchy thursdays you're already halfway there, right?


how FAB are the little banner flags? and the offset mats? yeah! i was already pretty psyched just seeing that thing...but then...i found out that this week's theme at something completely different is LET IT SNOW! and of course, like everyone else, what i need to do right now is make holiday cards!!! so i did. see?

(patterned paper: my mind's eye, echo park, dcwv, love elsie, basic grey; glossy cardstock: ranger; stickers: echo park; bling: recollections; border punches: ek success, martha stewart, recollections; snowflake punches: paper source, martha stewart, chipboard sentiment: fancy pants; inks: colorbox; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

almost everything on here is leftover from either the november pixie dust paperie kit, SNOW SHOE; or the december one, which is just previewing today on the PDP blog! so i've got loads of lovely xmas goodies from there...and a few leftovers from my regular stash of holiday fun, so i say: SNOW FAR, SNOW GOOD! ♥♥♥

reindeer games card & stenciled snowflake tutorial

today's card, made with awesome ingredients from the november pixie dust paperie kit, SNOW SHOE, is the featured project on the PDP blog, where there are some more photos and further details of what i used! but while you're here i'd like to show you a step-by-step version of how i made the fun (and VERY EASY!) snowflake background:

you just need regular old acrylic craft paint, a nice stiff-bristled brush, and a stencil. the problem is, i didn't have a snowflake stencil...or so i thought... until i was cleaning up the scraps after punching & diecutting snowflakes out of patterned paper, when i realized, YES, i did have an unlimited supply of snowflake stencils!!! (score!) :)

i really did use those scraps for the card i made above, but to make the demo easier to see, i punched a couple of "stunt flakes" out of red cardstock. (if you're punching-to-order, i recommend glossy cardstock since it holds up really well to repeated coats of paint!)

place the stencils on your paper and apply as little paint as possible, holding the brush almost at a 90 degree angle to your paper.

work from the center out, to avoid ruining the snowflakes you've already done. if you want them closer together than you can get without smearing, either allow the paint to dry between coats, or punch more than one flake on your cardstock and stencil them all in one go!

as soon as i was done i had to go and look at ALL of my punches and dies...and suddenly they were all potential stencils! give this idea a try and i bet you'll do *EXACTLY* the same thing afterwards!!! :)

rudolph the red knows rain, dear!*

ETA monday night: super excited to find out that i won the prize for this sketch challenge at limelight papercrafts! (it's STICKLES-- how cool is that?!) even happier to learn that i reported the discontinuation of limelight incorrectly: mandy is closing her SHOP...but the blog AND the weekly sketch challenge shall remain! WOOHOO's all round! ♥♥♥


i saw this fabulous sketch on the blog of the one-woman card-makin' renaissance who is called ♥amy tsuruta♥:


i was excited that it came from a cool site that was new to me--limelight papercrafts! though sadly, when i got there, i read that limelight is actually going to be closing, which i'm sorry to hear. in the meantime, i think you'll agree that it IS a great sketch, and if you can make & post a card before midnight tonight you've got a shot at a cool prize that involves *stickles*! there's a further challenge to incorporate polka dots in your sketch card...which i sorta did:

(patterned paper: mme, prima, ki, bo bunny, basic grey; thin die-cut-able wood sheet from my lovely friend MARI!; hand-dyed lace from the amazin' GINA!; dies: nestabilities (label shape) & tim holtz (reindeer); felt poinsettia: making memories; holly: prima; rub-on: we r memory keepers; inks: colorbox; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

see the strip of green paper on the border there? it's got dots! does a single row of dots count as POLKA dots? would it help if i said i was listening to a polka whilst i attached them??! well, whether or not it qualifies on that score, i am pleased to have completed another xmas card! ♥

*that was the punchline to a joke i learned in the second grade. i don't remember the joke...it was one of those long & convoluted "shaggy dog story" ones...but for some reason the punchline has stuck with me for 40 years; conversely, at this point in life, i can get up from the couch & by the time i've reached the kitchen i've forgotten what i wanted in there. memory, eh?! :)

another sketchy xmas card!

you know how sometimes you can just suddenly be ON FIRE with a great idea for a card?! well, that didn't happen to me this time. but luckily i had some very pretty papers...some gorgeous fabric poinsettias snagged for a song in michaels holiday decor aisle...and laura's lovely sketch 66 from 2S4Y:


so i think was able to pull off quite a festive monochromatic card anyway:

(patterned paper: basic grey, kay & co, sei; poinsettias: michaels (lg), prima (med), making memoies (sm); additional layers of tulle & cardstock cut with nestabilities' "blossom two"; brad: mme (from nov's pixie dust paperie kit!); bling flourish: recollections (re-colored w/copics); velvet trim: doodlebug; felt word: anna griffin*; adhesives: tombow monorunner, gluedots, sewing machine)

and by heckie, with less than a month left till christmas, i'll take it ANY WAY i can get it!!! :)



*i got a pack of "calisto christmas" felt stickers at michaels last week and while they're beautiful AND i hate to be negative in public-- i would warn you strongly against them! those finely detailed diecut words are WELDED inexorably to their plastic backing! seriously, you CANNOT get those babies off without ripping the felt to shreds. but i'm a "can-do, make-do" gal, and since i'd already cut "celebrate" from the backing sheet, i just trimmed around the felt as neatly as possible and figured i'd attach it to the card with gluedots. as it turns out, rather bizarrely, the plastic that i could not get OFF the words, would not be held ON the card with any adhesive i owned!!! finally i just manhandled it on there and machine stitched my way cursingly across. i'm sending the rest of the packet back to the manufacturer. definitely NOT a timesaver! ah well. :(

i don't even like snow...

...except on holiday cards, where i really REALLY like it a lot. it's quite nice on calendars, too. and in christmas specials, especially the animated kind from the 1960's and 70's. plus you actively need a bit of snow in snow globes, otherwise they'd just be "globes" wouldn't they? but i digress. what i actually popped in to tell you was that this blustery, snowy, sew-y card is my contribution to the pixie dust paperie blog today:

and i hope you'll cruise on over there for additional photos and a bit of commentary on how it was made!

while you're there, be sure to drop into the pixie shoppe, where everything--yes, that's right, EVERYTHING in the shop--is 15% off, including the lovely and amazing november kit, SHOW SHOE when you use the code "thanksgiving" (small case letters, no spaces, no quotation marks!) hurry though, because this offer ends at midnight, EST, on sunday, november 28th!

in the meantime, i'd like to wish all my american friends a very

♥ HAPPY THANKSGIVING! ♥

whilst at the same time hoping those of you in the rest of the world are having an especially

♥ PLEASANT THURSDAY! ♥

unfortunately, it doesn't come with potato chips...

...or french onion dip...but it IS *called* a potato chip scarf... (or a curly-wurly scarf) ...and here it is, being worn by the world's least enthusiastic scarf model* :

here's a closer shot, in which you can see the detail and shape better, but without seeing it ON someone, it's hard to see the fun drapy ruffly effect!

i used this pattern, which involves short rows**, but is a much better way*** to knit a potato chip scarf if you have a limited amount of yarn and are not totally sure when it's going to run out. i had 3 balls of very high end italian thick-n-thin called venezia that i snagged for a song when my favorite local yarn store was closing****. it was luscious to knit, and i know the colors will look amazing on my friend lelia, whose birthday present this is. and now of course i am firmly in the grips of yarn lust...and totally longing to cast-on something else! :)

*no, i actually wasn't homicidally angry when this was taken; so no, i don't know why i'm making that face!!! :)

**short rows are really no big deal to do...i'm not sure why they made me weirdly (& needlessly) nervous in advance; additionally, the pattern i used gave me a link to the best explantation of how to "wrap" a stitch when turning your work that i've ever read, making me even more confident with this technique!

***the more common method is to work a verrrrrrrrrrrrrry long horizonal swatch that *DOUBLES* every other row. the finished product looks almost exactly the same...assuming you have unlimited yarn and don't run out, mid-row!

****i still miss you, simply knit, other stores just DO NOT compare!! ♥♥♥

heart the art: week 46 (HISTORY)

this is one of my favorite HEART the ART prompts ever! for week 46, miss gina has given us HISTORY; for which, incidentally, she made one of my very favorite all-time HTA pages...but then...so did i!


i don't think i've ever made a faster journal page! partially because i went completely digital... and yeah, it is realllllly simple and pared down; but mostly because i got so into the journaling, and the concept of time travel, that i really wanted the page to be plain and stark to contrast with the thought of all the sumptuous historical eras i'd visit, given the chance: ancient egypt, arthurian england, pre-colombian south america, the courts of henry viii and kublai khan and queen victoria...well, you get the picture, right?!

♥♥♥ history...i dig it! ♥♥♥

pretty much summing up every morning of my life:

(but generally by the time my coffee is gone, my grumpy is, too!) :)

happy monday, darlings!

♥♥♥

double-challenge holiday card!!!

can i just say how much those words fill me with joy? it's thrilling to do any challenge...more so to combine two of my faves; and i really realllllllllly need to get going on holiday (or should i say "h-word"? yeah...better...) cards! ♥WAHOO!♥

i started with kazan's lovely sketch #66 from 2S4Y this week...

i added in the design dollies' current fab color combo of baby pink, grass green and white... (ok, admittedly i have a couple shades of pink and not MUCH green, but still...)

i grabbed my favorite recent purchase, this awesome pink snowflake transparency...et voila:

(transparency: hambly; fabric poinsettia: imaginisce; snowflake dies: nestabilities; metal & bead snowflake: jolees; bling flourish: oriental trading co; chipboard letters: ki memories; ribbon: michaels; spray ink: glimmer mist; crepe paper: from the party store; adhesives: tombow monorunner, sewing machine, otc brad)

here's a gratuitous second shot that shows how the inside is completely transparent. i love that look! making clear cards never stops being sort of magical to me! :) (but yeah--i will stick a little panel of patterned paper in there...under the poinsettia/snowflake thingie...on which to write a festive greeting!)

now i just need to make like 49 more...easy peasy mac-n-cheesy* right??!?!?! :) :) :)

*my friend trish said this in an email recently and it made me spit out coffee and nearly choke to death laughing. dontcha just LOVE IT when that happens??! :) (btw, is anyone else craving macaroni & cheese now? yeah, me too!)

i call it a "LOLcard!" :)

it's what you get when you combine a lolcat (in this case one of my favorite birthday ones!) with a greeting card (in this case for lhj's brother); and it looks something like this:

(lol cat: i can has cheezburger; glossy cardstock: ranger; photo paper: kodak ultra; photo corners: sei; epoxy stickers: love elsie, sei, michaels, around the block, sue dreamer; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape; other: vintage map, sewing machine)

i think it's probably just a matter of time before these things are sweepin' the nation, don't you??!?!? at the very least, they'll be dusting the wainscotting of the nation, surely?! :) in the meantime i've decided to submit this for the current challenge at the order of the opus glueii, where the topic is, and i quote, men men men men manly men!!! :) :) :) i hope it will count as a "masculine" design even though it's not particularly masculine-themed?! (the cat in the pic does look VERY MUCH like alan's cat, yoda, though...who is a boy cat...does that count, jana? rosemary??) ♥♥♥

heart the art: week 45 (PULL)

for HEART the ART week 45 the prompt was PULL. as you know, i generally try to go with my very first reaction to these, in this case what i thought first was a self-directed bit of helpful instruction! :)

which i followed up with a few words of encouragement (under the removable journaling card), and concrete ways to improve (on the back of the card); here's what those look like when you pull the top bit off (it's on there with a sticky-back velcro dot...i love those things!) :

and thus we are another week closer to the end of 2010...can you believe the weeks are now in SINGLE DIGITS?!?!? no nor can i! but please...DO NOT say "the h word"* to me any time soon, ok?! :)

*by which i mean "holidays"! arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! now *i've* said it!!! it's lucky i've pulled myself together, isn't it? a lesser woman might well be PANICKING now!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

PDP-there's no people like *SNOW* people!

a couple of months ago my darling stef sent me a link to these totally awesome snowpeople by creative chick! that clever lady started off with glass jars, pretty beads, and styrofoam balls from michaels and finished up with some utterly charming little friends! i found them so delightful that i had to try it, too! i had a (snow)ball adapting the idea to work with november's pixie dust paperie kit, SNOW SHOE, and thus today's project was born:

i hope you'll hop over to the pixie dust blog, see more photos, and read a bit about how i adapted this fun & flexible gift idea, but be warned: this action MAY WELL result in the necessity to make your very own snowfriends! ♥

heart the art: week 44 (SMALL THINGS)

here's a little HEART the ART secret: for the last couple of weeks, i've had this page sort of half-made in my head, and i've just been waiting on a prompt for which i could use it! week 44--SMALL THINGS seems like a good fit, so here ya go:


a few years ago, i asked jeff if there was some way of placing a bird feeder near our apartment's (3rd floor) dining room window, so i could really see the birds up close. (there's only one tree near enough to eye level from our windows to work, and it's a weird, leaning, craning view!) he was dubious, to say the least, about whether birds would be willing to come SO CLOSE to us in the house in order to use the inexpensive feeder we bought, which he mounted on a plank by re-purposing some brackets that were designed to hold a window box. he also was slightly puzzled as to why i even wanted such a close-up view of our avian friends. but one of the MANY ways that guy earned the nickname "lovely husband jeff" is by almost always being willing to humor me, and he is absolutely always ready to take on a construction/fix-it project.

flash-forward several years: the plank has been upgraded a couple of times and now features a bigger, two-sided feeder, as well as a holder for the suet blocks that wild birds enjoy in winter, AND extra window-box rails for the "on deck" birds awaiting their turn at the feeder. from october to march we buy birdseed in GIANT sacks which gets dispensed daily out of a large sealed kitchen trash can that lives (cleverly disguised) near the bird-feeding window. and every weekend, an eager bird-watcher can be found in the chair that now resides by that window purposely to hold eager bird-watchers: avidly cataloging new visitors, chuckling at avian antics, and generally making this project the best expenditure EVER in our household.

care to guess *WHO* can be found in that chair most often and longest ??! i'll give you a hint: it's the bergold who is NOT WRITING THIS! :) don't get me wrong, i love the feeder and watch it often, with great delight; it just turns out, i don't watch it MOST often, or with GREATEST delight--that job is reserved for the man of the house! ♥♥♥

stickers + spray ink = JOY!

this fun christmas card is made with stickers and papers from the november pixie dust paperie kit, SNOW SHOE! for more details, hop on over to the pixie dust blog! but before you go, here is a little step-by-step mini tutorial of how i made the christmas-themed text paper which i used as the background of my card.

using the yellow cardstock and fab prima alphabet stickers from the kit, i filled my paper with christmas sayings. (for the demo i made a much smaller, non-holiday version!)

when i was happy with the layout, i took the paper to my dedicated spray ink area. (ok, yeah, it's an old baking tin covered in papertowels, set down in my kitchen sink!)

i sprayed the cardstock pretty heavily with ink (in this case, black cherry glimmer mist) and let it set for a minute so the ink could really get into the paper.

i always have a couple of pieces of scrap paper handy for blotting up excess ink. you can use paper towels or sponges, but it seems a shame to waste it; especially when...

...sometimes the "blotter" comes out looking sort of cool!!! :) (when they're not cool, you can always toss them!)

sometimes i need two rounds of spray before i get the color/intensity that i want, in which case i repeat a couple of steps until i am happy. when i'm finished spraying and blotting, i set the results aside to dry thoroughly. (a brayer and papertowels speed the process a bit; a heat gun even more so!)

et voila! the end of another successful inky experiment!

...well, almost...

at this point i should probably mention that i originally planned to use the stickers only as a mask. i *thought* that after i sprayed the cardstock, i'd peel the letters away and have a lovely one-layer, two-toned effect. in fact, i didn't think i'd even HAVE TO peel the letters away...i figured once they were wet, they'd pretty much FALL OFF my cardstock! what i didn't expect was that the ink actually FUSED the stickers permanently onto the base so that trying to remove them was nearly impossible. as it turns out, the stickers and the cardstock background were dyed slightly different shades, and looked really good, so i just left them on there and kept going with my card!

et voila, the end of another SURPRISING (but cool!) inky experiment!!! ♥

it's ABOUT TIME, lauren!!!

arrrrrrrrrrgh! once again i have quite belatedly realized that it's been an embarrassingly long time since i've changed my blog header. i always have ...in my mind... the intention and plan to change it every couple of months, but somehow, that never quite happens. which is a shame, because i have loads of digi-stuff that
i really love, and headers are so much fun to make!

so once again i vow to do better, and by heckie, *THIS* could be the time it really happens! no, seriously it could! hey...why are you laughing like that...?! :) :) :)

digi materials: paper (re-colored): gabriella kit by laura skathi, funky playground designs; dressform & french script elements: parisian anthology brush set by rhonna farrer, house of three; postage and large swirl brushes: french kiss & floraART#2 by ana aspnes, designer digitals; border: on the edge #12 by katie pertiet, designer digitals; butterfly brush: gypsy girl flower brush set by gypsy chick, scrap artist; roses: betsy's room kit by corina nielson; font: plastique, dafont.com

christmas minibook

i am even more than usually pleased and proud that today's featured project on the pixie dust paperie blog, utilizing november's SNOW SHOE kit, was made by me! it's a mini-book version of "the night before christmas" starring niece madeline and nephew matthew, and it is--if i do say so myself--pretty darned cute! here's a sort of "overview" photo...in this case taken quite literally OVER the book!

of course, there are loads more photos, closeups, and details about the making of the book and the products within over at the PDP blog, and i cordially invite you to have a peek at those, because i think--again, all modesty aside--it really came out very well indeed! :)

here on my own blog i want to say a few words that might be easily be tag-lined, "in defense of bad photos"! when i first asked my sister about using her xmas pictures from last year, she was willing, but didn't think she could help, because her photos were (according to her):

1. not that great
2. of the wrong stuff
3. really, REALLY casual
4. not all from the same occasion
and finally
5. there weren't nearly enough of them to fill a minibook

i am printing this because i've had this conversation SO MANY TIMES with myself--in fact, every vacation we take, when i get home and edit my pics, my main thought is, "well THIS is gonna be the year the travel journal HAS NO photos!!!" because inevitably it rained part of the time, and i had the camera on the wrong setting for the really CRUCIAL shots of the biggest icon of the whole trip, and i forgot it entirely on another un-missable day, and so on, and so forth. and yet, somehow, i nearly always figure a way AROUND such problems...and when the project is finished, and the pictures bring back all the wonderful memories i think, "OMG, i nearly talked myself into deleting these!!!"

here are a couple of specific strategies, and a few illustrations from this project.

1. photo editing software is your friend!

it helps if you can identify what's bothering in about your pics. if you have lots of different pics that don't "match" why not make them all black and white, or sepia-toned? i use photoshop elements, but there are plenty of other inexpensive software programs (one probably came with your digital camera!) and free online tools like picknik and picasa; most of the online and store kiosk printing services have a some basic editing functions, too, that'll let you convert to b&w, fix red-eye, add frames, etc.

original photo of matthew & santa

b&w conversion, judiciously cropped & sized

2. collage is your other friend!

if your photos are blurry or you've only got low-def file sizes, print them small and make little photo clusters. also, consider WHERE you want to use them...this mini-book is 5x5"; enlargements were not an option anyway! clusters and groupings are also great if you don't have ONE shot with everyone together. if you've got distracting backgrounds that'd be hard to lose, let another photo overlap!

not close enough

too close

just right!

3. you don't have to use the whole photo!

yes, i know you love your great aunt edna, but she's making kind of a funny face in this particular shot, and her motorcyle parked in the background is VERY distracting! the great thing about digi is, you can save more than one version of things-- if aunt edna doesn't work for THIS project it's fine to trim her!!! crop her electronically, or cut her out of a print with scissors, or place a couple of embellishments over her side of the photograph. remember, all your pictures don't all have to be the same size and shape, either; in fact a variety of shots is often more dynamic on a page.

4. play to your strengths!

having done a bit of "tinkering" with the photos for this minibook, they started to remind me of the snaps from my (1960's) childhood-- the vast majority of which are 3" b&w squares with a white border. when i realized that, i used this digital frame set to make the resemblance even stronger. (if you're printing at home you can also do this by just placing them far apart on the page and leaving some white on when you trim; you can make faux polaroids this way, too!) i cut out my pics a bit wonkily, and inked the edges, so they'd have a "messy on purpose" look that covered any "messy by accident" problems! (b/c no, many of these shots would probably not look as good if they were the centerpiece of a minimalist masterpiece!)

nobody realllllllly looks good here...
...that's better!

5. sometimes drastic measures are called for

in this case, the tricks from above were more than sufficient, but i have been known to do "CRAZY" things when the sane ones didn't work! in my new york travel book, most of the photos are printed on transparency; some as collages, some on their own. in my washington dc travel book, i used photoshop's "watercolor" filter...not to mention the "contrast" and "saturation" sliders...to change my disappointingly grey and lackluster photos extensively. do you want to know which photos in which travel books are unanimously the favorites of anyone who sees them?! yep. the ones that were so "BAD" they needed to be crazied up!!! :)

6. sometimes you just have to bite the bullet

hey guess what? i just found half a dozen photos of your mom & her siblings on christmas morning, 1947! oof, no, wait, you're not gonna want these...some of 'em are blurry...and your grandmom had not done her hair yet...and holy moly, in this one your 6-year-old future mom is bouncing on the bed and your uncle has a lincoln log in his ear! i should just toss these, right? they are inarguably BAD photos! what am i CRAZY--those are priceless treasures!!!!!! uh-huh. and so are yours! perspective really is everything. :)

one more gratuitous picture...but do check out the PDP blog!

in conclusion, my on-going photo-evangelical advice to myself... (and anyone else who needs it!) ...is this: KEEP the "bad" photos! USE the "bad" photos! i promise, in the future you will agree... if they contain people and places you love, THERE ARE NO BAD PHOTOS!!!

student of clouds (digi-conversion)

i made this little digi-collage for the font throwdown gina and i had waaaaaaay back in january. i liked it at the time, and i like it now, despite the fact that the excerpt of billy collins' poem "student of clouds" is not entirely readable...or well, at least not EASILY readable. i've thought off and on of making a hard-copy version of this, but wasn't sure how to solve the font problem...or make it TEXTURAL (which is one of the points of MAKING a hard copy, imo!)

but it's my friend paul's birthday and i know he really wants a version of this he can hang up, so i applied myself to both problems.

first i changed the gorgeous grungy script to a gorgeous grungy typewriter font. it pained me to do so, because the script totally had (& has!) the vibe i want, but the point is to illustrate the POEM and if you cannot read the poem, you're in trouble, right? so i bit the bullet and did it, and it looks quite a bit better than i feared, which is nice!

i tried a couple of things for texture, the first being to print on sticky-backed canvas*. (hey mari!!!) it looked cool, but (this is hard to tell from the photos) i was kind of wondering if it was a bit dull and soft-looking compared to the test-print i'd done on photo paper...and when he saw them side by side, LHJ unsolicited, offered the same opinion, so i decided to go with the brighter version (i will use these canvas words for SOMETHING, though, don't worry; and i'll be using the technique again...and OFTEN...i suspect!)

i considered and/or experimented with: a collaged background; more/higher contrast stitching; corrugated cardboard frame; distressed/darker edges; and a lot (A LOT!) of different mats. but nothing was really right, until, in frustration i just decided to pare down and go totally simple:

yep. torn edges, heidi swapp chipboard letters, all-white stitching, one dark mat, white background. go figure. definitely not the texturey dramatic masterpiece i was envisioning...but...the poem stands out AWESOMELY, which is exactly what i wanted! (happy birthday, paul!) ♥

*in case you are wondering, as i was beforehand: this was completely easy, straight-forward, and drama-free. i trimmed a 12x12 sheet of the canvas (which is about the weight of cardstock; & the backing makes it fairly rigid) to 8.5x11" so it would fit in the paper tray of my (nothing special or expensive) HP photosmart inkjet all-in-one. then i pressed "print" and held my breath...but it was FINE! so yeah...i think a period of printing EVERYTHING on canvas, just to see if it looks cool or not, will probably ensue. i apologize in advance if this becomes tedius! :)

heart the art: week 43 (SPOOKY)

since HEART the ART week 43 fell right before halloween, the lovely miss gina set for our prompt, "SPOOKY". i don't know why that made me think of the silly photo blog post i made when i finished my nosferatu amigurumi this summer, but for some reason it did, and then it made me think that i'd really love to print all four photo-panels with the text on them...like a little mini-comic...and put them into my book. so i did.

fooling around in photoshop, i discovered that i could make the pics even MORE comic-book-like by using the "cut out" filter. then all i had to do was add the text, print it out, and affix the windows to some cardstock. as an art journal page, i guess it's pretty "out there", but it has two important things going for it:

#1: it cracks me up (which...really...that'd be enough for it to make the cut!!)

and

#2: it reflects something i was "into" this year, by commemorating the fact that i've heartily enjoyed both making unusual ami's and photgraphing them with humorous backdrops.

welcome to HEART the ART, nosferatu, i hope you'll like it here! :)

the cutest kids in the world...

...who are not related to me*...are my very dear friend trish's children carlos and isabel. they are also the sweetest, smartest and most fun kids in the world who are not related to me! i'm sure they'll turn out to be pretty talented, as well, seeing as their mama is an amazing knitter and quilter and their papa is quite possibly the best photographer i know. this is one of literally DOZENS of fabulous pictures he's take of these guys, and it was my very first choice when i saw the my mind's eye "CUTE" banner and prima's jack & jill papers in this month's pixie dust paperie kit, SNOW SHOE!

there are more photos and a detailed description of this embellished frame on the pixie dust blog today, do pop over and check them out! :)


*at this point, quite obviously, the aunties union--local 241--requires me to mention that the CUTEST kids in the world are the nieces and matthew. of course i'd be honor-bound to say this even if it were not strictly true, but luckily in my case it *IS* just an empirical fact and thus doesn't even count as braggin'!!! :)

heart the art: week 42 (BIRTHDAY)

isn't it funny how the things you most enjoy *MAKING* are not necessarily the ones that turn out the best? case in point: for HEART the ART week 42 prompt, BIRTHDAY, i decided to make a page about jeff's 50th birthday...which neither of us can quiiiiiiite believe is coming up in just over two weeks (!!!)


i used some hand-stamped numerals paper, a cake cut from an old birthday card, a photo i rescued from my phone, my trusty dymo labeller, a road sign leftover from nephew matthew's birthday banner... in short, i combined a subject that is close to my heart and a whole lot of favorite stuff... and yet the result is *not* a favorite page! go figure. but my art journal has A LOT of pages and there's still room left for more, so let's mark this one done, and ROLL ON, week 43!!! :)

this is why i'd make a really bad seret agent!

♥ happy tuesday, darlings! ♥

happy little trees...and a ONE DAY offer!!!

♥♥♥WELCOME♥♥♥

one and all to the first of four special "designer days" for pixie dust paperie's november kit, which will go on sale this friday, november 5th in the pixie shoppe! i am so excited to show you today's project--i made these happy little holiday trees using just some of the gorgeous papers and fabulous trimmings in the new kit:

this was such a fun and easy project to make, i hope you will hop over to the pixie blog where there are lots more photos and a description of the method!

of course, you'll also definitely want to tune in for zielonooka's gorgeous project tomorrow...and then miss lori will wow us on wednesday...and finally teacher jessy will school us in fabulosity on thursday! what a week, right?!

mondays, however, can always use a little something special to get us going for the week...and boy do i have that for ya today...are you ready?! ok here goes:

for TODAY ONLY (monday, november first)

i've talked pixie-in-chief kirsty into letting me offer the october kit FALL in LOVE to all of my lovely blogging friends at (...wait for it...)

♥HALF PRICE!!!♥

oh yeah and there's a special coupon code to use at checkout... it's "LAUREN"

(HOW COOL is that?!) :)

just in case you need some extra incentive, here are some of the cool things i made with the kit:

and of course there's a WHOLE MONTH's worth of jaw-dropping inspiration from my fellow designers on the pixie dust blog!

remember, the deal is for TODAY ONLY and will disappear like autumn leaves in a breeze at the stroke of midnight, eastern standard time, so GO NOW* and use the coupon code "LAUREN" to snag your very own glorious ♥FALL in LOVE♥ kit at half price! then be sure to come and leave me links so i can see what YOU make!!! ♥♥♥

*why are you stopping to read footnotes?! the clock is ticking, people!!! :) :) :)