Grandma Olena--PUBLISHED

The Dec/Jan issue of Somerset Memories was in my mailbox today...and why is that significant?? Only because I have a piece of art published on page 63!

I am awaiting a reply from the publisher as to where or not I am allowed to share the image or not. Otherwise..hope you can take a peek at the magazine sometime.

UPDATE:
I got permission to share my published piece with you. In the magazine it's framed but I wasn't able to take a decent photo with it in the frame.

This caption appears next to the photo:

"There are very few photos of my beautiful Grandma Olena since she tragically died before reaching her 30th birthday. As a child I always wondered why she didn't smile for her picture...I'd like to think this tribute to her would make her smile now."

More Humbugs

I made these late last night but was just too tired to get them posted.

I like these but not nearly as much as my first ones.

Bottlecaps

I've been saving bottlecaps for quite a while now...my neighbors and family even save them for me occasionally. Nice to have people like that even if they do think I'm odd.

I was inspired to make these bottlecap magnets aftering seeing a post about some Christmas ones on Ali Edwards blog.

I only had very thin sheet magnets at home so they aren't really strong enough to hold up anything but themselves. Who said art had to be practical, right?!?

I have 16 more sitting taking up precious table space while the Crystal Lacquer dries. Next time ...hopefully...I'll remember to put them on a tray or something so I can move them outta my way!!

UPDATE: Here are the 15 that turned out...

BahHumbug postcards

Here is my postcard poking fun at the chaos of some peoples Christmas. I'm glad our family has the "keep it simple" policy. :)

The second one is giving a little jab to some of the clueless husbands out there.

Glad mine isn't one of them. Love you sweetie!

Altered book pages

I picked up a this book at a local thrift store the other day. I had originally intended it for something completely different but decided since it was small that I should just dive in and play!!

I really like 3 of the 5 pages. The other 2, I am not so pleased with. I don't actually hate them enough to cover them up but may go back and revisit them later to see if I can make any good changes.

Can you guess which ones I like??

I still have plenty of room to play some more in this book. It's very freeing to work without a theme...at least for today. :) Sometimes I need a theme to get me started. In fact this book was planned to be a book in which each spread dealt with one of the senses. Yeah...that changed pretty quickly.

Illustration Friday: Scale

This is a piece I did last year but it seems to fit the Illustration Friday theme perfectly!!

Book Journeys

I'm thrilled that the new altered book round robin, that Theresa invited me to participate in, has begun!!

This book has the theme of Book Journeys. At first I was worried I wouldn't be able to come up with pages..then the ideas started flowing and I had to pick just 2. All the books that I love to read to my kids were close in the running too. But these are what I ended up going with.

Each of these authors are fantastic story tellers and I'd highly recommend any of these books.

Art Journal

This has been a work in progress for quite some time now. The first thing I did was rip a bunch of random pages out. Then took a corner rounding punchto each page. I selected pages to paint leaving 1-3 unpainted pages between. My next step was to punch holes for the stitching. The stitching was done mostly while sitting and waiting for my kiddos during their activities.

I learned a new background technique on ABC_alteredbookclub and have completely fallen in love with it. It uses acrylic paint and baking soda. I believe it is a Claudine Hellmuth technique originally. I have asked my friend who presented the tutorial permission to link to it...I know she is busy so I will update ASAP.

UPDATE: Tutorial link

I used this technique for the covers of my Art Journal.

Next I plan to start filling the painted backgrounds with...well I haven't completely decided... It likely will be what strikes me at the time. I know I won't be doing the pages in order...just randomly picking what suits my mood or subject best at the time.

This whole project was inpired by Ingrid Dijnkers awesome Art Journals.