New Tacks For My Office

Since I have an office now - and a place to display some of my 'dalliances' - I decided that I needed to be rid of those pesky push pins. So I opted to make my own artful tacks. I took some dominoes that I had done quite some time ago, pried off the magnet tape - I have a stainless fridge now, so what's the use!? - and epoxied some thumb tacks to the back. I think they put those danged push pins to shame! The dominoes are mostly done with Staz-On and Sharpie markers. There are a couple of Chart-Pak transfers in there, too and some alcohol ink things. Then I started eye-ing the Rummi-Kub tiles and got to work on those. Chalk inks or Stazon for the backgounds. I stamp with Stazon and then color in with chalk pastels or prismacolor pencils. I went to Frenzy Stamper yesterday to pick up my Halloween book pages and got some Tim Holtz Fragments. These things could easily become an addiction! Just put some clear glue like Diamond Glaze, Dimensional Magic or Glossy Accents down on your picture and put the fragment on top of it. Trim the excess paper when it's dry and - Viola! - you have an acrylic tile! It's very easy and very cool looking. I found that I had a bit better luck when I weighted the Fragment after gluing, but either way went well. There's also an embossing powder bug and lizard thrown into the mix for fun. So, my bulletin board should be much happier now. It was thrilled when I took down the faded purple paper and the bear border from the last gal that had my job! That got replaced with a beautiful blue and green batik fabric. I've got to make that place my own!

Happy Anniversary To Me!

Today marks the 17th anniversary of the best day of my life. It's the day I married my fantastic husband. I could never in my wildest dreams have asked for a man that is more compassionate, thoughtful, endearing or loving. He is everything I could ever want and more. He's an awesome father - I often say he's a better mother than I am! He's calm, level-headed and my best friend in the whole world. He knows how I feel about him, but I felt the need to share it with the world today. My public declaration. This picture was taken about 18 years ago, but the love is still there and even stronger than it was then. When I think of us, this is the image that appears in my head.
Love you long time, my love - forever and ever!

K-

Boo Cat!

See?
I told you the swaps were keeping me in the studio! This is Boo Cat. Another Frenzy Stamper swap. We had to do 33 of these puppies! Yikes! That's about maxing me out! Anyhow, I wanted this to have a primitive look - no fancy stuff or tricks - except for the rhinestone eyes! It was another one of those - took much more work than I thought - but it was fun. The background is the credit card technique I credited in an earlier post - it's done on both sides. The cat is done is black gesso. Then I had to go back in with white gesso to put in the mouth, eyes and moon. The rest is pretty self explanatory.


I did learn on very valuable (to me!) trick doing this page. I was concerned about placing the tiny rhinestones in the eyes without getting any glue seepage around the edges. I don't really care for that - looks sloppy to me. I was envisioning placing each rhinestone with my self clamping tweezers and a teeny tiny drop of glue on the end, dropping them, making a mess, etc. YECH! I was dreading that! Then I had an "aha!' moment. I used the rhinestones that are made for clothing embellishments to be set with an iron. They have heat activated glue on the backs. I set them in place and gently heated them with the heat gun. As they warmed up I went in low until the glue melted - it's a visual thing that you get used to seeing after you've done a few. It took me less than 10 minutes to set all 70 eyes! (I did a few extra pages) What a relief that was! I was seriously considering leaving the rhinestones off!

I was planning on pouring some resin today, but we've had the evap cooler running now that the intense heat has backed off. It makes the house so nice and cool. It's much better on the skin and furniture, too. But resin does not like he humidity. It'll never set up right - stays tacky forever. So I'm kind of hopin git cools off around here quickly so I can play with the resin!
I've got another Halloween project in mind, but I'm still waiting for supplies....
I hope they get here soon before I lose interest!

Halloweenchies!

Wow! It's been quite some time since I've posted an update here. Time has become a rare commodity at my house. With two kids each in a new school and a new job after almost 15 years of working strictly from home, I've got some serious juggling to do! Don't get me wrong, I love my job and the kids are doing fantastic - straight A's for both of them the first quarter! But if it's update the blog or clean the bathroom - the bathroom usually wins out! And I'm still running my business to top it all off!



I'm trying to pluck some time here and there to work on my art. It's been a challenge - but one I'm up to! One thing I've done is swaps. I work better with a deadline sometimes! Here you'll see my 'Halloweenchies' for another Frenzy Stamper swap. This came up spur of the moment a few days ago and I've already got them done - yea! I just love Jack - who doesn't? These were really straightforward. I sprayed the orange cardstock with black webbing; punched out the inchies and edged them with an ink pad; then cut jack out and adhered him using mounting tape to give it some dimension. I think he looks great!

I have the inchies from the last swap mounted and framed. I can't take a picture of it because my camera is dead and Chris lost his (bummer!). It's too big to fit on the scanner, but as soon as I can get a good picture of it, I'll post. It looks fantastic!