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!

More Inchies!

I finished my inchies for the most recent Frenzy Stamper swap. I can hardly believe I had time! I got two sets done before I started working and had three to finish up after. I realize that most people work full time, so I'm not trying to whine by any means. It's just quite a bit of an adjustment for me. I worked 106 hours in the first two weeks, so I was bushed! Anyway, these three sets are the last of them. One set is circles and polka dots. Another is metal. I punched a fleur de lis, mounted it on the inchie, covered it with aluminum tape, coated it with india ink, then lightly sanded the raised edges. The last set is the 'anything goes' set. I cut the hearts from the leftover phone book pages from my last journal swap. I really like this one.

New Job!

Well, I started a new job about two weeks ago. I'm now the Administrative Assistant at my kids' old elementary school. I've put in a ton of hours the last two weeks trying to learn the job and my responsibilities. It's really quite a bit, but I'm looking forward to it. It's been quite some time since I've had to get up and go to a job every morning, but I like it. It's still hard to get anything done when I get home, but that will come with time - and necessity! The schedule works really well for our family. I have close to the same schedule as the kids with the exception of about 4 weeks in the summer that they have off that I don't. They're old enough now that that's not a huge problem. Other than that, I have pretty much the same time off as they do - not too many jobs can give me that! My consulting and window covering business takes place almost exclusively on the weekends and evenings, so it doesn't conflict with KCK Designs either. So it's a win, win for everyone! The only thing that I think may suffer is time for art - BOO! I just have to make the time becasue it makes me happy. And when Mom's happy - everybody's happy!!!!!!

Inchies!

Inchies are all the rage right now and I've just jumped into the fray! I've got to get 5 sets done by the first of August - no sweat! These are the neatest little pieces of art going! Each one is a 1" square and must be original - no copies - and have at least two layers to them. I thought it would be a PITA to work this small, but it's actually really fun! Here are my first two sets - Black and White and 'Word.' For B&W I used a zettiology stamp - Maddie calls this one "Fat Little Bee Man." The dots are done with a Sharpie poster paint pen. For Inspire, I did a Simple Solution background with pink and yellow pear ex, stamped the word and added a square brad. It's simple, but pretty.

Fabric 2 x 2's

This is my first foray into anything art related using fabric. It was a real stretch for me which is odd considering the amount of time I've spent sewing during my life. I've made all kinds of clothes - including jeans, suits & heavy coats! I spent the beginning of the summer making new cushions for all of my patio furniture, and there's a lot of it! I've sewed intricate window coverings for myself and clients. Yet these little 2 x 2 pieces of fabric had me on the run. I have no idea why I was so intimidated. They aren't fantastic by any means, but it got me using my machine for something other than a utilitarian purpose and I LOVED it! I have 6 sewing machines ( yes, six!) - they are mostly vintage Singers. But I've borrowed the whole set of decorative stitch cams from my brother - we have a sewing machine thing in our family! - and I'm planning on playing with those as soon as I can. I already have a wall hanging design in mind for my next fabric project!

4th of July

Well, we headed up to the Stoneman Lake area for the 4th. This is my favorite place to camp in the state. It's not too far and the forest is fantastic! We had a bit of light rain a few days, HAIL on one - but I loved it! - and general good camping weather the rest of the time. The rain is no issue since it soaks in pretty quickly and goes a long way toward keeping the dust down. We went on some great Ranger rides, but we broke the other strut - the first one went on the last trip to Crown King! Luckily, Chris took a jaunt down to Prescott Valley and picked up a new one so we weren't without our 4-wheeling for the rest of the trip.



Things were pretty low-key, but I couldn't go without my art bag! I just got a new order of Zettiology stamps so I had to take them along to trim and get them in my binders. Well, if you're going to take stamps, you'd better bring along the rest of the acoutrements! So I played with some post cards. I'm sure the letter carriers like to have some eye candy pass through their hands every now and then! I only took a black pad, my prismacolor pencils and my peerless watercolor leaves. It was actually nice not to have too much to choose from! I love the bright colors of the peerless watercolors and I'm digging how easy it is to shade with them. I really like the Dr. Ph Martins, too, but didn't bring those along. So here are a few of my playthings. I didn't finish the background on one yet, but that's coming. The kids (5 of them!) all got into the fray and made more postcards than I ever would have thought! My stamp binders sure got a workout! But if they're respectful of my things, I have no problems with the kids diving in, too. They had a ball and were very proud of their creations. After looking at these, I'm not so sure they will actually make it into the mail. I might just have to put together a Zetti Journal. I just love the artful oddness of it all...

Metal 2x2's

Another swap in the can so to speak! This one was for MMArtFriends again. There's always a good swap going on in that group and the quality of what you receive is good. This one had to be 2" x 2", made of metal and have a metal focal point. I mostly used this great 12 x 12 sheet from Provocraft that I had gotten eons ago. It's stamped with dots - very cool. I used some alcohol inks, gesso and koh-i-noor inks for coloring. You get a nice pattern when you sand off the dots. The rest is pretty self explanatory. The one in the upper right is a slide mount done with metal tape, embossed and distressed. I thought the 'window' was perfect for hanging a charm!

Four

Well, I just finished up another swap for the Frenzy Stamper number book swap. This one has 4 x 6 pages and ranges from 1-25. Again, the concept for this one took much more time to execute than I had planned on, but the outcome is exactly what I had envisioned. That alone is a huge accomplishment for me! To have something come out just as the mind's eye sees it? Doesn't happen too often at my house! LOL! The picture doesn't quite do it justice. The focal point is heat patina'd copper mesh layered onto a blue patina copper mesh background. It's affixed with rusted staples which compliment the rusted washers. Look closely, the background is done out of phone book pages. And just think, I did 27 of these puppies! ARGH! Anyway, I'm waiting for Maddie to finish up her pages (my little girl is doing her first swap!) and then I'll send them in. I don't want to be late getting to the store (I was last time) and get disqualified. That darned freeway construction caused me to miss many of my fellow swappers! Luckily, I sent my pages in early so I wasn't left out. I hope this is an enhancement to the book. I've already seen the covers on-line at www.mizz-frizz.blogspot.com and they're great! I can't wait to see what else comes in for this one!

IMPORTANT! Orphaned Works Legislation

There are some really disturbing things going on in Congress right now that can affect all of us who post any pictures on the internet, etc. If the legislation passes, you no longer will own the copyright to your own work at the moment of creation. You will have to register it with clearing-house type companies to have a copyright. And even that will not prevent someone from stating that it is orphaned and use it as their own or even registering it themselves. Who would police such a thing? I don't understand why this is even a consideration. It seems to me that the only people this will benefit are the registrars - of course it would be a fee-based registration process - and people who want to use other's artwork without paying for the right to do so. Imagine what a hassle it would be to register everything you produce! This makes me so mad that my head could spin right around a la Linda Blair! But I will not rant excessively here. Please check out the links below for more information. Go to the petition and sign it. Write to your Congressman and Senators. Tell them that this is not acceptable. It is another way our government is stripping our rights one by one. This legislation has been brought up before and defeated. They keep rewriting it and resubmitting it. And this time, some shady behind closed doors things are happening. Please, please educate yourselves and stand up for the rights of artists, crafters, and creators everywhere! Do you enjoy art blog surfing? Imagine no pictures for fear of theft of creative works. Imagine NO EYE CANDY for inspiration. It's a travesty. We must band together and be heard. Please do your part. Let everyone know about this. We can prevail if we are loud enough and strong enough. Thank you.

Sign the petition here - please use correct info - it must be verifiable.
http://www.petitiononline.com/Stop2913/petition.html

Learn more about the Orhaned WOrks Act here:
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00185

My Little Punk Rocker

Maddie, my daughter, was invited to a costume party. Well, she had the option of dressing in Hawaiian garb, 80's getup, or punk rock. Well we did the punk thing and she looked so cute! She didn't look like herself at all, but we had fun putting it all together. I couldn't get her to wear safety pins in her ears though. "Just because you did it, Mom, doesn't mean it's not gross!" Well, she's got a point there! We found a really fun shirt that had a license plate on it that says BAD GIRL, a cut up and frayed jean jacket, black leggins, flame job hightops and a ferocious belt! Then add the pancake makeup with heavy eyes and lips and the funky hair and she was good to go! I think she looked awesome, but you can judge that one for yourself!

Walking Toward Paradise...

This canvas I did for a friend for her birthday. I hope that she likes it. When I was making it, the Robert Plant song of the same name just kept running through my head, so that stuck as the title. Sometimes what I think is pretty neat, the rest of the world seems to wrinkle their nose at. It's nice to have the on-line art community to share with. There's no judgment, or questioning looks - ha ha! I can't even see you! Or the big one, "So what are you going to do with thaaaaaat?" (tilted head and curled lip) Ugh! I despise that question! Many of my friends and acquaintances don't know how I have the time or wonder why I'm not doing something more productive. For me, art IS productive. It feeds the creative need in me, even if it's not gallery quality stuff. I don't care. Maybe someday it will be, but for now, it's a journey. I love to learn and try new techniques and see where it leads. I started sewing at around 11 and did that for many many years. Used to make most of my own clothes. Not anymore! I also used to make soap, and that fed my creative need. Most people don't question soap making because you have a tangible and useful product when you're done - especially after they used it! If you've never tried a good quality handmade soap - you don't know what you're missing!

But anyway, she's walking toward paradise. I'm not a mall shopper, but this gal is. She's all done up and headed for Nordie's! That's HER paradise! Just send me to the art store - that's MY paradise!

Altered Photos

These are some altered photos I've done. I learned the techniques from Karen Michel. She's a fabulous and giving artist - very down to earth. And she has a style that I really connect with. The best thing about these is that you can hardly make a mistake and there are many happy accidents! Enjoy!

Memorial Day Camping

Well, the kids got out of school and our plan was to take the 5th wheel and head up to Stoneman Lake in the Coconino forest (just south of Flagstaff) as we always do this time of year. We'd been having some unseasonably cold weather as of late and it was snowing up there! Needles to say, we bowed out of that one really fast. I had ENOUGH snow growing up in Upstate New York!

So we opted to head north about 45 minutes and camp behind Lake Pleasant. It's a great camping area that has loads of trails to explore in the Ranger. It's the area that we stage in to head up to Crown King. And it doesn't feel like we're making a mortgage payment to put gas in the truck to get there either!

Of course I came down with a ridiculous head cold the first day, but I toughed it out and still managed to have a blast. Two other families came with us: the DeHeers and the Gillespie/Jensens. We went on some great trail rides, did some target shooting and found a trail that takes us right down to the lake on the far side of 'Party Cove.' It's been a few years since we've had a boat, but Party Cove will forever be etched in my memory banks! The kids braved the icy depths and went swimming. I sat firmly on the shore and watched! It was just a nice relaxing 4 days off and a great way to kick off the summer. I love exploring in the desert and unfortunately we're cut off for the next several months because it's too hot to be out there. Hopefully the next camping trip we'll be able to retire to the forest where it's cool!

Oh! Check this out! One of the boys was riding his dirt bike out of camp and came across this...


A gila monster! YIKES! It was about 50-60 yards from our camp! They're protected - not that we would have done anything to it anyway - but they're poisonous, too! It kinda freaked me out, but the kids thought it was soooooo cooooollll!!!!