First Day Home

The washers say "Imagine" "Dream" "Believe". For some reason the First Day Home layouts are always my favorite.

All of Us

Left Page Missing...

The missing page is the big birth record they gave us from the hospital.

Just Born

When Ev was born, we didn't yet know what his name was. So I didn't really say "Hi Everett, I'm Your Mommy." I left out his name at the time. He was to be either Everett, Joey (Joseph), or Henry.

1st Layout

Most of these will be 2 page layouts. So imagine the pages bound together in a lovely brown suede album. The pages of the album are black, which has been a bit harder to work with than the cream of the other book I did.

I've left a couple pages out that have documents with personal info on them. My scanner doesn't pick up the textures well and the colors aren't quite right on-line. Also, most of the time if the pictures look crooked, it's the way I scanned them. But not always! Like on this first page...not straight at all. It's way cuter in real life, I think.

It has taken me a little bit to get back into doing this, but I'm really enjoying it now.

Fast Forward to Halloween!

Here is the little gourd ghoul I made for Phin.
This is the newest member of the trio...a little mummy gourd. He has Mou-Ah-Ha-Ha written on his tummy.
This is Ragged's "Ready for the Ball" little gourd witch.

Our gourds along the fence are doing beautifully. We've counted thirty-five so far. I've been reading more about when to cut them from the vine in the "Foxfire Books", and it said to let them go through two frosts to harden the skin. I go out to check on them every morning and every afternoon just to trim them and see how they're doing.

Hub and I went to Cumberland Gap again this week-end...yes, we love it there. I spoke with one of the merchants of a primitive art shop and asked her if they bought from locals. She said they did, but she'd have to take a look first. She said she bought them outright from the artists and then marked them up for whatever she thought she could get. I'm such a novice at this that I don't have a clue about all the buying and selling part of it. But I did notice that Hub's ears perked up, and he became much more interested in what I'm doing!

 

Butterfly

Here's my piece on the quote "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly".

Looking forward to seeing more creations, people! :) 

More Boxes!

For Cate ...

*Jack & Sally Box o' Love*

and

*A Midsummer Night's Aubergine Dream*

Eeee! I couldn't help it, those names just presented themselves : .)

Art Challenge!

MadRetz and I like encourage and inspire each other to do more art, so we dream up art challenges. Our most recent challenge was to create a mixed media piece using the quote: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."

Here's my piece : .)

Now, I challenge the Nudge-Nudge contingent to create a mixed media piece using this quote and post it here!!!

Have fun with it!!! Good Luck!!! : .)

The Dragon*Con hat

This is my hat for Dragon*Con, the big sci-fi/fantasy convention I'm going to with my DH and friends over Labor Day weekend. A big part of the whole experience is costuming. I'm not so much going to participate as to watch, but I thought I would at least like to have something interesting to wear while I'm there. The area I'm most interested in down there is the Youth Literature tracts, so after long consideration of various characters I decided to go as "Tiffany Aching" from Terry Pratchet's Discworld series The Wee Free Men and Hat Full of Sky

Here is what I patterned my hat after


Here is my hat with our messy "little" room behind it.


And here is what it looked like wearing it in the dusty mirror.


The little guy on the top kind of swings around while you walk.
I made the hat by copying the characters from the book cover, then creating backs for them so they'd work in 3 demensions and then had them laminated for sturdiness and sewed them on to the old witch's hat (which btw, I think I wore for halloween when I was 12 and my mother kept and used as decoration on our porch for years) with gold thread.

It will pale in comparison to most costumes down there, but if nothing else I hope it becomes a conversation piece.

A new card. I have been trying to master the art of the pop up. This is the first card that I have managed that actually comes up and creates negative space behind it without any help from me. I do need to use different glue though.
Here is the front of the birthday card:


And here is the card when opened.

Modigliani Box

A gift for my friend Lorali.



















A cardboard gift box painted with acrylic. 3 pieces of mat board covered with handmade paper to make the exterior. Modigliani sticker from Dover Publishing, surrounded by multi-sized beads affixed with Diamond Glaze.

Nudging Towards Productivity

Hi All- I'm Emily. Way back when this started I was all excited to begin a First Year Scrapbook for my son. So I thought I would be using this to post my ideas, layouts etc. I didn't. Clearly.

But! I AM doing it. My Boy is turning 3 (!) this August and I AM DOING THIS NOW. As proof of my real effort, I have 250 photos. They are stacked neatly beginning with "Before you were born" and divided monthly through his first birthday. I have also noted in each month any events that need special attention. First solid food, first bath, etc.





So, you see? I'm doing it! Yea for me! Keep your fingers crossed for me that I won't lose steam.

Phin's Tags

Phin came over tonight and while we watched Ghost Whisperer and the Food Network, she went wild creating tags out of my scraps and punches! It was cool watching her make these mini masterpieces out of my stash. They're so very cute and I never expected that she'd gave them to me! I, on the other hand, sat on the couch like a blob after our late afternoon tea.

Bears!

After numerous sitings of bears in our area recently and one really funny news story : http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Detail.php?Cat=HOMEPAGE&ID=57095 (copy and paste I can't figure out how to make it a link) regarding them I made this illustration.. I call it "Bear with us in East Tennessee"



No reason for drawing it really, just for the heck of it. I'm on a roll recently. Thank you nudge nudge, for nudging me to do stuff :)

In Honor of Father's Day

A new illustration. I call it "Waiting Up For Daddy"

My new blog

So, this may or may not count under the Nudge-Nudge submission policy...but I am so tickled that I actually did this by myself, I just had to post it here.

I spent the weekend modifying my blog so that it is more personal. The biggest trick; I downloaded Photoshop's 30 day trial so that I could modify the artwork that I got from istockphoto.com. I also learned that Blogger hosts its own photos, so if you ever need HTML for a photo, you can just create a post with that photo uploaded into it. Then go to the 'Edit Html' page and grab the code. You don't even need to post the photo to keep the code.

Anyway, I hope you like it.

Birthday invite

This is a picture (on my cell phone, sans flash...but holding a flash light to at least get some light on the subject) of the invitation that I made last year for my 30th birthday. The base is light pink, the squares are a dark cream color. The text was printed on a B/W laser printer and then cut out. There are actually two thin lines bordering each square, not just one thick line. There is a striped piece of velum over the bottom third of the invite. The ribbon is brown.

There are two ways to tie a bow...on this card, I wrapped a longer section of ribbon around the card and secured it with double stick tape. Then I cut a smaller piece of ribbon and tied it around the longer piece on the card and cut the ends.

To make an actual bow (like the one on my previous post), I cut a length of ribbon and make a loop with my left hand, holding the loop with my forefinger and thumb and 'pressing' the loop so that it 'folds over' my thumb, towards my wrist. Then I make another loop with my right hand and pass that loop over the back of the one in my left hand and under and around to make a bow...after I adjust it, I trim the ends and then attach it to my project with double stick tape.

Ok...so I think for my 31st birthday, I am asking for a digital camera :)

--girl

Wedding Card

Ok...so, this really doesn't show up well...I don't have a digital camera so I had to use my phone and...well...it really doesn't do this one ounce of justice.

The card itself is a creamy, blue. The ribbon is chocolate brown. I rubbed the edges of the card and both parts of the piece in the middle (the base is the same blue, the other piece is cream colored) with brown ink from an ink pad. The stamp I used on the middle piece is from Stampin' Up. The card is 5" x 5".

I also made a cream envelope and lined it with the blue paper. This may just be incentive enough for me to get a real digital camera...or at least ask for one for my birthday.

Yeah...so that's it. My little piece of craftiness.

Thanks for letting me share.

--girl

Footstool

Made this last week for my girlfriend's daughter's first b'day.