Tagging Along

I am a little late to the whole tag creating craze.   I always admire these wonderful embellishments to packages and pages, but have not created too many of these little pieces of art.  Here is a photo of one I created recently.  I don't have a particular use for this in mind right now, but it will be nice to have it on hand next time I need to present a gift to someone.  

Another project is moving along. The heritage album focused on my grandfather

 is now in process.  I don't know if I will complete it in time to give it to my brother for his birthday, but I am going to try!  Here's a photo of the cover of the album.  It is not a great photo, but the best I could do with my camera right now.  The frame is made with polymer clay. I stamped the clay with a frame rubber stamp and then covered the raw clay with Pearl Ex gold powder.  I then baked the clay.  

Leaning Tower of Paper

My paper stash keeps growing and is wildly out of control despite my best attempts to organize it. It is a rainy day here today and I thought I might tackle this perilous paper tower, but decided to go eat a piece of chocolate cake instead. Much more enjoyable.

Here is another simple card I made for a friend who is ill. I stamped the sentiment across two layers of background paper. Next time I will stamp it on one layer so it looks a little better.

Valentine's Day Card

This is a Valentine's Day card I made for my husband. I used the Cuttlebug to emboss the hearts in the white two-inch squares. I then used the Cuttlebug again to emboss a piece of red cardstock and cut a heart out of that for the center image. I raised the center heart with a pop dot. Fairly simple layout, but I like the way it turned out.

The art of paper cutting

This week I wanted to try my hand at Scherenschnitte - the German art of paper cutting. Martha Stewart featured a demonstration of this art on her TV program. It looked interesting so I decided to see if I had enough patience to complete such a project. There was a template and instructions available on the Martha Stewart website so I downloaded these, grabbed my craft knife and started cutting. The instructions indicated that you should place the paper template over another piece of paper folded in half. Basically I was cutting through three layers of paper. If I do another of these projects, I think I will transfer the pattern so I am only cutting through two layers of paper. This project was time consuming and my results were mixed. Some of the cutting looked a little rough. I tried to clean this up a little bit after I finished the project and unfolded the paper underneath the template. I don't know if it would have been easier and smoother looking if I had used small scissors. Next time I might try that.

I am reading all of these wonderful artist blogs and really enjoying it. I probably would be better off spending less time at the computer and more time creating, but I tell myself that the blog reading is an activity that stimulates inspiration.

This and That

I tried the block printing and found that I needed to use stamping ink for the print to take. The acrylic paint was just too thin. I also had to put a lot of pressure on the block for the print to be fully visible. I ended up putting a piece of rubber shelving liner on the floor with the paper on top of that and then stamped with the block putting all my weight on it to get a good print. One sheet of paper took me 45 minutes to block print. Pretty labor intensive!

I have also discovered quite a few artist blogs and am now addicted to reading them which definitely takes some time. Time seems to fly when I sit in front of my computer to read them.

I have not started on the heritage album yet. I want it to be something special and have been thinking about how I want to approach it. The light bulb moment has not come as yet. I hope to have a concept and start executing it soon - otherwise I won't make my mid-March deadline. I work slow!

No stitching on the lap quilt this week. I go through periods where I get a lot done on it and then not so much. At this rate no wonder it is six years and counting and still not close to completed!