Glad tidings to you!

Free Christmas-themed printables

Lisa Vollrath brings back her annual holiday present with The Original Printables Holiday Countdown. Get a new set of downloadable holiday images every day between now and Dec. 25 by visiting her site.

Merry Christmas!

Homicide Turkey!

Riffing on noir art for a turkey-themed Thanksgiving postcard. This one digital, of course. It's hard to glue while one is giggling the whole time. :-)


Oh, and I'll have to pay homage to wackystuff for this piece, without whom such demented alterations would not be nearly as inspired!

A Halloween chunky

Better late than never!

Stephanie Rubiano's art

she rests, originally uploaded by stephanie rubiano.

I just ADORE this artist's work. Check out her multitude of winged-creature boxes on her Flickr site. They're all amazing.

Back to school nostalgia

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Woefully behind, tonight I finally completed these (non-digital) chunky pages that celebrate back-to-school nostalgia.These are for a swap I hosted. In August. God bless the angels who keep playing every month! Retro images from 1960s and 70s advertisements.
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Halloween matchbox shrines

The outside of my matchbox shrines, closed:

A peek inside each one:

These were made for a swap, and the ones I received in return were just outstanding. So glad I tried my hand at this new altered art!

Eat, drink and be scary

Oh, I've been horrible at posting this month, and I feel awful about it. It's been a challenging month, dealing with layoffs, husband's surgery that sort of thing. I should know by now how healing and relaxing making art is, but at the same time, it's hard to find the muse when one is stressed out about other things.

Nonetheless, I did manage to create a few seasonally themed things, and that alone has started to break my stress barrier. I feel more creativity coming on!

This Halloween postcard was done mostly digitally for a LetterHeads swap.

Beauty of the Orient

ATC for swap due this week. Vintage image with transparency overlay, some shading and the Chinese symbol for "Beauty."

I Still Play With Dolls

I made this postcard in Photoshop with some ephemera I own and some digital ric-rac.

One bottle at a time...

Here is my contribution to Go Make Something's Message In A Bottle challenge. I'm sending these out two at a time, as bottles come in my mail box.
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This is a sample of what's going into my bottles, although some later ones have more of a theme of fall and Halloween:
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(Click images to enlarge)

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INTERESTED IN PLAYING?

Are you an artist interested in receiving a bottle and keeping it going? Click on the image above and read how. Then e-mail me with your name and address and I'll include you in my next set of bottles.
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More Art in a Bottle received!

Another cool art bottle received today! Check out all the goodies:


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Thanks Robin S.! Love the ATC.
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All this is part of Go Make Something's Message In A Bottle art project.
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1950s Ad Art

A postcard I made for a swap with the theme of 1950s advertising. These are all authentic '50s images (except the butterfly). The quote is from the 1953 movie "Roman Holiday" starring Audrey Hepburn. Can you believe these outfits -- two and three pieces each! -- cost less than a sawbuck?

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Free Matrioshka labels, to do lists!

If, like me, you love matrioshkas -- and who doesn't? -- you'll love these free downloadable prints.

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Thanks to Jessica at How About Orange for the alert and Yas over at A Print A Day for making them!

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Victorian digital

This ATC was done for one of my art groups, and the theme was open -- so long as it was digitally created. Embellishments were optional. Can you tell which embellishments on this card are real, and which are digital?

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For the love of Print

One of 10 ATCs I made for a swap in one of my art groups. The swap theme was entitled "Print." The rules were to use real print from at least two sources. Mine came from a 2004 publication of the New York Observer and a more recent Elle magazine, supplemented with vintage images and a printer's "N" stamp in the background using distress ink. Oh, and a vintage-style bronzed brad.





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(Click to enlarge)

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Into the Looking Glass

My ATC contribution to Go Make Something's Make It Mondays challenge. This week's theme: Alice in Wonderland.

I used foil for the mirror.

Sorry the picture's not very sharp. I took this photo with an old digital camera instead of my scanner.

B is for Bubba

"B" in my ongoing project, an ABC book for Larry Gene. I'm hoping to have this done by the holidays and give to him as a Christmas present.
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I've noticed the book looks much better if I don't overcrowd the pages with too much stuff, which kind of defeats the purpose. About three items to a page is it. However, on some pages I'll have to double up. We'll see how that goes.

Art in a bottle

Oh what fun! I've received an official "Message in a Bottle," a real water bottle chock full of art goodies!

Here's what was in mine:

*A selection of text in foreign languages, including what looks like Swedish, French, Arabic, Russian and Japanese.
*Joss papers
*An ATC from Lisa Vollrath
*Colorful popsicle sticks
*A glassine envelope filled with awesome genuine cigar labels!
*Four bamboo domino-shaped beads
*Four miniature playing cards
*Some chunky embellishments such as flowers, paper clips and a plastic key.

My bottle came from Lisa Vollrath over at Go Make Something. To read about the cool pay-it-forward bottle swap, read Lisa's description on these plastic mailgrams. I'll be sending out my bottles soon!

If you would like to be included as a potential recipient of one of my bottles, please e-mail me your name and address (my e-mail link is on the upper right side of this blog). I'm looking for artsy people to participate, as you would be able to reciprocate the sort of ephemera and embellishments that fellow artists would enjoy. Let me know!
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A is for ABC Book

I decided to make an ABC book for my very bright son, Larry. I wanted to use items he recognizes and words he knows to support his rather extensive vocabulary, which, at 14 months, is about 50 spoken words and growing every day! In fact, in the last week, he spoke his first sentences (as opposed to single words): "Mama up!" and "Want down." Also this week at his grandmother's house, twice he counted "1 - 2" for the first time out loud while playing by himself and with no coaching involved. I'm so proud of that boy!

Larry Gene for President!

Ha! This is too funny!

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Americana the beautiful

Chunky page art for a swap I'm hosting in my LetterHeads group. Theme: Americana.

No digital work here, all collage, glue, pen-and-ink drawing, wire, chalk, a few artsy stickers, some button embellishments.


Both the pink tag background in the first chunky page and the American flag tag wedged in the wire house on the second chunky are hand drawn.

Vintage Halloween (Monte)

Monte whipped out another set of ATCs, this time with the theme of "Vintage Halloween." These cards aren't due until October, but they were so fun, he's way ahead!
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Monte started making ATCs with me about a year or so ago and has been making them every now and then since then. I asked him why he enjoys making these little artist trading cards, and this was his reply:
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"It's fun to create and I love being with my wife. It's a connection to (her). And I like to create. ATCs are instant gratification. You get to create something and see it immediately, not over a long period of time."

What a sweetie!
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