Some of my latest creative escapades

The theme for September's ATC swap through the group in Helensvale Queensland is "No paper".  I cut up a chinese placemat made out of bamboo into ATC size and coated the surface with impasto using a Heidi stencil of a butterfly.  Once the impasto had dried and was transparent, I covered the whole thing in two-step crackle medium, then covered it in Ginger Alcohol inks to accentuate the cracks.  The butterfly was painted with Black alcohol ink and the edges inked with black StazOn.

Yesterday I did a Mixed Media class with Linda Baldock at Scaploot (http://www.scraploot.com.au/).  Linda's a very talented artist and I love her grungy style of art.  The class we did was called "Flooded Canvas" and here are some pics of my piece.

The piece is made on the reverse of a canvas. The inside is painted various colours, then a coat of impasto is applied, sticking in beads, watch pieces, rusty bottle caps and bits I've collected over the years, black mesh, rusty keys and a vintage photo.  Once touch dry industrial grade resin is poured over the top. My piece is not quite finished yet as I want to do some more colour around the outside edge of the frame.  In hindsight, I didn't realise the impasto would stay white, I think I would have either added more colour to the impasto before the resin or if I was making one of these at home, I probably would have let the impasto dry for a few days and go nearly clear.  Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the piece and I had a lot of fun trying something new.  If you want to see more of Linda's art, check out her blog here - http://atclindab.blogspot.com/ .

"Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality."

~Les Brown, Speaker and Author~

A trip up north and down memory lane ...

I arrived in Queensland on 28th August after an 11 hour drive with my mum & dad.  A few hours later it was my niece Alexis' 4th birthday party ... she's grown up so much in the few months since I last saw her.

My very cute nephew, Harry, wasn't walking when I last saw him and now you can't slow him down. At 18months of age he could also get the milk out the fridge, unscrew the lid, pour it in his cup and all over the kitchen tiles and sort of put the lid of his cup on ... what a clever boy!

It was great to catch up with family and friends, but the week just flew by.  Ferg arrived on Thursday, we celebrated my sister Sylvia's 40th birthday on the following Saturday and very early Sunday we started an 11 hour drive back to Sydney.

Here's a few happy snaps:  Me and Alexis; Harry wearing a bucket!; me, Sylvia & mum; me and Ferg; my friends and I creating at Scrapbooks Etc; me and the wonderful Lyndal with a pic made on her i-Phone ... a very cool app; the gorgeous Jill and me.

Jill sent me the link for this cool photo editing web-site - http://www.picnik.com/ - where you can do all these great creative editing features, you'll notice that 3 of the photos have a black edge around them, well you can do that and more on this web-site.

The week after I returned from Queensland, I received my second year of blogging published in a hardcover book.  Last year's book had 104 pages in it and this book has 170 ... much more active blogging in my second year.  It's so cool to get a hard copy of my blog, every time I open the book I get caught up on all the things I did last year ... like the birth of my nephew for which I was present; the first creative soul retreat I attended and fabulous workshops I did; amazing creative people I met throughout the year; the evolution of my art and growth of our dog Beau ... the list goes on.

If you're interested in publishing your blog, visit this site here - http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/ - and click on "Blog Books" ... it's pretty awesome.

Until next time, keep having fun.

"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships."
~Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States~