If I start now

I realized this morning that if I do 5 Christmas cards a week I can ready to mail by Dec 3.

 

In 2013 I made over 60 cards and today I have twice the experience of a year ago and probably five times the stash. Let's get cracking.

 

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Sea turtles go home

I found a quilt on Pinterest from the 2008 Tokyo quilt festival of a sea turtle brigade that caught my eye. Litchfield Beach, where I live, is a popular spot for the loggerhead turtles to lay eggs. Walking up and down the beach you often find nests where 100 or so eggs are buried just waiting to be hatched. I thought it would make a beautiful mixed media painting.

 

On my silhouette cameo I cut a full page of sea turtle die cuts. I didn't need all 54, but you always allow for extra.

Once I had all the sea turtles extracted, I used a white gel pen to paint the shell and highlight the head, arms and legs.

I used a 14x18 canvas and covered the background with a blend of gesso, teal, tan and beige acrylic paints.

 

I used a new method I learned recently with torn sheets of paper. They make a wonderful, realistic curved border mask that allows your colors to align properly. I also used a sheet of paper at the top to create a perfectly straight horizon. The ocean does look very flat from the beach. If you look very closely at the final painting, you will see a few of the turtles have already decended into the water and a large school of fish are swimming above.

This mixed media is different than the others I have done to date. More closely resembles an acrylic painting than an abstract. I am going to look for a white frame and hang this one in my turquoise kitchen.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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Magic, pure magic

Presto I put together 4 cards using my Studio Calico August Card kit paper pad.

Sometimes it just comes together that way.

 

Cut and paste.

 

And color

 

Lots of color

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Chalkboard background

I have been working on these cards for the last few days. I started by stamping the background on white cardstock in various color inks. Then I used Versamark ink and heat embossed it to get a resist before applying distress ink. The technique is fun to do. Once I had a number of images I needed to figure out how to use them.

This was the first, I took the dark grey and die cut scalloped hearts then aligned the Moroccan color image behind it so the words would appear to float on top. I stamped a dog and colored him in greys outlined in black, added a black hello die cut and embellished with buttons and hearts. A few words were highlighted in the same ink color.

Second I used the grey die cut hearts aligned on the heat embossed broken china blue. I cut this piece down and into 12 squares and mounted the squares on black cardstock with pop up glue dots. I affixed the bird and feather die cuts and used a silver sentiment mounted on the same black cardstock.

I took the pale tomato background and cut it at an angle then adhered it with glue to two others in grey tones. I cut the sentiments on the cameo and used black marker for color. The small butterfly and bouquet are rub-ons, the large butterfly is a die cut and cake was stamped on velum and glued to card.

For the card bases I used white cardstock and colored the edges with the same pale tomato ink.

 

On this last card I used my corner chomper to round the corners.

 

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Bundle up for school

I was on my favorite Studio Calico blog and they were offering a back to school bundle which was 5 classes for one low price of $25 buckaroos. The classes were conducted during the last year so they are very current. It was a savings of $100 off the original air dates.

I just so happened to have $22.79 in credit and a member discount for $2.50. So guess what it cost me?

ZIPPO!

So much great material on my account now, this should keep me busy until Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by, don't forget to subscribe to my blog (at the very bottom of this page) so you don't miss a single exciting post. Ha ha!

 

 

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Mid August

I haven't posted anything in a few weeks!

Not that I haven't been active or creative, on the contrary, I have been in class! Away for a few days too, but mostly wrapped up in creativity.

I am doing some mini album scrapbooking in addition to card making, art journaling and mixed media. I took a Christmas card class a few weeks ago, I did it to get out of my workshop and interact with humans more than to do the cards. I have no interest in doing my Christmas cards until the temperatures drop below 60.

My first mini album is created out of a cereal box and will be all grandchildren from birth on. Not too much of an undertaking...

Mini album

 

I created this box card for my Friend's grandson's birthday.

This card was for a Sunday challenge, it was so much fun coming up with this layout.

Although I have not created the book yet, I started pages of my own mini album using some photos and stuff from my trip to Iowa last week.

 

Speaking of Iowa, my neice and I did some mixed media while we were there. I think she enjoyed our afternoon getting pasty fingers.

August is half way through, local kids go back to school next week. Our beaches will soon be devoid of tourists (yay).

I will try to do a better job at keeping this updated. It helps me to remember... You know what they say about short term memory... I already forgot.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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