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Riding the exercise bike to retreat!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Quiltville Mystery Quilt Parts 3 & 4

I'm still catching up, but I'm getting there. I'm really loving the colors in this quilt and the black and white makes everything pop!

 
Here is part 3 of Easy Street. The shadow block.
 
 
 
And part 4. Some purple geese with teal wings and then putting some geese together.
I'm almost caught up. I've still got part 5 to do and part 6 will be posted tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas All!

We celebrated on the Solstice this year, since the kids were flying on Christmas Day. It was so much fun having the kids home for the holidays. We had a great time!

Here we have Paul, Roger, Heather, Cinder, Will, Rachelle and our newest family member, PEPPER!
Have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy and healthy New Year!

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Quiltville Mystery Quilt Parts 1 and 2

I finally got a start on this mystery quilt. I'm only 2 weeks behind now. Yeah!  Everything except the black and white is from my stash too! Love being able to shop in my own quilt store....er room!

Step one was to combine the gray and the black and white prints into 4 patches! Check!



Step 2 was to make flying geese with your chosen purples as the goose and the black and white prints as the wings. Check!

 
 
My purple chicken pin cushion is enjoying the making of this quilt too! On to steps 3 and 4!

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

When my quilt group, Cactus Patchers,  started this round robin quilt way back in February, that was the song that kept spinning through my head while I was trying to think of a start to my quilt. I finally came up with this bright sunburst block and sent it off on it's journey to 5 other quilters...

 
Well, last night the Cactus Patchers met for our annual Holiday Party and at the end of the night was the big reveal! We finally got to see all the quilts we had worked on over the last 10 months.
I absolutely love the way mine came out. And I'll treasure the little note each person wrote in the traveling journal that went with the quilt on its journey. This was so much fun and very outside the box.
 
 
Jane was the first to get the quilt and she added the piano keys in the lower left of the center block. Next, Monica added the flying geese in the upper right corner. Betty, got the block next and added the thin purple border and wide tan border. Pam added the fuzzy vine and leaves to the top of the wide tan border. And, finally, Donna added the mountain border. Now it's my turn to add any additional borders and finish it up. And it definitely still sings to me about the bright side of life.
 

Monday, December 3, 2012

Life Goes On

It's been quite awhile since I posted on my blog. We had such a great end to our salmon season catching 6 fish in the span of 3 days. Did some smoking and canning, plus several portions for the freezer. And then less than a week later my dad took a turn for the worse and then suddenly he was gone. Words can't even describe how sad I am or how much I miss him, but life does go on and I have some absolutely wonderful memories of him. And that last weekend I got to spend with him, showing him the pictures of our great salmon catches and he got to enjoy the little searun cutthroat I caught as well.

I'm back in Arizona now and getting ready for the holidays. Both my boys will be here and I can hardly wait. Got a full slate of cookies to bake, leg o lamb is in the freezer for Christmas Eve dinner and I'm starting to get crafty again. Found a new mystery quilt to start, which I will post here as I get the steps done and I have my Retreat in a Box projects to complete from Club Scrap.



Here are a few of my favorite pictures of my dad. I'm going to miss your smile!

Monday, September 24, 2012

Our Very First King Salmon

It's been a long slow 4 weeks of fishing with nothing to show for it and only one take down which we lost at the boat! (ARGH!!!!!) So, today, it's a fresh week, the high tide is about mid-morning so we decided to get out before the crack 'o dawn and see if the bite changed. Did it ever! Our first run up "silver alley" and bammo--fish on! We were both hearts pounding the whole time, managed to get the net hung up twice before getting it under the fish and finally into the boat. Wow! did that feel good!

 
And check out that sunrise over the trees! That was about 10 minutes after we landed the fish!

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Happy Fall Equinox

Back to playing with collage techniques. The theme for this month's lottery over at PAO is Fall, so I thought I'd make a fall themed collage. I started with scrap paper in fall colors and then added paint around the seams. A little gesso to soften things up and then more paint with stencils. Got my chalk inks out and added texture stamps, then a die cut clock and birds nest and a nice fall quote. Then I stamped the birds leaving for the winter with archival ink. I made some pinecones with the TH pinecone die (LOVE IT) and added them along with some fall leaves. A little more paint and ink around the new glued on items. Finally, added some Distress Stain dots with picket fence.

 
 

Monday, September 17, 2012

Happy Quarter Century Paul!

Wishing my son Paul a very happy 25th Birthday today!!! Hope you have a wonderful day, Paul! And just for you a little walk down memory lane..............
 

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Collage Play

I've been checking out some collage videos on pinterest the last few days and thought I'd try my hand at making one. It really was fun to get out all different mediums and just play. I used paper scraps, gesso, paint, stencils, stamps, diecuts, inks, gelatos and sandpaper. And this was my first use of the homemade gesso recipe I found on pinterest as well. Worked great and was a whole lot cheaper than the real stuff!

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Tattered Florals Leaves

Don't you just love how Pinterest sucks you in and the next thing you know 2 hours have gone by and you haven't accomplished a thing?  I was determined to actually create something from some of my pins the other day and decided that the Tattered Florals die was the chosen guinea pig for my creative juices. The pin I chose lead me to 3 different tutorials from which I chose to try 2 of them. The first one is here and my examples are below. I love the centers of these flowers, made with the skinny petalled flower on the die.




And the second one is here  with my examples below:



I also made some roses with the Pinecone die, which I absolutely love!


Then I decided that I needed some leaves to go with my flowers, but I don't have a leaf die and I left all my punches in Arizona. What about the Tattered Florals die? Could I make leaves by cutting the petals? Let's give it a try.

Start with some patterned paper or misted paper or whatever kind of paper you'd like. I chose some waste cardstock and spritzed with greens, blues and purples. Cut out several of the large, medium and small flowers with the die. Scrunch them up and then unfold.

Cut the petals apart into leaves. I shaped the wide end of the leaf a little by rounding it and narrowing it. If your leaf tears a little, that's ok, just smooth it out with your scissors. You can make the leaf a little narrower or shorter, after all, no 2 leaves are the same anyway.

To finish the leaves fold in half to the point making a nice vein down the center and unfold. Use a tooth pick or bamboo skewer to curl the edges a little. Pinch the end into a nice point and you have a leaf ready to glue onto your flowers.


I used these on my Pinecone Roses. I think I need something bigger for the Tattered Florals flowers that I made.


And here is a finished art piece using some of the flowers and leaves I made this week.



Hope you enjoyed the Tattered Florals Leaf tutorial and have a great week creating!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Waxed Paper Embossing

Saw this on Pinterest the other day and had to give it a try. Started off with plain white cardstock and waxed paper. Added some collage bits and several layers of mod podge.


After it dried I ran it through the Big Shot with some different embossing folders and did some sanding to distress them.


Next I did some inking and more sanding. Inking and sanding, about 4 or 5 times for each one.



I added more embellishments and mounted the one with the musical theme to another piece of cardstock.


Really, a fun technique and I'll definitely be doing it again!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Got Crab?

Wow! It's almost been a month since I've posted on my blog. Where in the world did that month go? Lots of family visiting and then visiting family, that's where. And mom and I had a great time getting the genealogy papers out and adding info and gaining headway. But that story is for another time and blog (got an idea for that and just need to sit down and do it) Stay tuned it's gonna be fun!

So, we got home to Florence on Tuesday and according to the weather report Wednesday was going to be calm wind and warm temps leading to blowing winds on Thursday. Guess which day we decided to go fishing? That's right, Wednesday. First day, this season, poles in the water hoping for one of those early, confused, salmon who forgot to wait for the starting gun on the run at the end of the month. Decided to just take 3 traps with us 'cause if you don't catch a salmon the next best thing is fresh Dungeoness crab, YUM! Well, not a single bite happened and the fish finder only yielded sporadic blips that might have been a fish on it's way, but when we started pulling the traps up to head on in, we got 5 keepers in the first and another 5 in the second, we were thinking, yeah! at least there's crab for dinner. Pulled that last trap up and Roger couldn't even lift it into the boat. I had to pull on one side and that was a struggle as well. The trap was literally FULL of crab. And get this, 16 keepers!!!!

We were thinking it might be our first ever limit in a trap (limit is 12), but 16? This may be a hard record to break. We actually had to have a crab fashion show on deck and throw back a few little keepers to get back down to our limit. Whoo hoo, we're canning crab today!

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Stretch Your Stamps Day 2

I signed up for an online card class called Stretch Your Stamps and had to jump right in and try one of the techniques from Day 2. This one is focussed on collage stamps. I'm also playing in Club Scrap's summer camp psl and it's stamp week so we get a 2fer out of these. Yeah!
This one uses the Papillon collage stamp from Club Scrap along with some Refresh paper and a Nature's Wonders sentiment tile.

Again, from Club Scrap, I used a Nature's Retreat flower and quote stamp on Milestone's yellow green paper then mounted on the back side of Academy red.

And last, another Nature's Retreat stamp mounted on Nature's Wonders paper and 3 NW tiles up in the corner.

Thanks for stopping by my blog!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Let Freedom Ring

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope everyone has a joyful time celebrating the nation's birthday. I participated in a challenge titled Let Freedom Ring. The object was to create an art piece using some kind of bird cage, so, of course, I went on a De Paul crawl searching for something that I could alter to use as a birdcage. I found this flower arranging frog and put it up on a shelf to stare at me for a few weeks. (this is often how I come up with ideas) It was brass colored and I immediately painted it white.



                                                   

After having it stare at me for almost a month, I decided it was going to have a beachy theme. After all, I'm at the beach. So, I took a trip to the beach to look for small pieces of driftwood to poke into the "birdcage" as a kind of nest.



I found some great beach themed stickers from K& Company  to add to the centerpiece, along with a few seashells from my collection.
The banner is some crepe ribbon that I misted with Memories Mists, blueberry and pink lemonade flavors.

And, finally I needed a crab in there somewhere so I created my own sticker with a stamp and dug through my treasure jar of jewelry finds and found this tiny little flag (I think it's an earring), wired up a flag pole and put it in the crab's claw.

Enjoy the holiday!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Herb Garden ala Repurposed Basket Rack

Saw an idea on Pinterest the other day to plant herbs in mason jars and hang them up. So we are on a DePaul crawl the other day and found this old shower/laundry wire basket rack for about $3 and thought we could use it for an herb garden for the deck. First thing, we took it apart and spray painted black.
Then we decided to split into 2 short racks so we'd be able to move them around the deck to get maximum sun. It rains alot here, ya know!You can also see that I lined the bottoms of each basket with a piece of pond liner so they wouldn't just drain on to the lower basket or lose all their dirt.
As I planted each basket I lined them with soaked sphagnum moss to help with water and dirt retention.
This one has strawberries on the bottom and rosemary and thyme in the middle basket. Mmmmm......I love the smell of rosemary.

The top of this one got italian parsley and the second one has lettuce seeds in the bottom, a different rosemary and sage in the middle basket and will get a ginger mint and one basil plant in the top.

We also decided that the middle baskets were too low so we moved them up a notch and can move them farther if they need it as the summer progresses.
Here they are completed and ready for sunshine. Can hardly wait to start using them. Hope you enjoyed my little gardening tut!