new cmc challenge and a free digi!

hello and happy monday!  ok so probably not happy about monday but hopefully you're all happy anyway! 

i am very excited today.  i am sitting in my new work space in my family room - a bigger space.  why?  BECAUSE WE HAVE NO MORE TOY AREAS ON THE MAIN FLOOR OF THE HOUSE!!!  that's right.  no more toys.  i spent more than 12 hours straight yesterday clearing ALL of pezza's toys from the main floor, brought them down to the basement, sorted, organized, threw away and set aside for consignment.  i have been wanting to do this for months and finally yesterday i just bit the bullet and did it.  i filled up one gigantic contractor size trash bag with crap to throw away and set aside a few things to donate.  the rest of the toys are set up so it is now easy for her to find what she wants to play with rather than everything being mixed up in a huge jumble of crazy.  the next consignment sale is in the spring and between now and then whatever she doesn't touch for several months straight will quietly disappear into the consign pile.  i have to do this very stealth - like as she is a hoarder in the making.  she cannot throw away anything!  i have to sneak the freakin grocery receipts into the trash because she becomes attached to them on the way to the car.  it is a little disturbing.  i see an appearance on an episode of Hoarders in our future...

today a new mixed media challenge kicks off over on Color Me Creative and i hope lots of folks will join us! 

Our challenge is to use a stamped of digi image in your mixed media piece AAAAAAANNND we have prizes!

Here is my page from my art journal:

I drew the girl myself - the digi is below for anyone who would like to download it.  She is printed on copy paper and colored with prisma pencils.  while copy paper is not the ideal surface for colored pencil artwork i like it for mixed media pieces because it is so thin that it blends right into the the background without noticeable edges.  unfortunately i had a bit of an unexpected occurrence here - you can see the green in her face.  when the matte medium i used to glue her to the page touched the Silks paint beneath it re-wet the paint which then soaked through my thin paper a bit.  not sure on a fix yet BUT something I will keep in mind in the future!

The page itself uses a variety of techniques and mediums and is one of the pages I teach in my Art Journaling class on CMC.

so what about the prizes???  this month our prize package is a $20 gift certificate to Paper Temptress AND a $15 gift certificate for digi images from Guylou's Inimitability!!!!

and of course as promised here is the little girl for you to download:

let me know if you have trouble downloading her!  if you use her i would love to see - come back here and post a link for me!

cmc challenge - it's BRIGHT!

happy fall!

oh how i am LOVING the weather these days!  and the leaves are starting to change - one of my most fave things ever!  never ceases to amaze me!  there are some trees in particular in our area that are absolutely brilliant!  once they start falling pez and i will take walks and collect them - i really try to bring her attention to things like the leaves changing.

hubby and i sat down to go over our calendar for october and WOW!  does EVERYTHING need to happen ALL in october???  and to top it all off he is working out of town for october so that always stinks.  we have our last camping trip of the year before putting the camper away for the winter this month too.  we are heading back down to kings dominion for their halloween set up.  i used to do a haunted house every year down in missouri and i have not done one yet since moving to va - i so miss them!  i have a groupon ticket to a haunted forest nearby but it expires so quickly we may not even get a chance to use it! boo!  AND pezza has decided she wants to go pick pumpkins at a farm instead of going to target.

My project today is for the new coloring challenge up over on the Color Me Creative site - the challenge is to use BRIGHT colors on your image

I made all three papers myself using Luminarte Primary Elements pigment powders and Luminarte Silks in a variety of ways.  Interested in learning how to do some mixed media too?  Check out my classes on the Color Me Creative site.

all the DTs used the cute little monster stamps from SCACD - isn't she fun?!  I colored her with colored pencils as always - I teach colored pencils classes at Color Me Creative as well!

now i am off to get my crazy weekend started!  first - pumpkin cake with homemade cream cheese buttercream frosting, then farmers market and hopefully - some major cleanout in preparation for my first foray into a children's consignment sale - because WOW do we need to clean out pezza's stuff.  she is a hoarder in the making so this is going to be a serious battle!

happy weekend y'all!

art journal joy

hello all!
happy fall!  i know it's here where i live anyway - love love love it!  we are having a great week here despite me being sick because we are finally getting a break from vet visits and everyone is looking pretty healthy.  at the end of this post i will have kitty pics for those interested!

we are gradually getting our schedule back into shape with school starting.  she seems to be doing well so far.  we are also doing girl scouts and gymnastics.  we'll see how that all plays out.

i have been keeping myself very busy with some online classes Suzanne asked me to teach at Color Me Creative as y'all know.  You can sign up HERE.  The basics class and card/scrapbookers class are both live and the art journaling class will go live on friday!  today's project is one of the pages from the art journaling class:

i love how this page turned out and i think it pairs up well with the saying from St. Francis of Assisi.  i love the freedom of playing in my art journals.

This page also incorporates acrylic paint which is the current challenge in the Mixed Media challenge group also on Color Me Creative.i would love to have more folks join in over there!  just click HERE to go to the group.  the challenge runs until September 30th.  a new challenge will start on the 1st and we will be giving away prizes!

now here's some kitty pics for ya:

i have a photo area set up in my studio.  ALL of the cats seem to think it is the cat sleeping area.  here is tiger - our big old maine coon and the one who gave us a scare by being suddenly unable to walk a couple weeks ago.  she is much better now but pretty arthritic which is common in these big cats.

and this is fluffy - tiger's sister.

don't let my art journal get in your way or anything there fluff....

baby kayla, a foster who came to us super sick and is now doing much better.  she will even be at the adoption event this weekend!  she sticks very close to me - in this case a little too close!

Next up - Peter and savannah

savannah came to us with 2 very very sick tiny kittens and she was very sick herself.  we were unable to save her kittens but we did save her.  she and peter, who came to us with kayla, have become great friends!  savannah has only a stub of a tail and hops around like a billy goat so i refer to her as the billy goat, hubby refers to her as Boxcar Sally - poor little thing!  peter is amazing.  the only one who wasn't sick and boy does he have charm and personality!  he also has a black moustache and goatee making him quite distinguished (or comical) looking.  They will both be able to go to the adoption event as well.

bubba, our own Maine coon baby we adopted last year, has not been too sure how he feels about all these foster kittens but he is finally deciding they might actually be quite fun to play with and he is always very curious about their antics

i'll take all the good thoughts y'all can give for us to find good homes for these and all the other foster kittens this weekend! 

art journal page and a freebie

hello awesome readers!

here's hoping for a more productive day for me!  hollyn had a good time meeting her principal last night - she is very nice.  of course pezza also made the rounds of all the tables herself meeting and getting to know everyone like she was running for office as usual.  even the asst. principal commented it was like she was running for office and i told him that is what hubby and i have been saying about her for years.  she is certainly not an introvert :P

i have another class project for you today - remember you can sign up for class over on Color Me Creative!

 i LOVE the quote and it is something i need to try harder to remember on a daily basis.  as for the piece itself it was alot of fun to make and has SO many yummy things included in it!

you may recognize the tulips from a previous post - i scanned it into my computer and turned it into a digi which y'all are free to download if you would like!

if you want to know the how's behind the piece we talk ALL about it in class!  i will leave y'all with a pezza bit.  last night i sent her to her room for being ugly to me.  as she was stomping off she asked how long she had to stay in there.  i said until she decided to stop being ugly to me to which she replied that will happen when you start doing everything my way.  um yea that ain't happenin' missy.  so she disappears for awhile, collects herself and reappears on the scene in disguise:

she said her name was ella.  love this kid - so glad she isn't boring!

class time ladies!

hi all!

we are having the most unbelievable weather up here in northern VA - it was 80 DEGREES yesterday afternoon!  and it isn't even march 15th!  i. was. wearing. SHORTS!  hahhahahha!  of course this probably means a long hot summer and brutal hurricane season for my mom and my family down south but for now we are really enjoying it.  my headaches have been much better (though not completely gone but manageable) and i even got out in the gardens and started working on those sunday and yesterday.  pezza and i went on our first garden center outing of the spring YAY!  oh so many things i want!  however technically we are not supposed to start planting up here until may 1 so i will have to settle for getting all of the clean up and prep work done!

i have NOT been spending a whole lot of time in my studio but i hope to change that first thing this morning!  in the meantime i wanted to put up another post about the classes i have coming up in baltimore in may since it seems very few people had been getting my blog!

the group The Outlawz is hosting a retreat May 18, 19 & 20 and i am teaching classes there!  live and in the flesh!  hahhahha!  i will be teaching a colored pencil class AND a beginners mixed media class!  you can get all the details of classes on my Workshops Page and all of the retreat info on the outlawz page.

i sure hope to see some of you there!

CMC Challenge

hi all!

{anyone ever get tired of thinking of clever titles for their posts?  i've got nothing....i always do the title last...}

i have been cooking up a storm still stocking my freezer as i go.  this weekend i made three blueberry baked french toast meals, 112 cranberry orange oatmeal cookies - some for a cookie exchange tomorrow with some friends and some put away for giving out at christmas and 3 meals of chili.  then yesterday i made 7 breakfast burritos to have on hand for hubby and 4 meals of enchiladas along with homemade salsa, guacamole and chicken salad for sandwiches for hubby's lunch - the salsa and chicken salad were both made with pre-chopped & frozen veggie mixes i made a couple weeks ago.  i am LOVING this method of cooking!   i will give some chili and enchiladas to trev too - the reality of bills is hitting pretty hard now that he is on month 2 of livving on his own!  the cool thing about cooking this way i have noticed is that it does not take a whole lot more time to do BUT it saves LOADS of time on future days when i can just grab something and warm it up!

as i mentioned last week, my buddy suzanne is letting us pencil folks join in on her copic challenge on color me creative and the current one is GOOD!  you do not want to miss out on this - there are some really good prizes up for grabs - this is what suzanne had to say:

For this Challenge we have LOTS OF PRIZES!!

AND A WAY TO DONATE TO A WONDERFUL CHARITY!!

WHAT YOU CAN WIN:

-1 person will win a NEW Provocraft CRICUT MINI machine

-1 person will win a NEW KINDLE E-READER

-1 person will win a $50 Gift Cert. to SCACD

-1 person will win a $25 Gift Cert. to the Paper Temptress

-1 person will win 5 digis from Tiffany Doodles and a $15 Gift Cert to 7 Kids College Fund and a Gilli Gift Bag

it is a color challenge - white, cream and gold:

In addition I was inspired by the following challenges:

1. ABC Challenge - E is for embossing
2. Card Makin' Mommas - Christmas

the card base is gold, then i embossed a cream paper and brushed over it with gold ink.  the holly piece is from a christmas paper pad.  I covered the scalloped circle in platinum viva decor inka gold and then cut out my image with a fleur de lis spellbinders die.

coloring metallics is one of the topics in Prisma Class 2 on color me creative.  i stamped the image on a darker cream using coffee brown archival ink.  i gathered up some old (nice and flat) primas in white, cream and gold and misted them heavily with a mist of water and gold perfect pearls.  i topped them off with clear glittered skittles.

i am hoping all of you colored pencils fans will head over and join in on the challenge - if we have enough interest we can branch out on our own!

goodies

A package of goodies arrived yesterday - YAY!! my first order from Close to my Heart - adorable!! I am working on some classes in conjunction with my friend Cori who does CTMH - we both have lists of people interested in both CTMH and SU products so we are trying to make everyone happy by offering both :) anyway, I can't wait for my coffee to be done so I can go down and play! I have done some major re-organization down in my scrap area so it will be nice to work in. We are doing some Valentine cards featuring embossing powders so I will be working on getting those ready. No idea there were so many options in types of finishes :P And maybe at some point I will have time to catch up on my scrapbooking. Need to figure out how to get good pics of scrapbook layouts so I can post those as well......cards are so easy to just scan in.

I made alot of changes to my website getting ready to start posting my workshops and such - you can see it here http://www.pezadodle.com/. Now how to advertise and get those things filled up......always so much to do. Luckily Hollyn is a good baby and super cooperative yesterday. Even though she's cutting 6 teeth right now - YIKES! she woke up in the middle of the night and after a few minutes it was apparent she wasn't going to put herself back to sleep so I went in to rock her. When I picked her up she said "Tank oo mama" and gave me a big dramatic MMMMMwah kiss - SO cute. well coffee's done!