September and October pages in my 365 days calendar

I noticed that Kate had her calendar post ready, so I quickly went to photograph my pages. This is how my September pages began. I think these were the perfect colors for this month's pages.


Here are the two pages finished. You can see I added the leaves for the month, because I really prefer to decorate my pages at the end of the month, since I then have a better idea how the month progressed.


Here is the left side (click to read the daily entries). The cats are left over from my Halloween swap and I used them on days


when I was working around the house and not in the studio, where Bleubeard is not allowed. This is the right side, and I love these leaves I cut from a magazine.


And here we are waiting for October with its pumpkins and a Xylene transfer of a haunted house. I'm not crazy about the pink with the orange pumpkins, but that was the color most prevalent on the page. I may try to cover it over with more paint toward the end of the month.

Please go to The Kathryn Wheel for more calendar pages.

Inspiration Avenue Challenge: Spain

Today is Friday and the day I set aside to show my Inspiration Avenue challenge entry, this week assigned by Lisa at The Wright Stuff. I suspect the inspiration came from her recent trip to Madrid.


I wasn't actually going to play this week, because I was not really interested in the subject matter. Then I remembered I could actually use the entry to make a tip-in for my 7 Continents altered book, which I have been working on since 2005 (possibly a world record for procrastination and UFOs).

I started with a 12 X 12 white scrapbook page, which I first painted a dark pink and allowed to dry. I then added purple paint mixed with fabric softener and intended to make paste paper. The above photo shows the paint/fabric softener mix was too thin and took forever to dry. The light spots are the light from my window shining on wet paint. I had the image nearby that I wanted to use, and was quite surprised when I realized the image was more an orange red than a pink red, even though there were bits of purple and blue in the image.


So after attempting to turn this into a paste paper (if you enlarge the image, you still can't see the squiggles I made using the comb), I cut the page to size (8.5 X 11 inches) then added red fluid acrylic that read in the orange spectrum, which I scraped over the pink and purple. This piece includes a tape transfer of horses and an old picture from the front of a travel magazine. I used red vinyl letters for the word "Spain." Now all I need is another European spread for the reverse side and I'll have one more tip-in for my 7 Continents altered book!

If this sounds like your kind of challenge, please join Lisa in her homage to Spain at Inspiration Avenue this week.

It was a colorful Tuesday

My friend Sally was unable to go to lunch on Monday due to a doctor appointment, the day we have designated to go out and about. So we decided to go on Tuesday this week. It's a good thing, because our weather turned unseasonably hot yesterday and the trend is supposed to continue through the weekend. It's back to air conditioning for sure.


After some computer time, I realized I still had an hour to kill, so I decided to put my excess Halloween backgrounds away.


While doing that, I also decided to get some paper out and make some backgrounds. I was so inspired by all the hand painted background papers I saw when I blog hopped last week, I wanted to make a few myself.


I decided that paint didn't work with my collographic plate, so I grabbed what I thought was a black crayon, only to learn


it was purple. I knew I could work with that color, but my collographic plate was not made for using heavy scrapbook paper.


You can see the heavy paper left something to be desired: like a good image.


I grabbed some green and lavender acrylic paint and went to town painting over the images of the keys.


Next I grabbed my gold fluid acrylic paint and spread it over punchinella (sequin waste) and a piece of netting.


I tried to get a close-up, but this camera simply doesn't take close-ups well.


Next I grabbed my black fluid acrylic lid and added five black circles. By now, an hour had passed and it was time to go to lunch. So I set this page aside to work on later


and headed for another Mexican restaurant, this one called Reyes. Once again, Sally chose the restaurant. Like Chinese, I never tire of Mexican food. We were surprised to see this one had a buffet, something that pleased both of us.


While Sally was getting her plate, I took a few photos of the very colorful surroundings.


We had this very lovely table by the window. I was seated with horses.


This was Sally's side, the beautiful calla lilies.


The next booth over had parrots.


Even the chairs matched.


I wasn't especially crazy about the salad bar,


but the eggs, zucchini casserole, and rice were awesome. Love those eggs and zucchini, even though my plate looked more mess than color at this point. How colorful was your day?

WOYWW 121: a tag

I don't often make tags, but this was what was on my work table early Tuesday evening. Don't you just love the autumn light? This is part of a round robin and it's my tag that identifies me as the maker of the pages I will be mailing tomorrow. I used a jar of Bingo marker fluid to color the tag. It's a whole lot cheaper than Tim's daubers. The credit card was for spreading the glue.


Maybe you can see it a bit better, now. I can't move the bottles because they are holding the plastic piece (which is quite hard to glue) to the oriental text I added to the tag, as well as the slide mount which I've glued a plastic piece behind. At some point tonight, while my British friends sleep, I will turn these pieces into a small collaged tag for this month's swap partner.

Also on my desk is one of my cast iron rocking horses that somehow lost his tail when he got dropped years ago. It doesn't mean I don't still LOVE him, because I do. It only means I have him in a more secluded location, where he can hide his lost tail from curious prying eyes.

So what is all this nonsense, you ask? I am following Julia at Stamping Ground and showing my work desk, that's what! Please see her for the rest of the links.

Limeade to celebrate the end of summer

Last week we saw the official calendar end of summer. It's now time to think about autumn, so this limeade makes a good transition drink between cool and warm tea time. It's been awhile since I've written a real letter to someone, and today, as days grow shorter and nights grow longer, is the day I plan to catch up on some real letter writing. So, while I'm drinking my limeade and writing a few notes to friends, please join Kimmie and the rest of my tea Tuesday buddies and catch up on what they are doing, too.

It's starting to look like Halloween

I'm in a Halloween houses swap on ABC Yahoo Group. It was suggested by Kiram at Ponderings of a Mind, whose digital art I fell in love with at Christmas. You can see her entry on her blog. I know Patty and Marlynn will both love her house.

Kiram's idea was to have the house width 4 inches, like when we make our 4 X 4s. The house couldn't be more than 4 inches wide, but could be as tall as you chose, with a roof of your choice. My house is definitely not as spooky as some I've seen.


I still can't believe I spent over a week working on these. I started with a digital image of a woman with wings and an owl. Then I added a scanned pumpkin. Digital is hard! No getting around it, I would rather cut and paste using paper and scissors than Photoshop, but sometimes you just have to do it. Size can be so restrictive. For instance, I have a couple of die cut pumpkins left from some I made with my friend Kathy's die cutter a couple of years ago. But try as I might, these were too big and I didn't have enough for the number of houses I had to make. After a bit of trial and error (mostly error), I scanned them, then cut them to size. Next, I painted the backgrounds. I added the door, sewed the painted roof (a row (roll) of numbers I got at Dollar Tree), and punched the cat and crow I colored using some black paint. I didn't add the door knob and the focal image until the very end because both were dimensional.


Next, I cut the window using a punch. Gotta' admit, I used a lot of punches on this house. I sewed my information to the inside of the window, then added the cat, also a punch. Next I sewed on the corrugated cardboard roof, then sewed the house together.

The secret to the house was I used 12 X 12 white scrapbook paper that I colored using orange and black paint, then cut into 4 inch X 12 inch strips. I folded the strips in half widthwise then cut the roofs. It looks like Halloween has taken shape in my house (pun possibly intended as an afterthought).

Silent Sunday: Museum of World Treasures (the actual name of the museum, not Ancient Treasures)

Inspiration Avenue: Collography Keys

When I first read that Hettiene had chosen keys for her first Inspiration Avenue challenge, my thoughts immediately went to this altered book spread. But I have shown this spread on my blog before and wanted something new this week.

As I was contemplating what I would make for this challenge, my mind raced to the keys I keep in my studio for just this purpose. Then I nearly tripped over my collographic plate I had placed behind a door in my studio that was made using old keys. If you are not sure what a collographic plate is, it is a water resistant plate used for printing. I showed the process here. Since today is officially the first day of autumn, I thought I would work on this technique outside.




Supplies from back left clockwise:

Bowl of water (to remove excess paint from plate)
Pearl Glaze
Paint brush
Collographic plate
Paper to print on
Paper towels (for cleaning the plate)


As I was about to begin, I realized I had not brought anything to place the glaze in, so I went inside and grabbed a used cup.


I brushed a bit of glaze on the keys,


then laid the paper face down on the painted plate, and gently pressed. Unlike fabric, which is all I've used in the past, paper will absorb the paint easier, so I had to be careful to not press too hard. It also made taking a photo while pressing on the paper while the paint was still wet, a bit difficult.


Unfortunately, I don't think I got very good coverage on this piece.


So I tried twice more, then cleaned the plate before the paint could dry on the plate this time (unlike when I allowed paint to bake on the plate earlier this year in the hot summer sun).


I got one decent print (the middle one in the above photo), although I must admit, I prefer this technique using fabric and paint or Shiva/Markal paint sticks.

If keys are your thing, you might want to join the Inspiration Avenue challenge this week, or simply stop by and see how other participants interpreted Hettiene's challenge.