October and November calendar pages

My October pages are complete because today was Hall0ween and I was able to finish my calendar a few hours early. I'm sure Kate who keeps the links at The Kathryn Wheel, will be happy to see that many of us are still around with only two months left to go this year. And be sure to congratulate her on her "Journal Your Year" article in the latest edition of Somerset Studio magazine.


Continuing with my year of journaling, here is my October left side


and right side. The house was supposed to be a haunted Halloween house, but the Xylene transfer didn't work as well as I had hoped. I hope you can see it on the bottom right.


And I am ready for November, although I don't have a clue how I will decorate these pages until I am nearly through the month. I hope you will visit Kate for the links and check out other calendar entries this month, too.

It's a sign of the times

Have a super Halloween!

Silent Sunday: More photos from the Great Plains Transportation Museum

Inspiration Avenue: Masquerade Ball

This week, we have been invited by Shelly to an Inspiration Avenue Masquerade Ball.


And what could be more fun than a bunch of trick or treaters hiding behind their Halloween costumes. Won't you join them? After all, it's nearly Halloween and one more chance to celebrate this holiday.

Halloween brings out the tea in me

I'm starting this Halloween tea post with Assam tea at my library table. As you can see, I have gathered a few embellishments to add to my Halloween altered book.


As the tea steeps, I begin reminiscing over this book that I started in 2004 with a few tip-ins from a swap.


This tip-in above is especially important, because it came from my dear departed friend Gina Wise. It is the only tip-in made for a swap that I will show, other than a few I made myself, and one made especially for me. This was sent as a gift from Gina because whatever the swap was, I was not a part of the original players.


I sewed this plastic together and turned it into a pocket page.


Here I stamped a pumpkin using a foam stamp. I also added a slide holder that I covered with handmade paper and stuck some Halloween confetti behind a bit of organza.


Here I used several UNICEF boxes left over after collecting for UNICEF. Actually, I think this is from two different years, because I was quite involved with UNICEF back in the early 2000's.


I realize this is not much, but I wasn't much of an altered artist back in 2004. You can see I had very few supplies and tried to make due with what I had on hand.


To compliment the tip-ins I received, I decorated pages near the tip-ins. This is one I actually liked. Once again, I used my handmade paper, something I had an ample supply of when I was first getting started making altered art.


Tissue paper and a decorated brown paper bag on the right compliment the paint chip on the left. The tag pocket (also on the left) is highlighted with words about the "the day after Halloween."


A little filler called "In the pumpkin patch."


This is one of the houses I got in my Haunted Houses Halloween swap a few weeks ago. This one was created for me as the swap host by Dianne of Art Beneath the Cottonwoods. Several of these tip-ins were placed back to back, so you will see more than one tip-in in the picture. But, the one from Dianne, hand drawn and hand colored, is front and center.


All of the houses have now been added to this Halloween altered book, and I've started adding a few pages to complement the pages between the houses.


I have a few more pages to go before it is finished, and the cover to decorate, then I can call this book finished after seven years.


Now to finish my tea and continue decorating my still sparsely decorated Halloween home (not that my house is sparsely decorated, quite the opposite, it just doesn't have a lot of Halloween decorations).

Please join Kimmie and the rest of my tea friends today as I start a full week of daily tea drinking. It should be quite an adventure since I am a coffee gal from morning to night. Now I don't plan to give up coffee, but I do plan to drink tea every day. I have so much tea, I need to make a dent in my stash before I turn into one of those hoarders you see on TV. Wish me luck (and head on over to Kimmie's for more tea-ventures).

A few days of Halloween

I'm not big on Halloween, but this year I've gotten sucked into the Halloween spirit via both paper and fabric. I started by cutting a few tags from my friend Kathy's old Sizzix. Since I only wanted one side of the tags, I cut the felt and paper into strips I could manage in the die.


It didn't take long until I had enough tags for both my paper and fabric collages. For the paper collage, I used a double sheet of cardboard weight I glued together. In fact, I had this background sitting around since the beginning of the year when I made several of these for One World One Heart. After I decided on a design, I moved on to


the fabric, which I tried to match closely with the tissue paper and thread backing I had previously made.


It was time to bring out the colored Sharpies and 91% rubbing alcohol to color the white muslin.


I used all the green Sharpies and my only blue Sharpie for the background.


I added the alcohol, and as has happened previously,


I got way too much alcohol on the fabric. I used even more muslin cleaning up the mess, but I got some nice blue fabric (with a hint of brown) as a result.


As the fabric dried,


I decided to make a cross from a rubber eraser. I have a bunch of these erasers I bought last year at Big Lots. I think they were two for $1.00 at that time, so I stocked up on them, hoping I would find my carving tools after my basement supplies had been returned.


No such luck! It's great that these were straight lines, because they were



relatively difficult to cut, even with my arthritic friendly paring knife.



I tried several times to get the cross right. I had to carve it at least twice more before I got it right.


Finally! I was pleased with the really irregular way the cross turned out, too.


I was a bit disappointed with the design because I had wanted a tree in the cemetery, but realized after I had everything in place, that there was no room for it.


I was marginally happier with the headstones in the fabric cemetery. I even added a quilted moon. In fact, this is the first time I have ever tried to quilt a quiltlet that wasn't


just a bunch of haphazard patterns like what is on the back. Now all I have to do is even up the quiltlet with the backing, add a hanger, and it will be ready to display in my rather under decorated Halloween home.

Do you celebrate Halloween?

Silent Sunday: Great Plains Transportation Museum: trains, no planes, but automobiles