Being Sketchy

The She Art instructor, Christy, doesn't use any patterns for her She Art girls. She doesn't even draw a cutting line on her patterned paper. She just grabs the scissors and starts cutting! I can't do it! I think it's the engineer in me. I have to plan... I have to sketch it all out... I have to make a pattern... I have to trace my pattern on my paper... THEN I CUT!

I do most of my sketching at work! {gasp} Well, some people surf the Internet when they have a few free minutes... me I like to sketch. I used to carry around an engineering notebook, but gave up on that when it started looking more like a sketch book, hahaha. Now I carry around a yellow sticky post-it pad. Now when I make sketches that I want to take home, I can just take the sticky note instead of having to Xerox my engineering notebook.

Here are my last two sketches. They are made on two post-its stuck together to get the height I needed. The first you might recognize as the Pride and Prejudice girl. The other girl is going to be a Christmas Carol Angel. Right now she's wearing a top hat, red scarf, and a white night gown. I'm rethinking the night gown, she might end up wearing a Victorian era dress.

Here's a post-it sketch of Jena. What do you think? Is it a good likeness? hahaha!

This "sketch" is by Chris. A few weeks ago we had a problem with the lawn mower. When Chris plugged it in, it caused a surge that flipped off a circuit breaker. He didn't know that at the time, and he was the only one home. So, he went through the entire house testing every outlet to try and find a pattern to the outage.

This is an accurate floor plan of our house and every outlet in it. That's my boy! He's an engineer in the making!

Well, that's all I had for today!
Have a good evening everyone!

Another Christmas Card

When I saw this card by Mary VP, I knew that it would make a GREAT Christmas card!

Here is mine using the Unity Ippity stamp set, Totally Happy... it's pretty much the same card. I gave it more of a clean look by leaving the bird solid. I also added glitter stickles to the white areas in the fence to make it look like snow. Then I added an elegant Christmas sentiment and I have another Christmas card ready to go!

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday FWF

It's FWF Friday again, and I'm continuing my quest to finish Christmas cards! Here is my latest card:

Thanks for stopping by!

Another She Art Girl

Here is another She Art girl... I call her my Pride and Prejudice girl. Pride and Prejudice is Cheryl's all time favorite book. We also have the DVD and I just took her to see the play at the South Coast Repertory.

To make the girl's background I created a collage of all our Pride and Prejudice stuff... like the play ticket and the parking ticket from SCR.

This is a xerox copy of the title page of the book.

This is a copy of the front of the DVD box.

I looked up regency styles from the late 1800's and created a dress for my girl in that style.

She ended up too short, which kind of bugs me. I guess she could be the Bennet's little sister. hahaha! The saying is hard to see in black. It says, "She wasn't afraid to love."

Super SPECIAL Birthday!

So, what made by birthday special this year, you ask? Was it because all the stores opened up super early and had extra special sales just for me? That was special... Was it because we got a free dinner? Actually, the waitress dropped our pizza, so it was free... uhm, not the one that she dropped, they made a new one.

My friends from work took me on a special run on the Newport Back Bay Loop... Nothing like a 10 mile run at 6am on your birthday, lol...

How about that GREAT blog header that Chris made for me? That's super special... Don't you LOVE it?!!!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II are special!

Flowers from my hubby are always SPECIAL!

And, LOOK! The Register put my picture in the paper on the afternoon on my birthday!

Three birthday desserts are special... And very VERY YUMMY!

Family gathered at my mom and dad's house is super special! I'm so Thankful for my mom, dad and the rest of our family!

... and no post is complete without a card! This is made with the stamp sets picked for me by my SIL. Yep! New stamps are SPECIAL too {grin}!

Thank-you, everyone, for a super SPECIAL birthday!

She Art 2

I'm taking an online class called She Art 2. This first week, we learned how to do faces. I'm not sure I like faces on the girls. Without faces, they can be anybody... I feel that I can read myself into a girl without a face. She could be me... the quote could apply to me...

Well, I figured that I would give faces a try. After all, who knows, I might like it. Here is my girl... face and all!

I don't like the way the mouth came out. It was better before I outlined it... oh, well. I do like the eyes. It's been years since I've drawn or painted anything. I guess I didn't lose all my drawing and painting ability after all.



---- EDITED ----
Okay, I had to try... I erased her face in photoshop. I think I like it better. What do you think?

Friday FWF

I finished another Christmas card to share with Unity Friday FWF! If I keep this up, I might finish all my Christmas cards by Thanksgiving! YAHOO!!!


This is the snowman from the Unity Itty Bitty collection reminds me of a snow globe. I accented the snow globe effect by mounting the snowman on the inside of the card covered by a clear acrylic window. My friend Mara has me hooked on baker's twine... I may never go back to ribbon again... {grin}

Don't Pass Me....I'm not in your Age Group

I still laugh when I think of the T-shirt worn by another runner saying, "Don't Pass Me....I'm not in your Age Group!" Hahaha... I passed him...

In fact, I passed more people than I thought I would, finished 3rd in my age group and came home with an award! I feel so slow running with the people at work... I'm almost always the last one back. So... reality check... I'm slow when compared to men and women in their 20's and 30's, but do pretty darn well against the other "more mature" ladies in my age group. I finished in 24:42... not my best time, but an okay time for a rainy Sunday. That's why there are no pictures of this race. No one wanted to get their cameras wet.

As for Chris... he forgot his timing chip, so he has no idea what his finish time was. But, I know he was faster than me.

Next week is Thanksgiving. Time to start thinking "Turkey Trot."
Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

The Nutting Girls!

I had the day off Friday, so Cheryl and I went down to Carlsbad to take a class by Julie Nutting. Julie is the author of "Collage Couture: Techniques for Creating Fashionable Art."

You know how I'm so into the "She Art" girls right now... well Julie has her own type of art girl... I'll call them Nutting Girls!

Here we are with Julie Nutting.

I wanted to share how we make the backgrounds. It's different than the backgrounds for She Art girls. Julie uses only paint with brushes, stamps and stencils. In the following steps, Cheryl's background is on the left, and mine is on the right.

We started with a coat of paint... most of the ladies used a royal blue. I used teal, Cheryl used light blue, and the lady next to me used green. Then we stenciled patterns with a doily and added texture with white paint.

Next, we add a glaze of color over everything. Cheryl used pink. Me? well, I had a problem with glazing... mine is more spotted than glazed. Julie had issues with mine... she likes her backgrounds more muted so that it won't distract from the girl... okay, I admit, I had issues with my background at this point too.

Now we redo the doily stenciling, add stamps and cover all with more white for texture... in my case, make that LOTS of white to cover up my mess, lol!

Even though all the ladies did their own thing, we all ended up with very similar looking backgrounds. I guess if everyone works in layers with the same 6 paint colors, everyone will eventually look the same.

Everyone added hair to their girl to make it look like them. I'm not delusional, I know that girl doesn't look like me, but she has my hair, lol!

When we got home, I did a little more work on the girls. I think it's from being in the She Art class, but I like my girls with words on them. I found a journal spot that I added to Cheryl's girl.

My girl got a nice sentiment stamp to break up the plain center of the doily. I also changed the huge white flower for a nicer smaller flower.

So what do you think of them? Cheryl likes them better than She Art girls. I think my style is going to fall somewhere in between the She Art and the Nutting girls.

Crafty Saturday!

I made another card! It's a two card week, and I got a start on my Christmas cards, YAHOO!!!

I made this card for a couple of challenges:

VSN Jingle Bell Rock - used brads and bling
Scrappin' Mojo November card sketch

The challenges are motivating me! I actually started my Christmas cards before Thanksgiving!

And wait until you see what else we did today :oD
Stay tuned...

Friday FWF

It's Friday... and time for Unity Friends with Flair! And here is the card that I did for the Unity November sketch challenge. I got the doll stamp from the "Get It While You Can Bin." The rest of the stamps are from the July KOM.

Here is the sketch:

Thanks for stopping by! Have a GREAT weekend!