Could I get a few more hours, please?

There just are not enough hours in the day, is there? I went to my first gourd festival in Casa Grande on Friday and there are just so many things I want to try. I can combine gourds with polymer clay (yeah!) as well as beading and other things I already do. I loved the jewelry some of the artist made using gourds. I took a wood burning class a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed that. I burned a humming bird and then painted the design. So by painting in that class, I had an idea of what kind of paint I wanted to buy while at the festival. I also picked up a couple of wood burning pens. I also found a book of designs and one for beading on gourds, so now I need to find the time! Happy crafting!

2009 will be a wonderful art year!!

Two emails arrived this last week that made my day! The first was a partial list of the instructors for Art Unraveled 2009. This was such a treat and I have been working on my list of what instructors I would like to take classes from. Of course, there are some that I went to right away, but there were some that I am curious about and might take a leap and stretch my art a little and see where that takes me. The second email I received was that the Cyber Fyber Online ATC Exhibition is online and can be seen at http://cyberfyberonlineatcs.blogspot.com/. Mine is #58. There are some absolutely beautiful ATCs on this site--check them out! Whatever you do in 2009, be sure to make time for some playtime, some art and enjoy life!! Have a safe, healthy, and wonderful 2009!!

Adding Gourds to "Other Good Stuff"!

Well, I jumped into another art form--gourds!! Thru a friend of a friend, my sweet hubby bought my Christmas gift of 97 gourds and a variety of tools! I have a friend that is very involved in this art and has been enticing me with her wonderful projects so I thought I would add that to my list of things to work on for 2009! Well, since I received my gift before Christmas, I went to the December meeting of the Southwest Gourd Association with my friend and jumped right in! There was an ornament or small gourd item exchange as part of the evening, so I found a gourd that would work for what I had in mind and did up "Frosty the Sheriff Snowman". Since I had the paint out, I also did a couple of showmen for friends that I usually do ornaments for. Wow, I already did 3 gourds. Nothing fancy, but they worked out well. And one thing I have learned already is that I will be able to use a variety of my other art supplies on gourds. Frosty's nose is made out of polymer clay! I received a wonderful ornament with Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree on it. That was perfect for me as that has always been one of my favorite Christmas stories!

The Next Step, an Etsy Store!

Well, we did the next step today--we opened a store on Etsy.com. If you have never looked at the items on Etsy, you need to do so! Really fabulous stuff. We browsed around looking at the many items this afternoon. Amazing stuff from amazing artists. I put five necklaces up for sale, so we shall see how it goes. If you have a chance, my stuff is under FlightsofFancyAZ. I need to finish a couple of projects I have started here and put them on as well. With the holidays coming up, now seemed like a good time to try and sell a few things!

Mary is home!

It was so exciting to pick up my doll, Mary, after her adventure. She came back to me with quite a few treasures! Mary collected purses, quilts, a hat box as well as some flowers. The best part of it all was reading the journal that went along with her on her journey. There were wonderful entries from everyone and many included items of their grandmothers. I love the fact that I now have a wonderful doll of my Grandma Mary and along with her is bits and pieces of all of the other artist's grandmothers as well. I had mentioned sewing, gardening, cinnamon buns and even ivory soap. She came back with quilts, flowers, a bar of Ivory Soap covered for a pillow and her hair is done up to look like a cinnamon bun!! Amazing work by all the ladies. All of the dolls had a personality and it was great fun trying to find that "something special" to add to them before sending them off. I made a mini book of all the dolls and the item I worked on for each doll, so I have a record of all the wonderful dolls that visited. I was wondering what Mary would look like since so many of the dolls had a lot of wonderful sparkle on them. I was so thrilled when she came back as she did looking so much like my grandma! I showed my Mom yesterday and she was tickled and said she wished that her mom could see her. She would have loved her! What a wonderful compliment to all the gals that worked on her! Our next adventure is an art quilt after the holidays. I can't wait!

We have a name!

In between all that has been going on, my daughter-in-law, Autumn, and I have been trying to come up with a name to call ourselves if we can get a few items ready to sell. We both have birds as our trademark of sorts. Mine is a bluebird and Autumn's is an owl. She called me the other night with the absolutely perfect name "Flights of Fancy"! Now if we can find some time to play and get a few things together for sale. The holidays are right around the corner!

Books, books and more books....

Well, I think I found out that my second love is making books! I ended up taking several book classes. I took two classes from Jill Berry and this group of books was from her "Five Books in One Day". There was a lot of "wows" in the class as we each would discover how this fold or that crease would work. I need to finish the house book yet, but the others are done. The one that says ART! on the front has a few Moo cards and signatures in it from the class.

This one was an evening class with Jacqueline Sullivan, "Stenciled, Textured Journal". I love the look of this book. It looks like you just dug it up somewhere. Very old world feeling! I was a great class to learn about different mediums and paints as well as another stitched binding.

This one was probably one of my most challenging classes and I really love the way the book came out. This was "Little Carved Beaded Journal" taught by Doris Arndt. We did everything from painting the pages to carving the front and back covers with an x-acto knife and I am not very good with those, but by the end of the day, I think I could say I am getting a lot better! The binding is really something and I didn't get it finished in class, but with a tip from Marcy (thanks Marcy!) I was able to finish it up at home! I really love the way this book came out. The purple book was one
I did in Kelly Kilmer's class, "A Few of My Favorite Things". This one came out totally different form the others and was a lot of fun. We also did a few challenges in class on how to better do a page to train the eye to go towards your focus point. I want to do more in this book and probably will add to the cover some. It will probably be a book "in progress" for quite a while as I learn new techniques for my pages!

My last class of the week was with Tracie Lyn and Marylin Huskamp for their "Miscellany of Vintage Fabric Journal". It was the perfect class to finish with. This pair have a wonderful, easy going class and it is like you have known them forever! The book is an accordion book and there is fabric everywhere in it. I did it in the purple and green to match my studio and left some of the pages without fabric so that I can sketch and make notes in it. All in all I did eleven books during Art Unraveled and each and everyone is different. I had to go out and buy a basket to put them in so I can put them on display in my studio. Thanks to all the wonderful teachers and for Linda and Chuck putting the week on. This was my second year and I had a wonderful time!!