Candle Box

 I made my daughter in law a box for Christmas this year using black chipboard and the papers from Graphic 45 French Country Collection.  I love the rich colors and the vintage home grown aspect of the paper.  My daughter in law loves sunflowers and chickens and I think this paper works for the two of us.  The box is 4"x4"x8" and the sides are split down about 2/3 of the way all the way around.  I covered all surfaces with the various papers from the collection and added chip board bits and ribbon from Stampin UP!

 Opened the box contained a candle that had leaf imprints circling it.  I  really like the way this box turned out and may end making a few more for gifts during the year.  While they look like they take a lot of work it can be done in a couple of hours. 

 The lid is some flower bits I had from other projects that I glued together into a sunflower ornament on the top of the box.

Another view of the back side of the box.  All sides were covered but these were two of my favorite. 

WOYWW #343 and a couple presents I made

What is WOYWW?  It stands for What's On Your Workspace Wednesday and each week a group from around the world gets together to share their spaces, what they are working on, and other aspects of their lives.  Julia has been kind enough to handle the mob each week for over 5 years now and it has always been a lot of fun for me and the other to link up and see what's up in the world.   Click on the link above and check it out. 

Happy Holidays!  I hope everyone had a great Christmas and is looking forward to the new year.  My son and his family came down from Tennessee and spent the week before Christmas.  It was so much fun seeing how they had grown and how different they were from the last time I had seen them.  Teresa is in first grade now and talks all the time about all things Star Wars and scientific.  Hannah is a girlie girl and if it sparkles and can be worn she is pleading...please Grammie.  Charlie is walking now and has one of the most beautiful of smiles.  Heather and Michael hosted them at their house and hosted Christmas dinner and we all had a lot of food and fun! 

On Christmas Day I was headed out to Heather's house and fell, face planted on the front drive, causing various degrees of damage to my left knee, left elbow, right shoulder, and back.  I went to the emergency department and they said while they couldn't see anything that was obviously broken I did have some soft tissue damage and tendons injured in the fall.  I now sport a shiny hot pink and flowered walker that helps me get around when needed and a swollen knee that limits just about all that I am capable of doing.  I have an orthopedic doctor's appointment on Jan 7 to find out if he can tell me more...I doubt it but I will go and hopefully he can get rid of the ouchies for me!

Okay!  Now on to my desk this week...

Yes I know...what a mess!  I was starting to sort through some stuff after I finished the girls canvases the other day and never made it any further....guess it will give me something to do while my knee heals. 

Speaking of canvases....  Here are a couple canvases I made for my granddaughters...

 I covered the 12x12" canvas I made for Teresa with some left over tissue paper that was blue and covered in multicolored snowflakes.  I used modeling paste and a stencil to make the snowflakes and snow at the bottom of the canvas.  Fearful for little fingers prying the blingy bits off I stuck them down very well with Glossy Accents and covered the hat and the hand panted letters with it also.  I love buttons and bling so I used a couple buttons shaped like birds in nests in the tree on the far right. 

you couldn't see the Glossy Accents on the hat very well so here it is up close.  Like I said I stuck all the blingy bits down with it also.

Hannah's Canvas is a little more difficult to see in the light with such a light background and dark gingerbread man and name.  I think I would have used a little lighter brown in retrospect and a darker background.

I found some more buttons in the box that had to do with the gingerbread theme and stuck them to the canvas along with a little more bling.  Hannah is all about bling, bracelets, necklaces and girly stuff. 

You can barely see the snowflakes on the canvas above so I took pictures of them and the bling that I shared in these two photos.







Okay that is it for me for today.  I will be back tomorrow to share a candle box I made for my daughter in law. 

Vickie

WOYWW

It has been a while since I last participated in WOYWW and I have a million reasons I can come up with but I think I will spare us all the excuses and just get on with it...

My desk today...

 I am in the process of making the granddaughters a couple of canvases so they can have a Grandma painting as my oldest granddaughter Teresa calls it.  The snowman when finished will have Teresa's name on it.  The music canvas is for Hannah and will have a gingerbread girl dresses in jewels and all sorts of finery! Hannah is Miss Prissy while Teresa is our more analytic girl.

I have done a lot of crafting and journaling but can't find pictures right now so will go with what I have!!  This next picture is of a calendar swap I am participating in.  Not a good picture because the stars are stenciled on with glass bead medium.  Looks fine in person but not so hot here!

 Made a few new cards for Christmas...still don't have a Christmas letter or cards addressed but...I am working on it!  These three cards are from the Close to My Heart collection called White Pines.  I can't send cards with what I call "naked" envelopes so I usually stamp something on them!

Next is the Close to My Heart scrap book pages from the White Pines Collection:  They always come with two pages to do and and I found the third one online...  It is a page set done by another CTMH person.  I am glad my daughter got into this business cause I love scrapbooking memories. 

page 1

page 2

This page was online and directions can be found here .

Life is good.  DD is coming over with pad Thai, chicken wraps, edamame, and Starbucks coffee!  We are going to eat lunch and then put up the outside Christmas lights. 

Hope everyone has a great week.  Looking forward to getting back into the swing of WOYWW... it is a lot of fun!  What is it? Click the link and check it out!

Fun Weekend!

WOW!  I had a really fun weekend staying home this week!!  I received and invite to join an online crop and while I was a little skeptical how it would all work out I really had a lot of fun interacting with crafters from all over the world!  This is the invite I received! 

 I was more then happy to participate but unsure how it would work.  I logged into the chat room but unfortunately no one was there at the times I tried to "chat" so I did the next best thing and just chatted on the Facebook posts! 

The first challenge was a BINGO Challenge - Sheree said using the following picture choose a line and use those products on a page/project life weekly spread/ card or OTP project... the line can go up/down, across or diagonal its up to you to choose...

Okay this couldn't be too hard now could it...I chose tags, buttons, one photo, and 3 pattern papers!

Do do you think I nailed it with this page?  When the tags are put back in the pocket it is only one photo!  I put pictures of Chuck and I on one of the tags and then the lemon paper on the back of it...really cool looking!  Unfortunately being an over achiever I couldn't just leave it at a one page spread I made a second 12x12 page to match it!

a view of the tags!

I was really impressed how these pages turned out considering I had no idea what products or prompts I was going to be given to complete them.  I really love the bright crisp colors of the purple, green and yellow!  I think I will have to reformulate what colors I associate with summer now!

Okay!  Challenge one done!  On to challenge #2!  Kerri is a friend I met on line a while back just because we love paper crafting.  This is her challenge..its a colour challenge DARK BLUE LIGHT BLUE AND RED...  Kerri said it didn't matter what you made just use the colors...so I made a card!

This is some of my most favorite print papers.  Close to My Heart from several years ago!  I am down to one 12x12" sheet and a few scraps.  I think I am going to cry.  I love dark blue, light blue and red together and don't think of them as 4th of July colors.  

Next on the agenda was a stash game where Sheree called off an item every so often and we were to gather it all up and take a picture of it to post when we got it done....

Done!  Day One over and done and the only thing left to do was more scrapping and talking in the Chat room!  Never could get logged in or nobody was there so I just kept on doing what I was doing!

Day Two

Didn't get out of bed till late...about 24 hours after the initial post of the challenge...sounds horrible doesn't it but remember the 17 hour time difference...{giggles}

The first challenge by Sarah was to create something out of your scrap or stash and use the letters to define what you did.  Well now SCRAP or STASH?  Interesting...SCRAP it is!  I had never much of anything with the Project Life cards and papers (but I bought the stuff to do so) so I decided since people were posting a lot of Project Life I would try to do something too...harder then I thought! I probably should have taken the classes when the store offered them!  My word was S-mouch spray C-ards (Project Life) R-hinestones A-utocollants (stickers) P-rima flowers. Again an over achiever...did 3 12x12 pages.

Heather and her friends Jennifer and Wayne ran in the 5K Color Me RAD run in Oklahoma City on 8/23/2015 so when I woke up she and Jennifer had posted several pictures on Facebook so I snapped them up and used them to make these layouts using the photographs. 

Color was really hard to get on these photographs and I apologize for it!  I had a hard time photographing them because of the shine from the acetate sheets when the light got to bright so...I am taking what I can get!
I guess that the way these turned out are okay but I doubt I will every buy anymore Project Life cards because either the sheets didn't have slots going in the directions I wanted them to go or the cards weren't oriented or turned the way I wanted or were too big or too small!!



A favorite picture of Heather was the one in the third layout, upper left corner....

my beautiful daughter Heather!  I am so proud of her and her achievements

Second Challenge of the day was a layout/sketch challenge by Tanya.  Tanya has started a challenge page on Facebook called Little Shop of Sketches where each week she will have a new layout for us to try.  Sounds like fun to me.  Anyway here was the sketch she gave us to follow...

Doesn't look too hard so I gave it a go...

The paper is from KC&Co that I have had for a hundred years at least...remember those old blocks of paper you could by from the hobby craft stores.  Well I got to digging through this stack and found the old ceiling tile paper and for some reason my mind jumped to this photo and this layout was born!

I didn't ever see a prompt about the BINGO game today so after this last layout was done I just logged off and went to watch TV!  I had a great time cropping and having fun 'chatting' with the group online today.  I look forward to doing this again!

#8 Calendar Tags...April Showers

I joined a swap on Creativeblock-Stampers Anonymous(a Yahoo group) this year to create calendars made from #8 manilla shipping tags.  The group is a restricted to using primarily Stampers Anonymous stamps on the projects and shares what we make.  While this can be a little restricting it promotes sales and use of the Stampers Anon stamps and products.  I own quite a few sets of stamps by SA in the Tim Holtz and Dylusions ranges and started buying them because they are so well cut and I like the subject matter of the stamps...  I have been in a good number of swaps on this group and love the work and interaction with many of the artists in the group.  Check it out...

This swap was for 12 like tags and you got to choose the month that you wanted to make.  I got to the game a little late in signing up and the month of April was the only month left but I think I did fairly well with what I came up with....

Now you probably don't need an enlarged view of one tag to get the gist of the project but if you have old eyes like mine you probably need it to see the sparkles in the hair, the buttons I covered with Glossy Accents, and the details of the little things I did to the tag...I used mainly Ranger inks and Dylusions to create these tags.   Dylusions (c) is an group of awesome products designed and created by Dyan Reaveley who owns a teaching studio and store in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK.  To say Dyan is eclectic would be missing the boat by a few minutes.  IMHO she is to funky art as Tim Holtz is to grunge.  Her products are bright and quirky and a lot of fun to use and create with.  Dyan has a mental illness that she brings out in most posts because she wants people to know that it is an illness not a limiter to arts.

The details...

I used a stamp set by Dylusions called Ruby Rainbow...don't you just love that name... to stamp the image on a white #8 shipping tag with Archival Black ink.  I used Distress Ink Markers Barn Red, Vintage Photo, Scattered Straw and Stormy Sky to color most of the girls clothing and umbrella.  The skin and eyes are done with Spectrum Noir alcohol makers,  Sharpie Fine Marker in black, Signo Uniball White pen for highlights.  The back ground was distressed in Stormy Sky and water spritzed to give image of rain.  The vine was then stamped on in Mowed Lawn and flowers are made using Liquid Pearls.  I used Stickles Red glitter glue to make the hair beads and Glossy accent to pop the buttons up.  Ribbon is Stampin Up!

I decided to name this tag April Showers...appropriate don't you think!

Pennsic Wars XLIV 2015

Checking in for what seems to be my monthly posting recently.  This time I have a good excuse....well a more reasonable reason why I didn't blog...I didn't have internet access!  I was gone to war...Pennsic Wars to be precise.  I went screaming and kicking last year but this year I was a very willing participant in the camp.  It is a medieval reenactment/submersion that everyone dresses up in period and lives a more primitive life for two weeks.  Watch this video or click the Pennsic Wars link to learn more.

Click here to go to Pennsic Wars video on Vimeo

 A few pictures of me and fellow campers...
 Here is a "freeze frame" of our camp!  The McGuire's Marauders encampment is in the lower middle part of this frame.  See the big white tent at 6pm?  That's our big tent...my sleeping tent is straight back next to the road.  It is just a regular tent not a period canvas but it is where I lived for 2 weeks!

Pennsic is its own town for two weeks out of every year with a postoffice and zip code, shopping center, food court etc.  It is huge...there were about 11, 500 people there this year.

Heather and Michael's massive tent!  18'x18ft'!

Heather and Sara working on my tent!

Our tents set up...blue roof and the canvas with the green dags.

Getting ready to put up the BFT! 

There is a lot of communal work that has to be done in order to make the camp livable.  Everyone has chores that is capable of doing them and chores are fitted to people who have handicaps or disabilities.  

Wood is delivered and line was formed to stack it!

Big tent up and a fire in the pit.  Our open air shower...made a bit of a concern for some when the drones where

Some photos from around Pennsic!

 Pennsic University is a real and true school.  There are classes in cooking, sewing, jewelry making, brewing beer and mead, weaving, knitting etc....  To appreciate PU check out this class schedule...

Heather going/coming from classes she taught at Pennsic University. 

Heather teaching her class in making Largesse to give away.

Bethany took a class on henna body painting and got Heather to help her decorate her hands.

I made a ring and a pendant in Heathers class...

First wire work I have ever done and I really enjoyed the class.

I also took a class in gluten free Medieval cookery that I enjoyed.  Lots of good info was obtained about grainless medieval cooking.

I celebrated my 63rd birthday at Pennsic this year.  A group of us got together and went to Red Lobster to celebrate...what could be better then a couple drinks and some crab!!

Michael, Heather, Bethany, and Sara

Julie to my right...

Michele to the left

I had a wonderful time!






Some random pictures...

The ice cream truck was a favorite location

A group of us went for ice cream and I got a picture of the crown on this counts head!!!  Yes it is silicone roosters!

Julie at the food court

The dragon lighting up the sky!

Beautiful Sunsets

Heather, Julie and I on an outing into town.  A nice stranger took a pic for us!

 The street urchins out and about.  These 3 are selling the Pennsic Independent news paper...."a dollar tweny five" others make ice runs and sell ice to the overheated masses.

Hope you enjoyed visiting my page and the memories I am sharing.  Promise to get back on the crafting wagon soon!