"The Sweet Far Thing" Not so Sweet....

What an incredibly long book.

What I liked, well, sadly not too much. This story has been going on now for three books and nothing gets resolved until the last 50 pages. So why then are there so many other pages? I think my main problem with this series/book is that the scenes are not long enough. As soon as I felt like I was getting into what was going on the Author moved on. Because of this I had very little attachment to the characters.

I do however think that Bray is a very poetic writer. Her descriptions are new and original and very image provoking. For example “…tasting her name on my tongue like an exotic new curry.”

As for the young adult aspect. Today’s teens are faced with a multitude of things and many of them were addressed in this book: cutting, death, sexual orientation, love, betrayal, discovery etc… To me the author spends the most time on the parts of life that all teens experience loved, betrayal and discovery but she does not ignore the more difficult ones however she does kind of gloss over them.

All in all I am glad I read the books but I did not enjoy them as much as I have others.

Art Deco Mask

This week over at One Powerful Hour the theme is...

Carnival/Mardi Gras

I came up with the idea for this week's theme when Alpha Stamps revealed their newest swap. A mini mask swap. The size of this piece believe it or not is ATC size, well not counting the petals, just the mask part. Super small and tons of fun to work on.

When I was little we lived in Spain and one year my parents took us to Venice. I have always remembered all the fabulous, artistic costumes that they wore and have tried to create my very own here.

I used one of the quilt block stamps from Repeat Impressions over and over to create the pattern on the mask. Colored it with colored pencils. The black petals are from a gigantic silk flower that screamed at me to be used the second I walked into Michael's for just this project. As finishing touches I added Rhinestones and glitter.

Hope you enjoy! Thanks for looking.

Young Love

This week over at One Powerful Hour the theme is

Love

A few weeks ago I got a surprise box of goodies from Alpha Stamps and I have been dying to use them (actually I have already used them but I can't share that creation yet, it is being published!) So I was thrilled with the theme since the goodies are all love/valentine/romantic.

Everything on this card is Alpha Stamps except for the circular transparency around the image which I picked up at Michel's thinking it would work great, which it did. For more details on the supplies I used check out my Alpha Stamp Gallery.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for stopping by.

Birds of Song

This week over at One Powerful Hour the theme is Birds.

We have been getting really fabulous gifts from even more fabulous friends for the birth of our second child. I ran out of thank you cards so I had to come up with a quick design and this is what I made. It works great for this weeks theme.

The colors In the picture are a bit off the pink is really a deep rich raspberry and it looks very nice.

I hope you enjoy my card and take a trip over to One Powerful Hour and join us this week or in the weeks to come.

Love Gone Wild Swap

Lenna has finally gotten all settled into her new home...kinda...and started up her swaps again. If you have never taken part in a Creative Swap then you are missing out.

This swap is called "Love Gone Wild" it is a 4 for 4 ATC swap. There are still a few spots left and it's not due to Lenna until the 15th of February so you have time! You can see some of the other entries on her blog.

When I think "Love Gone Wild" I think of the Silver Screen...actors and actresses totally out of control on the screen and off, the games they play and the skimpy lingerie they sometimes wear. So I combined all that on these ATC's using a mini Bingo card as my base, some lovey dovy couples. I stamped an animal print using brown ink and ripped bits of it to attach to the ATC. There is a stamp of birds and hearts over the women's heads and a heart that I embossed over the couples. To finish it off I added diamond glaze to the words and affixed some film strip.

I can't wait to see what I get in return.

Metalic Bird

A few weeks ago on One Powerful Hour I set the theme of Metallic and made this bird. Well, time got away from me and I wasn't able to personally post about it until now.

The bird is a single chipboard page from a book so you could make a bunch of them, that I got from Alpha Stamps.

To start I painted the entire bird using Tim Holtz silver distressing paint. I then stamped the swirl (one of my favorite stamps, Hero Arts) and covered the image with glitter.

The Poinsettia stamp is from Repeat Impressions. I stamped it three times onto grey paper. Added some twinkling H2O's in a slightly darker grey then went over the entire flower with some silver pearl ex powder. I cut out the pointsettia's and affixed them together with a shimmery silver brad. I positioned the pointsettia over where the feathers came together.

Orange, Orange and more Orange

When a girls favorite color is orange well then you should give them Orange! At least that is what my friend who asked me to make this pillow said and I must admit I agree completely with the sentiment. It is very hard to find completely orange objects and the recipient does not like pink and orange mixed which is very in right now.

Picking out the fabrics was not easy, as I previously stated orange seems to come mixed with pink now. We started with two different sized poka dots but I was worried that it would be to much so we settled for the stripe and the smaller dots. The smaller dot fabric also has some stripes in it.

The next hard part was deciding how to do the Monogram. I couldn't find a good orange ink so I decided to go with an applique which also proved tricky because I needed to make it stand out on the fabric. Ultimately I went with more orange which actually is a perfect match for the darker stripe in the striped fabric. I wish the close up of the applique had turned out better...guess it's time to pull out my camera's instruction manual again.

The next hard part was deciding how I wanted the stripes to go. I started with them looping around like a continuous line but the stripes didn't match up everywhere and that annoyed me so I ended up turning them all the same way.

As with all the pillows I make the backs Velcro shut (making it easy to remove the internal pillow form for washing) with a ribbon to hide the seem. I also always flip the "major" fabric so it becomes the minor fabric on the back. I think the back of this pillow is almost as stunning as the front.

All in all I am pleased with the outcome. Orange is not my favorite color so I had a bit of a hard time making decisions I just hope that the little girl receiving this loves it.

And I had to include a close up of the bow because I think it may be the best one I ever tied.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

This week over at One Powerful Hour I set the challenge of...
Holiday Music

Originally I wanted the challenge to be an interpretation of the Twelve Day's of Christmas song but I couldn't come up with a nice piece so I switched the challenge to any and all Holiday Music.

I selected the song Winter Wonderland and I love the version by Bing Crosby (I'm pretty sure it is the original) which can be listened to HERE. The specific line out of the song that I chose to represent is "walking in a winter wonderland" but instead of people I have what I like to think of as Reindeer.

The Reindeer, which I stamped on transparency film using brown Staz On ink, wrap all the way around the cube which is made from a cube template. The cube has some snowflakes embossed on it (not the white ones you can see but they are subtle glittery ones). Next I cut out some pine branches that I embossed using Tim Holtz distress embossing powder which gave them a fabulous texture.

To finish the cube off I added some red rhinestones, some white snowflake stickers the fibers coming out of the bottom and a cardinal covered in snow.



My camera was a bit cantankerous so I don't have very good pictures and I used the cube in an ornament exchange so I no longer have it to try to correct the photo's but you can get the general impression of the overall piece and the cardinal from this photo.

Stop by and join us at One Powerful Hour...we would love to see your creations.

Dragonfly Pillow

Here is yet another pillow but look closely and you will see that I am getting a bit more creative and courageous.

The customer told me that her daughter's favorite colors are pink and purple and that she loves butterflies and dragonflies...

I did not care for any of the butterfly themed fabrics so I decided to make a few appliques to go on the pillow. After spending quite some time in the fabric store I settled on these two pink fabrics, I really like a purple paisley but couldn't find anything to go with it.

It took me forever to get this pillow put together...mainly because other projects kept creeping up on me. And I feel horrible about it...but it is finally done.

The applique that I made is a dragonfly stamp that I love. I stamped it onto the same pink fabric that is in the center of the pillow. The stamped image was not as dark as I wanted it so I outlined it with a dark brown fabric pen and then I colored her in. This was a difficult task for me since the colors did not blend the way I am use to my colored pencils and water colors doing so. But all in all I think the image turned out nicely.

I have not stamped the initial yet because I want to make sure the customer likes what I have created for her. But when I do it will be in a dark brown which is what the dark color on the fabric is.

I learned a lot about making appliques on this project and I plan on making many more.

Leaves

Over at One Powerful Hour the challenge this week is...

Leaves...

The October Paula's Kit Club was leaf themed and in it came the lovely stamp that I used on the front of this slide mailer. I just thought it was the perfect autumn/leaf stamp that I have seen in a long time.

To prep the slide mailer I painted it all with Vintage crackle paint from the Tim Holtz collection. On the front I added a glittery swirl in autumn splendor glitter from Sparkle N Sprinkle. Then I affixed the stamped image that I had stamped in brown and painted/highlighted with Twinkling H2O's on gold paper.

The inside if the slide mailer is not as glamorous. I have been in love with the image of the woman and just had to use her...it wasn't until after I had her glued in place that I realized she would be really cold in that outfit in the fall LOL...to enhance and hide the fact that she is not large enough for the opening I added various feathers.

The leaves on the left hand side are stamped on the same gold paper as the front image and highlighted with Twinkling H2O's also. To finish this piece off I added the "Fall" sticker and the small rhinestones in the corner.

I think this took me a little over an hour but I'm not sure. I kept messing with it after I had things all planned out and forgot to watch the clock because I was having so much fun.

Thanks for looking.