Happy Crafting

I had the wonderful pleasure on Sunday to participate in a craft class with Cathy Lyn Harrison from Teach Me Art School and Studio. We met at her home in Historic Niles and tried out a project from Cloth Paper Scissors November/December issue. These Sparkling Snowmen have bottles for bodies and each bottle is filled with treasures: beads, crystals, pearls, etc.

Here are my Snow Ladies! They are obviously female because of my unrestrained use of froo-froo and their cute little pillbox hats :)


I have one more bottle that Cathy was kind enough to give me, as well as a handmade snowman head, so I'm not finished yet! The trick is finding enough do-dads to fill the bottle. During this project I was able to try some new products. I used a lot of gel medium to decorate with, especially when we covered the heads with chunky glitter. The whole thing is sprayed with aerosol glitter from Krylon. I really want some of my own!

I am ashamed to say that my pictures have been languishing on my computer, unused and unseen. Last night I made a small step in the right direction by finishing a digiscrap layout. I used freebie kits from Theresa Hernandez, Peppermint Creative, Daniela Peuss, and Connie Prince.

Hopefully, I'll be posting some more layouts in the future :) Have a nice weekend everyone!
Allison

The last of the spooky stuff, I promise!

Here is a quick pic of my "altar" for both Halloween and Day of the Dead. My centerpiece is Eve. She was created in an art for kids class I took at San Jose State. Her body is made by using masking tape to adhere newspaper to a straw. The straw provides the hollow for the aluminum wire to go through and connect all the bones. The newspaper adds the bulk and give you the shape to paper mache over. The hardest part if I remember correctly was attaching her head! Eve was constructed to show our common ancestor. They say we are all descended from an African Woman. I used the biblical myth of Eve to represent her. The green felt around her neck is the serpent whispering knowledge to her. This is one of my favorite things in the whole world. It expresses so much of me and took many days and a lot of new skills to make.



After my pumpkins were done I had a little fun with them :) You can also see the finished Halloween Tree... well, as finished as it's gonna get this year! I wouldn't ever consider it "done", just like a Christmas tree, every year it will change. I think next October I will add some spider webs and garlands of some sort...
It was a great start and now I get to continue practicing! My dear Kevin got me this cute little mini xmas tree! I guess I'll be creating more ornaments and hopefully taking better pics ;)

Well, Eve says, good bye everyone and remember that we are all connected in one big family tree!

Post-Halloween blues...

Yep, I'm gonna miss Halloween a lot! I enjoy Christmas but it's never been a real crafty time for me... I take that back. I tend to make more digital art around xmas where as Halloween has me up to my elbows in paper, glue and pumpkin guts ;) Here is something I made last year for Crafty Curios: a set of winter shirts for ladies and girls. Of course, you can also get the designs on sweatshirts and hoodies. I imagined these being perfect for gals who spend their winter up in the snow skiiing or just sipping hot chocolate. Of course, if the only snow you see is the sparkly stuff at the mall, that's okay too! Here are the Ladies of Winter: Snow Bunny, Frost Queen and Ice Goddess!



I'm not completely done with Autumn though, oh no. We still have Turkey Day to celebrate! Here is a link to a FREEBIE! This is a scrapbooking page kit that I designed called Apples to Apples. It's free for you to download and use for personal scrapbooks and such. Please no commercial use. Hope you enjoy it! Click on the link above to download the zip file! I think it would go nicely with any sort of Fall layout :)Here is a preview of the kit to give you an idea...