DW Challenge #19-Moon

Digital Whisper has posted this cool image for us to play with this week.
What would YOU do with it?
I've used a piece of art by John Duncan and a number of digital elements by Lesley B of Digikeepsakes.  Her work is brilliant.  She used to post a ton of freebies, but now is only offering her own artwork for sale.  It's gorgeous in it's own right. 
But I digress.
Here's the finished product:

I kind of like it.  Let me know what you think! And have a funny day.

Unless you're making other plans of course.

Wordless Wednesday

See more Wordless Wednesdays here.

I'm late

with my Digital Whisper contribution.  I had yesterday off work and thought today was Monday.  Well, it isn't.

At least that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Here is the beautiful image we were given:

and here is what I've done with this image:

There you have it. 

You can click on the image and it actually makes it bigger.  That's refreshing, cus it doesn't always work.  don't ask me why.

I have to run.  Not only am I a day off, but I thought it was a whole lot earlier than it actually is.  Good night.

(I should have my act together tomorrow.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  As if that'll ever happen.

There is a really cool image over at Digital Whisper already posted for the coming week.  I'll race you!

Go on, you'll be glad you did.



Waterton Trip

Yesterday, we spent the day in Waterton Park, on the border between Canada and the US.  I promised you some pics, so here we go:

I left early in the morning and this greeted me.  I was late getting to where I was going, Natch.

It's harvest time.

Red Rock Canyon

THIS is why I wanted to visit the Park.

AND a sneak peek of our further adventures:

HAH!

TTFN.

Soartful Challenge-Travel

This week over at Soartful Challenges we have been invited to use this image in our art:

So I said to myself, "Self.  What shall we do this week?"

I've been in the mood for scrapbooking (hum to the tune of I'm in the Mood for Love) and so scrapbooking it is. 

This made me wish I could fly away, drive away, run away to somewhere else, but I'll have to settle for scrapbooking. Hey it could be worse.  A LOT worse.

You have 5 days left to join in on the Soartful Challenges fun time this week.  That should be enough for you to come up with something.  Heck, I did.  Even though in my mind, I'm somewhere else.  Far, far away.

I had the bestest day today!

and I have to show you where I was!  Autumn has FINALLY arrived (in place of summer) and it's extra special super-duper, cus we never had any last year.  So on the 2 or 3 days that the fall colours are SPECTACULAR my life grinds to a halt while I go outside to take pictures.  See what I mean?

See what I mean?

Oh right, I said that.

Not only did I get great shots, but I met some other photographers, who were all trying to get shots of the ducks taking off, AND a lovely old gentleman in his 80's who told me all about The Snows of Kilimarnjaro (sp?), that Starlings (with their oh-so-pretty iridescent feathers) were brought over here from England by a man who wanted to bring all the birds in Shakespeare's works to Canada (but off course MOST of them froze to death, just like we people do), and we walked and talked together and compared cameras and experience, of which he definitely has about TWENTY more years than I do..

(I'm out of breath now)

It was a LOVELY DAY.

AND tomorrow, I'm driving south to meet up with my daughter and her beau and their dog and we're going to Waterton Park where fall has arrived in it's full splendour.

I love my life.

Would you mind feeding Lucy while I'm gone?  Thanks.

September Dress-up

FINALLY, my September dress for  September Dress Up is done.  Well, to tell you the truth, I did a dress about a week ago and then realized I was a month off in my months and had to put it aside and make another one.  You'll see what I mean when I post NEXT month's dress.  THIS month, I thought it should have something to do with school, it being back-to-school-month and all.  So, that's what I did.

The paper is from Bo Bunny's line, A Gift of Love.  (CAN YOU BELIEVE I KNOW THAT???? I never know what I've used.  I am SO PROUD of myself!!!)

I edged it with Tim Holtz' Antique Linen Distress ink (yup, I know that too!) and stamped it with a stamp.

I don't know whose stamp it is, you can't win them all.

In fact, that's about all I know.

The lace belt and collar, rickrack, apple, buttons, and owl are from my stash (That, I'm sure of) and the little girl is covered with crackle.

she looks like she's nervous doesn't she?  Grade One can make you feel that way.

The apron?

Red.  Sewn.

There you have it.

Visit Margaret's wonderful September Dress Up and drool at the amazing wardrobes.  It makes Saks Fifth Avenue look like the Bargain Bin.

I love my dress this month.

TTFN!

It's finally Friday!

And that means two things.

1.  I can sleep in tomorrow. and

2. Art Creations Friday has given us a new image for the coming week.  Here's what they provided:

Isn't he sweet?  Looking a bit worried though. I can't imagine why.  Here's mine:

It IS getting closer to Halloween, after all.  I wouldn't want you to think I'm sadistic.

Art Creations Friday

I had fun.

So will you.

And you have a whole entire week to come up with something.  Mine is only done cus I had nothing better to do.

CCC Challenge #15

Linda of L3 Studio has given us our challenge for the 15th week of her Compendiom of Curiosities extravaganza.  (If you check out the talent in this challenge, you'll understand why I am saying "extravaganza".)  This week we are to use Tim Holtz'

 Alcohol Ink Agate on Grunge Technique.

Check it out:

The image is from Lisa's Altered Art and I've done the technique on her wings and the star.  I think I'll use this technique again, it's pretty cool!

I hope you Come Join us!

Wordless Wednesday

More Wordless Wednesdays here.

It's Opus Time!

ADDITION TO POST:

For those who cannot read the small little sentiment:  "You can't be friends with a squirrel, a squirrel is just a rat in a cuter outfit...Sarah Jessica Parker

Over at The Order of the Opus Gluei  this week's challenge #72 is EASE(L) INTO FALL.

This isn't the greatest picture in the world, but you have to understand, we haven't seen the sun here for oh, say, like maybe a month?  OK, perhaps that's a tad melodramatic.  But it's been A LONG TIME!  And it ain't easy to get a decent picture when there is no sun.

Where I work, we have squirrels.  Big, ugly, aggressive, in your face squirrels.  Some dufus bought some peanuts once and now we have to buy peanuts for the little cretins ALL THE TIME or they hiss at us.  And call us names.  True story.

Anyways,  you can click on the picture to read the sentiment.  It pretty much says it all for me.  Our challenge was to create something fall-ish and possibly use an easel while we're at it.  I was going to make something little and autumny, cus I have tons and tons or autumny stuff, cus I LOVE atutumn, but when I dug for my little easel in the easel drawer (OK, I don't really have an easel drawer), I found a big easel that I forgot I had and well, the rest is history.  It's my ODE to a SQUIRREL.  Nasty little buggers.

You have five more days to take part in this challenge over at the Order of the Opus Gluei, so hurry over there.  Well, the actual truth is that you can play with them at any time, they don't have any rules over there.  Why, if in the dead of winter, you have an overwhelming urge to make something fall-ish and wave it near an easel, go for it!  They'll be happy.  And so will you!

Just some ATC's

Thanks for stopping in!

I love Paris

Soartful Challenges is singing a Cole Porter song this weekend.  My favorite version is by Nat King Cole and so that's what I've been listening to as I created my "I love Paris" LO this week.

I have to give a big shout out to MissFroo7h for the awesome Eiffel Tower brushes!

I've never been to Paris, except during Karen and Tamara's Paris In July extravaganza three months ago (like in July, duh).  Which brings me to a secomd item I would like to mention.

My friend Tamara over at Thyme for Tea

has kindly given me a

Cherry On Top Award!

How cool is that?

The rules of this award require me to:

1. Answer this question:

If you had the chance to go back and change one thing in your life, would you, and what would it be?

Well, usually I would say there is nothing in my life I would change, as it's all brought me to where I am today.  BUT, lately, I've been kind of instrospective and thinking about the kind of person I am and have been over the years.  I'm an introvert.  And I like my solitude.  A lot.  Always have.  It requires great effort on my part to be sociable or even to participate in anything which requires me to be in a group.  Now, I like who I am, for the most part.  BUT lately, I've been thinking that I need to be a bit more outgoing, smile a bit more, be friendlier, more thoughtful towards the people I am with when I'm with them.

So I am trying to do that.

What would I change?  Maybe I wish a little bit that I'd come to this conclusion earlier in my life, and maybe been a more pleasant person, maybe smiled more.  Then maybe it would be easier now.

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, ya know?

But I guess anything is possible.

2.Award the Cherry on Top Award to 6 people.

OK, here are my thoughts on this:

I think that a cherry on top of a sundae (or cupcake or anything sweet and lovely) is the "piece de resistance", that extra special wondrous gift that finishes off something that would be delightful even if it didn't have a cherry on top.

And so, the people I would like to pass this on to are:

1. Linda of L3 Studio

2. Chris of  Bling-Kin-Eck

3. Rosemary of Free Advice-Still Worth Every Penny

4. Amanda and Jenn of Kind Over Matter

5. Gini of A Litle Bit of Shiny

and

6. Jana of I Can't Wanna

These are some folks who have supported, encourage and inspired me.

Thanks Tamara for taking the time to send me this award. It's the gifts like this that make me thankful I started this silly ol' blog.

If you've read all of this, congratulations and thanks!

But, I promise.

And that's all you're going to get out of me today.  :-)

21 Secrets!

I've been oohing and ahhing (is that how you spell it?) over the offerings in Dirty Footprints Studio's upcoming 21 Secrets Art Journalling class.

21 artists, 21 journalling secrets-be still, my beating heart!  (Besides, how can you NOT want to play in a playground called "Dirty Footprints Studio"?  I mean, c'mon.)

The top three artists that I am interested in are (in no particular order lol):

Dawn Sokol

Hanna Anderson

and

Jonathon "Blade" Manning


 

My heart is just a pittypatting!

I could happily spend all day exploring the blogs of these talented people and the other 18! (I had to use my fingers to figure out 21 minus 3 =18.  I think a few posts ago I mentioned I was arithmatic-challenged, if you remember.)

I'm going to suggest you check it out:

Dirty Footprints Studio

You'll discover she's having a giveaway. Maybe I'll win. Maybe you'll win. Maybe we can take the class together.

That would be so cool.

Let me know if you're signing up, K?

Digital Whisper #17

Hi y'all!  I have to go to work shortly, but I spent the morning making a LO for the Digital Whisper challenge this week.  It's digital.  (duh)
I only say that because I started out putting together a paper LO and then remembered, it's DIGITAL Whisper, dum dum!  Here is the image we were given:

And here is my digital LO:  (tee hee)

If you have, ahem, somewhat more "mature" eyes, like I do, you may want to click on the picture to make it larger.  It works so much better than pressing your nose up against the monitor.

Art Creations Friday Challenge 87

Art Creations Friday

gave us this image this week:

AWWWW, isn't he ADORABLE?  Although, the look on his face tells me all is not tickety-boo in his world.

Here's why:

May your weekend be full of health, prosperity and happiness.

And may you happily skip over to Art Creations Friday  and join in the fun!

Alphabet Soup

The Poobahs over The Order of the Opus gluei at have challenged us this week to put together something wonderful which brings to mind the alphabet.  Where do they come up with these ideas anyways?  Well, you would know the answer to that question if you ever visited them.  lol 

Here is my ATC.

Here's what they have to say to us:

Here in the USA the schoolchildren are dragging themselves back to the classroom and getting back into the swing of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

In honor of their noble efforts,

your challenge this week is to use letters!

Now, it's important (to me at least) for me to tell you that here in Canada we send our children to school too.  But never mind that, I'm so relieved they didn't suggest we pay homage to

arithmetic

cus I was always (and still am) seriously arithmetic-challenged.  Back in my day (do you ever catch yourself saying that?) we didn''t have calculators (or copiers, or cell phones and underwire bras) and we had to actually count.  With our fingers!  Yeah!

Ask a young kid nowadays to do that!

(OK, I just realized I'm off on another tangent and worse than that, it's a old-lady one.  So I'm done)

But I would have come up with something for arithmetic, I want you to know.

Anyhoo,  The alphabet it is and I had another fun time with it (like I always do with the Gluei-girls).

Now here's another REALLY important reason for you to blurf on over to The Order of the Opus Gluei because you won't want to miss their inchie blog header.  That's right, I said INCHIE BLOG HEADER!!

Have you ever?

It is SO COOL.

Go on.  You know you want to.  I'll see you over there.  Maybe doing next week's challenge with us.  I hope so, anyways.

Did I tell you it's supposed to snow here tonight?

I feel so sad.

Wordless Wednesday

See lots more Wordless Wednesdays here

En Francais, s'il vous plait

PS:  This is a late addition to my original post.  My buddy who was experiencing the same thing told me exactly how to stop the French from happening.  I switched my language settings from Canadian to American.  So now I have dual citizenship.  Lol  and I suppose the only things that could go wrong now is that my 'puter may switch to Spanish?  Hmmm.  Maybe I should go take some night classes....
OK, I HAVE to tell you this.  Right now.  I was blurfing over at a friend's blog a few moments ago and reading what she wrote and look at this:
Can you believe itÉ I sure couldn``t...god damn french keyboard! I fricken hate Windows 7 sometimes.Do you see the "E" where a question mark should be?  That's FRENCH.  THAT's what happens to me too.  Out of the blue, when I least expect it, all of a sudden, my puter will refuse to type things like question marks (which are English) and in their place give me stupid accented French letters.

For those of you who have talked about my "unusual" comments about my puter, and I know you are out there, this is proof positive that I am not a lunatic!  So go back to all your friends at the coffee shop who you mentioned your crazy friend Electra to, and tell them, "Electra is not nuts!"

It must be a Canadian thing.

And for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, never mind.

Compendium time!

Over at Studio L3 Linda has posted Challenge #14:  Masks Basics for her awesome Compendium of Curiosities Challenge  And I've made something.  I should warn you,

 it's not very Tim-ish, not at all.  but I think Mr. H would be OK with that.  I followed his directions to the "T" and then some.  Here it be:

This isn't the WHOLE thing, I'm easing you into it.  I was in the mood for something girly and I think I've achieved my goal.

OK, here is the rest of it.  Ready?

Told ya, not Tim-ish at all.  But I like it.

The digital elements are by Laurie Ann.

I did my thing with one of Tim's masks, Concerto, to be specific, I printed out the elements, cut them out and glued them where I thought they should go and I outlined the music score and especially the treble clef with Lemon Ice Stickles.  And finished it all off with a little bling by Recollections.

Oh yeah, some Worn Lipstick, Mustard Seed, Dusty Concord (did you know I hate purple grapes?) and Tumbled Glass Distress Inks were involved as well.

And VOILA!!

We have a card for the next sweet little girl who skips into my humdrum life.

And like I do every Tuesday (It IS Tuesday, right?)  I'm going to these parties.

I hope you'll come along.

 

Stamp-tember Hop!

My buddy Lori over at  I been thinkin'...'bout inkin' told me (and about 150 others) a secret the other day.  The secret is that the challenge blog Simon Says Stamp is having a blog hop!

The grand prize is a $100.00 gift certificate for their Simon Says Stamp Store.

How can I not hop along with the best of them?  I visited all the blogs and have to say, there are some really amazing cards artists out there! (and this comes from a SEVERELY card-challenged chick.) At the end of the hop, you are supposed to link to a project you have made about Holiday Fun.  Here is my ATC celebrating Halloween:

The background is by Holliewood Studios.

The three witches, good and evil, as well as the "Haunted" sign are from

Lisa's Altered Art.

The boat, waves, and the chains the evil witches intend to use to incapacitate their prey are by Pixelworks, who are actually closing shop in two days.  :((

I cannot tell a lie.  I don't remember where I found the the mummy, keeper of the crypt, nor the frame, nor the barbeque.

Somewhere in that vast warehouse we call The Internet.

I hope you'll join the blog hop-you'll find lots of inspiration along the way.

That would be about it.  the little sailor suspects nothing, wouldn't you say?

tee hee

Compendium of Curiosities-Week 13

Over at Studio L3 it's Week 13 of the Compendium of Curiosities Challenge.  Now I would like to tell you that I haven't been participating in this particular challenge because I just haven't been in a position to get Tim Holtz' CofC book right now.  BUT (you won't believe this) one day not too long ago, I opened my mailbox to find a parcel and in it was Mr. H.'s book and some tags to get me started.  How AMAZING is that??? 
My own personal angels who played Santa and sent me this awesome gift are Linda Ledbetter of Studio L3 and Daisy Sparks of Eclectic Paperie.  I can't adequately express how absolutely thrilled I am by their kindness!
So, OF COURSE I'm now taking part in Linda's most excellent challenge.  Still not over whatever bug I have, this LO is the only thing I've gotten done in the past two days, but get it done I did!

Here are my flowers:

I cut them out of grungepaper, sprayed them with Airondack Color Wash and Glimmermist, painted them with sparkling H20's and finished them off with stickles and a pearl.

And here is the LO I put them on:

Oh my.  I THINK the papers rub-ons and brad are from the Bayberry Cottage line by PinkPaislee,

the cardstock is dotted swiss by I-don't-remember-who (you likely have some of their product in your stash).  And the felt is from the same manufacturer.  We'll call it IDRW.

There's some tulle too, from the pile of little-girl stuff I used to use when my daughter was little and it was raining.  Oh yeah, there are three sitckled butterflies from the Graphics 45 new line that I love, love, love.

OK.  A HUGE thanks again to Daisy and Linda and now I'm goin' back to bed.

The world's scariest license plate

Gotta love her.  You could try to pass her, but I wouldn't honk

Isn't She Lovely

Over at Soartful Challenges they have give us a (lovely) image entitled "Isn't she lovely".  I understand this lovely woman was drawn by Arthur Jule Goodman around the mid to late 1800s.  she's so elegant, don't you think?  Not much around today that is elegant like this.

Of course, I need to rattle her up a little bit.  To tell you the truth, I think these Hoity-toity la-de-da LADY-typed from days gone by, must have had some pretty good times,when no one was looking.  How could they not?  I mean, they're just like you and me, except they wear about 60 more pounds of fabric than we do.

Here's the real deal:

All of the elements I used are from Scrapartist, who are going out of business in four days.

Phooey.

I won!

a beautful clock from mb Art Studios, through a giveaway on one of my favorite blogs Kind Over Matter  It's a "Goethe" quote that I chose, but I realized I can't tell anyone about it cus I don't know how to pronounce "Goethe"  Do You?

I would be eternally grateful if you could help me.  Then I can brag to my friends.  My face-to-face friends.  My friends here, well, YOU, don't actually hear me talk so you can't tell if I'm from the back woods or not.

Mary Burrows' art is really lovely, you can go see more of it here!

Art Creations Friday #86

I have a few days off work.  Can't seem to shake this virus, so I hope this does the trick.  I slept most of the last 24 hours, and now I'm up, but I'm too weak to stand up and scrapbook, which is how I scrapbook.  So I'm doing some digital.

Here are the images provided for us over at

Art Creations Friday

And here is what I've done with these images:

Now I ask you, would you argue with this woman?

Opus Gluei Challenge #70

Fair-Well Summer!!

Have you gone over to The Order of the Opus gluei yet?  What?  Why not?  I told the Poobahs  you would be coming.  Yeah, right, like you've been too busy.  Well, all I can say is you're missing the funnest challenges in the blogoverse.  Your loss.