This week's dog laundry pic

Again, Cocoa helps with the laundry, lying her sweet fuzzy head atop a pile of folded shirts and spreading out in the place I was folding. But so cute!

Bird/Nest/Egg Chunky pages

I'm making some pages for a chunky book swap and the theme is Bird/Nest/Egg. I like the nesting idea, especially right now as I'm carrying a baby. And I like blue eggs, like a Robin's eggs. I've also used some old lace edging I got at the thrift store, and dyed it with alcohol inks, which worked great.

Laundry Help

Cocoa helps with the laundry by laying on a pile of t-shirts I just folded.

17 weeks pregnant

This morning I sat down to eat my nicely prepared breakfast, a waffle with sliced strawberries and banana on top, and as I sat down, with my belly I flipped one waffle square off the plate and onto the floor. Doh! I guess I am getting bigger. My dog Cocoa waited patiently with big saucer eyes, but I picked up the waffle (5-second rule plus I vacuumed recently) and put it back on my plate. The bananas, though, they were well stuck to the floor with the strawberries, so I let her have at it. She was very good and cleaned the floor to a shiny finish. My loss, her little fruit fest.

I used a simple velcro closure , which you can see here.

New Mag Bag: Archie Comix

I really like making these. This one is smaller cuz I used smaller pages, and I made a top flap instead of making tote bag handles. I haven't quite figured out how to make it square, with sides, but I'm getting there.

Penguin shrine, the outside

Here's the outside of the penguine shrine. The bottom part with the penguins is actually the top of the tin, so you see that first. I liked the play on words of "snowbird" as both the bird and the ski resort. The white stuff is molding paste made to look like snow. Then I signed and dated the bottom of the tin.

Altered Altoid tin: Penguins

Here is the inside of a little shrine on penguins that I made for a trade. It's an altered Altoid tin. At a local thrift store, I found this cute little pin of penguins skiing, so decided to send them on vacation to Snowbird, Utah, a fun ski resort I used to go to when I lived in Utah. I printed out a trail map and used that as the background, then added diamond glaze over the top to make it shiny.

My very first fabric postcard, sent to Mum and Dad for Valentine's.

More fabric postcards I made for Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's a picture of the fabric postcard I made for my husband. I actually mailed it to him and it came yesterday, in very good shape. That's the first time I've mailed any of these things. He liked it.

Bed Hog

Cocoa shamelessly hogging my side of the bed. Oink!

the other side of the Anime Mag Bag.

Anime Mag Bag

Just finished another mag bag, this one with pages from magazines on Anime. Very colorful, lots of faces, I really like how it turned out. I will save this to sell at the Anodyne show in October.

Another Mag Bag: the meat tote? the BBQ Bag?

Here's my 2nd Mag Bag. I used book pages this time, from a BBQ cookbook, just because I thought it would be funny to have meat images for a tote. It turned out to be very difficult, the pages are too stiff. I had to use pliers to get the last couple strips woven in. And the contact paper doesn't adhere as well as to the magazine pages because they are so stiff, so it kind of floats in some spots, instead of sticking to the square panels. On the other hand, it's incredibly sturdy. I think it's pretty cool. I'm going to save it to sell in our art show in October.

More inchies!

These are for a swap I'm in , and I finally made it to 100 inchies! I liked coming up with the text, being sometimes cheeky. For instance, there's a bathing beauty that says "Shave Your Pits" and a woman in an apron that says "Cleaning is Fun." Heh.

Inchies!

These are for a swap I'm doing: they are 1x1 inch, and have to have a background, image, and text. And I have to make 100! It's fun, I just wish I had digital editing skills, because all these are put together by hand, with tiny scissors, and sometimes I'd like to play on the computer and make something but I can't figure out my stupid non-Photoshop software. Wah.

Preggers!

A Twinkie. I really wanted a Twinkie last night. I think what I really want is some cake. Nice moist, spongy cake. With cream filling.

I'm 2 1/2 months pregnant this week, hoorah! No headaches since the pregnancy started, which totally rocks. Good baby. I am nauseated all day and want to sleep 12 hours a day, but I can deal with that.

I lay and think about crafts I want to make, and then I take a nap. I want to make another mag bag, for instance, but I need a nap now.

It's finally normal January weather here, 9 degrees and 6 inches of snow. It's bright white outside and the sun is out and it's just beautiful.

Oh yeah, time for a nap. Scuze me....

Mag Bag close-up

Here you can see some of the woven page panels close up.

Mag Bag other side

New Craft: Tote Bag!

I just made this in the last couple days, with directions from a new fun book I got for Christmas. It's called a "mag bag" cuz it's a tote bag made from magazine pages. The outside and the handles are covered in clear contact paper, which not only makes it more durable but has that nice plasticy look of the 1960s. I used some old magazines I had from the sixties and I love how it turned out.

Another postcard. Used a page from a Paper Source catalog, markers for the red edge, and candy stickers.

Another Xmas postcard I made.

Xmas altered postcards

This is for a swap I signed up for on Swap Bot. I used old cards, wrapping paper, and other bits to cover over existed postcards, creating a Xmas themed NEW postcard!

Finished Quilt Top!

Here it is! It's actually not just the top, but the whole sandwich, that's why you can see little gold shiny things all over the top--those are the safety pins holding it together with the batting and the backing. So someday soon I need to learn to actually "quilt" my quilt. It's kind of devious, you think you're making a quilt, then the class ends and they go, "oh no, this is just the piecing class, 'quilting' is a whole other class," and set of tools for your sewing machine, etc. But I'm very pleased with how this turned out. I love my bright color choices. Several people in the class said it would be good for a children's room. NO, it's MINE.

ATC's: more Hand-Drawn

The two themes here were "Artist's Choice" and "Lanscape." I did "Psychedelic Lady" for my choice, and since I don't do good landscapes, I cheated and made little tiny "Landscaping" maps for a path. This was a very fun swap to make cards for, I just hope I like the ones I get in return.

ATC's: more Hand-Drawn

The first one on top here is a cat theme, and it's my favorite: "Cat Spaceship." It's based on some drawings in a really fun children's book called The Truth About Cats. The second on top is, you guessed it, trees. I call mine "Modular Tree." The bottom one is on fish, and mine is called "Prehistoric Fish" based on some Walter Anderson artwork I saw in a show here at the Bell Museum.

ATC's: Hand-Drawn

These were for an ATC swap through Swap-Bot, and most of the themes were chosen so I had to come up with my own interpretations. "Professor Plum(p)" was for the theme "faces," and mine is based on an illustration from the classic version of the game Clue. The Self-Portrait was, well, you know, based on me. The bottom left one's theme was "Egypt" and I just looked up an image of Nefertiti on the internet. I call mine "Nefertiti's cousin" because mine is not as pretty as the image I saw. So I thought her cousin might be a little more manly-looking. She probably has a moustache. The dragon is from a super cute dragon I saw on Art.com that I can no longer find.

What Are you Thankful For?

Thanksgiving approaches. Life is a little chaotic right now. My Dad is in the hospital and far away and it's tough cuz I can't do anything from here. I'm going through a medical thing myself and having lots of headaches and other side effects. I finished my first quilt top and it's gorgeous and I love it. I got promoted at the library and am supposed to go to training on the Monday after Thanksgiving but my medical thing is going to interfere so I'll have to put it off another two weeks--I hope my boss won't think bad of me. Good, bad, happy, sad. All seems to be compressed right now into a very short time period, like a TV mini-series.

I like Thanksgiving and thinking about the things I'm thankful for. I'm thankful in particular for my Dad, who's mellowed in his retirement and is really fun and silly now. I love him when he tells me stories about his life, even when I've heard them before. I'm thankful that he's gone back to an early love--singing, and his life has been enriched immeasurably by his singing group. I'm thankful that I got to go to a concert of his this year and hear him solo on his favorite song: How Great Thou Art. I knew he was a good singer, but he brought tears to my eyes when he sang that, both because he was so good and because you could feel his enthusiasm. I'm thankful that he doesn't take things too seriously and can laugh at himself, which is always a good lesson for me. He's still my role model, which is really satisfying to realize sometimes.

I gotta go call the hospital and see how he's doing.

Dia de los Muertos Postcard exhibit winners

These are the winners from the exhibit. They got their postcards printed up for the MCBA store into sets with 2 of each winner. I bought a set and was kind of annoyed to discover that they didn't even acknowlege the artists by name on the back of the postcards. It just says something like "one of the postcards from the blah-blah-blah exhibit." Kind of lame. As far as the winners themselves, I liked them pretty well. I felt like my art compared well with everyone else who entered. I don't really like that one red winner, though. I just don't think it's that well done. It seems kind of slapped together. I really like the lizard, he's cool. I think that's my favorite. And the yarn one is really fun, I like that, too.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine is the one with the family group against a blue background.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine is the one with bowls of ice cream under the skulls.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine is the one with the slices of pie under the skulls. I really like the one to the left of mine.

Dia de los Muertos postcards

Mine are the guitar guy and the one right below it with the skulls on a pastel background

Dia de los Muertos Postcard exhibit at MCBA

This is the exhibit I have cards in. Some really fun entries, I hope they do this again next year.

Nancy Drew deco

This is a page I created in a small deco for a group I'm in online. The theme is Nancy Drew with a Twist, and the twist is your interpretation based on one of the actual Nancy Drew book titles. So I chose one with "crossword" in the title--The Clue in the Crossword Cipher, #44-- because I have this great crossword puzzle rubber stamp. Then I found an image of a cipher (some coded text) and messed about with that, ripping it up and inking the edges to make them look burnt. And the photo is a real vintage photo of some mystery lady. I chose her because I thought she looked sort of worried and nervous, good for a mystery.

Not a Very Jolly Jester

J. got this cute jester outfit for Cocoa for Halloween but she was not amused. She did agree to wear the collar but the hat was out, no way.

My First Quilt Square!

Hooray! I'm so proud. I am taking a beginning sampler class at this wonderful store in Minneapolis called Glad Creations. The instructor is an absolute slave driver, but I'm really learning a lot and I would totally recommend her as a teacher. That little black toe in the bottom left corner is Cocoa helping me take the picture by putting her paw on the quilt. Such a good doggie.

I Drink the Tang, I Eat the Toast

Ugh. I have a cold/sinus infection/stomach issues. It started over a week ago and it's still hanging on like an annoying hanging-on thing. I haven't been sick like this for quite a while, where I just had to stay home and wait it out. Here I have this great job and I can't go to work! Suck. So I drink the Tang, I eat the toast. I sleep a lot. And cough. It's not that bad, it could be worse. I don't have a horribly stuffed-up head, thanks to this procedure some sensible doctor told me about a few years ago, nasal irrigation. It's basically like an enema for your nose. Hey, being sick isn't pretty! But seriously, this beats taking antibiotics, which will probably be the downfall of mankind.

Anyhoo, I've watched a lot of TV lately. I expected there would be some good stuff on for Halloween, but not so much. There was Exorcist II, which stars Richard Burton as a priest who gets brushed by the wings of the demon Bazoozoo. Uh, yeah. If you look it up, it's spelled Pazuzu, but it sounds like Bazoozoo. Couldn't they have come up with a demon name that inspired a little more fear, instead of visions of the fifth Teletubbie? Bazoozoo, yeah, he's the cyan-colored teletubbie who wanted to teach the kids irony, he didn't make the cut. And how sad is it to see the great Burton in this B-movie horror sequel? Oh, yeah, and James Earl Jones plays a great healer Kokumo (from the Beach Boys' song?--way down in kokomo?) somewhere in Africa in a mud hut wearing a locust mascot head, but also a city slicker entymologist who is developing The Good Locust, who calms all the other freakin' out locusts so they don't destroy crops and stuff. But wait, my favorite part of the movie was this funky hypnosis machine that Linda Blair's psychologist was using in her freaky all-glass clinic. It's like a strobe-light metronome that you control with your brain. And you can share your trance/vision/flashback with someone else, they just have to put the headgear on and synchronize their strobe-light metronome with yours. Very 70's, and very classic Hollywood, the whole hynpnosis thing being such a snap. And funny how Louise Fletcher plays a role very similar to the one she'll play only six years later in the much better movie Brainstorm: hard-working psychologist using freaky new scientific device to cure people.

Well, even though that movie kind of sucked, I obviously had fun watching it. Here's my shorter thoughts on Wolfen: Plodding. Gregory Hines plays a hip black dude coroner. Oh, yeah, you know he gets killed. He's too nice. But if you want to see what Edward James Almos looked like before he became the patriarch of Battlestar Galactica, here he is as a skinny young Indian. He even gets naked! Not for a love scene, but to mock the white fella cop who thinks he's shape-shifting into a wolf. It's pretty weird. The premise is interesting, about an ancient animal living on the fringes of society picking off society's throwaways. But then they use real wolves at the end and I'm just not buying it, they're just wolves, they're too small to rip people's heads off with a single swipe. I'm just too CSI-educated for that now.

Altered Propoganda

At a recent exhibit at MCBA, I saw some work from this brilliant artist, Micah Wright, who reimagines WWII propoganda posters. He evidently has a couple books full of the stuff, with great titles like If You're Not a Terrorist, Then Stop Asking Questions. His website has a bunch of his artwork as well, which he calls The Propoganda Remix Project. If you look at one of the slide shows of the posters, be sure not to miss his added commentary on the bottom of the window in small text.

Deco Pages: the backs

These are the backs of those same pages. On every back I have one thing that is the same: a yellow square with my personal chop stamped in red. My bro-in-law had the chop carved for me special with my name when he was in Singapore. It's very cool!

Deco Pages Swap

Here are just a few of the 41 pages I made for a deco swap, which is a 4x4" book that you bind together, one page from each of the participants (so there's 41 participants in this swap, it's a big one). The theme was "Alluring Asia" and I mostly used text from a book in Chinese and origami papers and collaged them together. I also used some rubber stamps with Asian motifs, and some Asian coins. I also have some Kung Fu guy wrapping paper form Archie McPhee's that worked well, he's in the lower right corner. My favorite is the one above that.

Look into the Light!

I have this as my desktop wallpaper now, which you can do, too, if you want. Click on the picture to get a bigger version of it, then right click on the photo, and choose "Set as Background." Fall is my favorite time of year, so colorful.

Quick! Look at the Leaves!

Before they all blow off, that is. Good thing we went looking the weekend we did, because most of the leaves are gone now. Here's me and Cocoa at Hyland, in front of a particularly colorful tree.

Wanna Go For A RIDE?

Cocoa in the car a couple weekends ago when we went to Hyland Lake Park Reserve to see the pretty fall colors before all the leaves blew off the trees. Doesn't she look happy? She loves to go for rides in the car, and she knows the word RIDE. When you ask her is she wants to go for a ride, she bounces up and down and runs around and tells you in high-pitched squeaky bark that YES, she would like to go for a ride, please. Then when we go out back to get to the garage, she runs around the yard and tells everyone listening that she is going for a RIDE! We keep a special seat belt on her in the car so she is a safe rider.

ATC: Monkey Fez with Rings

The monkey in a fez is a bead I got at Archie McPhee's, and the rings are pasta rings painted black. Archie's has a lot of good monkey items, the latest of which is Cap'n Danger, Stunt Monkey.

ATC: Zoik!

This is a fabric ATC I made for a new ATC group that meets at a quilting store. I made up the word Zoik to go with this fabric, I thought it sounded retro. Plus that's the best I could spell with the wooden letters I had left. :)

Get the Burglar, Fozzie!

Here's Fozz with one of his toys, a stuffed burglar. He likes to pull on it but really he doesn't damage it much. He just loves to throw it around and leap on it. So cute!!

Fozzie Bear and Woo

It's W. and her little silly doggie, Fozzie Bear! Isn't he cute? He's a labradoodle and just a funny little ball of energy and love. Very wiggly. He likes to leap on his toys.

Reading

I just finished reading a children's book called The City of Ember, and it was really good but now I have to rush to the library and get the next one in the series. I didn't know it was a series when I started reading it, and you know how when you're reading your mind can wander and you look at the cover of the book, or the back...and when I looked at the back, I discovered a blurb that said "The cliffhanger ending will leave readers clamoring for the next installment." Doh! And it was a cliffhanger. Annoying. Still, it was a good story. It's sort of a dystopia for kids. I've always loved those kinds of stories (Z for Zachariah was one of my favorites growing up), because they make you the reader realize everything in your world that you take for granted, like trees and a breeze of fresh air. Those are two things they don't have in this story. The other good thing is that the kids are the ones to solve problems, through their ingenuity.