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31 days. Wow!
In addition to Kelly's Creative Every Day and #Cre8365, I've also been doing a photo-a-day project that spun off into it's own blog as well.
The 31 photos are now printed and ready to be put into their own little photo album. I still have some work to do on that, but today I worked on the cover art. I am desperately slow when in comes to Photo Shop, but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out!
Earlier this month Kelly, over at the Whimsy by Kelly blog, challenged everyone to use their good stuff. If you didn't see her post on either her blog or on Facebook, I strongly recommend that you take a minute to read it here. It has certainly given me food for thought.
Sometimes it isn't even the good stuff for me. It's the cool stuff. That one sticker shaped like a brain that had a great logo on it that I begged the store clerk for. The empty chip bag that I asked a complete stranger for last weekend in the brewery. They were VooDoo chips and had the best little voodoo dolls all over it. (Don't judge me!)
These are the things that become the "good" stuff for me. The things that I just do not believe I am talented enough to use to their full potential. Trash that I'm not worthy of.
All this brings me to what I did today. Over on Swap-bot, I did a Sticker Slapped ATC for a swap. The ATC had to have a minimum of six stickers. Preferably more. I recently bought some stickers at the Dollar Store so I pulled those out. Then I remembered the good stuff. The cool stuff. The stuff I bought when my now thirteen year old son was an infant and I was going to become Super Scrapbooking Woman.
Stickopotamus stickers - Oooo. Jolee's Boutique stickers - Aaaaahhh.
And you know what I did? I used one on my ATC! And it didn't hurt a bit!
Okay! Okay! I hear you laughing that I only used one, but at least it's a beginning for using the "good" stuff!
In other news, the wonderful folks over at the A Creative Year blog are challenging everyone to a February mini-challenge called 28 in 28. Post something each day for the 28 days of February over on their site.
It's a great group over there with all types of art from ATCs to digital to zentangle and everything in between! So go check them out!
You know the project:
They are a lot of fun and just the right amount of a challenge at first. Then it takes a little step out of line, but you laugh and refer to the result as an unexpected design element. Soon it leads you completely in the wrong direction but you persevere, remembering the good old early days of your relationship and change course to get back on track.
And then...and then, after you have nurtured and nourished this little idea into an actual item you realize that you have created a MONSTER!!!! A soul-sucking demon of a thing.
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And one of these days, I'll tell you how I really feel about this sock.
Having finished the Swiss Cheese Scarf, I dove into the bottomless bowl of UFOs and pulled out this little gem that was started almost exactly 2 years ago. I call them my Dippy Hippy socks.
With one eye on Chicago Fire and the other on the sock, I picked up the stitches for the gusset and happily knit away. Then I looked. And I looked again. I was knitting backwards (the wrong way round).
Now the only visible issue with knitting backwards is that in this case, I ended up with purl stitches on the front of my sock where there should be knits. Ok. No sweat. Design element.
I reversed the direction in which I was knitting and all was once again well with the world. Chicago Fire ended. There was an episode of Chicago PD to watch. Knit knit knit knit. Chicago PD ended. Time for bed.
That's when in it happened. I looked at my darling little sock and I realized that it was a mutant. A sock which, without major surgery, would never see the inside of a shoe or the outside of a foot.
A sock for which I had never turned the heel.
You're working quietly away in whatever space you create in. Doesn't matter what you are working on or with, but it's quiet, peaceful. Suddenly, you have an epiphany! You create something that makes you laugh! You combine things that you know no one has ever dared combine before! You dash through the house looking for someone, anyone to share this amazing moment with! You find them! You show them! You say: "Look! Look! Look what I made!"
And you get that look. Yeah. I get that look a lot.
That's why I'm so glad we're here for each other! Cuz, Look! Look! Look what I made!
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Another ATC challenge on Swap-bot. This time the theme was hearts. The base of these ATCs is the paper I showed a couple days ago in "Watching the Paint Dry".
But wait! There's more! I made envelopes too! I'm beginning to suspect that rubber cement has something to do with my obsession with envelopes, but I really like these a lot! I used one of those touristy maps that can be found in restaurants and the Chamber of Commerce. You know the ones: they have all the little square ads around the outside and streets don't necessarily connect because the businesses on that part of the street didn't purchase one of those little squares. And best of all they are FREE!
Because it was too busy for an address, I had some speech bubble stickers that I found at the dollar store.
AND THEN! If I weren't feeling clever enough, I sealed the envelope on the back with a Hello My Name Is badge sticker and added the return address on that!
Okay - when I read over what I just wrote, maybe I did deserve the look, but screw it!
Look! Look! Look what I made!
Not certain how long ago I started this scarf/shawl, but it's been awhile. Appropriately, it's called the Swiss Cheese Scarf and I found the pattern over on Ravelry, a knitting/crocheting site.
Normally garter stitch would make me want to drive the needles into my eyes, but I so love the colors of this yarn that it hasn't bothered me too much. It also helps that the pattern is fairly brainless!
I'm not to the finish line yet, but I can see it from where I sit. I am anxious to see how it looks once it's washed and blocked because now it's just kind of a hot mess.
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Working on some ATCs today and it's been a lot of hurry up and wait!
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I am participating in a round robin over at the Artistic Treasure Swap group on Facebook. It's a lot of fun seeing pieces grow as individuals make their mark upon them.
I was third on this piece so I finished it up and will pop it in the mail tomorrow so it can fly home to it's own roost.
This tile, along with it's beautiful envelope is the one I started. It just arrived home this morning! (Yes. We get Sunday mail delivery. Not sure why, but we do!)
Sometimes when you change horses in the middle of the stream, things don't turn out as planned.
This is a birthday gift for my friend Tom. Back in June, he fell off his bike and as a result of the injury had his shoulder replaced just before Christmas.
My original plan had been to tangle some bikes on the dictionary page for shoulder. Luckily I had a dictionary that had the image of the shoulder bones on it. Perfect, right?
When I received the invitation to his party, this little guy was on it. More perfect, right?
We lost perfect when it came time to frame it. I had this frame on hand and even though it was smaller than the dictionary page, I liked the size. Unfortunately, where I placed the little guy was not too perfect because I also wanted the shoulder in the frame.
Oh well, he liked it. It got a big laugh and his wife also had this guy on the birthday cake. The cake read: Next time use training wheels!
It never pays to seek perfection!
I have an embarrassingly large number of knitting UFOs (unfinished objects); mostly socks, but a few other items as well lay in a state of somewhere between just begun and 15 minutes away from finished.
These are my Isolde socks from the What Would Madame DeFarge Knit? book. I love that title! I think I started these three years ago and TA DA! Finished! Out of pergatory and onto my feet!
The yarn is Frog Tree Pediboo - a 80% Merino and 20% bamboo. I think these will see a lot of wear!
Working on lots of backgrounds in a couple of altered books right now. It's really appealing to the destructive side of me!
This one got a little splotchy, but isn't that really just a design element?
