White upon White upon White

It is a very HOT and WINDY day here in San Diego and it has taken the sweet spring mood away like a bomb! So it's great that I am finished with my Spring swap cards.

The theme for the monthly card and tag swap with A Swap For All Seasons is white for May, and I knew immediately what I wanted to create.  I have been having so much fun making little dresses out of paper, and a wedding dress would be so perfect for the theme! I was assigned Joyce to send my creations to so I was hoping that they would be special. Joyce is the first person that sent me cards in this group and they were so lovely.

Here are the cards that I got from Wendy Wirth:

Linking with Pink Saturday.

Spread Your Wings! Altered Peat Pot

Spring is soooo here in Southern CA. Actually it's almost like summer! It is supposed to be in the 90s this weekend. I am so lucky to live here. I find it so much easier and inspiring to be creative on beautiful sunny days and this week is full of them.

So how perfect is it that the theme for my monthly art club is a birdie altered peat pot. I have been experimenting with tea dying and knew that I wanted to incorporate some of the dyed fabrics, papers and ribbons in to this piece. I covered the peat pot with dyed burlap and lace. I then shredded some tea dyed French text to create the nest. I dipped the bird in a cup of tea, but if I had that to do over again I would paint the tea dye on. The bird took forever to dry and the glues holding him together started to fail. After adding some flowers and the laser cut frame I finished it off with some tea dyed seam binding and adhered a tea dyed doily with chipboard to the bottom of the pot to add some stability.

All this while I listened to the birdie outside my window sing while she was sitting on her eggs in a nest she made in my patio light fixture!

Linking with Pink Saturday.

A Swap for All Seasons March

Where oh where oh where is Spring? Hopefully it is right around the corner. Now I know I shouldn't complain since I live in San Diego but we have had a week of well needed rain and it is just enough to remind us how lucky we are that it is almost always sunny here! I know my Midwest and east coast friends are really ready for Spring. It has been a tough winter for you guys!

Our them this month for the Swap for All Seasons theme is Spring and Yellow.  These are the cards that I sent to Joy. It's always fun to work with Spring colors but I don't typically choose yellow. So I added purple to my combo and loved the way the French Perfume Labels worked in the color scheme.

Art Joy Stuff Vintage Paper ATC Swap

This month I decided to join an ATC swap  hosted by Kimberly of ArtJoyStuff.  She hosts a different theme monthly and this time around it was Vintage Paper. I thought "that sounds pretty easy, I can handle that," and so I joined in.  Well this was NOT easy! The rules were that everything on the ATC had to be vintage. EVERYTHING! I guess I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until I tried to make the card with my limited supply of vintage items.

I had a bunch of pages from an old Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book and I started with that. Then I found a beautiful piece of flocked metallic vintage wall paper. It still looked so plain! So I went to bed and started again in the morning and came up with millinery flowers and a roll of vintage seam binding. In the end it was fun and challenging to use all vintage materials.

Linking with Pink Saturday.

                  

New Grandma Baby Shower

Last week we hosted a shower for my dear friend Lorraine who is about to be a grandma for the first time. The shower was part of our monthly art group, Paper Soirée, which is held at Paper Tales. The ladies were all excited to shower Lorraine with scrapbook supplies for her new Grandma Brag Book. Each month this group hosts a swap so we continued with this tradition and swapped paper baby shoes. We all made two and traded one and we each gave one to Lorraine.  My girlfriend Pam and I made all of the decorations and my daughter Cassidy helped by folding Origami boats for party favors.  We all had so much fun and Lorraine was so surprised!

A Swap For All Seasons Valentines

This was my first month in a wonderful swap group called A Swap For All Seasons.  I love this group because you can choose to participate each month and you create a card and a tag to send to your partner. This is pretty easy and not overwhelming if I run out of time because I have overcommitted myself (yes, we ALL do this!). The group is managed by a sweet and very organized woman, Linda.

I created this stitched Valentine and tag for Debi:

And I was the lucky recipient of a beautiful package from Joyce. She is so sweet. After visiting my blog she learned that I love Marie Antoinette. She used this as her inspiration to create a card and tag for me. Visit her blog to see the beautiful pieces!

Linking with Pink Saturday.

Stitched Valentines

These are the Valentines Day cards I made for a Marie Antionette Mail Art swap.  I have been having a wonderful time mixing paper and various laces, burlap and other fabrics and stitching them all together with my sewing machine. My machine is about 25 years old and is causing me some frustration but I am continuing on none-the-less. I now really understand why they call the top and bottoms thread equalization tension because it is definitely causing me some tension!

Linking to Pink Saturday.

Altered Valentine Candy Box

Pink and red, lace and doilies, glitter and ribbons......what's not to love about getting creative in the Valentine season! This is one of my favorite times to create and here is an altered candy box that I have designed for a few swaps that I entered this year. I just love changing up these old candy boxes and I love filling them with little trinkets in mini cupcake liners. Happy Pink Saturday to my favorite blog party visitors!

Valentine House

I finally finished purging the house of all of the Christmas decorations and was able to move on to Valentines Day. Who isn't inspired by pink and red and hearts?  This sweet little house is a design that I've been working on for a class at Paper Tales. The class will be held on Saturday, February 1st at 10:30am. If you are in San Diego I would love it if you would join me!

And a happy Pink Saturday to the fabulous visitors from Beverly's blog party.

Twelve Days of Christmas - Day 9

On the ninth day of a Christmas

My wonderful partner gave to me

A little Charlotte so sweet!

Happy Pink Saturday!

This adorable piece is created in a vintage pastry tin. This MAMA swap has truly been one of my all time favorites. Thank you so much Kimberly!

And here is the glittered frame that Kimberly will open today:

Twelve Days of Christmas - Day 8

On the eighth day of Christmas

My swap partner gave to me

This beautiful heart to adorn my Christmas Tree!

This ornament is so cute. Once again, Kimberly has used a fabric panel printed with a vintage image in her work. She has inspired me so much that yesterday I spent hours printing images on to fabric!

And for Kimberly, here is a little globe featuring the Eiffel Tower in a snow storm. I have one myself, and I shake it and dream of Paris during Christmastime. I hope Kimberly does the same!

Twelve Days of Christmas - Day 7

On the seventh day of Christmas

My very talented partner gave to me,

A gorgeous hanging piece of Christmas art!

 Isn't this beautiful! I just love the color palette and Kimberly's incorporation of  vintage photos printed on fabric in her work. I will treasure her precious gifts for many years to come.

I created this little dancer in her own stage shadow box for Kimberly for her Day 7 gift:

Twelve Days of Christmas - Day 6

On the sixth day of Christmas, 

My swap partner Kimberly gave to me,

A Bingo card filled with holiday glee!

This piece is  a lovely celebration of holiday pink! and here is my little gift for Kimberly, gold earrings for her holiday outfits:

Twelve Days of Christmas - day 5

On the fifth day of Christmas 

my wonderful swap partner gave to me,

A ballerina dancing on a leg in my tree!

Isn't she fabulous! A beautiful assemblage piece of art to hang on my Christmas tree was my gift on day 5. I just love it! 

Happy Pink Saturday to my blog party friends!

And here is what I created for Kimberly, two ornament shaped tags with lovely little angel faces.