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A Rosey Winter Day

Day FOUR of schools closed, no mail, freezing temps, and an icy blanket of snow covering metropolitan Atlanta.

 

Thank goodness on Saturday, during our pre-storm grocery run I grabbed this bunch of pink roses to bring home.

 

They were just meant to be enjoyed...

 

...and perhaps to even take outside, tuck into a tree and photograph.  

Surprisingly enough, these little fellas proved to be quite hardy. The afternoon outing in freezing temps didn't ruffle, droop, or discolor their little petals one single bit.

I think there's a lesson from nature tucked in there somewhere for me.

I dare you...

 
{{Laura at 52Flea interviewed a European artist here and when I read the words quoted above, they called to me...I loved those words...it's so easy in life to stay in our safe little comfort zones, but we all know that real growth comes when we step outside those carefully guarded perimeters of "safe"...}}

The little single pink rose was a summer gift that appeared on one of my rose bushes this summer. But learning how to glam up this photo was a direct result of learning a few of the basic manuevers in Photoshop Elements. Of course, I have to mention that there are also several layers of Kim's new magic pack textures applied to this photo as well...

 
...her newest textures that I am totally in love with....

 
"Technical" things like computers, sophisticated remote controls (!), blackberry's, elaborate software programs, etc. all give me major fits. I am not gifted at all in the world of technical. Photoshop Elements fell into this same category..........it was like reading Greek. And I don't read Greek. So if my latest posts are making me sound like a Kim Klassen groupie.....I only have this to say.....I admit it. I have become an avid fan........she taught me the gift of using photoshop.

If I can learn PSE, anyone can...so when I read that Kim is offering a FREE Beginner's class to Photoshop, I had to share this information. And if you didn't already know it, Adobe also offers a FREE 30 day trial download to PSE. Check it out here.

One thing that I am pretty decent at though, is math. And free + free = FREE! So what do you have to lose?

I dare you......

xo, Sue

 
There's something about heading outdoors after a hard rain...I love that smell...

 
 
 
...and the way droplets of water puddle and glisten...

 
...and with each passing day, more and more signs of summer being over begin to creep into the landscape...

 

But heading outdoors to enjoy all the sights and sounds after a rain does have its down side as well...

 
 ...especially when my constant companion is with me...the little girl who doesn't care that we just paid to have her groomed last week...

 

 ...and who doesn't understand the words, "please!!!! stay out of the mud..."

All she cares about is someone tossing her the next tennis ball to chase...

...in fact, at one point, she actually laid in this puddle..........

 

 

 

She cleaned up rather nicely, don't you think? Thanks to the magic of photoshop you'd never guess this little girl was caked in mud now, would you?

Wouldn't it be fabulous if all of life's messies could just be photoshopped away? I thought you'd agree....

Credits: texture from Kim Klassen, vintage ticket from Cathe Holden.

Art Journal, Gaffer Tape, Free Image, AND THE GIVEAWAY!!!

Seriously. I love peeking in on all the creativity happening in blogland! More often than not my inspiration for heading off to create something is a direct result of seeing someone else's work.

Such was the case yesterday...The bug that bit this time was art journaling. A little sweetie by the name of Autumn posted some fun pages here and here and also in other posts. I recently became blog-acquainted with her after we exchanged visits during the Where Bloggers Create party hosted by Karen Valentine. 

Not to mention all the online classes happening, or happened, or going to happen...and all the other bloggers who share their art journals... here's a few to peek at:

~~Teresa McFayden's online class: Between the Lines. She also has a Flickr group site where class participants can post their work.

~~Here's a fun blog devoted to showcasing journal pages happening around the blogosphere.

~~I first read about Dispatched from LA's online course from Cherie. This one is a start-anytime-you-like class... and it looks way fun.

~~Patty recently did a splurb on her blog for La Dolce Vita's Transfer Love Class that also looks yummy! It began yesterday...I also learned via Patty of this e-course taught by Carole. It's also one that I would love to take...still can until August 8th, I believe.

~~Autumn had a link on her blog to a journaling e-course called Nourish Your Soul. It is currently underway but another will be offered in the near future. Here's a peek of a few journal pages from Hope's blog {the instructor}, Besottment.

No shortage of inspiration available, for sure! So for all these reasons and more, I hopped back into one of my art journals...

In the beginning, Sue slathered gel medium to the pages using a foam brush to spread it evenly. Next, a crumpled piece of aqua tissue got added, then a few torn pieces of a napkin this doll shared with me {same blog where I often learn of lots of the fun online classes happening}, and even some diluted pink paint...

a random tidbit (also known as rambling): Once upon a time I wallpapered my daughter's bathroom with crumpled tissue paper and incorporated pressed flowers and glitter. It was unconventional to say the least and she loved it...of course, she was only 11 at the time...

For the longest time I've been wanting to get a roll of gaffer tape and play...finally ordered some from a tape company online...let the possibilities begin! {{7 Gypsies is responsible for my inspiration where Gaffer tape is concerned. They have tons of great ones.}} This particular piece I ran through the printer...first I printed my image on a plain piece of paper. I had "presized" the image in my photo software so it would fit on my 2" strip of tape.

All that's left was to place a piece of tape directly over the print on the paper and run the paper through again. Once the ink has a chance to set up, carefully remove the tape from the paper. I found that the ones I left on overnight were grabbing some of the printer paper...

And just for fun...do you see the humor of what happened during this photo shoot?

Maybe he saw the word "fly" and decided to check it out! Moving right along...here's a few more tape creations...

 
...a rubber stamped piece...would be a fun little return address label on an envelope for something mailed to a dog lover...

This is a Tim Holtz stamp I scanned into my picture file and then resized and printed...gaffer tape tears nicely and before I use this piece I'll most likely tear a chunk off each side for a little more interest and texture...

...progress on the pages....just waiting for me to capture some thoughts in writing...

...here's a few more close ups...

...and before I forget, would you like a copy of this lady? Her name is Dorothy Sutton. I grabbed her from the Library of Congress site, and you can now grab her from me. She was a little scruffy in the original photo, but I've cleaned her up a bit. She looked like she needed a fresh infusion of hope...

I'm sort of feeling like a news reporter...you know why? Because I threw out the words "giveaway" way back in the title of the post, and then rambled on and on ad nauseum making you wait until the end of the program to hear about the giveaway. Yep. That's just what they do on the news. DRIVES ME CRAZY when they do that...esp. when the opening bait line turns out to be more exciting than the final catch...

Hence, without further delay, here's my giveaway celebrating 100 posts...there will be two of them...the first winner will receive:

A 12" x 7.5", 290 pages journal...and added to this prize I will include...

...but that's not all...once the winner is chosen...

...I'll peek through your blog and choose some extra little goodies from my stash that I think might tickle your fancy...

For the second winner, there will be a $25 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble and some extra goodies from my stash as well.

You know the drill...leave a comment on this post and your name goes into the pot. If you want to double your chances, blog about my giveaway and leave a second comment letting me know you've done so! Entries must be blog-marked by Sunday, August 8th, 9PM EST.

Bless all your sweet little souls for all the fun, inspiration, nuggets of wisdom, doses of encouragement, delicious giggles of humor, and what not that I've come to enjoy by visiting all of your blogs! 

Xo, Sue 

Free birdie images and we're off to the beach....

How did it get to be so late, so soon?

The calendar indicates that tomorrow we leave for the beach. You know what that means...a million little details to attend to before heading out. Well, a million little details if you're the mother. And I am the mother. So logic would tell you that I've been busy attending to all those details. NOT.

Instead...

A little birdie told me to start another art journal... {"start" and "another" are key words...}

 

I used this little birdie in my journal and made two different versions for you to grab if you'de like to use them in your own creations.

Here's a few other shots...

 
...just felt good to play...and make a mess...and contemplate the wise words I used in this creation...still needs a bit more added before I'm finished, but those million little details I need to take care of need my attention first...

Hope to have some happy reports to share when we return informing you that the beaches of Florida's panhandle are still filled with white, sugar sand and not chunks of tar...

Xo, Sue

The little things...

My favorite husband has often playfully teased me {or is he sending a message?!} that I am the world's best starter of a million little things...a million little things that often have to wait a long time before they cross the finish line.

Unfortunately, I resemble that comment to a tee. Poo! 

BUT, {in my defense} often times those just short of the finish line projects look like this little 4 inch flower. Technically, they are finished.  In fact, there are numerous little bitty creations floating around in my stash just waiting for their day to be chosen for a bigger purpose in life.

 
 
 More often than not, me believes that art does imitate life, or is it life imitates art?
 

Some times it's okay, and maybe even necessary to just keep doing the little things especially when you can't see the finish line. Many things in life are a process. But one blessed day the bigger picture will come into focus. There will be a greater purpose for all those little things...

...even little ribbon flowers.  

 
  One of several old blue canning jars I picked up recently stuffed with a few hydrangea from my garden. The sustained heat in this region fried a lot of my moppy head friends and cut short their season of gracefully showing off their beautiful colors.

 Some little creepy bug has invaded my being and I'm not enjoying its presence one little bit. Can't decide if it's a sinus infection or one of those viruses that have been going around. All I know, is that it is winning...

 
It chooses to visit me right in the middle of my "busy-as-a-bee" season....! Have lots of irons in the fire, many that are time sensitive so resting yesterday was not an option. Spent hours on the phone coordinating utility hook-ups for daughter's new rental. Seems they like to have parents on the hook for those bills instead of college-aged students. Hmmm...wonder why?

And while I was tucked away handling all those calls...

 ...this little family member with the white fur coat was busy in the kitchen eating the leftover pizza oldest son forgot to put away. Naturally, it was one of those mega-sized take and bake pizzas. And even more naturally, oldest son ate only a few slices so Miss Sophie (the one in the white fur coat) had herself quite a feast! But the revenge of such an over-indulgence was swift and severe...and was all mine to handle, each episode... for several hours.

All other family members were out and about...DH had a business dinner, the boys had soccer and what-not...just us two sick girls left to man the fort. One rested, and the other did not.

The one who didn't rest was originally planning to share some recent finds on her blog.

 DH and I have decided that we will plow ahead with having the house spruced up a bit and I've got a budget to work with for decorating and such. To that end, I've been hitting lots of antique shops...made some really fun scores at fabulous prices. The photo above is one of MANY of these late 1800's lithographs I made an offer on to a dealer and he accepted my offer. They are each 11 x 14...this larger format is harder to find and even more difficult to find at the bargain price for which I obtained them.

Hopefully this cruddy crud cold/virus will decide to release its grip on me and I'll have a chance to soon show you some other fun stuff in their "potential" state and what I hope to do with them...

Meanwhile, here's a scan from my personal collection you digital manipulators might enjoy having in your stash for your personal use...

In "real life" this is a four page, handwritten  French deed on that old yummy cotton type paper I just adore.

Hope everyone had a safe and memory-filled long weekend!

Xo, Sue

Pressing on...

The first time I saw the pressed version of these little guys I immediately thought to myself...Van Gogh! These are the inspiration for his suns! Oh, if only I could hunt down my teacher in high school who used to say I was too busy talking to learn anything during the art appreciation section of class.............ha ha ha!

Obsession can overtake me when it comes to preserving many of my little flower friends. I don't know why...but I just love paging through the albums I keep them in, especially during the winter months.  

My little noodle is always scheming and dreaming of ways to use these pressed flowers....

These adorable little creatures bloom the entire season....they've filled out so much since they were first planted about five years ago...

They make adorable little wreaths...or maybe multiples of them could be woven together to form a sweet birdie's nest...or just for fun put them around a napkin for a picnic lunch? The current occupants in my household might not fully appreciate such a special touch as I am the lone female in a pack of males.

But I'll have to put my scheming on hold as I am in the throngs of moving the contents of my daughter's apartment into our garage. But before the movers could deliver it today, I had to MAKE ROOM for it all. Do you know what the temperature is inside a garage in the thick of a heat wave in Atlanta, GA?  

Tomorrow I get to drive the hour plus to her old apartment and tidy up. But before I could do that I had to buy her a new vacuum cleaner as she casually mentioned that hers didn't work anymore. Since we have a central vac system at our house, I don't have a mobile vac of our own to take with me.  I'm a little nervous wondering how long that vacuum cleaner of hers has been inoperable....!!!! What will I be walking into???

For a multitude of reasons, she legitimately can't help and hubby is away on business...and sometime in the next month all the stuff gets moved out of our garage and into a new apartment several hours away from this apartment....

So I'm running behind on answering emails...I'll catch up in the next few days...and since I've had to work so hard, I thought it only fair that while I was out hunting down the best bargain on a new vacuum cleaner that I should be allowed to make a quick dash into one of my antique stores.................and tomorrow I'll be driving by another one...oh my!

More on that later....and eventually I hope to post some fun little uses I'm thinking about for all these pressed flowers.

Xo, Sue
 

Lisa's Art Challenge - "Outside the Box"

Ah-ha...now I know why she included the word "challenge"....

And a challenge it was on many different levels...

The first challenge was getting out of Target without straying from my short, concise shopping list. Suffice it to say, I didn't pass the first challenge. Nothing extravagant, but one of these and one of those begin to add up quickly, don't they?

Yet as I rambled through every aisle it was like taking a walk down memory lane of when my children were little ones.  Children crying--more pronounced {and did I mention louder} the closer I came to the toy section! Mothers giving "that look" to those screaming children and me pretending like I hardly noticed that child on the floor thrashing from side to side {professional courtesy from one mother to another} desperately clutching some much-needed toy...

Memories...they are known for showing up in the most expected, and even unexpected places.

{The flowers on the box were once the color of the freshly cut flowers!}

Our challenge was to take these little boxes that originally contained soap and give the box a makeover. After painting the box with a Martha Stewart paint sample called Sultana I began to adhere individual little blossoms of pressed verbena. It took way more than I had on hand and there was no time for pressing more so I even slapped ripe ones to the underside of the top cover and blasted them with my heat gun. Results...not bad.  

After hemming and hawing, staring into space, and staring some more, I finally decided to make mine a memory box.

 
  A few years back I purchased from this gal's Etsy shop two pieces of mirrors she had washed in acid and just like it was meant to be, the pieces were exactly the size of this box. The words were cut from an old novel printed in a large font I nabbed at Goodwill specifically for the larger font size. {Not to read it...but for artsy pursuits!}

 

The second mirror was used over the photo... a few more scratches were added using a file as to open up more peek-through area for the image. 

The photo is of my cousin Johnny and myself when we were wee little ones...fifty-one years ago with the sun shining in our eyes...{not a lot of camera tips floating around for the novice photographer back in those days!}

Our families were inseparable...we gathered together every Sunday if not more often during the week, every holiday including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many sleepovers, and so on.

Johnny and I accumulated hundreds and hundreds of hours through the years traipsing through woods, sometimes I was a passenger on his bicycle with the tiger banana seat, or on a mini-bike, snowmobiles, and even harrowing rides on his motorcycle hanging on for all I was worth. He grew up on a large dairy farm and any chance I got I loved to spend days at the farm. They had an old car we drove through the fields long before we ever had a real license.  Finally, a chance for me to give him a scary ride!

Sadly so, it will be five years in July since his life ended tragically. It's still hard to believe at times...I cherish the times I get to visit with my Aunt and we are able to share memories we each hold so dear. He had a brilliant mind, was an accomplished photographer who developed his own film, flew airplanes, motorcycled across the country just to visit places he'd never been before & surprising relatives in many states when he suddenly appeared on their doorstep {!}, backpacked across Europe another year...always looking for an adventure.

 
 It took me way longer to create this little piece than it should have...so many interuptions of getting lost in my thoughts and memories...

Yes, some memories are best never to be forgotten even if they make you cry.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.  ~Kahlil Gibran
**********

To view the creations of more participants in today's art challenge, head over to Lisa's blog, Tarnished and Tattered. If you've not been there before, take a peek around as Lisa is a talented Texas gal who creates some gorgeous stuff! She is also being featured in a soon-to-be-released Stampington publication due to hit the streets any day now! Thank you, Lisa for hosting this challenging event. Who knew one little box could be such a fun challenge {or make such a mess of my once clean workspace}!    

Where Bloggers Create Party

Don't ya just git giddy when something you've wished for, waited on, dreamed of, but mostly

WORKED HARD FOR, !!!finally!!! happens?

For most of my "creative life" which now spans decades, my creative space and supplies were scattered throughout our home in closets, bins, tucked under beds, and so forth. The dining room often became command central. And upon walking by such headquarters one would immediately receive the distinct impression that command central had been heavily bombed! Chaos reigned supreme.....
 

 But when I read that Karen, at My Desert Cottage was hosting her second annual WHERE BLOGGERS CREATE PARTY I knew this was the motivational spark I needed to get busy.

I inherited the bonus room above our garage several years ago, but as life goes, for a number of out-of-my-control-bumpy-mountains-in-the-road-of-life reasons, the room never got put together.

Until now....still have a little ways to go, but the hardest parts are behind me. NOTHIN' like company coming to set a body in motion, is there?!

I worked like a mad woman. Or perhaps madder than normal would be more appropriate...what is normal anyway, does anybody know? Stay on task Sue...

Jewels got sorted...

...dolls got hats...

...and with each little accomplishment I could feel the cobwebs that had taken my creative spirit hostage begin to release their sticky grip...speak nothing of the physical cobwebs in the actual room...

My rusty imagination began to awaken...it was all I could do not to stop what I was doing to follow the latest inspirational muse...but untrue to my given nature, I kept plowing through box after box, bin after bin, sorting, tossing, organizing...

Why, even fresh flowers were lovingly gathered from my garden and scattered throughout the room...they are such happy little creatures, aren't they? Not to mention that nothing, save a warm hug, says welcome friends more than fresh flowers.

Despite the fact that I am beyond blessed to have such a wonderful place to now work on a variety of creative pursuits, one major flaw in this room is the lighting. Although there are five windows, each is housed in an alcove which can be a real issue...especially at night. One thing I have invested in to counteract this challenge are Ott lamps. JoAnn's, Michael's, Wal-Mart, among others carry this brand and routinely put them on sale at 40% off.

The majority of my furnishings are hand-me-downs that were used previously in our homes through the years. Several pieces came from thrift stores and one piece was stolen. Yep. You heard it right. Theft. That would be the bin housing my stash of vintage wallpaper. It's original purpose was to house goober pairs of golf and other sporting shoes in our garage. The idea being that my family members would dutifully and joyfully place their shoes in the tidy little cubbies......NOT.

 

A year or so ago this vintage dress form came up for auction on Ebay. It is about three times the size of my other dress form I'll show in the next photo. She has been the perfect 3-D inspirational board, if you will, and I continue to pin new items to her daily.  And BTW, I was the only bidder and shipping cost me more than the dress form. Felt badly for the seller, but happy for me!

I've taken way too many pictures of my newly organized space...excitement about my new room and working with crummy lighting conditions most likely influenced my excessive photo snapping...

 

Here's an oversized spice rack I picked up at Goodwill for maybe $5 or so. I love making, giving, and receiving mail {handwritten letters....ahhhhhh....love 'em}. I used to be so much better at sending these personal greetings. Hence, I am hoping that having this little rack hanging on my studio wall will be a visual reminder to improve upon sending more snail mail to brighten someone's day.

 

Not withstanding the fact that I've rambled long enough, Typepad or my computer has chosen this point in time to go into total rebellion. Consequently, on both accounts, I'll bid my farewell and continue this tour in another post {or two+!} in the coming days.

Thank you for your visit and I'm anxious to head out to see all the other creative work spaces. But before I go, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Karen for what has had to be a monumental undertaking to keep an event of this size so well organized.

Warm wishes to all,

xo, Sue