Saints and Sinners

It's been too long, and I have so much to blog about, I will have to divide it into more than one post. I will begin with the fun I had last night at the Los Angeles Craft Mafia's little get together at the Saints and Sinners Lounge in L.A. I actually looked at the website beforehand, and while my immediate thought was "Is a mommy from the Valley cool enough to go to this place?" I wasn't going to miss it.

Well, it was so fun! This group meets once a month to socialize AND do a craft at the same time. Mark Montano is a member, and just came out with his FIFTH book "The Big-Ass Book of Crafts" which you can buy here on Amazon. This link will also show you his other books for sale. Mark was there, directing the group on an awesome craft.

Well, you just won't believe the craft he had organized for the group - making your own rubber stamp! Yay! So, now I was able to complete Michelle Ward's challenge for this month! Well, it's cheating a little, 'cuz it's not "carved" but it is totally handmade/hand cut, so I think it counts (It does say "Cut It Out").

Here's what I made!
It was unbelievably fast and EASY!! All the instructions are in Mark's book, but, basically, you take a wood block, attach a flat layer of a foam sticker sheet, then, using the same foam sticker sheets, you cut with plain ol' scissors your design and stick it on! What could be easier or cheaper! This idea is so simple and brilliant. I flipped through the book, and it has TONS of easy crafts just like this one.

Moving onward - I know I promised to post my visual journal entries from Vegas - so here they are for your viewing pleasure!

Remember how I said I got the journal at a craft fair in Tel-Aviv? Here's the cover:

The Hebrew at the bottom actually says "travel journal". The Hebrew at the top can be loosely translated to Wonderland. The entire book is handmade.

The paper is from a vintage map, and I have circled Thessalonica (today known as Salonica, Greece) and Sofia (in Bulgaria) because those are the two cities where my paternal grandparents were from before they moved to Israel.

How do I love this layout? Let me count the ways...This is SOOOO me. The Asian paper is ripped from a newspaper. I hand drew the tree branch on tracing paper, tore the right edge and inked with red ink. It's glued over paper that is actually the inside of a security envelope. Oh yah - gotta check out the cool designs inside those security envelopes, folks! To the far left are staples from the next page, which I didn't originally realize would be there, but I love how they look.

The background papers for this were glued on ahead of time (i.e. before I left for Vegas). I added the "Vegas" arrows from some advertising brochure I got in the taxi, then did my journaling on the green mulberry paper.

This is the last entry from the trip. The background was also pre-glued, and I just added the journaling.

Ok - that's WAY enough for one morning!