Shake, Shake, Shake!

Patti V! You are our winner for March! Yay! You get the fabulous pair of handmade earring posted at the beginning of this month! Please email me privately with your snail mail addy so I can send these along!

Now, for April...how about a necklace? I have a few microscope slide necklaces left over from way back when I used to make these for stores. These used to sell for about $23-$28 in boutiques here in CA and AZ. I think I'll have a fire sale of the leftovers at Art and Soul in two weeks. Or, you can just win one here for FREE - shipping included! - just by leaving your comments throughout the month. So here's what you could win for April:

If you're interested in actually purchasing one of these, email me directly there's lots of designs to choose from- fire sale price is $6!! Whoa, I must be nuts - or in need of space in my closet...

I actually did some art this weekend that wasn't card designing - let's hear another "Whoa!" I took a class with the wonderful Juliana Coles at this wonderful studio in NoHo. I could only be there one day, 'cuz there's just no way I can justify being away from kids and husband for more than that. Well, ok, there probably is, but I'd be guilt ridden for months.

Here's some little snippets from my journal:

Oh yes, the fires within. I actually have a strange fire/water thing going on in much of my art. The background is an image torn from a magazine of coy fish swimming in water. Then I added the silhouette of a woman (supposed to be me), and fire on top of that with acrylic paints, then outlined with black sharpie. Fun.

This is a small portion of a layout where I did journaling on my book page (I'm using an old encyclopedia for this journal) with sharpie, painted over with oranges and yellows. Then using a stencil found at a scrapbooking store, did swirlies with red/orange acrylics, outlines with black sharpie and white gel pen, added ephemera of butterflies, circle nailhead and masking tape.

This is the left side of a two page spread. This is my favorite of the pages I did, and it's so simple. Turquoise acyrlic on encyclopedia page, with Asian paper and film image glued over that. I cut out this image of a woman jumping from some ad in a magazine that I wanted to add to this layout. When I turned the image over to put the glue on, I acutally decided that I liked the reverse silouette type image more than the photo image I had actually intended to use. Hmmmm....another silouette - what could that mean?

Here's a portion of the right side of this same layout. My handwritten text says "The power is in your hands". It really is - yah, I'm talkin' to you.

Don't you just love my big lotus on the left? I do! I painted yellow acrylic over the text on the page, then added large, red circles with more acrylics. I drew the lotus and colored it in using oil pastel crayons, blending with my finger. On the right, I used white paint over a circle stencil then glued on that vintage Asian paper doll I've been "saving for something special" for over four years. I'm using the good stuff! It's just no good when it's in my drawer. It looks real good in my book where I can see it more often. The text under the lotus reads "Follow your Instincts".

Can you believe all that was done after lunch?