Not So Handy

This is the last piece of art I was able to create before my right hand developed a condition called gout this week. Let me just tell you it's really painful. Imagine how little you can do when it's totally disabling your thumb and index finger. My finger joints are really inflamed. Luckily, I was able to get right in to see my doc and I am now on hardcore anti-inflammatories. (Though the list of side effects gives me the heebie jeebies!)

The good thing is that I am one of those people who happens to be ambidextrous so I can manage for now, but it's annoying just the same. I am typing this one handed, for example, which takes forever. *sigh* Hopefully this too shall pass. I am hoping it's markedly better by tomorrow-I am teaching two middle school classes tomorrow and I need my hands!

Do You Moo?!?

I do! Okay I don't walk around mooing, but I did order these wonderful little cards from Moo made from snippets of my own art. (Thanks Deb for leading me into temptation!)

I love that you can preview what your cards will look like and choose what portion you want to have on the cards. Some art lends itsself better than others-you just have to try them out. It only took me about 10 minutes of playing to come up with the ones I wanted made.

I have to say the service was really fast-less than 2 weeks and they are in my hot little hands. The quality is excellent! What I really like about them is that now when someone asks me what I do, I can hand them a card that bears some of my art and say "This!" and they can see for themselves!

I can see I am going to want to make more cards. I just have to make more art and decide what's going to look good. Oh lord, just what I need-another addiction! C'mon and join me! Show me your Moo cards!! Comment to this post with a link if you've made moo cards-I want to see!!

Winter Wonderland

We have SNOW!! After last week's major rain/wind storms that left laots of damage, flooding and an 8 day long boiled water advisory, we had a snowstorm yesterday. Yes, I live in Canada but NO, snow is not a common occurance on the west coast at lower elevations. Needless to say, it's wrecked havoc here-lots of trees are bending and snapping with the weight of extremely wet snow. As a result, power lines are being comprimised. We have been lucky-no damage at our house and out power is okay. (Knock wood!) The only hardship I had was spending 1/2 hour working on getting my car doors open. The locks weren't frozen-the door itsself was frozen in the jam. It ended up we pouted cold water in the cracks and managed to work it open. Unbelieveable!!

The main roads are plowed and sanded, but the side streets are a mess. We are on a dead end so driving in and out of our street can be a challenge. Thanks goodness I grew up in Winnipeg, the home of winter so I know how to drive safely in these conditions. I also have my snow tires on and front wheel drive. Dh shovled the entire drive three times over the last 24 hours so we are down to the pavement. I am sure the postal carrier was much releived to find that when she arrived here this morning! In some places, the snow was over a foot deep!

So...no trips to the PO today to do mail outs. I only went to a medical appointment because it was important. (Of course it was in the hilliest city!)LOL!

To see more pretty pics of our snow laden neighbourhood, check out my son's blog.

Mirrored Magic

This week has been a real roller coaster. As always when I am struggling with something, I pour myself into making art and somehow that keeps me sane. (Well okay, that and spilling my heart to my closest girlfriends. You know who you are and I love you for really being there for me!!)

When I am upset, I just pull out my favourite art supplies, turn my music up loud and get busy. It allows me not to think and I am always amazed how easily I can slip into "the zone". It's definately balm for my soul.

Anyway, this is today's project. It's just one sample for the Altered Mirror class I am teaching next Friday. I had so much fun doing it. I only wish you could really see how vibrant the colours are. It took me all morning, but I enjoyed making it. Everyone can use a little magic in their lives! I can't wait to share it with the kids!

Button Bracelet Addiction.

My new addiction is these butons bracelets which I designed after creating my charm necklace for the Simply Charming Charm swap. (Click the button on the sidebar to see.)

I will be teaching this as a class with handmade charms. (Not exactly what's pictured here, but you get the gist.) I am really excited because I will be teaching this as a Mother's Day Workshop at a local middle school. I know the kids will have a great time making them and it will be exciting to see their creativity.

Anyway, if this one catches your fancy, it's for sale in the Tattered Edge Mercantile.

By My Hand

Can you guess who this might be for? If you guessed a certain Cowboy's Sweetheart, you'd be right. This is a pendant I made for Deb for Xmas and before you chide me for sharing it here and blowing the surprise, she already knows about it. I shared it with her last night because I couldn't stand not to. As soon as I saw the cowboy themed papers from Cosmo Cricket, I knew I had to buy some and make some goodies for her. There's more to her pending parcel than this, but I am going to be a paragon of restraint (HA!) and not show her any more!!

If you haven't had the pleasure of checking out Cosmo Cricket, you really are missing out. Their papers and other doo-dads are so pretty and the colours are so subtle. I just love their style. (And they are super nice people to boot!)

I have two more classes to teach in the next wek or so and then my version of Santa's workshop begins in ernest. I want to make some handmade gifts this year! Speaking of which, I had added a few new things to the Tattered Edge Mercantile. I plan to add a few more in the next little while, as time allows.

Reminder:
If you are participating in the Breast Friends Collaborative, you can find all the info here. Please have your pages and charms in the mail to me on or before Dec. 4th.

If you want to add a button to your blog to show your support for Joanna, you will need to email me. I can't respond via Blogger.

New In The Mercantile

Hi Folks! Just a really quick update to let you know I have listed a couple "quilty" things in the Tattered Edge Mercantile. I hope to be able to make a few more of the Pieces from the Past Charms. I just need to get my hands on some more frames. (Working on it!) Anyway, if you feel like peeking, please do.

Happy Thanksgiving (tomorrow) to all my American Friends. Thank you for blessing my life, for making me laugh, for sharing your art with me.

And Deb, my husband said I was welcome to pop on over to Cody for turkey when I said I was having turkey envy. Joke's on him-little did he know you had already invited me!! What time is dinner?

EDIT: I was able to get more frames, so look for more charms to appear in the mercantile shortly. In the meantime, I just uploaded another goodie!

From Sorrow to Joy

I am sharing this entry in my Moleskine as part of Michelle Ward's Street Team Crusade #2. The song I chose to journal about is "I Find Your Love" by Beth Neilsen Chapman. I heard a snippet of it when watching Calendar Girls when it first came out and I just thought it was so beautiful and moving. Here are the lyrics, in case you can't quite read them in my entry:

I'll catch your smile on someone's face

Your whisper in the wind's embrace

Through diamond stars and songs and dreams

I find your love in everything.

The sun, the sky, the rolling sea

All conspire to comfort me

From sorrow's edge, life's beauty seems

to find your love in everything.

I've come to trust the hope it brings

To find your love in everything

Even as I fall apart

Even through my shattered heart

I'll catch your smile on someone's face

....amazing grace....

I really love a song with beautiful lyrics and this one makes me cry every time. It about sums up my experience of grieving.

On a completely different note, these beautiful earrings arrived in the mail yesterday along with another 12 days of Xmas gift. They were made by Kristen Robinson as a thank you for hosting and I am just delighted by them. They are so delicate and lovely and the best part is, they are not blatantly Christmassy so I can wear them year round. I have to go see the ENT this afternoon so I am going to put them on, since they will be checking out my poor ears! Thank you Kristen, I really, really love them!! I would much rather wear handmade jewelry than store bought any day!

Weekend Hodge Podge

Well, I managed to get the cover of my Moleskine altered over the weekend. All the bits for this collage came from friends. I al now working on the pages inside to get some done before I have to send it off in the next couple of weeks. I can't wait to see what the others have done with theirs. I think this is going to be fun!

















These are the two wonderful cakes Penn arranged for the ATC swap group to have yesterday in Vancouver. It was the swap group's 6th birthday. The one with the ladyfingers was tiramisu and the one with the flamingos was chocolate mocha. They were delicious! The real trick was keeping our ATCs from having chocolate all over them. LOL! We had a great turn out (hmm..wonder if that had anything to do with the promise of cake for anyone who showed up?) and lots of cool cards were traded.

Today I had a parcel in the mail. I thought it might be another gift for the 12 days of Xmas swap, but instead it was a sugar skull! I had to laugh when I saw it-I have NEVER had one before! Unfortunately, the return addy had rubbed off the outside of the box, so I am not entirely sure who sent it. It says "Suz" on the back so thank you Suz! If you are reading this, please email me and let me know it was you! It certainly is a cool thing and I can't imagine having the patience and skill to make one. You just never know what's going to turn up next in the magical mailbox!

I have a few more goodies to list on Etsy later today so check back if that interests you!

Small Wonders

This is what I have been occupying myself with this morning. They measure
1 1/2 inches square. The first photo is the fronts of the pendants and the second is the reverse. (Obviously the feather is on the reverse of the crow.)

The four patch is from something I had pieced together ages ago and it just so happened that the scale was perfect for this. The button has it's original thread and it's vintage, as is the measuring tape on the reverse.

The crow is from a postage stamp that came on a packet I received recently from Karenann Young. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I was going to do with it. The feather came from an envelope of feathers Deb Trotter sent me last Xmas and the paper behind it was some vintage text from Sally Jean's rummage box. (She had a box of bits in a class I took a year and a half ago and we were welcome to pick through it for odds and ends. I had this piece left over-I just love the colour of the ink.) I cut a piece of Mica to cover the front and back to act as "glass".

I am going to have to make some more of these!

Party Favours

I spent the morning working on my ATCs for Sunday's swap. It's the 6th birthday of the group so we are having cake and the theme is "6".

I decided to draft a library pocket that measures 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (standard ATC size) and filled it with ephemera. I figure what's a party without party favours?

I also am in the process of tidying up and reorganizing my art supply mess . I have been so busy that everything is everywhere and it's beginning to drive me nuts. I can't find a couple of things I want to use and stuff is strewn all over the place. Time to do a major clean up!

Speaking of major clean ups, the weather has calmed down finally after yesterdays HUGE storm. Luckily, my power never went out, though the lights flickered a couple times. Some communities are still without power and some areas that got hit hard (flooding and falling trees) will have alot of cleaning up to do. I felt sorry for the UPS guy who was out driving around delivering parcels last night. It was an ugly night to have to be on the roads.

Okay, off to tame the mess!

Obsession, Thy Name is Moleskine!

Okay so perhaps I am late to the party, but I have a new obsession: Moleskine pocket journals. I have been trying for some time now to get caught up in art journalling and just could not get inspired. I don't know what it was, except perhaps for the simple reason that if I am going to write, I prefer to blog about things. I find that my thoughts come so quickly that the only way to keep up with them comfortably is to type them out. I am so much a computer girl that my husband even bought me a laptop for when I can't be home on my computer. (Entirely HIS idea, god bless him!)

Anyway, that said, I drove into Vancouver yesterday to pick up a Moleskine for a project I am doing with a small group of friends. Something about the size and the lovely paper, the pocket in the back, the elastic closure and the smell of the leather must have gotten to me, because suddenly I am obsessed! I want more of these little gems! I want one for in my bag to jot down the flotsam and jetsam of day to day life-phone numbers, appointments, websites I want to check out, ideas for art, etc., etc.

In the course of preparing for this project, I Googled Moleskine and let me tell you there are tons of links! There is a blog dedicated to the journals called Moleskinerie. On UTube there are videos of people flipping through their journals so you can see their art work. There is a "Wandering Molskine" project, much like the 1000 Journal Project, though I don't know how active or successful it is. And then there is something I find highly amusing: "Molskine hacks". This term refers to anything involving altering a Molskine to suit your purpose. You could be adding tabs, categorizing lists, decorating the cover, making some sort of pen holder, etc. There are endless 'how-to" links for every kind of hack imaginable. It's interesting to see how people are using their journals.

So...Forgive me if I get a tad obsessive, but this is my current obsession. I am just in love with the idea of filling a pocket journal with all kinds of stuff from my every day life. As you ca see from the pic I posted, I have started my journal for the project I am doing. It was hard choosing which journal to buy. There are some that have story boards in them which would have been interesting to work in. Another has an accordion set up inside it. One is one with a series of 6 pockets. They even have journals with lines for composing music. Too cool!
If it weren't storming horribly here today, I would drive back into the city for another one. I have to have more!! They have some brand new ones out now called City Journals. They feature a specific city and contain maps, etc. plus blank pages to journal about your trip. I am coveting the one on NYC!! Santa, if you are reading my blog, I need that one!!

Okay, back to working on my journal! If anyone out there uses the Molskine, I would live to see what YOU have done!

This N' That

Isn't this sweet? This arrived in the mail from Carla Naron. It has special significance to me because "Faith" is the pseudonym I use in working on the crisis line. Thank you Carla for this sweet little house. I love it!

In other news, I am delighted to discover a couple of mentions online. One is here on Cloth Paper Scissor's website. The other is here in an article by a company in France about Papier Valise. The mention is in reference to the Artist in Residence gallery and says the design team's work is
"Superb/Wonderful vintage creations/artwork". Congrats to Janice-it's a great article!

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the 12 Days of Xmas blog. We are having so much fun with this swap and new photos are added often. Also check out the Just Simply Charming blog. Ruth just uploaded three variations of necklaces made from the charms from the swap. Mine has a "how-to" as well, but it hasn't been uploaded yet.

People are continuing to respond to the call for art for Joanna's Breast Friends Collaborative book. THANK YOU!! This book is going to be wonderful!

That's about all the news I have for now. I need to make my way to the Post Office this morning with a mound of mail. 12 Days of Xmas swaps are going out, along with Divine Definitons and some other goodies. I think Canada Post is running in the black thanks to me!

Request

Hi Everyone! If you had a question regarding the Breast Friends Collaborative book (See details in Friday, Nov. 10th's post) for Joanna, or would like to sign up to participate please email me at tatterededge at shaw dot ca. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't make it easy for me to respond directly when someone asks questions via a comment post. (I wish!)



Thank you so much to everyone who has contacted me to sign up so far! It's so touching to know that when one of our art sisters need support and encouragement, everyone responds immediately, with their hearts wide open. I have seen this time and again and I thank you for answering the call. Doesn't it feel good to give? Someone once said that one of the lovely paradoxes of giving is that the more you give away, the more you get to keep for yourself. So true!


**Joan, I saw your questions, but I have no way to get in touch with you. Please email me!**

We Will Remember

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders field the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead.

Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

~ Major John McCrae, May 1915

The red Flanders’ poppy was first described as a flower of remembrance by Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918), who was a Professor of Medicine at McGill University of Canada before World War One.

Colonel McCrae had served as a gunner in the Boer War, but went to France in World War One as a medical Officer with the first Canadian Contingent.
At the second battle of Ypres in 1915, when in charge of a small first-aid post. He wrote In Flanders Fields in pencil on a page torn from his despatch book when a close friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle. Helmer was one of 6000 Canadian casualties in just 48 hours.

Colonel McCrae, while still serving in the field hospital, caught pneumonia and meningitis and died on January 28, 1918 in Boulogne, France.

His volume of poetry, In Flanders’ Fields and Other Poems, was published in 1919.

In Canada, most Remembrance Day ceremonies feature a reading of this poem.

***********************

By way of thanks to those who have served so that we could live in a country where freedom is taken for granted

and for the sons and daughters of Canada who serve now so that we may continue to enjoy that freedom.

May you all come home safely to your loved ones.

God Bless.

In Solidarity

One of our art sisters has been drafted. She's been drafted into the legion of women who are battling breast cancer. JoAnnA Pierotti posted to her blog that she will undergo a mastectomy and chemo in the next little while. I can only imagine how scary it was to be told that not only does she have cancer, but now she is going to have to fight for her life.

Although I don't know JoAnnA very well, we have travelled in some of the same art circles and her work is so beautiful. My experience of JoAnna is that she is a sweet spirit and is always very friendly and positive. I know that those qualities will help her get through this difficult and challenging time . I also know that having friends you can count on to stand by you when things get rough makes all the difference in the world, which is why I am posting this "Breast Friends" icon to my journal. I just want JoAnnA to know I am thinking about her and holding good thoughts for her recovery and healing. If you would like to join me as a show of solidarity for her, please email me and I be happy will send you the button. (Please do not hotlink to this post.)


"The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it."
~C.C. Scott


Edit:
There has been such a swift response to this post! There was a suggestion from Shari Schneider to host a collaborative book for Joanna to show our support for her at this time. I am happy to be able to host. Here are the details if you would like to participate:

Breast Friends Collaborative

Page size: 4 1/4inches wide x 5 inches high

Art: Please create art that focusses on courage, hope and healing. You can include song lyrics, poems, quotes or anything that expresses postive energy. Please include the words: From your "Breast Friend_(your name)_" on the back along with your contact information.

Charm: In addition to your page, please create a small charm to go with it. This can be anything relating to your page to signify friendship, love, etc. Please keep the charm SMALL so it will be comfortable to wear on a bracelet and be sure to add a jumpring or loop for hanging. You can place your charm in a small ziploc bag when you mail.

Embellishments: Please keep embellishments LOW PROFILE (no heavy 3D please!) and if you want to have things sticking out or hanging off the page, embellish the top or right hand side only. (So the book will be able to stand up!) Please remember to also keep the left hand side of the page clear so that it can be punched.

Deadline: Please be sure and mail your pages to me on or before Dec. 4th. It's just one page so 3 weeks should be plenty of time! Please email me at tatterededge at shaw dot ca for my snail mail address. It would be wise to place your artwork inside a Ziploc bag and insert a piece of cardboard. This will keep it from being damaged.

Please email me if you plan to participate so I know how many pages to expect and watch for in the mail. Thanks!

Something for the Holidays!

Hi Everyone! Just a quick update on the fly. I have added a couple of new journals to the Tattered Edge Mercantile. I hope to have more goodies available later in the week.

If you are interested in comissioning a journal, please contact me at tatterededge@shaw.ca for more information. I will be taking orders up until November 22nd.

Off to shop hop for art supplies-I need to get out!

Arting On

My state of unwell continues. Because of that, I am reduced to doing art in small snippets in between painful ear/sinus/headaches. I don't know how good the art making is when I am doped up on pain killers, but there's no way around it right now.

Anyway, soldiering on, I am making ATCs for a swap Penn and I plan to drop in on on the weekend while we shop hop for art supplies. I am looking forward to getting out for a bit. These are made with water soluble oil pastels, which are one of my favourite things. I just love the colours and the blending process. It's relaxing to sit and paint backgrounds with them. The crow is from Green Pepper Press, from the set that I ordered recently.

The other thing I wanted to share with you is that there is now a 12 Days of Xmas blog, featuring the swap I am hosting. To see what that's all about, click on the 12 Days of Xmas button on the sidebar. Go on, you know you want to!!

Also, I emailed the folks at Cosmo Cricket to tell them how great I think their papers are and I have not one, but two emails in response from them. They seem like awfully nice folks and really, you are doing yourself a favour if you go check out their products. Their "Wanted" paper line is far and away my favourite, but I also love "Wonderland" which is the Xmas line. I normally don't go for Xmas stuff, but they have such a wonderful vintage feel to them, how could I resist? I freely admit, I am an absolute paper junkie. It's sick really, but heaven help you if you try to stage an intervention! I have scissors and I am not afraid to use them!! *grin*

Time to go rest my aching head now. Catcha later!

Edit: See? I am in a fog! I forgot to also mention that I have done some updating to my website and there is now a Gallery 11 that features my adventures with digital collage! Happy surfing!