Category Archives: ATC

May27

Promised ATCs

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It’s nearly 80 degrees out and a bit humid. I went out briefly to plant a couple of perennials in the pond garden (which needs major weeding) and I got warm and came in. It’s not even sunny either. I planted Lupine and English Daisies. Seems my color theme there this year is pinks and purples.

Here is the Food challenge card I made for Emily over at ‘The Floss Box’.


I have all these sheets of letters in different papers that you punch out and am glad at the chance to use them.
Then I was clipping magazines and ran across this angel statue and decided to start a ‘Butterfly Wings’ series. The butterfly wings are from wallpaper border. The pretty white wings are from some papers I just got from Creative Papers online (love them!)

Then I did a Butterfly Fairy. Her ‘crown’ is part of a raspberry from the wallpaper border.

Her banner says, I wish you love.
And for my stitching pals-Art and Soul:

I think Emily fits in this category too!
I have these chalks that don’t photograph well (her neck), but I also colored her in with pencils.

Feeling a bit in a funk from not sleeping well last night. I was restless, it was stuffy in the house, I turned the air on, ate something around 6 am. I guess we all have those nights. I hope to do a bit more outside, but here comes Mister Sunshine!

May26

Memorial Day

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We had our first barbecue of the season today. First Bri and I had to run down to the store to get the charcoal and meat! Before we went, I had cooked Red Bliss potatoes and some eggs for salad and deviled eggs. Getting everything cooked wasn’t that bad. I even made some ‘ham dogs’ burger meat in the shape of hot dogs as I had bought 12 hot dog rolls. I even cut up fruit for a salad and added a bit of honey to it to give it a little sweetness. Oh, we had corn on the cob too.

Bri planted tomatoes and peppers yesterday and mulched them today. I have to plant the other side with the zucchini and green beans. I am trying a Martha Stewart support approach for the tomatoes-you make a support out of bamboo or sticks in the shape of a tepee and have twine for the tomatoes. Hope it works! We have the tomatoes planted in circles. (Update-just purchased trellis clips, twine and 24-5′ bamboo stakes from 2 different internet stores! Sure beats running around from store to store with the price of gas).

I did make some ATCs, one for Emily’s food challenge (over at Floss Box) and will have to take pictures tomorrow and post them. I did do a little looking for solar lights that change color and found some in the shape of mushrooms, so I ordered them (from Amazon and a lady who bought them liked them a bunch!)

What fun!

Have a pleasant Tuesday!

May20

What to do when it feels like March

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That’s right folks! It crept up to about 60 today and rained until 4 pm. I had started a few ATCs yesterday and did a few more tonight (see Flickr). Sean started a writing course tonight down at the annex campus at PSU.

Here’s what I did :


I printed out some images on vellum paper and made this card for a friend. She gave me the neat backing paper with the ‘language of flowers’. I liked the way it turned out. The vellum makes the paper curl up though.

Over at ‘Facebook’, there is an application called ‘Sketch Me’, so I did it with a newer photo of me kneeling with my flowers. This is my new calling card!
Hope to get outside tomorrow. I walked around tonight and things look ok, but I need to do so much more weeding, planting and mulching. Hope my tummy is better too. I had to take some prescription medicine today, which is my last resort.

May14

Art by lantern light

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A few of these I did on Monday with the use of a lantern (we have a mini Coleman that is a flashlight/lantern combo). It wasn’t really dark, but enough that I needed some light. My eyes aren’t that young anymore. : (

First two by lantern, finished Tuesday night:

Paradise-made with gardening catalog for the background, bluebird from old bird handbook and stickers

Want to Play?- tore up a few different colors of green handmade paper found at Dollar Tree and used Mod Podge to apply. Real looking flowers are from the gardening catalog. The rest are stickers.

This one was made before the power outage:

Blooms-background is my photo from Longwood Gardens, ‘Blooms’ is from the brochure from LG, and moth is freebie from Dover Publications. One side is a sticker and the other is paper.

And this one made Tuesday night as I got a big order of papers from Creative Papers online and wanted to dig in to my new stash:

Cardinal Song-flocked paper, Dover freebie gramophone, sheet music and awesome Marjolein Bastin bird stickers (gotta love stickers!). I colored the gramophone.

Apr28

More like a typical spring day

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It’s in the 50s and rainy, more like it for spring! I did enjoy the nice weather though, but was way overheated from it one too many times. We need the rain. And I didn’t go with my mom when she got her cat scan. It was her idea. It’s a 23 mile one way trip and we are suppose to get heavy rain about now, just when I’d be driving home. She lives 3-4 miles from the hospital. She called a little past 2:30 and said she was in and out of the hospital in 30 minutes. She was told by a gentleman going in the hospital that one of her tires was half flat, so she attended to that afterwards. I told her I felt terribly guilty from not going, but she said it was too long a trip for the time she was in there.

Anyway, I am really tired, but enjoyed making some ATCs. I will give the ‘Eternal’ one to mom as she added the decorator chalk to the lady’s gown.

These are from my ‘Planetary’ series

I saw this idea in a magazine, but the child was sitting on the Earth.

Apr27

Chasing my tail!

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Yep, what to do, what to do? Do I continue outside because that’s what I really want to do or clean my house? There’s so much to do in both locations. I did sort through a huge pile of junk mail, but I should have done that Thursday as Friday is recycling day. Now it will be sitting around all week.

My gardens are getting there. We had a cooler day and a little rain last night, so I was able to get to the lilies. There are so many weeds in there, I chopped off a few lilies by mistake. I do that every year!

I got my first iris today! It’s a pretty all white one! A few dianthus are blooming too. We went to Walmart and I must say their flowers and veggies are pretty decent this year and I bought a bunch last night. I planted more dianthus (Sweet William) that are named ‘Diana’ something. The ones from last year are coming along nicely.

Heard brother #2 has been planting a bunch of things at mom’s. This is good, but I use to help her with that. He also found her a nice used bed set (with a double bed) on Craig’s List and they went and looked at it and bought it! She has been sleeping on a twin bed and couldn’t stretch out right. I hope she is sleeping now as she was exhausted getting the room tidied up for the new additions. She is suppose to have a cat scan tomorrow and wants me to go along (I went with her when she had an MRI a few years back and waiting freaked me out a bit as I knew she was in that closed machine all that time). The weather is suppose to be rainy too.

That’s about all the news. I did sit after dinner and make one ATC! I haven’t made one for weeks. Speaking of dinner, I made the Rachael Ray turkey burgers which are so good! All you do is grate a small white onion in the ground turkey and toss in some seasoning like parsley and poultry seasonings. Next you make the patties and roll them around in pecan pieces and instant potato flakes and fry them up!

I am doing a little cross stitch at night. I am trying to finish off a Christmas ornament that I started back in ’05. I have to do birds over one stitch and it’s hard! Plus the design isn’t right at the top, and I can’t figure out why. It’s pretty though.

Apr8

Head spinning

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I’m so excited about crafting things, that I want to do about 10 projects at once! My partner is putting together the most adorable fairy kits for you to assemble. I’m making art pieces out of Altoids tins and will probably make other things from them. I have 3 almost finished (thanks for prompting this post Sharon!) It’s the ‘finishing touches’ part that is holding me up. I have a few other tins bookmarked on flickr to help me out. People have such great ideas! I will say I painted the tins and they resemble the photo below featuring Cate Blanchett.

Have a few appointments set up this week and one more next week. I hope that is it for a while! Still waiting on the blood work results-a week now. No news is good news, correct? I have to be more optimistic now! ; )

Off to wrap some birthday gifts.

I took some photos and thought I’d share:

I keep my Art Trading cards in a notebook and use baseball card plastic pages.

I just got this Mona Lisa rubber stamp and whipped this ATC up right away! I also was in QVC outlet store and they had this big pack of letters on different backgrounds that you just punch out. I think there were 10K of them!

Here’s a kit I had started and pulled out last night. I am so sorry I didn’t change out the fabric.

I finished the first African violet ‘Nancy Reagan’-only 6 more to do. I am all purpled out and put this aside for a few days.

Apr3

Announcing

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My friend and I are working on an etsy shop! There is nothing listed yet, but I figured if I talk about it, I’ll get busy! I hope to have something listed within a week.

Not much new on the home front. I made my niece a cute ATC for her upcoming birthday tonight plus I worked on a few other cards I am still trying to finish the first plant on the African violet cross stitch sampler.

It took me all evening last night to feel better physically. I think all this upset is going right to my gut. Just surfing, I went over to Flickr and saw a link-most views of my stuff and I saw that many people said that my photos or art were one of their ‘favorites’. That gave me a little moral boosting, especially when it came to getting etsy rolling.

Check out the elephant painting in my vid pod on the right. Angela Cartwright had it featured on her blog.

QUICK question-anyone have tummy trouble taking vitamin or calcium supplements? I’m wondering if that is why my tummy’s been so weird. I started taking them in February. I think I’ll not take anything for a few days to see. In the meantime, I’ll order some vitamins for sensitive tummies. Who needs this when you are trying to stay healthy?

Doctor’s Choice Sensitive Stomach

Mar31

Last day of March already!

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We had such a busy month, it just seemed to go quickly. Having Sean home in the middle helped with the winter drudgery feeling. I just got a phone call and the lady said my eye appt was moved to the 9th as the machine is down. Maybe Bri can go with me since it’s late in the afternoon.

Today I have to return a movie, maybe rent another and buy some cards, one of which is an anniversary card for us! It will be 24 yrs for us this year! *Bowing* With Sean not home a lot now, it’s rather like the old days of keeping each other company. I find cooking for two a drag. Sean use to eat most of my leftovers, his dad doesn’t.

Here’s progress on The African Violet sampler plus a ‘happy’ real one close up. I think I’ll finish this one violet and then pick up a different project.
African Violet sampler-violet #1

A cheerful real violet
A few ATCs I made recently:
Made from mostly recycled things-part of a postage stamp package, a stamped image that wasn’t perfect….the glare is a hummingbird sticker

Pollination

This one is called ‘Dress rehearsal’. I love finding these old images:
Dress Rehearsal
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Tip of the day-eat rice cakes! They fill you up and help like fiber does! Enough said. : )