Thriving Art

Well, here is the T-Day  "line-up", 3 wine bottles and one water bottle......all empty, and in the back row are my oldest, and dearest friend from Minnesota, and myself ( this photo is over 10 years old).   I normally keep the empty wine bottles and give them to Ronda for displays, in the store, but I brought a few back to the craft room so I could see how the wine tags would look hanging from them, since there is more than one shape of wine bottle.  I'm showing off the 12 wine tags I was commissioned to make, by Ronda, with a Paris theme.  There are 6 of each design.  Making these tags confirmed that I DO NOT want to do commission work, plus there is just no money in it.  So, if I do continue with the retail idea it will have to be the quick and simple styles of the dangles ( which I displayed last week ).  Now that these are finished, and off my mind, I'll do a little more calculating on time and money before I make a solid decision. I want to apologize to any

Posting a little later than usual (I usually post Monday night), but still getting together with  the T-gang over at Elizabeth's  .  Monday was super busy and by the time I got back home I was worn out.  So it was a little dinner, and a little TV... very little as I couldn't keep my eyes open.......but then it could be the glass of wine relaxed my eye lids....LOL!  Anyway it was an early night for me, which means an early morning and time to greet the T-gang.  Last week I was working on an idea and made some prototypes to show a friend of mine.  They are gift tags to hang on wine bottles, not really a new concept, but I did I went a step further than just words on a tag.   I had bought a set of stamps with a wine theme.......mostly for the small bottle and the wine glass, but the little boarder stamp came is just as useful.  A little dangle to hold them together and tiny rhinestones for decoration.  The bottom row have two that are a bit different, the "wine a b

Welcome to Betsy and an other WOYWW, as always brought to us by the magnificent Julia at the Stamping Ground !  I was doing a bit of cleaning and remembered it's WOYWW (technically tomorrow from here)  So I did stop and grab my camera......looks staged?  Well, not really I was laying out my new stash and drooling over it........LOL   I am finding that labeling does take some time, but less time than leading you around Betsy by the hand......er....eye........er.... hand!??   NOW if you scan to the left..................and step out a bit........................  This is the section that had not been tidied yet..............yep, dirty window and all.  I can't tell you when the last time that window had been washed, because I honesty don't remember!!  When I pull up the blinds I get a lot of natural light now that the tree has been removed.  Guess I'll give it a good scrubbing, maybe even before WOYWW 303....LOL Go ahead a nose around all ya like, if you ca

      Third page of my 12 Pages in 2015 journal.  For some reason I couldn't tie a song into this page, although "In My Room", by the Beach Boys kept running through my head.  It is colored with crayons and blended with OMS (?) yep, found OMS will also blend crayons as well as colored pencils.  Makes sense, since both are waxed based. I had this drawn out, and colored, then left it laying on Betsy for more than a week.  Every time I had to move it I would think "I need to finish this", then I'd set it aside.......LOL  I had had a lot of comments about the Princess and the Pea story, which was a possibility, after all the GD's call it the Princess Bed.  It is setting on risers, so I can store luggage under it, thus, it does set rather high.......but not triple mattresses.. ;)) Our ritual has always been bath time, bed time, and book time, such a great way to end the day and they relax and fall asleep quickly........unless I am reading the Gi

Yes, I am Irish, or of Irish decent.  My Grandfather's name was Patrick Anthony Costello.....a good Irish name for sure.  His parents migrated to the United States from Ireland, that makes me the fourth generation out of Ireland. or it that one too many??? I'm not real good at genealogy, even though I find our family history quite interesting.      Top photo is my drink for today, in my new Irish glass.  It is just a cold, flavored, carbonated water. The bottom photo is of the Shamrocks that I have growing around the yard.  I'm celebrating the "wearing of the green" with the T-gang at Elizabeth's   Are your celebrating St. Patrick's Day?   "Green" Inky Hugs Krisha

With St. Patrick's Day this week we are using a lot of green. That is the challenge over at Addicted to CAS: Green   and over at Just Us Girls  it's Trend week .  The trend is splatters!  Roll them both together and  I get a great card. (IMHO) I really like the way this card came together and the effects of the splatters.  The leaves are an Inkadinkado stamp, I think, not too sure, and too lazy to go dig it back out again......LOL  It is colored with markers and the sentiment is a die cut. These two challenges are in progress right now, and there is still time to join in the fun at both blogs. Click on the links in the post and they will take you right to the challenge.....good luck! Inky Hugs Krisha

WOOT! WOOT! second post of the day, I am trying to get caught up on projects and challenges.  In case you missed my first post of the day, you can see it HERE.   It is "Trend" week over at the  Just Us Girls  blog and they chose splatter for this challenge.  I can remember years ago when this was really the "hot" thing to do on a card.  It has made a come back with all the art journaling being created today. I used blue acrylic paint and a brown spritzer (that doesn't work correctly) for the background, AFTER stamping the bird and masking him.  The stamped image is colored with Prisma colored pencils and OMS.  The sentiment is a die cut.  I have two male birthday's on the horizon, and this will do for the adult BD.  Now to work on the one that will only be 2 at the end of this month. I am also entering this card in the Simon Says Wednesday challenge "Things that fly" There is still plenty of time to enter both of these challenges.

The challenge for this week, over at CASology , is "Tropical" .  Oh, yes, haven't we all been dreaming of warmer weather? Even though I live in the southern half of California a TROPIAL vacation would be a dream come true. All die cuts, except the palm trees, that is a stamp I have had for so many years I can't even remember who made it.  The card base is white, but photographing it on an overcast day gives everything a blue tint. I am cutting it close as this challenge ends tomorrow, so all I am packing is my flip flops....LOL Are you ready for a tropical vacation? Inky Hugs Krisha THANK YOU to everybody that leaves a comment regularly.  I do try to return the visit or shoot you an email, but I find that not all the e-mail buttons on the profiles are connected.

  The  Unruly Paper Arts Reader Art Quest  (UPA RAQ) for the month of March has to do with this inspiration photo.  Since this runs for a month there is still time to participate!     So I did a little dangle.  I had finished before this challenge went live, but had not posted it until now......is that LUCKY?  LOL! Inky Hugs Krisha

The prompt: Coloring Book Inspiration. "For this week’s prompt, use coloring book pages as inspiration. You can use a page out of a coloring book, print out one from the many free coloring pages online, or you can even try making your own! You can use pens, markers, crayons, colored pencils – whatever medium you are most comfortable with and have on hand!"  There is still time to join the fun over at Journal 52     I know that there are coloring books around here, that belong to the GKs, but I just hate the paper they are printed on........always have, even as a kid!  So I gave it a quick "What shall I do" and took a marker to my journal page.  I always liked coloring the pages with words on them.....now you know why I have this addiction with lettering....LOL  Even with this addiction to lettering I kept it quite simple and "child-like".  I ran and got out the GKs' crayons and had a go with coloring the page, forgot how much I do not care for

It has been a busy week since I last met up with the Tuesday T-Gang over at Elizabeth at The Altered Book Lover .  But here it is once again time to share our drinks and weekly shenanigans.  These photos were taken early Monday morning, as the sun was coming up over the neighbors house and fence.   A couple weeks ago we had to have one of the trees, in the back yard, taken out due to termites, and the last standing tree was pruned way back.  It all HAD to be done, but it kinda but a kink in some of the "other" things going on.  Since the trees had gotten so big (and over grown) they provided a lot of shade on the patio, so that is where I had quite a few plants that required only morning to early afternoon sun.  Simple solution.......move all the plants back into the shade of the patio cover........BIG problem........DH has so much junk, besides all the BBQ equipment, on the patio there really was any more room.  Well......er.....there was also all the patio furniture

What a challenge this week was for my Journal 52 page.  I'm not sure just why this challenge...."restrictions" became a brain twister for me.  One simple shape and one color, plus black and white............quite simple really, since I like geometric designs.    This is really my second page, as I tore out the first one....LOL  This time I chose a square, and since I had scraped black, leftover paint, on the page I went with that as a background.  With a white gel pen, on an extremely dry page, I outlined the square then inched it around to make a fan effect.  I had already ruined a page by painting the color directly onto the page...um...er.. one of the mistakes anyway.  So I painted the red onto a piece of cs graduating the shades with white and black, cut the squares to fit and glued them down. Now was that so hard??   Here is the first page, what a mess it became, although I do like the circle design, the process was a disaster! week 9 reject I normal

  Betsy and I are keeping it short and sweet this week for WOYWW.   Instead of describing what's on Betsy I labeled it all for you, even miss spelling label in the photo.....LOL  What can I say it is rather late Tuesday night here.  Hitting the 300 post for  WOYWW  and  looks like it's gonna be a BIG gathering this week.  I will try to visit everybody that leaves a comment, but it's a busy day Wednesday, so it might be a tad bit later in the week.   We've been lucky enough to have some rain lately, but today it cleared and was a really pretty day, so grabbed the camera and took a few sky shots That wraps it up for me, going to publish this post then link up when Julia goes live.  Was just lucky last week and hit #1 and that was a first.....LOL Stay well, warm and safe. Inky Hugs Krisha

Linking up with Elizabeth for our Tuesday "T" Shares this week with a collage of tea pots that I found in an antique store over Valentine's weekend.  The photos were taken with my cell phone, so the quality isn't quite as good as what my camera has.   I think my favorite one is the round one with the hole in the center. Which one do you like?   Inky Hugs Krisha

  Merry Monday! The second day of March, and I am once again, joining up with Elizabeth, The Altered Book Lover  to give a piece of art a second chance.....so to speak....grin!   While working at a flooring store, around 2010, the boss insisted we each had a good notebook/ daily reminder, or one of each.  The notebooks were to take with us when having to measure somebody's house for flooring....................Oh yes, I can measure the floor and work up an estimate, except I HATED doing carpet....LOL   I can even design you a custom closet and cabinets.....I digress and am so glad I am retired from ALL the measuring.   This first photo is what the nice leather notebook looked like, I had already started when I remembered to take a quick picture of it      This is how it looked once I had finished.  I had very lightly sanded the leather, added gesso, bits of paper, ink, paint and stamped images.....even embossing some of them.  There was no way anybody else co