Weekend of Mo`opuna (grandchildren)

It's been a long and wonderful weekend with my mo`opuna (grandchildren). It started Friday morning and ended Saturday night. My daughter's daughters range in age 7 mos. to 3 yrs. old and I had them by myself until Saturday morning. Thank goodness it was a sunny day, they love being outside. We have a pool  for them along with a slip-n-slide. They stayed out in the backyard for hours. Of course, they couldn't eat their breakfast fast enough Saturday morning so that they could be outdoors again.
They also love to do crafts. So they use my paper punches to create one of kind pictures and cards. The more they can glue those punched flowers to everything and anything the better! They made their own paperbag Easter baskets this year. The 7 month old is quite happy to watch all the activities (for now).
I'm still working on my workroom. I've noticed as I'm cleaning and restoring that we crafters and artists have an uncanny way of storing so much in such tiny spaces!

Last week I took some time to visit Angela Cartwright's site and noticed some familar sketchings/doodlings (for lack of a better word). So I linked to that site, called Zentangle. I was caught off guard a bit, as the sketches reminded me of the doodling I did when I was in high school. You know back in the "hippy days", when we didn't want to listen to the teacher's lecture, we'd take black ink and pen (usually India ink) and create these psychedelic black and whites sketches. Well, turns out that you can get a certification so that you can teach others how to do those sketches. In fact you can't teach someone how to Zentangle unless you are certified. Wow, why didn't I think of that?!  Cha-ching! So, I spent some time "doodling" without  being certified (I guess as long as I don't call it "Zentangle") and here's what I came up with. I forgot how relaxing doing this type of art can be.  

 

Aloha for now,

Blog Candy

I was just visiting Kyoko's blog and noticed her post about Jodie's  blog candy. Well she has a beautiful blogspot and I like her candy. So, go check it out and sign up, the deadline is 5/17. jodiefromoz.blogspot.com
Aloha,
          

Great Mother's Day

I'm sure all you mothers out there had a great mothers' day! I know I did! I got to spend $ at BFC, used my 40% coupon. After that we took Hoku, my gorgeous dog, to the Pet Expo. She was so tired, she slept all the way home. Then it was off to the Elk's in Waikiki for a fabulous Mothers' Day feast.

I made a bunch of these cards for Mothers'  Day for DD, DIL, MIL, and BFF. Hope they liked it.

I know, I need to learn to take better photos. Please be patient, I'm trying.

I used my Cricut to cut the flourish, and the Fiskar edger for my border. I used creme and pink cardstock for the cards. The sticky pearls and pink rhinestones  are from K & Co. I used an old "Just for you" stamp from Dots.

 

That's it for now, see you in a few days.

Aloha,  

Spring Cleaning! What!?

You know how Hawaii doesn't have much of a noticeable season change like the continent? Well growing up, I certainly didn't notice, so spring cleaning didn't mean anything to me back then. But as I got older and started my own family, reading about spring cleaning and getting organized in magazines was a new thing for me because growing up we just cleaned things out as Mom saw fit. Now, if you say 'spring' to me, I'm deciding what things I need to clean and/or discard!
Currently, I'm cleaning my workroom, discarding, giving away, cleaning off plastic container tops etc... I went to PriceBusters and found these collapsible containers and decided to use those instead of the mismatched plastic containers that I have now. I ran into a couple of challenges, one, it's getting costly to change all the containers I want to change, and two, I've had DH driving around the island with me in tow to all the PBs looking for my color choice. It was explained to me by one of the PB clerks that when they get products in, it's shipped as a lot, so they get a whole bunch of colors and styles at once; like opening a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.
Anyway, I'm off to visit my SIL in Vegas, hope I find more collapsibles there. My work will still be here waiting for my return (yuk), so I'm not too worried about the mess. Unless of course House Beautiful or Where Women Create sneaks into my house and takes threatening photos to expose my packrat workroom!
Aloha,

Collage and Assemblage

With magazines from Stampington and Co. like Somerset Studio, Artful Blogging and Somerset Life, I've noticed the collage and assemblage terminologies. These magazines by the way are some of my favorites. The assemblage art in these magazines have a different genre than that of the cardmaking blogs that I follow, yet I like both varieties.

I think that the Victorians were the first to do any type of collage with their crazy quilts, assembling them with the assorted embroidery stitches. Now, this type of quilting have evolved into art quilts and much more have been added to enhance these art quilts, much of which can be seen in Art Quilt magazine. Of course I still love the Victorian crazy quilts and have had the pleasure of taking classes from renown author and crazy quilter Judith Baker Montano and Marion Speers to learn crazy quilting, also known now as insane quilting. I'll try to put up a sample of one of the pieces I'm currently working on. 

Now, about assemblage, that would include all card makers.  How long have we been collecting card stock, fancy papers, ephemera, rubberstamps and other found objects to create our cards. I've attended my share of rubberstamp conferences in Vegas. I remember hosting Stampin' Up parties with Joelle back in the early 90s. Each card is an assemblage and/or collage art.  So, whether we crazy quilt, make cards, or create scrapebook pages, we are all collage, assemblage artists.

Have a great weekend, Aloha.