Great Class with Seth Apter

Today I spent the day with Seth Apter at A Work Of Heart Studio in San Jose. He's a great teacher and the studio was the perfect environment for creating this mini journal made from a mini deck of cards.

Part of our homework, was to come with a deck of cards painted in black gesso. I choose to use a mini deck of cards, since I love to work with mini things!

Seth is from New York and it was such a treat to have him here in the Bay Area to teach us a class. You should definitely take a class from him if you get the chance.

The cards are just 1 1/2" x 2 1/2". We painted many layers onto the cards.

 And made marks with some amazing items you wouldn't think to use.

 We stamped and stenciled...

 And my favorite part, added some spatter to the cards.

 Then it was time to collage. I finished only 10 cards, just 42 more to go!

Seth shared some great tips and tricks, it was such a fun class and I learned so much! 

Thank you Andrea for hosting such a great class...I love your studio and had a wonderful day creating!

Creative Sketchbooking with Pam Garrison

I recently signed up for Pam Garrison's on-line class, Creative Sketchbooking from Creative Bug. It's a four part series, with many videos to watch per series. It's a really fun class and here's some of the work from just Series One.

 The pattern kind of reminds me of the designer, Emilio Pucci, who I just love!

I made photo copies of my pages and turned them into tags and cards.

 

 

I stamped Happy Birthday and Thank You on the tags/cards which I purchased from Target's Dollar Spot section.

For a closer look, below are the journal pages next to the tags/cards I made with it.

 

 

 

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated my sister's birthday. I showed them how to make Peerless Watercolor folders and then we made some paper dolls.

The paper dolls turned out really cute! We used the Mindy Lacefield face stamp and then my sisters made the dresses and background cards.

And last, our first selfie of all the sisters. It's not easy trying to fit all six faces into one shot that's one arm length away, I guess that's why you need one of those selfie sticks. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!

My New Washi Tape Holders

I love my new washi tape holders, they look like mini planners, they're just 3" x 4 1/2" and they hold a ton of washi tapes!

I embellished the two holders on the top, adding washi tape, ribbons, button and flowers. They come plain, like the two pictured on the lower portion.

I got the idea after watching Christy Tomlinson's YouTube video on washi tape cards. She suggested buying credit card holders and wrapping your washi tape around credit card size plastic. She bought some cute ones from Daiso (Japanese dollar store), so I couldn't wait to look for them too. I bought four different ones and they were only $1.50 each.

Each folder holds 20 credit cards. The holders easily expand to fit 20 cards full of washi tapes.

You can usually wrap 5 washi tapes around each card, so add that up and you can store 100 different washi tapes in one cute little holder. I laminated white card stock, the size of a credit card, and wrapped the washi tape around it.

I even love how the inside cover is a cute polka dot pattern. I added my Paige doll image on the inside flap. Pictured below are all 20 cards from one of the holders.

I filled up one holder completely and part of the second holder, so I still have room to buy more tapes!

These are perfect for traveling and taking to classes.

I bought my credit card holders from the Daiso in LA, where I was last week. My daughter, Rachel, and I went to LA to attend the Vidcon conference in Anaheim.

She also shot more videos for YouTube with several other channels: Dreamworks, Tastemade, Popsugar and Feast of Fiction. Here's some behind the scenes shots...

I'm so proud of my daughter, she now has over 500,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel: KawaiiSweetWorld!

Doll Projects & Planner Target Haul

I like to reuse my artwork in different projects. Lately, I've been taking my Mindy Lacefield paper dolls and copying them onto muslin to make new projects.

On the left is a stuffed doll I made and on the right is my paper doll. Below is a picture of how the paper dolls look copied on cream colored muslin.

I took one of the dolls and sewed around the outside.

 

And then came up with this wall hanging...

Here are all three pieces I made...

It's was fun to see what I could make from the muslin copies!

If you follow me on my blog, you know I'm really into planners and all the accessories. I think this year I must have bought at least 5 planners - well, this weekend I bought yet another. These are the items I picked up. Most of them came from the Target Dollar Spot area... 

Target actually has their own planner version in the Dollar Spot. It's the smaller binder with the triangle patterns. They sell the inserts for note pages, monthly calendar pages, weekly planner pages, tab dividers and pocket dividers.

Target also sells the coordinating post-its, washi tape, pencils, paper clips, mouse pad...it's all so cute!

I hit five Targets this weekend to collect all these items. Unfortunately, there wasn't one Target that had everything...but it was a fun hunt! 

And then last but not least, I have three articles in this month's Somerset Life!

 These are the paper dolls I made with the Catherine Moore stamp...

These are the wire heart necklaces I made a couple months ago.

And the third article is the sitting dolls I made at my bday party last year.

I took the black and white head images from my sister Lana's high school year book. In hind sight, I wish I had looked up the names of the students so that I could have given them credit. :-)

Thanks for stopping by - have a great week everyone!

New Paper Dolls Using Sunny Carvalho Stamp

I just purchased a new doll face stamp designed by Sunny Carvalho. Her face is similar to the Mindy Lacefield face stamp I posted a couple weeks ago.

I stamped the face on some water color paper and used my Peerless watercolors to color in the faces.

I added a body and legs and some embellishments. These are my finished paper dolls I gave out at my last class.

Hope you had a great weekend!