Attended Charity Benefit Gala

Last weekend I went with my sister Maryl to a Charity Benefit Gala, a black tie event! The event was held at Pier 48 in San Francisco where there were over 2,000 people. The banquet was held in a massive tent where they projected beautiful images on the ceiling.

The table bases were also illuminated....it created such a beautiful atmosphere and love those lucite chairs.

But the best part of the night was the secret guest entertainer. The first winner of American Idol, winner of 2 Grammy Awards, 2 American Music Awards, 2 MTV Music Awards and 11 Billboard Music Awards...Kelly Clarkson!!!

 

My sister Mary in the audience

A very blurry picture of me ;-)

What an evening to remember!

Sister Celebration & Making Resin Necklaces

This past weekend we celebrated the November birthdays for my sisters, Diana and Lana...born only 1 day and 1 year apart. We had a wonderful crafting day making these adorable dolls...

My sister Diana hosted the event at her house and taught us the steps to make these wooden reliquaries dolls. Some of the supplies to make the dolls came from Paper Whimsy.  

It was a beautiful day and Diana's house has these beautiful windows looking into a wonderful backyard. 

Diana had the table set up with all the supplies and instructions we needed.

Diana drilling holes in our blocks for us.

Me and my five sisters

It was a really fun day; the food was delicious, the project was amazing, and Diana was a great host. Thanks Dee, and Happy Birthday Lana & Diana!

Now on to the gifts. I decided to make my sisters some resin necklaces, inspired from a class I took with Kecia Deveney at Art Is You.

It started with these resin bezels I purchased from Susan Lenart Kazmer Art Mechanique. I soldered curly wires on the top and bottom.

For the pictures inside the bezel, I photocopied vintage tin types which I then embellished with a white pen and vintage text paper.

 Below is the picture of the finished pieces with charms added to the bottom and an assemblaged chain.

Here's some close up shots...

That's all, have a great weekend!

Fun To Paint Circles

I've been playing with paint and drawing circles...inspired by Roben Marie Smith, she's a wonderful artist with great on-line videos.

Here's some photos of the step-by-step process. I finger-painted some circles in an old journal book with some colorful acrylic paints.

Then I added multiple colors of paint and continued to make more layers of circles...

Afterwards I added some white paint for accents...

Then I layered more circles using white and black pens...

Now, you may be wondering what you do with all these colorful circles. I like to cut them out and add them to my projects as accents. Below I used them to embellish wrapped gifts...

My next project was in my Dylussions mini journal. I laid down several colors of acrylic paint.

 Using an old plastic gift card, I smeared the paint around.

 Then added some white paint...

I cut out some of the circles and glued them in my journal pages to create a fun background. Next I made some paper dolls using Catherine Moore Character Construction stamps, and glued them to the page. Here's my finished journal pages.

Bright colors huh? It's fun - makes me smile. 

Hope you had a great weekend!

Colorful Tags

I've been playing with some bright colors lately and some new doodle stamps from Jenny Doh. I made the tags below this week.

I love using water soluble wax pastels from Caran d'Aache called Neocolor II. They go on like crayons and then when mixed with water, they have a wonderful watercolor effect and the colors blend together so easily. To create the black splatters, I used a fan brush and black ink. Also, the white-out pens from BIC work great for accents.

Below is the picture of the stamps I purchased from Jenny Doh's web site:

The stamps are a good size for smaller projects - like tags and cards. I also used stamps from Teesha Moore for some of the girls.

Here's more pictures of the tags...

These were fun quick projects...I hope you try some of these supplies.

 Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Journal Workshop

Yesterday, I hosted a journal workshop...it was a beautiful day to get together with family and friends and create art. We played with paints, sprays, stencils and stamps. Following are some pictures from the class. We first started with some spray inks.

  Then we layered some stencils on top...

We also did some mono printing with the Gelli plate.

And added collaged elements from magazines.

We painted and doodled on bags, tags and folders...

 

And everyone created such fun and beautiful pieces, I love them all!

On another note, I have something surprising to share. I was shopping at Joann's today - you can never have enough supplies ;-). I was at the Tim Holtz section and I looked up...

There, in front of me...larger than life...a picture of the necklace I had made for Tim Holtz. Last year I had made some necklaces for his booth at the winter CHA show  The necklaces were all created from elements from his idea-logy line. The necklace pictured at Joann's was the one Tim actually asked to keep, it's all one long necklace. How cool is that???! Let me know if you see this photo at your local Joann's store.

Be happy, create art!

Journal Class with Dyan Reaveley's

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending an all day workshop with Dyan Reaveley at Scrapbook Island in San Jose. Below are a couple of pages I made using her technique and some of her images.

There were about 40 people in this class, some familiar faces too...it was a great group to be with.

Dyan was a fabulous teacher and had so much to share.

She has such a fun personality and her teaching style worked really well for even such a large class.

She supplies everything we needed. It was such a luxury not to bring a suitcase full of supplies.

That's my sister Diana working on her background pages

 This was a fun black page we created. The picture below is just the beginning of how it started...

This is how i finished the page...

Examples of more background pages I made...I love using the stencils and stamps to create interesting patterns.

Me, Dyan and my sister, Maryl

 Below is a page from Dyan's journal - love this one - so quirky ;-)

Group photo at the end of class...

If you ever have the opportunity to take a class with her, you should jump on it. You'll learn so much and have a great time!