Buttons and beaches

I have a post today on the Galblog so please stop by and say hi - http://thegalblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/buttons-and-beaches.html

thanks so much!

Easy like Sunday morning

Today is a very special day for me - it is Dan and my 30th anniversary - I can hardly believe that we have been married that long!?!?!? Of course, I was very young when we got married!!! LOL!

And today is the new challenge at These are a few of my favorite things!!!!  What is your favorite day of the week?  When I was working full-time, Sunday was always my favorite day - peaceful, leisurely breakfast, maybe a walk on the beach, just recharging my batteries. Then in the afternoon, football in the fall and winter, and a peaceful dinner - usually in the crockpot or simmering on the stove. Summertime dinners are on the grill or boiled shrimp (like for our celebration dinner tonight along with French bread, a salad, chocolate mousse, and Prosecco.)  So delightful!!!

We had a wonderful time on vacation - we stopped in Charlotte on the way up and I got to shop at Cheap Joe's art supplies and also at Trader Joe's - great food and wines!!! in Asheville, my SIL and I went to a fantastic quilt show and then on Sat, all of us went to a super crafts fair and lunch, and I got to go to my favorite yarn shop and fabric shop and get some beautiful yarns and fabrics.  On the way home we stopped in Jacksonville, where we lived for 10 years, and went shopping at the Towne Center - it is incredible - total shopping heaven and an anthropologie too! We then went out to the beach for dinner at what used to be one of our favorite restaurants and happily, it was just as good as we remembered!

Since retuning home, I have been doing some DT work for Sept - we will be having a crop on Sept 17 and 18 on ScrapGal, and also painting quite a bit. This coming Mon, Tues, and Wed, I will be taking a class with Pat Weaver, a nationally known watercolor teacher. I am super excited!!!!! And on Friday I won a RAK of laces from Prima - is that not so cool!!!! I think you know how much I love Prima products!

Thanks for reading and hope you have a great day
ttfn
Chris

Artist journal

I have been wanting a watercolor and sketch journal for some time now and decided to make one for myself. I was very inspired by Ruth Rae's book Layered, Tattered & Stitched, and used her journal as the basis for mine.  However, I used canvas for the cover and lined it with heavy interfacing and felt. I sprayed the canvas and the felt with Tim Holtz Adirondack color wash in lettuce - this goes on very well but takes a while to dry on the fabric. I then layered everything and sewed it together, creating a spine. I used old sheet music for the bottom layer of the embellishment and added some of the new Gecko Galz Versailles designs - Opulence and Let them eat cake (I printed the designs on fabric paper) for layers and also added some antique lace, some tulle, and some of the wonderful vintage Gecko Galz buttons as well as some from my collection. Everything is securely sewn onto the cover.

On the inside of the front and back covers, I added some pockets to hold pens, pencil, brushes, and a small watercolor kit.

For the insides of the journal I created 4 signatures of watercolor papers and actually sewed the signatures to the spine.  This was probably the hardest part of the project but I am very pleased with it and will be taking it with me on vacation later this week - I hope to sketch some of the beautiful scenery in North Carolina.

Thanks for reading and have a creative week!

Prima vista

It's August 1 and that means a new manufacturer of the month at Scrapgal - can you guess this month's manu???? One of my favorites - Prima!  I took this photo at Epcot in the Marrakesh Restaurant (by the way, I will have a posting on the Galblog Tues 8/3 about this layout - hint hint!) - the patterned paper is Flights of Fancy and this photo just seemed to be perfect - I cut apart some of the Prima flowers to create my own chandeliers.

This paper is Pastiche - I put puddles of very wet watercolor paint in the middle and used a short straw to blow the paint outward - this is a really fun thing to do and is actually a technique that some Chinese watercolorists use quite a bit - they are so skilled at this technique that they can create animals and flowers with their blowings. The photo was taken when we lived in the Bahamas - have I mentioned how much I love the ocean and the beach?! LOL! These flowers are actually vintage velvet - a lucky find. The brass piece is packaging from something unknown - it just looked cool to me and I just had to save it - I actually had a couple of these and used one once before on a layout.

Hope you come over and check out the other Prima layouts by the DT and also check out the new members of the DT who were announced today on the Galblog!

Thanks for reading and see you soon