Art Journal

I have finally gotten around to putting pictures of my art journal pages on my blog! These first two pages I actually drew and then colored in with Copic markers and Pan Pastels. The basic ideas for the pictures came from the very talented Joanne Sharpe. I absolutely love her work! She has been a real inspiration to us! The rest are different collages. This next picture of my "little stars" are six of my eight grandchildren. We had two babies added to our family a couple of months ago.

My mom, sister Carolyn and I have still been getting together every first Saturday of the month to make art together which I have thoroughly enjoyed. This is such a fun hobby for us!

New Babies!

We are so excited to have two cute new grandsons in our family! Julie and Adams's little Evan was born on September 1st. (He is on the right in the picture.) Adam was in Army basic training so Amy and I got to be there with Julie for the birth. Amy got to cut the cord and I got to help give Evan his first bath. It was such a neat experience! He is such a little cutie!
Ten days later on September 11th, Jacob and Mary's little Scott was born. The doctor couldn't get him to turn around correctly so they had to take him C-section, but Mary is recovering very quickly. These two are so cute and we just love them!
We also found out this week that Danny and Courtney's baby who is due March 5th is a GIRL! That will be 2 granddaughters and 7 grandsons! We are so excited to get another girl!
Having grandchildren is just the greatest! Robert and I love children so much and it's amazing how much love we have for each of our grandchildren. Sometimes I really miss my children when they were little and could hold them and take care of them and know where they were all the time! But it is wonderful to know and love them now as adults too. It's just a good thing that we still get to have little children in our lives with our grandchildren!

Kitchen Table Memories

It's amazing the memories that can come from seeing an old kitchen table!
Several years ago I was called to be a visiting teacher/home teacher with Robert. This is when I met a very dear lady named Lila "Jo" Wade and her family. Robert had been visiting her for probably about 15 years before that and had become very good friends with her. When I first walked into her living room I saw a table set up with a puzzle-in-progress on it. I kept looking at that table and realized it was the exact style of table that I had grown up with most of my childhood. What a lot of memories came pouring back! I remembered my family all sitting around it every night for dinner, eating my after-school snack of graham crackers and milk while doing my homework, seeing Dad sitting there paying bills every month, seeing mom working on her Relief Society lessons, etc. My sisters and I always hoped to be able to sit in the middle of the table on either of the sides so that we could put our feet on the bar underneath!
Last year I had the idea of asking if I could borrow the table for a night so that my mom, sisters, daughters, and I could have our Book Club sitting around it. Lila Wade said yes and it was very fun to have that night of memories with my family.
Well, dear Lila passed away last month after having been in poor health for many years. Robert and I will really miss seeing her every month. It is very sad to lose her, but we know that she is now able to walk around and do so many things that she couldn't do here anymore. We know that she is back with her husband who she lost many years ago, and with other family members. And that sweet family of hers said that they wanted me to have that kitchen table, which is so very generous of them. I keep worrying that other family members will want it, but they said no one did. What a kind gift for me to treasure!

Altered Book Pages

Thanks to Pam Carriker and her new book Art at the Speed of Life, I have been having so much fun working on pages in my altered book. Pam has the greatest ideas and I love her style and colors.

I've been using liquid acrylics as well as Pan Pastels to do these pages.

James C. Christensen

One of my very favorite artists for many years has been James C. Christensen. I absolutely love his magical fantasy paintings. He does such wonderful detail work with much symbolism which I love. What a great artist! These are two of my favorites: College of Magical Knowledge and Rhymes and Reasons. The words over the door of the College mean "knowledge is power". And how fun it is to pick out the different nursery rhymes in the second painting!

I don't have any Christensen prints other than glued together puzzles which are fading, but I have several of his books that are so fun to look through. What a great talent he is!

Hand Zentangle

This is a new Zentangle design I made to add to my altered book. I traced my hand, wrote in the words, and then drew in the rest of the hand. Can you say "serious Zentangle addiction"?!

Zentangled

Well, I have really gotten into this Zentangle that I didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago! It is so fun! I love the look of it on colored paper shaded in with white. I've gotten some great books on the subject and I'm having a great time trying out all these new patterns. There are many videos on Youtube.com that have been really helpful too.

These Hands

These hands held me when I was just a newborn baby and played with me in my playpen. These hands built our house and dressers and little rocking chairs and my built-in room. These hands baptized and confirmed me. These hands gave wonderful hugs and strong handshakes. These hands operated the controls of airplanes both small and very large. These hands took care of the finances at home, at the bank, and at the Church. These hands took such good care of our yard and grew an amazing vegetable garden. These hands belong to my dear father who I love so much. Thinking about my Dad today.

Zentangle

My new discovery and obsession! We made some of these stamped and doodled cards in my last ATC class and one of the ladies told me it looked like Zentangle, which I had never heard of. So I came home from class and looked it up on the internet. Wow! It's a whole new art form that is really fun!

Zentangle is the art of creating beautiful images with repetitive patterns and it is very relaxing while increasing focus and creativity. There are a whole group of people "out there" who are trained teachers and they do workshops showing how to make all kinds of beautiful patterns. And I just thought it was doodling! Little did I know what a great art form this is! There are several books on the subject, a couple of which I bought, and they are incredible! These ATC cards below are the samples I did for the class. The card at the top is called a tile- 3 1/2" square, which they make in their classes. Lots of fun!

Latest Creations

These are some of the lastest cards and ATC's I have made for Stamp Club and the class I teach.

New Kitchen!

Out with the old kitchen, and in with the new! After 31 years in our house, it was time to get a new and improved kitchen. The cabinets were falling apart. If you opened a drawer too far, you'd better watch out because it might fall on your toes! And the icky old kitchen carpeting (not a smart thing to put in a kitchen!) just had to go.

On Saturday, April 19th, Danny, Steven, Jacob, and Greg all showed up to help us with the demolition. Even little Mason and Gavin were helping to haul stuff out to the truck. Other than Jacob almost being electricuted, it all went well! We were just going to let our contractor, Dave Ridd who's my second cousin, do the demolition, but our boys wanted to come and do it. We were very grateful for that because it saved us a lot of money.

Goodbye to the old cabinets!

Our new kitchen only took two weeks to finish, which is really good. We were told it usually takes three or four weeks. Dave and his workers did a really great job. We ate a lot of frozen, microwavable food (yuck!) in our little make-shift kitchen downstairs and went out to dinner several times. We're very glad that it is finished.

We really love our new kitchen!