July 2nd

Here's my Doc-u-ment 31 for July 2nd:

Don't know how well you can see the peacock image in this wrought iron fence but I thought it was so cool. Art in unexpected places, should look for it more often. This wrought iron fence is surrounding a large tree in our new pediatrician's office. The tree is filled with butterflies, birds, stuffed monkeys and snakes. Surrounding the tree is "water" with stuffed rainbow fishy poking out along with river rock and the like. But since I like peacock's so much, that's what caught my attention the most.

My Document 31

Well let's see how well I can keep up blogging and journaling this month. I decided to take up this challenge:

http://lostnfound.typepad.com/thestudio/2008/07/doc-u-ment-31.html

So far I have a picture for each day and most of my journaling but I haven'e made my book yet. Started but not there.

So here's a snippet of July 1st:

I decided I needed a break from regular household duties and declared it "me" week. With the Document 31 challenge I decided to declare it "me" month. Unfortunately some home duties can't be avoided but I will be spending more time chillin' just for me. So I'm moseying along at my pace. So today I'm poking about the house, got some extra rest and cleaned off my art desk. The picture of the day is Shadow one of my fur babies. She's laying next to my desk chair and just luxuriated in a round of pets from mom. Here's to a luxuriating month of "me".

Envelope Catch-up

These are my envelope creations for the past couple of months. I'm enjoying the challenge of trying to come up with ideas to decorate the envelope with and try and match the stamps. I always duplicate my envelopes in case I really mess one up and you get to see the no address ones. March and April I didn't have enough stamps to match the envelopes thanks to the PO not getting in new stamps because of the price increase. Now to come up with May's design.

Graduation and Prom

We never do things conventionally around here.
My daughter Shyloh is celebrating her Senior year and graduation this month.
She designed her photo for her graduation invitation and mom matted it and added some bling. Here is her prom picture. Mom wasn't the best with the camera considering it was a week after my shoulder surgery but it will have to do. This weekend I'm heading to our new scrapbook store to make her a graduation book. We are absolutely the proud parents. She went to the Oklahoma Scholastic Media awards recently and took 1st and 2nd place in sports photography, 2nd place in sports journalism and the big award....Oklahoma Photographer of the Year at the high school level. Then she received a $2000 scholarship to the prestigious Oklahoma Art Institute's summer program where she will get to spend 2 weeks with a master photographer learning more about her favorite passion. She also attends technical school and took gold at the local level of Skills USA and took 2nd at state competition in business. This gives her a 600 hour scholarship in her program. She is graduating high school with art and journalism honors. Awesome!

Black and White

I started working on a series of black and white designs after seeing several great examples on the web. A couple of these are card "lifted" and changed a hair to suit my stamps and what I envisioned for the card. Not showing well on the scan is the rhinestones in the center of the dandelions and that I used black Stickles on the dots of the second card. I couldn't resist adding the bird from my quickcuts die. A friend had given me the Formal Affair paper collection by Scrapworks for Christmas and it has some wonderful black and white and black and cream patterns in it, so I've been working with some of these papers for my cards. I have a few more ideas to work on but I've made a good start here I think.

Back on the Creative Track

Well, I'm finally feeling better and looking forward to updating my blog a bit more regularly now that my shoulder is fixed. Yeah! It's amazing how much pain a simple bone spur can cause. I'm thankful that I have a good doctor and he scheduled surgery to take care of it before it caused tearing of the rotator cuff. It will be another 4 weeks before I'm more active but I'm already doing short bits of creating. So my goal this week is to start posting new pics on Thursday this week. Today and tomorrow are filled with check-ups and PT and grocery shopping with help of course. Another project I'm debating is weeding out and reorganizing my supplies again. Seems to be a yearly bug but when you've got limited space, it's either work with it or it becomes a disaster quick. Hubby wants the breakfast nook back for a small table and chairs. We haven't had a dining room table in a little over 6 years now but with the kids getting older, I think he feels we can sit and chat sometimes over a meal or snack. He's preferred his meals in front of the TV since we married after working 12 and 14 hour days so he could zone out. It's kind of sweet that we are planning more ways to spend time on us. And we did the requisite family meals when the kiddos were younger, then he went and turned on the TV :0) Family meals now are usually reserved for holidays and birthdays. Until the shoulder is stronger, organizing is limited to the planning stages. Since our retreat had to be canceled due to my shoulder and being short a couple of participants for the retreat center, I can't wait until Saturday! We have a brand new scrap store in town and I'm going to the all day crop for National Scrapbooking Day. Love the new store and the owner Leslie is so friendly and wonderful! I like shopping where I feel welcome. And since May is my birthday month, what better way to celebrate then signing up for a couple of new classes. So I've already treated myself to my birthday presents. :o) Plus I got in a handful of new stamps to do some new design work. Designing is half the fun. So after I update some of my work for the past couple of months, there will be some fresh work arriving soon.

Cool Backgrounds

While perusing blogs of favorite artists, I came across a cheesecloth background technique. I thought cool and tried it but wasn't thrilled. Not wanting to give up on the cheesecloth background entirely, I got out my trusty color sprays, in this case Radiant Rains. The top half of the picture shows the first spray through the cheescloth. The bottom half shows a fresh sheet of card stock that's been brayered with the wet cheesecloth after the first spray. Both are equally intriguing but the bottom is my favorite.