The BIG 40!

Since Clare hasn't been very craftsy at all lately I was really happy to see that my fave artist in the whole world, Donna Downey, was coming to The Villages to teach a few classes. I signed up for the BIG 40!

6 x 8" art journal - Building Mixed-Media backgrounds - 5 hour workshop
Donna's website says about this class:

"WARNING: THIS WORKSHOP MAY LEAD TO INSOMNIA CAUSED BY IDEA OVERLOAD :)
Since I am now 40, I thought what better way to celebrate this new decade than by sharing my favorite top 40 tips, tricks and techniques for building better art journals and mixed-media backgrounds. Like all great things building a strong foundation or base for your ideas is important, mixed-media and art journaling are no different. This workshop is going to put all these ideas at your fingertips as you create your own personal reference book for mixed media backgrounds and techniques and fill the pages of your NEW art journal. Each student will receive and work in one of my newly released art journals. the journals heavyweight pages are perfect for layering, paints, inks, collages, PanPastels, paper, etc and I plan to do all that and more in this workshop! We will build over 40 techniques and pages worth of ideas using several different wet and dry mediums filling one incredible idea book that will surely get your mind spinning with ideas!"

It sold out really quickly at She Scrapbooks as expected...

I learned some fancy tricks...:)

And Donna was as delightful and inspirational as ever :)

Smokin' Donna...

It was so nice to get my craft on again and as always when I see Donna - I feel so inspired, Thank you, Donna :)

Crafting for the new home...

In between starting my new job 6 months ago, and moving to a new house in a new city, finding time to do anything has been a real challenge. As a result (and due to the fact that half of my craft stash is still in boxes (!)) I have been seriously remiss in doing anything creative for some time. I can feel the difference in my life and I miss it dreadfully :(. The hardest part is the fact that things will likely remain this way for a little while at least until our 'destination' home is built and I can get a bit better organized.

That said, I have realized that designing the home of my dreams is in itself a very creative adventure. I spend hours pinning things on Pinterest and daydreaming about what colors will go in every room. I've already decided that I'm ditching everything that isn't going to coordinate perfectly. But there are some things that I didn't want to lose completely and they were really just the wrong color...so I thought I'd have a stab at repainting them.

I'm pretty pleased with how the canvas and vase came out. And they will match perfectly :)