Memory Mason Jar

Maddy made this adorable little project at the weekend. It's a mason jar with a decorated tag and colored post-it notes inside with her favorite memories so far for the year. At New Year she plans to open it up and read them:)

Maddy's Pillow



Maddy is so creative! She found this idea on line and did such a beautiful job of it first time!

 

 

She is full of creative ideas for her bedroom. This year is going to be exciting - I'll keep a camera handy:)

My painted owl pumpkin :)

I love all things Alisa Burke at the moment :). Her blog is jam-packed full of creative inspiration (link here!) and I was lucky enough to attend one of her classes a couple of years ago and she's a really nice person too :). She did a fantastic post this year linking past pumpkin tutorials (link here!) and they are all so totally gorgeous! I really like the idea of a pumpkin that lasts a bit longer than just for Halloween so I painted one this year and I'm going to see how long it survives as a table decoration outside.

Mike gives it a week :)

Cards and more cards...

Been making tons of new cards lately...

 

The pinwheels are my favorite!

No sew knotted blankets

Inspired by her cousin, Ali, Maddy wanted to make a fleece knotted blanket. Her very first one turned out so beautifully...

 

...that she couldn't wait to make another one with Mya...:)

 

Great job girls!

Bleach painted shoes!

Maddy and I found this craft idea on the amazing Alisa Burke's blog (link here!). I was really thrilled with how mine came out!

 

It was really simple. I bought some imitation TOMS at the local drugstore...

...and doodled on them with a paintbrush dipped in bleach...

 

 

I love them!!

 

Getting my Donna fix!

It's been way too long since I had a class with my artist she-ro Donna Downey (Donna's blog here!). I was so happy that she was going to be in Florida and booked two classes at She Scrapbooks in The Villages to get my fix while I can :). The first class was "Paint like an Artist"...

 

I was really nervous about this class in particular - blank canvases and group settings are really outside of my comfort zone - but I knew Donna would be great as always and help me through...:). 

 

 

The whole process of adding layers upon layers was really fun and I went from this...

 

 

...to this!!

 

 

I love my piece and the experience was really rewarding and liberating. I can't wait to try this out with Madison and it's a great way to repurpose old canvases too :)

 

 The next class in the afternoon was "PanPastel Painting"...

 

 

This class was really different and I got to try out a whole new medium. PanPastels will definitely be something I'll work with again. I love how they blend and the colors are so vibrant...

 

 

Thank you to my family for making arrangements to make sure that I could be there and get my creative fill. And of course to the amazing Donna for being a constant source of inspiration :)

Happy Father's Day!

Weekend Craftfest!

I had a great weekend with Madison making art for her bedroom. She made this absolutely beautiful tree and I added the word...inspire...

 

I was also inspired by how much I don't want to spend $180 on art work from PB Teen and I thought I'd have a go at this one myself...

 

 

We picked the word "dream" (since we have a stamp for that:)) and filled a canvas that we had painted white...

 

 

We painted the middle section with some more white, and brushed the dust off the cricut and used the letters as a stencil...

 

And for the third picture we used a deer stencil inspired by the fabulous Christy Tomlinson (Christy's blog here)! We arranged the final collection on the top of Maddy's desk. Look how fantastic it looks!!...

 

 

Cheaper, better and so much more rewarding than a trip to the mall. And great bonding time too. Such a lovely, craftsy day :)

Recycled cards!

I'm determined to make all of the family birthday cards for this year. For the latest batch I used exclusively offcuts of paper - I always feel so proud when I've been able to make treasure out of trash and I love how these came out :)

 

Home sweet home...

I love our new home and can't beleive it's been six months since we moved already. On the one hand, I feel like I've lived here forever - on the other I still walk around in awe that I am lucky enough to wake up every day in this beautiful home. I really need to start putting art on the walls now that most of the basics are taken care of - but before I do that I wanted to make a little something to remember our first proper home by. The place where our baby took her first steps, where we danced to Frank Sinatra on Saturday mornings. My soft place to fall for over 12 years...

I got the idea from somewhere on Pinterest - can't remember where so forgive me for not giving proper credit where it's due. It's a cute idea, right? I'll never forget you Tremont Drive:)

Maddy's Vision Board

Maddy has an amazing teacher for her Leadership class at Middle school. She assigned the kids a project which started out by having them write down their lifetime dreams. Then they derived "SMART" goals for 2013 that would support their success. The class was asked to visually represent their 2013 goals in a board that they could display on a wall to keep their focus on their goals throughout the year. With the help of Alisa Burke's beautiful tags (available for free download here), Maddy put together a stunning board using actual keys to symbolize the 'keys' to her success. My daughter is so stinkin' creative :)

Getting my craft on in 2013!

I can't believe this is my first blog post on here since September! In between moving city and moving house twice, the legs have completely fallen off any creative activities. I can't tell you how much I've missed it and find it hard to believe that at one point I was creating something new almost every day. Now that we are all settled into our new home, I am slowly starting to organize my massive hoard of art supplies so that when I have the time and feel 'in the mood' I can act on it without a whole big performance to find what I need :) I'm making progress finally!

Living a creative life is really important to me - regardless of how much talent I may be lacking or how well things turn out, it's important to me because I have this whole theory for leading my most joyful life. Basically, I divide my life into what I call my 4 "zones" and I have symbols for each as follows:

• Heart with Wings (Creativity/Spirituality)
• Stick person (Health, Body and Activity)
• House (Home and Community)
• Money (Finances and Work)

Each year I set a 'vision' and make specific goals for each of my zones. At the beginning of each week I draw this little visual in my planner and set objectives for the week in each zone to stay on track:

 

 

The picture reminds me of the balance I need in my life. I think of my zones as like the legs on a stool. With 4 progressing well I'm feeling completely stable and joyful! With 3 zones going well I can still manage. With only 2, the stool no longer stands and that's when I struggle too. I've been using my zones (and the visual) to keep my life in balance for a couple of years now and it works perfectly for me!!!

 

One of my goals in my Creativity/Spirituality zones this year is to make something and blog about it on here at the end of every month. For my first entry I thought I'd start out by making some cards. They are really simple to do and always so gratefully received:)

 

 

I hope that every time I send a handmade card, the person who gets it knows that I truly made it with love. I'm grateful to have so many people in my life to make cards for :). Life is good x

Eyeball is craftsy :)

We went over to Eileen's at the weekend and she's been getting busy making pictures for the baby room. Just adorable :)

 

I can't wait to get creative again once we get moved next week!!

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 :)