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 :)

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 :)

Ruffle bag...

I saw one of these online and thought I'd have a go at making one for my niece's birthday. She loved it!

It's so nice to have some time to make things again now that the holiday season is over!

Christmas Gifts!!

I actually managed to finish the gifts for the family in time for Christmas! Now they have all been received I can share some of the things that I made :)

A pair of wine bottle lamps for Rita with personalized labels...

An embellished purse for Eileen...

A personalized advent calendar house for Jen, Rich and Mya...

Inspired by the fabulous Etta - "Curious Specimen" ornaments of Gregory and Declan...

And a personalized family wall hanging for Pete and family made from their favorite words and colors...

The responses were so great - I felt like a million dollars! It was really difficult to get them all done in time since we moved house and I started a new job after I had gotten started...but I'm so glad I stuck it out. Think I'll do it again next year. I may need to get started now ;)

Rita's Confirmation Picture

Rita told me recently that her confirmation day was one of the happiest days of her life and that she had never felt so beautiful. It was a really touching story so I wanted to frame a picture of her on that day as a gift. It came out exactly as I had pictured it in my mind and she really loved it which made me really happy ;)

Making gifts

There are a ton of how-tos online for bottle lamps and I love the way that they look. I bought this bottle from Macaroni Grill (it's one of the ones they use to serve water in) and Mike drilled a hole at the bottom using a 1/8" glass drill bit. That was the trickiest part and took about a half an hour. We did lose a couple of bottles along the way and learned that applying any pressure at all with the drill causes them to break :(. The hole is just big enough to stuff Xmas lights inside the bottle, again using a lot of patience :). The finished bottle lamp makes a perfect alternative gift to a bottle of wine and was so pretty we had a hard time parting with it! 

Store bought cards are so expensive these days so I thought it would be a good idea to put together a packet of handmade cards for a full calendar year and package them up as a gift. In this packet I tried to include a variety of different card styles and made 4 birthday, 2 blank, 1 anniversary, 2 thank you, 1 Valentine, and 2 Xmas cards.

I wrapped them up in an organza bow...

And made a little bag to put them in out of this adorable fabric...

 

Now back to making Xmas gifts...remind me next year to get started in about March...;)

Gifts for baby nephews

I decorated some onesies with appliques for my two nephews for their first birthdays.

How-to on Martha Stewart's website here!

An Irish Blessing

I have decided to try and more fully embrace the 'Handmade Pledge!' Basically, that means I'll be either making (or buying handmade) items as gifts (and greetings cards) going forward. I have already made a start on Christmas (and thank goodness since I can already see that it's going to take months to get done:)) and I'm really enjoying the process so far. It feels a lot more personal and regardless of they turn out or how they are received, I hope my recipients all know that my gifts and cards will be made with lots of love :).

For my first gifting challenge I was inspired by this creation by Donna Downey (here) to make this little canvas piece for my nephew, Declan's baptism. I found the Irish blessing online and thought it was perfect! He is only one so a little young for feedback but his parents seem to really like it!

Sundress for Haiti

Project HOPE Art is an organization dedicated to inspire, heal and improve the quality of life for children in need through the creative process of art.

Their website says:

“We believe that there are not words as powerful as a single drawing, sock puppet play, mural, photograph or creative enterprise. Using art as a catalyst for healing and expression we intend to initiate whimsy and wonder while infusing creativity into disaster stricken communities. So often children are not part of the conversation within a hard hit, natural disaster area. We bring their ideas, thoughts and emotions to life in full color regardless of language, creed or custom. We do this using art as the Universal Language."

"Earlier this month, when Project HOPE Art was at Nadine’s orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, it became abundantly clear just how few clothes many of her girls have. The things they do own are very worn at best, some just barely holding together. HOPE Art would like to change this, with a personal touch, by starting a Homemade Dress Drive (link to blog here). We are inviting all seamstresses, beginner or advanced, to make one or more simple sundresses (our goal is 30) which will be hand delivered to the orphanage by the end of the year. This project is being aided by an online pattern company “oliver + s”, who has kindly agreed to let us use their free sundress pattern, which you can download here."

I really enjoyed picking out the fabric for my special little girl in Haiti and although I'm still very much a beginner seamstress but I found this pattern really straightforward and loved the dress that I made:).