Almost there...

Tomorrow is the big day! The Artful Blogging publication will hit the newsstands. So many wonderful bloggers in there. I am proud to be one of them. Feeling the buzz growing in blogland with more and more posts as people get their hands on this fun issue. Welcome to all the new folks that stop by my blog. Hope you enjoy your visit! Also a reminder that everyone is invited to my Artful Blogger party a week from tomorrow, Wednesday, August 8th here on my blog! Details here, more to come. Always up to something in ArtsyMama's house. Here's my latest. I feel a lot of new things brewing inside. Want to shake things up a bit and try some new things with my art. Love this recent post from Anahata. She is so inspiring!! She said, "For me this is always the beginning of a new year. I feel especially as if I am reviewing things. Making mental notes. Visioning for the future. I feel a sense of freshness and some staleness that has to go. This is my regeneration time...I feel new directions budding and new desires." I feel the same way right now. Who knows where it will lead... New wallpaper packs are available in Donna's etsy shop. That's always something to get excited about! She gets her sweet little hands on the most amazing wallpaper...and shares it with us!! Wohoo! Starting to use these already in my collages. They're fabulous!

Have a great day!

My altered life...

Look at this!!! Just take a good close look. The craftmanship, the colors, the style...WOW is all I can say. The lovely and talented Lilli made this ArtsyMama bag for me. I couldn't love it more! She is selling them in her etsy shop and does custom orders. Run over and get yourself one. Thanks a million, Lilli!
I continue to be a crafting machine. I couldn't be having any more fun. Loving every second of it. I have gathered bits and pieces of this and that from estate sales for so long and now everything is coming together. My creativity lets loose like a flood gate after the kids go to bed and I've been altering everything in sight. I will have these embellished jars at my Junk Bonanza booth.

Also this Dream piece. Notice all the flowers from my new stash!Made some more ribbons. These all have cute little birdies on them. I really like how they turned out!Hope you're having a great weekend!

Creative bonanza...

My muse is buzzing....here are last nights projects for my Junk Bonanza booth. Mini-inspiration boards made with a vintage tray covered with fabulous barkcloth and old clothing buttons with magnets on the back to place little bits of this and that to inspire.My new business card:)Altered composition books made with old Raggedy Ann and Andy pages and fun little vintage treasures.My son is going through a rough time lately, so he's been very challenging. I think my coping mechanism is to keep busy! What a great stress relief art is!

One woman's junk....

... is another woman's ART! I've been busy crafting away with all my estate sale finds, continuing to expand my stash for my booth at Junk Bonanza. The hanger above uses some of my vintage flowers that I found last weekend. The tulle is also vintage and such a lovely fall color. It hangs like a shall on the hanger and is gathered at the waist with a black velvet ribbon.
Then I ventured into the realm of altered ribbons. Completely inspired by Kimla Kay and her amazing ribbons. I am fortunate enough to own a few of her gorgeous ribbons from our swap so I gave it a try. These are much harder than they look and quite time consuming. A totally new media for me. Kimla's ribbons are really spectacular. I could use some more practice:) It's really a challenge to get all the components in balance. The face of the ribbons, plus all the trim that hangs. I used to be a competitive swimmer and recently went through my awards box when my sister was in town. I found a few ribbons that I could part with, which made it all the more personal when making art out of them.

They truned out...well, interesting...but it's all in good fun!

Not your average librarian...

Last night at the library I had the pleasure of teaching a mixed media journal class for teens. I made the journal above during the class to show some techniques. I was really excited about teaching this and brought tons of my own supplies to play with. I talked about all different types and styles of journals and showed this and this as examples along with a plethora of my favorite books. I talked about blogging as a form of journaling and showed my Artful Blogging article. It was at this time that one of the mothers piped up and said, "You sure aren't your average libriaran!" hehe!! I explained that I loved blogging so much because I'm definitely a "get your hands dirty" kind of art journaler, so I make my art, then photograph it and post it on my blog. It's the best of both hands-on and digital art!Three girls showed up (it was a hot summer evening) and they had some journaling experience so they dove right in. It was so much fun. I showed them some new, very simple techniques like painting onto bubble wrap and then stamping it down for making backgrounds. Their creativity took off and they made some pretty fun books, as you see here.We stuffed the inside of the books with lots of different types of paper and envelopes. They had some great ideas for themes. One of them was going to use the journal to chronicle her school year. Another was going to use it for doodling and writing notes.

Don't you agree that they turned out fabulous!?! This got me very excited for teaching in Cape Cod at JustBe...Connected in October. The girls loved the class and gave me big hugs at the end:) The mothers encouraged me to teach more of these classes and they wanted to participate themselves. What a fun experience to teach something that I'm so passionate about myself and see all of the amazing creations that others make. I love my job!

A new stash....and a winner!!!

I went to a lovely little estate sale of a woman who is in her 80's and was clearing some "clutter" out of her life. Boy did I ever luck out! I bought two BOXES of vintage millinery flowers. Here is a snippet of some of my new stash above. I also bought another box of gorgeous vintage trims and other supplies (below) and a couple of vintage hats covered in lovely flowers. Usually when I go to estate sales it is someone who has recently passed away and the family is clearing out their belongings. It was so much fun to meet the woman and talk with her about the gift shop she used to own and had all these wonderful things left over. I told her what I will be making with all of her wonderful goodies. She was thrilled....and so was I!!!!
Vicki of This Art that makes me Happy sent me this wonderful packet of goodies when I won her giveaway. Love all the colors here. Thanks so much Vicki!! Speaking of which.......Drum roll please.....

I have a winner to announce myself. I let Chloe do the honors of drawing a name from the 164 comments for the primere issue of Artful Blogging magazine. I'll probably be giving away another copy for those that participate in my Artful Blogger Party, so be thinking about your post for that. Without further ado, the winner is.....

Stacy!!!!

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Artful Blogger pre-party...

Once again your kindness and support is overwhelming. Thank you so much for all your jubilation and praise over my first time being published. You can still enter the drawing for a copy of the Artful Blogging magazine here. Just a reminder that we are going to celebrate this fun publication and have a Artful Blogger Party here on the ArtsyMama blog on Wednesday, August 8th. It will run much like the tea party that I had awhile back. See here to get a glimse of that wonderful party. I will post the morning of the 8th to begin the party. Whichever blogs would like to participate (anyone can-the more the merrier!) will create a related post on thier blog. I was thinking that each participating blog could post a quick tutorial on making some sort of artsy type craft. We could all skip around and get tons of fun ideas and try new techniques. Wouldn't that be fun!? That gives you 3 weeks to think about what you may want to post. I will then update with links to the participating blogs throughout the day on the 8th on my original post. Last time this was a huge success and over 75 blogs had parties of their own and we had tons and tons of mingling bloggers all over the world attend. This time is sure to be bigger and better than ever!! Here are some fun finds from my trip. The colors of this barkcloth are divine. I found this cute beaded basket for $1 at a thrift store. What a deal! The color of the flowers on this hat are just so yummy I just had to add it to my collection.
I've been dutifully working on goodies for my booth at the JunkMarket ladies Junk Bonanza in September. I'm so excited to see it all set up. Just figuring out what to put in my booth and how I want to present all my items is a creative exercise in itself. I keep thinking of more things to make and sell. My first project was to make these dresses. I used more fallish colors on these, added vintage trim and flowers, velvet leaves and topped each dress with a wonderful piece of vintage jewelry. I really like how they turned out.

Hope you have an artful day!

Huge excitement!!

While I was away I received my copy of the new Artful Blogging magazine published by Stampington. This is my first time being published and I am over-the-top thrilled to get 4 whole pages with an article and tons of pics from my blog. This is a dream come true!

Here I am with Chloe showing off the large picture of her that made it into the magazine. It will hit newstands on August 1st and let me tell you this magazine is absolutely packed with eye candy and really fabulous writing. Dozens of amazing bloggers are featured. The articles and the pictures really capture our little niche of blogland. I will be looking to this for inspiration for months to come! Congrats to everyone in it:) I will be having a drawing to give away one copy of this amazing new publication, before you can buy it in the store. If you leave a comment on this post (make sure to include your email), your name will be put in the drawing. You have until this Friday, July 20th at midnight to enter. Good luck!

Up north...

I'm back!! I had a great week in northern Minnesota with my family. Nice to spend some time on the beach, enjoying boat rides, s'mores and time together.

Here's ArtsyMama and family:)The kids got up at the crack of dawn a few days...literally! I was rewarded for being up this early with this amazing sunrise and mist coming off the lake. Of course we cooked up some good ol' fashioned s'mores. Yum!
Here is my sister and myself. She lives in San Diego, so spending quality time re-connecting is always a treat.Just plain havin' fun!The view from our cabin at sunset. I had a huge pile of mail waiting for me when I got back. What fun! This banner above with my daughters picture and name is from Kris Hurst. I ordered the delightful Magic banner below and she made me this special banner for my daughters room. They are both just amazing. Love her work. Thanks so much Kris! I have some more goodies to share that I got in the mail and also from some antique stores on my trip. More soon!

Goin' on a trip...

Well, tomorrow I head out on our family vacation. My sister, her husband and kids are in town from San Diego. My hubby, kids and I will head out with them and my parents and stay up at a cabin on the lake "up north" as they say here in Minnesota. We went to the same place last year. I plan to bring my altered book again that I began there last year. So I'll be out of the blogging loop for a week. I'll miss you all!

Before I leave I have big news!! I've been accepted to be a vendor at JunkMarket Junk Bonanza! Woohoo! This is gonna be so much work...but soooo much fun:) It runs September 6th-8th in Medina, Minnesota. A western suburb of the Twin Cities. If you're in the area stop by and say hello!

Finally, I leave you with a weeks worth of eye candy. Remember this book (below) when I sent it off? Here is the sign in page and the first page that I did.
My mushroom girl layout.
I did the work on the left, then it traveled to Lilia's gorgeous studio.
She did these pages. Stunning!
...and the left page. Then it traveled to Melissa's house. Here's her wonderful layout. Love these colors!!
She did the work on the left. Off it went to Cassondra's new home.
Love Cassondra's work. Fab!! She worked on the left page and then sent it off to Julie out in Utah. Wow! Absolutely gorgeous!! Love this last page she did with an Alice theme. Then it came home to me! I will treasure this. Thanks girls for all the great art work! This round robin was so much fun.

Have a great week everyone!