My little girl is 6

It's official, Hannah is now 6 years old. After counting the days...and days...and days...(she's been counting since November), she is finally 6. We had a nice little party with family and friends. We chose to do some art projects instead of party games. One of the things we did was make some shrink plastic charms etc. They colored them in with Sharpies, and some of the adults cut them out, then they got to watch them shrink up in the toaster oven. Lastly, they got to string them onto necklaces with a bunch of other beads. None of them had ever done this before so they thought it was pretty neat to see them shrink up tiny.
Along with Hannah's 6th birthday, came her first two wheeled bicycle. Granted, it has four right now, but she was pretty excited to have a two-wheeler. She has a little friend that just moved into our neighborhood this weekend, so she is really looking forward to riding bikes with her friend.
She is pretty tentative on it right now, and utilizes its brakes quite often. That's my girl, she's always been pretty careful. Which thankfully means no broken bones or stitches yet, but hopefully it won't take her to long to gain enough confidence to ride at a walking or even jogging pace. I'm looking forward to getting a little exercise on our walks.

Crafty Secrets Bird Lovers Class

This is a brand new class that will be held for the first time at Stampin' Cat Studio, June 28th. This little birdhouse is made mostly with products from Crafty Secrets (thus the name of the class, LOL). Embellished with a few products from Maya Road, including my favorite metal blossoms. And of course, we will be using Ranger Industries Distress Products also. It's adorable from the outside, but the inside is where the fun really begins. The inside houses some great tags we will make, complete with interchangeable sentiments. Cute and functional, you can't get any better than that. If you live in the area, go check out the sample in person, at Stampin' Cat.

On top of making a really fun project, you get tons of great product to take home with you. Including the Bird Lovers Large Clear Stamp set, a set of Birds & Botanicals Images and Journal Notes, half a pad of the beautiful double-sided cardstock in the Earthy Paper Pad, the great Chipboard Folding House set, and a sheet of Feathered Friends Cotton Scraps. You will have TONS of product left over for future projects.

Paintable Fun

I finally got around to playing with the Prima Clear Paintables, using Blending Solution in a water brush to paint on the alcohol ink, as shown on the Prima video. It is so much fun. So easy to work with, and they turn out great. After I was finished with this one, I layered it over a tag, stamped a sentiment on the front using a gold Paint Dabber, and added a couple of Maya Roads metal blossoms. The little one is painted with Wild Plum Alcohol Ink, and I stamped on the larger one with a stamp from my Nottinghill set by 7 Gypsies. If you live in the area and would like to see this in person just stop by Stampin' Cat Studio on Wednesday. Between 3-7pm, I will be there doing a demo of this technique. If you can't make it to Stampin' Cat but are interested in learning more about this technique, just click here and go watch Primas video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwaY8ipF3MM
Until next time...

Kodomo fun

This is all I can show you for now of what I've been working on lately, but I am having tons of fun playing with products by Kodomo Inc. These are cards made on a base of wood. If you want to see the kind of wood products that Kodomo Inc. sells, you can check out their website here: http://kodomoinc.com/woodbox.html
Let me just say, I was amazed at how wonderfully these wood products can be stamped on. Perfect image every single time. If you are very familiar with Ranger products, you might recognize the various colors above as belonging to the Distress line. I love my Distress Inks.

Huge thanks to Christine Adolph!

There is a wonderful trend going around the papercrafting community. Well, I don't know if it's happening enough to truly call it a trend, but still...it's happening, and it's wonderful. Sometimes when you are designing, and working in the industry you get a large collection of supplies built up which are taking up your precious space. Ok, even people who don't work in the industry sometimes have that problem. LOL. When it is becomes necessary to pare down your stash of supplies, a great way to do it is to Stash it Forward. The idea is to pass some of what you've been blessed with on to someone who may not be able to just go buy all that stuff themselves.
I was recently visiting Christine Adolph's blog and she was having a Stash it Forward giveaway, so I decided to enter the name of a wonderful lady I know from my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group at church. Jody loves crafting and has helped me out with the crafts for our MOPS group. I was so excited to find out that she was one of the winners! A couple of days ago I received the package from Christine, and I had gone through my own supplies to pick out some more great items for Jody to enjoy. At our MOPS meeting yesterday, I got to surprise Jody with all of her new supplies. So fun!!! Thanks Christine for making this happen. It was a blessing. Now to completely change gears. My father-in-law built us this wonderful bird "hotel" as my neighbor called it. It used to be by our front door, but I noticed that some skittish little birds were interested in it, so I moved it into our backyard, and tucked it into a little corner beside a window. Now we get to watch the little birds build their nest without disturbing them. They are so cute, they fly over with these huge pieces of straw, and usually have to try many times before they actually get it into the birdhouse. It's been lots of fun to watch.

This fun, distressed tile was created with Embossing Paste and Crackle Paint. It will be part of my Decorative Elements Paste Embossing Class. Every project in that class incorporates my favorite products (Ranger Distress Products) with embossing paste.
Yesterday was a long, but fun day. My husband was playing in a sand volleyball tournament, so the kids and I were on our own for the day. We went to watch my very talented cousin compete in an invitational track meet. Maria (above with my two kids) is now a freshman and gets to compete for her highschool. In past years she has competed at the annual Hershey meet in Pennsylvania, and we are looking forward to seeing where her talent takes her in the future. It is really fun to watch her race. She is still healing up from a recent injury, but still ran a very good race, missing first place in the 100m race by only four hundredths of a second. Congratulations Maria!

After sitting in the sun for a fair amount of the day, my kids were exhausted. I didn't even realize until we got home, that Hannah and I were looking a little bit pink. I guess we aren't used to sunshine, LOL.

Wild Thing!

Can you tell he's been playing with Daddy? He gets that wild look in his eye when Daddy gets him all hyper. How could anyone look at this face and not love it. He is such a blessing in my life, and I thank God for him all the time.

Are You Sure It's April???

So, I woke up this morning and opened the door to head to Portland and teach classes, and look what greeted me. Maybe to some of you this isn't that unusual, but in Oregon, in April...What in the world? This is crazy! Anyway, I headed to The Peddler's Pack with beautiful snow falling for a GREAT day of classes. These ladies are enjoying the Texture Tiles Sampler Class...they look very focused, don't they. You can't tell very well from the picture how big that pile of class instructions is, but in a four hour class there is alot to tell. Now this is what I LOVE to see!!! A happy, smiling face, and inky, messy fingers. Aren't they beautiful!?! Yes, I mean the faces, and the projects. What a great bunch of ladies! If you scroll up to the top of these class photos, look for the lovely lady in the red shirt...that's Michele. Bless her heart, Michele stayed between classes and helped me clean up from the first class and get things out for the next. I owe her big time. Thanks Michele, and thanks to each of you ladies, it was a joy to spend the day with you.

Ir-resist-able Art Backgrounds

The Paper Inspired Retreat is coming up quickly. One of the classes that I will be teaching at that retreat is Ir-resist-able Art Backgrounds. In that class we will be using Ranger Color Wash along with lots of other great stuff including(but not limited to) Leafing Pens, Heidi Swapp Masks, the Palette Gluepad, and Perfect Pearls. So today I got out my Ranger Color Wash dyes to play around with. As soon as I got this background piece finished I knew exactly which stamp set I wanted to use with it. Stampin' Cat Studio loaned me a new stamp set from Kodomo Inc. to try out, and the designs are just beautiful. After cutting up my background piece to make this card, I still have lots of beautiful paper left to make more projects. I love how the stamp that I decided to use matches their beautiful ribbon that I just happened to have. Clearly I love that particular design.

Finally, some new photos

I am so excited that Ranger Memory Glass and Memory Glass Frames are available again. I made this neat little necklace using the 1" Frames and Clear Glass. I so wish you could see this in person. The depth created by embossing on different layers of glass is so beautiful. The background stamp is a new one from Kodomo Inc. It was the perfect addition to this piece.
I finally got around to creating another Hexagon book. This one is actually quite similar to the first one, except that I fixed my previous problems of the hinges being to loose. This one can actually be hung up, tossed around, opened and closed without falling apart. I used silk ribbon for the hinges this time, and used three interlocking "hinges" for more stability.
I painted the silk ribbon with the metallic paint dabbers, making them a perfect match for the painted backgrounds. It also ended up being a great match for the nails. I will definately try this again. The ribbon is still flexible when dry and will hold it's shape a little bit. It definately changes the texture of the silk, but I was pleased with the result. It was exactly what I needed in this case. Oh, and isn't that a cute little flower image? It's from my new favorite stamp set, Nottinghill, by 7 Gypsies. Every single image in the set is a winner. I LOVE it.

I can't believe that it's been a week since I last posted. My deepest apologies. I have been hard at work, and I actually have something to show for it. I will share some photos sometime tomorrow. I hear the sun is actually supposed to come out, so I should be able to take some decent photos.
My week has been good, but I am exhausted. My kids have apparently decided that 6am is a great time to wake up. Now I know that some of you probably wake up that early on a regular basis, so you don't have much sympathy for me. But I don't, and it's amazing how much of a difference an additional 45 minutes of good sleep makes. Maybe tomorrow they will sleep in. That would be perfect...sleeping in, and the promise of some sunshine. I just know it, tomorrow is going to be a great day!

Hexagons and Prototypes

Hi there everyone! My friend Lauren has created an amazing project that I would love to share with you. If you've been visiting my blog for awhile, you probably remember the Hexagon book that I created using nails as the hinges.




To revisit that blog entry click here: http://asteiosart.blogspot.com/2008/02/prototype.html




Well Lauren contacted me to ask if she could expand on that idea to create a project made with Prang DAS Air-Hardening Modeling Clay. I've been waiting to see the results, and now they are here. I've got a link to Laurens' blog in the left colum, go visit her blog to get the whole scoop on this beautiful project.