in search of the divine…

being out and about recently as noted in my earlier Botticelli post I was inspired by an image of Venus…

using some rubber stamps I got busy layering my pages with lots of paint… gesso… and stamping on tissue paper as well as directly on the page… the stamp on the lower right ended up completely buried but my new cityscape stamp from StampDiva was brand new (a great company with a great stamp selection and very good delivery)…

a snippet of my favorite flimmersterne made a nice halo…

I am joining Yvonne at Meggy’s Way for her Art Journal Journal theme of OUT AND ABOUT...

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” Henry van Dyke

swan song…

finally the red rosin paper art journal I started back in October of 2013 is complete (more about how my gesso and monoprint pages began when you click the link above) …

I made a TAP transfer ironing it on cotton using a German swan image (swans are a favorite of mine for lots of reasons)…

adding bits of tea dyed lace and part of a flimmerstern along with a sweet spray of vintage flowers (some of those blooms also appear on a few pages inside the journal)…

I got out one of my button jars to have a lookie look and found a button with hanging threads that seemed perfect…

after deciding on the smaller poking tool I did a simple in and out tied binding… if you are interested in what’s inside the journal I have links to each of the spreads here…

sharing this for Gill’s wonderful NATURE’S WONDERS theme at Art Journal Journey…

Christmas in July and Celebration T…

this month’s turn of our local altered book round robin gave me a chance to get in the Christmas spirit thanks to my friend Fran’s Christmas themed tip in (more about tip ins here)…

I began by collaging various shades of white paper and old plastered book text onto the front and back of a sturdy piece of watercolor paper (6.50 x 9.75″)…

it was also a chance to get out the glitter to highlight the snow and icicles on a reused greeting card…

some peel and stick plastic icicles worked out nicely over and under the window…

with the first side complete I got busy on the reverse side where I also used part of an old greeting card adding trims and computer generated words…

the postage stamp from my collection fits in with Art Journal Journey’s July “Post & Postage” challenge…

in preparation for our son’s visit home we have been sorting and clearing like crazy which is long overdue here and it was fun how many Christmas bits of this and that appeared so I put them in a basket with Fran’s tip in in mind (and let’s face it in the big scheme of things Christmas will be here again before we know it) …

it is our son’s first time back  home for a visit since he moved to Colorado three years ago AND it was his 27th birthday so we had some celebrating to do…

hope your month is full of fun things to celebrate too ~♥~ I am joining in with Elizabeth’s Altered Book Lover here as well for T Stands for Tuesday

more index cards…

a new month and I am still playing with 3×5 card collages…

above are some background cards I made a while ago that helped get me going…

washi tape on stenciled painted background with catalog image, cigar box paper and a piece of Flimmerstern…

the lady was printed with ink running low in our printer and too good to waste,  stamped book text, striped tissue paper created on top of the ‘coat room check 351‘ card  in the first photo…

created on the black and white card with the house and garden diagram letting the TruBlu label colors lead me using Lumiere paint along with Distress Stains (one of my favorite things these days)…

swirly stamped background with torn pieces from a paper bag that held delicious Grasmere Gingerbread from our trip to the UK in June…

stencil and plaster with some of my favorite decorative tissue papers, music and “Persuasion” book text…

using a few favorite rubber stamps,  sari ribbon and a US postage stamp…

got brave and used all three of these wonderful Swiss stamps from a special friend with a little doodling and stamped ink spots…

I will have a few more cards to share next week…

♥Happy August Dear Ones♥

‘Tea with Marie’…

my talented friend Susan created her first gorgeous altered book for a round robin in our mixed media art group…

you can stop by her blog to see her interesting post on how her book began here…

working on the plain French-English dictionary pages adding lots of layers and embellishments was such a delight…

I highlighted an old French ledger page from The Graphics Fairy with a piece of pretty German napkin that I rubbed with gold gouache…

tiny flowers from a vintage hat I collected decorate a French cocoa label also from The Graphics Fairy…

some French 7Gypsies tissue paper started the background for this page along with a piece of old blue velvet for the edge…

the oval portrait of Marie was from a free digital collage sheet The Graphics Fairy shared back in 2009…

 one of my golden flimmers and some delicate German scrap helped frame Marie…

white gesso, gold gouache, bits of my favorite gold patterned tissue paper, torn napkin, scraps of embroidered netting, pink silk rose petals (on the left page edge and behind Marie’s head) and a K & Company vellum border at the bottom helped put the finishing touches on my pages…

such a fun theme and a very beautiful book to work in…

just because…

don’t ask me why but for a while now I have wanted to alter a mouse trap…

lots of talented artists have already done some wonderful ones…

when we were in Asheville recently strolling the aisles of a local supermarket we came upon these and I knew the time was right…

while I was working on the traps and being VERY careful to not get caught under the spring part I admired the artists even more and then Mr Magpie came home and showed me how I could disengage the ‘trap’ part of the metal…

I can use that trick when I alter the third one and not have to hold my breath the whole time worrying about getting snapped in the trap…

the larger rat trap spoke to me first…

after covering the trap with gel medium and pattern tissue I added some bat wings to the doll head, black cotton netting which made perfect hair and part of one of my favorite golden flimmerstern…

next I played with the smaller mouse trap adding a medieval lady and scraps of velvet and some of my favorite leaves as wings…

as I worked on these wooden traps it felt good to know that they will never be used to trap animals especially when there are alternative ways to invite rodents out of your home should you need to…

fun to add these to my list of unusual altered items which includes altered shoes, sardine cans, cutlery and cabinet cards to name a few…

have you altered any odd things?

“Fears and tears”

Pat of Artfully Ooglebloops made me do it …

I joined the Sketchbook Project 2012 World Tour back in the fall of last year…

for a while there with me out of commission for almost two months and trying to make it through the holidays I did wonder if I would be ready for the 31 January mailing deadline…

I chose the “Fears and Tears” theme from the list of available themes without too much thought…

the first thing I knew I wanted to do was glue pages together and collage the remaining pages with lots of old torn text…

thanks to Margaret…

for the vintage French page with men in their hammocks which reminded me of butterfly cocoons…

when I saw the F.E.A.R. quote above on Kathy Maximo‘s Facebook page I knew it needed to go into my book…

I have always thought of fear as the opposite of Love…

it just so happens that my centerfold pages have the one real sketch I did of my Secret girl…

dare I say that she looks a bit better in person…

the page is bent open a bit giving her an odd angle…

thanks to Nathalie for that vintage rubber Secret stamp and to Michelle Lum Ho for the perfect ’13’ stamp too…

I am a total novice at drawing and sketching …

Pat assured me it was OK and that ‘anything goes‘ for this project …

sketched or not …

she participated last year and does draw beautifully…

she had her book digitalized which is a great idea since the books become part of the Brooklyn Art Library and are not returned to the artists…

I am happy with how my pages came together even with hardly any sketching…

finding the right words was a great starting point…

I did sketch in the left hand side of the red lips (big whoop *ggg*)…

it was a partial image to begin with…

I stitched a tea bag on the left filling it with tiny paper stars and a Lunaria seed pod that I wrote ‘Love’ on…

my favorite German gold flimmerstern made the perfect burst behind a postage stamp…

the LOVE stamp on the back cover was the one we used to mail our wedding invitations back in 1981…

I enjoyed this creative process and marveled at how random words and phrases and meanings appeared through the gesso and paint without me consciously focusing on that happening…

thank you Pat for encouraging me to take part …

I said my goodbyes and my book is on its way …

what an amazing project the Brooklyn Art Library is in the midst of…

massive and most impressive …

“What will survive of us is Love” ~ Philip Larkin

what do you see: the Whirling Durvish Sisters

another lovely smooshed kipper tin has returned to Virginia all the way from Carole in New Zealand…

the Whirling Durvish Sisters are wonderful with their flimmersterne background and bits of lace and decos…and a yoyo flower too…

isn’t my kipper tin book looking smashing…

it all started with these ingredients that I sent to everyone…

I was especially tickled with Carole’s theme because I actually got to see some real life whirling dervishes at Washington National Cathedral back in October 2009…a little more about that here…

here is a short video if you’ve never seen or heard of them…

one more Queen Bee left…you know who you are ;)…

“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust” ~Rumi

***pop over and visit Halle…she’s celebrating her 4th bloagavesary with a lovely giveaway…no hoops to jump thru either***

what do you see…this house is made of Love and Dreams…

here are the bits that Linda sent to make a house for her in our Queen Bee “what do you see” swap…

after covering the plain cardboard house with music and book pages…

the next thing I wanted to do was cut out some windows…

saving the pieces to use as shutters…

two cute Paper Whimsy kids are looking out…

a piece of one of my golden flimmers made smoke coming out of the chimney…

I changed the white leaf ribbon Linda sent to green with a stylus and some stamping ink…

and I never miss a chance to use one of my handmade wire bird nest charms…

the rusty bird hanging with the sari ribbon loop at the top is from my stash…I just couldn’t seem to make Linda’s cute rusty rabbit work with my design…

the word festoso in the left hand corner… a happy coincidence that it is showing… means:

festoso m. (f. festosa, m plural festosi, f plural festose)

1. festive, merry, joyful, joyous
2. playful

pretty nice for any house…

I colored the little wooden oval piece and wrote Peace on one side and Light on the other…it says LOVE on the back of the number four…

I tea dyed the hankie bit at the bottom … it was from my Mom’s house…

completing the house to measure about 9.5 inches (24.13 cm) tall…

“this house is made of Love and Dreams” is what I wrote on the back of my house for Linda…

trail of hearts …

all of you dear hearts out there

*lavender filled heart photographed on a cigar box with the mother of all golden ‘flimmers’ … collected long before I knew about the chocolate ones*

you know who you are

*blue cotton velvet from dear Jean … last tiny lavender bud harvest and a way to use my wee wire birdsnest*

you continue to touch my heart so sweetly

*recycled rose fabric and a vintage button on my 25 cent thrift shop plaster hand … the hot pink sticker glowing to the right … the white fur in the background was a surprise gift from our youngest son when he returned from boy scout camp one year*

Bless You One and All

*great “crackle” fabric from Lesley Riley’s clean out sale last year and a wooden hand charm*

lavender is soothing … I spent the evening stitching hearts with lavender buds tucked inside … all of us have hearts that need mending sometime or another … wish you could smell these and that I could stitch enough to send to each and every one of you

oxo

“Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses” ~ Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism

Sparkle Tea Tuesday

today I am enjoying a cup of hazelnut coffee in my Sparkle mug … soy hazelnut creamer too … ummm Love hazelnut everything!

(the red Waechtersbach platter is from my friend Michelle … the snowman on the windowsill is made of wool by my friend Judy Post … the green foil wrapped goodie is a flimmersterne (two half rounds of foil wrapped chocolate around a wonderful golden frill … you can get a better look by clicking for the closeup…lots of gorgeous snow still outside the kitchen window too)

and what about those mice …  I wanted to share a special cookie recipe with you … a tradition in our family since the late 80’s when I first spotted the recipe in the pull out cookie section of a Woman’s Day Magazine (1986) … young and old seem to be delighted by these tasty Almond Cookie Mice … always a big hit in the children’s classrooms

cute with a cheese platter (here is a piece of  Mt Tam triple cream cheese topped with fruits, nuts and fig jam … ummm) the mouse cookies liven up any cookie tray assortment as well … they take a little extra time to make, but are so worth it

Recipe Note: I used to use currents for the eyes instead of cut up raisins … now I use mini chocolate bits (pointy side in)

Happy T Tuesday … do join Kimmie for a cuppa whatever you like

feel free to join in the fun … create a post on Tuesdays (no rules just right) … come and play … the more the merrier

fa la la la la … la la la laaaa

must share a footnote with you … the cookie mice in my photos are from last year (not for eating just for looks) …. I made a double batch last year and sometimes they are just too cute to eat … amazing that they still look as good as new tucked away in a tin all year, guess there is enough sugar in them to preserve them 😉

	Almond Cookie Mice
	INGREDIENTS:

1 Cup Butter or Margarine, at room temperature
1 Cup Packed Light Brown Sugar
1 Large Egg
2 teaspoons Almond Extract
1 teaspoon Vanilla
3 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
Peanut Halves
Coarsely Chopped Raisins
Red Licorice Laces, cut in 3-inch lengths INSTRUCTIONS:

Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with electric mixer until fluffy. Beat in egg and extracts. Gradually beat in flour until blended. Dough will be stiff. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour or until well chilled.

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Shape rounded tablespoonful of dough into 1 1/4-inch ball. Taper each ball at one end into a teardrop shape; press one side flat. Place flat sides down 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Press in sides of balls to raise backs of mice . (They spread slightly as they bake.) With a wooden pick make a 1-inch deep hole at tail end (round end). Gently push 2 peanut halves in each for ears and 2 pieces of raisins for eyes.

Bake 9 to 12 minutes until bottoms are lightly browned. Remove to rack; insert licorice tails; cool completely

“Not a mouse stirring” ~William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

May All of Your Xmas’ Be Bright

these pages began with the gold and tan greeting card from the Hartsfield’s in 1930 … mailed from Douglas, GA to Tryon, NC

gold gouache for the background and black felt tip marker for doodling and a flimmersterne as a centerpiece on the left with a lovely Paper Whimsy lady in the center

in my dreams….I can fly

The Gothic Arches theme is “wings”, Love this theme

The lovely lady is on a scrapbook paper background, that I painted and stenciled a bit (I am really enjoying my plastic doily pieces!)

That great green dotted paper behind the arch is from Linda

*forgot to mention ~ the bit at the top of my arch is a piece of flimmerstern that I colored with a silver metallic marker*

“The butterfly is a flying flower… ” ~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun