New Cards, Updates on ATC and Destination Heartfelt Art

Artwork Update:
In addition to the Artist Trading Cards added to the slide show, I made some fun cards and legacy pages this week. Shown here are some of the cards I made.

The Birthday Cone: Created around a sticker set I’ve owned for several years. I ‘puffed” the ice cream to give it dimension as well as aging the sticker with sand paper and ink.

The Now Moment: Done completely with scraps from the Club Scrap™ cardstock base (I haven’t been a member for 3+ years) to the polished stone inked background and stray die cuts—all collaged into a fun card.

The Birthday ATC: I used my Colluzle™ to cut a tiny envelope for an ATC and sent it as a gift on a card. The ATC is secured with another Club Scrap™ left over-the printed twist tie.

The Floral Tri-fold Pocket: The ladies on Jean’s Art Dolls had a challenge to make these cards from instructions on Split Coast ampers. //www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/trifold_pocket_card/ Mine came out very pink and festive.

The Taj Tri-fold Pocket II: My second attempt with this template evolved into a moving card for a friend. She’s not really moving; she is merely expanding her kingdom…

Seven seems to be my stopping point

As mentioned in the last post, I decided to try the 7/30/365 ATC challenge from Flickr. I made my seven, but I’m not sure I want to go forward. The effort helped “spawn” lots of other projects—still, I’m not motivated to go on and I haven’t made an ATC in two days now.

I posted the final three to the Flickr album at right. I like them all and if you visit the album on Flickr you can see the story behind each one. I think I may add the ones I didn’t give away to a legacy art piece as a collection.

Studio Make-over and Austerity Plan

I’ve had a set back in the Austerity Plan—of course, we addicts have lots of excuses that justify our mistakes and I’m no exception. I said I wouldn’t spend over $15.00 per month on my art supplies. I spent my $15 this month on adhesives, a bit of print paper, and some envelopes I needed for spring cards. That went very well. Then I watched Home Shopping Network for a special National Craft Month celebration and totally lost my resolve. My excuse was I had a little extra money that my Daddy had slipped me when he visited.

The item that was my downfall is the We R Memory Keepers™ Ultimate Cutting Tool Kit. It was especially designed for HSN and included a 17” by 14” magnetic mat, a circle cutter (their new one) plus the paper trimmer with scallop and straight blade, ruler, ergonomic cutting knife, extra blades, and magnets to keep your work in place. It was a Today’s Special Value with them for $29.95. Here’s a link to their site, currently priced at $39.95. If you click on the video you’ll see what I just couldn’t resist.

The purchase, and the inevitable guilt that followed, inspired me to do some additional work in the studio. I moved out a bunch of empty containers that I’ve been tripping over because I wanted to use them for organizing. I sorted a 12” high stack of papers and scraps that needed to be put away. I asked Sir Henry to stabilize a shelf I’ve been using to store papers which had sagged. I really did work.

I had one of the most productively creative weeks ever in the studio as well. The seven ATCs, three legacy art pieces, and several cards all flowed out this week. I also worked on the web site and posted some new pages as well as doing clean up. One set back doesn’t mean the end of my plan, it just means I’ve had a wake up call and now I’m back on track.