I Really Am Creating!!

I know it seems like I may be doing nothing...but honest I am!! LOL  I have a number of projects coming up next week and the week after and I can't wait to share them with you!! But for now I'd like to share some of my crafting I did while I was on the east coast of Canada, having my first visit to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island! I took some supplies with me, picked up a couple of small things while I was there and just used the quiet evening time to play and relax. Sometimes it was at the little kitchen table we had in our cottage or it was on the kitchen island in the big house we all stayed in, or the coffee table in my pretend bedroom(really a second living room but worked out great for us). I worked on fun tags, tags with trip stuff on them, a thank you card for my cousins and a birthday card for my Uncle Jim.

This was the birthday card for my Uncle Jim for his 70th birthday. So glad I grabbed a handful of my TH Paper dolls and threw them in my little travel bag.

For the map piece, I just trimmed it down, rounded the corners and then drew the hearts on. One around Nova Scotia where my Uncle lives and one around Vancouver where the rest of us live.

And these paper dolls were perfect. The two boys represent my Uncle Jim and my Uncle Rick (who passed away in July a number of years ago), the two girls represent my Auntie Judy and my Mom (who passed 4 years ago) and the lone show off girl is my Auntie Barb, who is 16 years younger than her oldest sibling. I think my Uncle liked his card.

I also did a thank you card, attached to a bottle of vodka to make more vodka slushy, for my cousin Ken and Nancy and Kaley, the owners of Hope River Farm. Be sure to check out the facebook page to follow the antics of farm life in PEI. They fed us so well while we were there and their table was full of family, 12 of us total!!

I seriously just threw in handfuls of TH Paper Dolls and other cards, some stuff from the Prima St. Tropex line and stamps that I loved like the Dina Wakely one that I used to border this card. Colour is from my DW Scribble Sticks and my Wendy Vecchi Minis.

 

These tags were from our first days of heading out to the east coast, from our dinner at the airport in Vancouver to our first night on Cape Breton Island. The Lighthouse Cottages were probably my fave little cottages. And if you go to the site and let the pics run  through, we had the 3 cottages closest to the green space. What a view and lovely beach space.

This piece was from a brochure and the top piece was my receipt from the Glenorra Distillery that we visited.

One of my sassy girl tags! It was just nice to sit and play after busy days of driving, sight seeing and beach combing.

And this one went to my Auntie Judy due to a conversation, over dishes, in my Auntie Nikki's kitchen after some wine and my made up on the spot poem that consisted of "Sassy, Sassy, kiss my assy" Yup...you had to be there to find this as hilarious as we did and yup...my family is batshit crazy!! LOL

And these three tags were done one evening while crafting on the kitchen island while we stayed in big house on the Bay of Fundy. Even though there were 10 of us, it was always kind of quiet i nthe evening, I was crafting, another group was playing crib at the dining room table, another group sitting in the living room reading. Everyone doing their own thing but still all together as a family.

 Thanks all for stopping by! One day soon I'll post some pics of the amazing scenery we saw on the east coast and some of the places we stayed. 

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Cathy

Hanging out with Emerald Creek Today

Hello everyone!! So happy to be visiting Emerald Creek today as a guest! This month's dare is "Anything Goes" and these are always some of my faves since you can create anything! I almost went with a beachy theme since I'm still on a beach high after my trip to Nova Scotia and PEI in June. But then I realized I had some new Seth Apter dies and I wanted to use those too! So a bit of oceany in the background with anchors then all about embossing powders and circles over that.

Here are a few step out pics.

I used the Tim Holtz tissue paper and stamped EC's anchor in Watering Can and Black Archival from Ranger.

I used my embossing pen to colour over the anchors then embossed them in Gun Metal and Hammered Metal.

Hammered Metal is one of my all time faves!!

I used the Seth Apter Sheild dies to cut out all these pieces. I cut them out of cardstock and some TH adhesive backed cork. I used some Hammered Metal and Rose Gold on the cork piece and just love the texture I got.

Seriously love how the Hammered Metal melts and creates texture all on it's own! On the circle piece on the left, I used Hammered Metal on gel medium and did not heat it so I could have another texture in there.

Top has heated Hammered Metal and the circle underneath has the unmelted Hammered metal.

Don't forget to share your "Anything Goes" creation over at the Emerald Creek Blog for your chance to win a $50 GC!

Emerald Creek Products Used:

Hammered Metal Embossing Powder

Gun Metal Embossing Powder

Rose Gold Embossing Powder

Anchor Stamp 

Create Stamp by Kelly Klapstein

Other Products:
Tim Holtz Tissue Paper
Distress Oxides in Broken China and Faded Jeans
Seth Apter Sheild Die Set from Spellbinders
Watering Can Ink by Wendy Vecchi
Black Archival 

Emerald Creek - A Year In Review

Wow!! What an incredible and creative year with Emerald Creek! It has been such an inspirational year with seeing all the Design Team creations and seeing all of the beautiful creations that all of your have shared with the challenges every month. I love seeing how people use the same product in so many different ways. And lets be honest here...when you have products as excellent as Kim, owner/head creative of Emerald Creek, has it's very easy to create beautiful projects!

If you want to see all the separate links for my Year In Review you can find them all at the Emerald Creek Dares blog.

Here on my blog here is a collage of my projects for the year! 

Thank you for all of the support and comments and inspiration in 2016!! Here's to more sharing, support and creating in 2017!

Have a great day everyone!

Cathy

Summer Days....

Good Morning everyone!!

Again, I have neglected my blog. I finally found a second job and have been working everyday for a couple of months now. I just finished with my part time job and was very excited to have had two days off this week!! It was very exciting for me! LOL I spent it mostly with my nephews and painting with them so they can enter a kids are exhibit at Opus Art supplies .

I haven't arted much in the last little bit, but I was able to take an amazing class at Clipper Street Scrapbooking, with Deanna. Her teaching for the class called "Black magic 2" was based on what she learned through Prima and Finnabair (also two of my fave sources of inspiration). It was such an amazing class and totally took away my fear of using black!!

We started with a simple white 9X12 canvas board and from there the magic began!

the finished project - Black Magic 2!! It was such an amazing class and I even loved using glitter this time!

I'm hoping to take another class here soon if time permits and I have that evening off of work. Clipper Street is by far one the best places to shop, take classes or even just pop in and share some ideas. The staff there are amazing!

So this will wrap up this post...but there is more to come for sure!! A couple of 12X12 canvasses I did for myself and my sister, a beach festival out in White Rock, BC that I managed to snap a couple of great photos at. Two more projects on my art table...time to get busy and complete them so I can share with you!

Have an amazing weekend!

Cathy

Easter, Best Friends and Life

Yes....I know my last post was a depressing one. But that's  life some days. Things haven't  improved too much and the job interview that I had and was super excited for, didn't turn out in my favor. I had thought it had gone so well but someone else got the position.

Easter weekend was awesome though!!! My best friend came over from the island for a jammies clad crafting weekend!! Picked her up at the ferry terminal about noonish....talked all the way back to the house then talked some more. Do you have that friend in your life that you can say anything to...no matter how dark & depressing it is, or how silly it sounds. That person that you can say everything that is wrong...ALL of it and there is no judging, just understanding and empathy and then tears (lots of those) and then some laughter (tons of that) maybe some more tears. Yeah that's  my friend  Linda Lou!!! I am so glad she came even though I truly had nothing to offer her...cept tea, but she came, picked up a few groceries & snacks and still came for the long weekend! And I needed that visit even more than I knew! And to top it all off....she spent a bunch of time with my crazy family coloring eggs and then Easter dinner the next night!

Going on 24 years of friendship and we are still the most hysterically funny people we know!! And nope....not everything we find funny is politically correct or appropriate yet we laugh anyways!

We spent Saturday evening dyeing eggs with my nephews...so much fun!! So much dye spilled on the table....we decided we should have white material on the table next year because the spilling made such cool colors and patterns!

Getting all the dyes readyand still using Mom's teacups that we used when we were kids 

There were alot of eggs dyed (and cracked)

 I am very lucky that I am able to do fun things like this with my nephews!

Will post again very soon to share some of my works in progress from my art table and some great pictures I took out at Crescent Beach last week!!

Thanks for visiting!! Have a great start to your week!

Cathy

Life Book and Life

Wow....the days and weeks just seem to be going so fast lately. I have worked on and completed a few more of my Life Book 2015 lessons! I am really looking forward to working on the ones I have waiting for me. So many new things to learn and so many techniques to work on getting better at. And the supplies!!! Oh lordy I need 5 jobs so I can shop for art stuff whenever I want too!! You all know what I'm talking about! LOL Especially now that I'm actually using the supplies that I have been "collecting" for so long, I need to replenish the basics regularly!

As for life....well it's the everyday ups and downs. March 15 would have been my Dad and Mom's 42nd anniversary, but this was the second one without her. Mom has been gone for a year and a half now, some days it still feels like it happened yesterday and some days it's not as painful, for me. For my Dad it's always painful and he misses her and still cries almost everyday for her. He keeps busy and looks after his littlest grandsons (7 and 3) and they keep him on his toes and he does things for his Mom (93) and his brother so he's on the go alot, and I'm lucky that I get to spend time with too and with the little ones. But somedays he just mentions Mom and he tears up, or he forgets the words to a song he wants to teach the little ones and cries because he says Mom would remember all the words. I know everyone in my family struggles with the loss still, but we all had our own lives, but for Dad his whole life was wrapped up with my Mom's.
I miss her every day, I know people say it gets easier, I haven't found that yet. It's just different. I miss showing my Mom all the things I make or create, she was my biggest fan when it came to my creative stuff. And she was usually the recipient of all the new things I came up with. My kids miss her, they were very close to her and there was no one in the world aside from me that my son was more loyal too. It broke my heart that his 18th birthday (legal in Alberta) had to be celebrated just 8 days after my Mom passed and 4 days after her service. He didn't want to celebrate at all, but we had to remind him...if Grandma was here she'd be all over taking him to a pub and buying him his first legal drink and I think it helped that my Dad said he was coming out. The things family does to protect and help the ones they love. I still have days where I just don't feel like it's real and I have days where I'm angry and days where the littlest thing or a song makes me cry and then there are the moments when someone says something about Mom and we all laugh. Those are the best moments, doesn't mean I don't miss her, but it's nice to laugh when we talk about her sometimes too.

Life in general is......challenging. Still looking for work as my current job is not enough hours to survive. There has got to be the right job out there for me!! I just keep getting up everyday and trying and applying and really try to not let the negative take over....ans sometimes that is a job all on it's own! But I can't wallow in the bad stuff, it doesn't do me any good and it certainly won't make the day better.

I have been doing some work with The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and making a few steps forward with that. Trying to declutter and  organize was my first month's goals and my second one is too make a more concentrated effort on updating my blog at least weekly, sharing more of the creative things I love and find on my interent adventures and also to put myself out there and work on some projects and apply for some design teams! These are things that although I can't make them my job, they do make me happy and I love to create!

Thanks all for checking in and we'll talk soon!

Cathy

Hello Everyone.......

It's hard to believe that the second month of the new year is almost over already!!

I started Life Book 2015 on January 1, 2015 and it has been an amazing learning adventure so far!! There are amazing instructors, so many things to learn and so much color and creativity! It is a wonderful journey to be on with some wonderful people. The group of people all on this journey are so supportive and caring and make all of us feel good about what we are creating. One of the best things about all the lessons is that you can follow exactly how the teacher does something or you can take the basics and create something that speaks to you more. So far I am following the teachers pretty closely, but I feel like by the end of this year I'll be venturing on my own when it's time to create, scary I know! But the confidence building and ignoring the "inner critic" that derails us all at times, is quite amazing and you truly could not find a safer more accepting place to share your work or ask questions.

I am a bit behind on my lessons, thank goodness for working at your own pace :) And I am kind of jumping around to complete ones that I feel more of a connection with. It's amazing to be learning from so many wonderful artist that I admire!

I have added my completed week assignments here on my Life Book 2015 page. This is where I'll add all my classes as I complete them, if I'm not afraid to share my finished project!

I have also started working on "The Happiness Project" with my sister and a friend of hers. We have decided to meet monthly to keep ourselves on track and it's nice to bounce some ideas of other people and see where they are too.

Lots of things going on right now. Not all good, but some are wonderful!! Work is a struggle as I don't have enough hours, but I keep looking, everyday and try to stay positive that the right thing will come along.

One of my personal goals for next month is to commit to keeping my blog current and updated at least weekly and really spend some time sharing what I learn, what I find that is creatively awesome and building a real presence in the blogging world. I'm starting a bit early and want to be into the habit soon. There is so much to share and learn from and I want to be part of that.

Check out my Life Book 2015 page for my completed art assignments and I'll be back soon!!

Have a wonderful weekend ♥