New Year, New Ideas, New new new!!!

First of all NO I did not make any New Year Resolutions because I would only break them anyway.

I did make a list of things I would like to accomplish in the year 2013 though. I would like to get a new keyboard AND I would like to keep it in good shape. You know, no food particles, no soda, no cigarette ashes etc embedded in it! Well at least for the first couple of hours.

I have started an Art Journal and I would like to add a couple of pages it to it every week.. okay I will settle for a couple of pages per month. I never thought I would have any interest in doing one but am finding it very interesting to try new ideas and techniques for fun without worrying that I am going to ruin an almost completed layout.

I am going to try to change my life style and see if I can figure out why I am so tired/weary all the time. I need to work more to support my expensive hobby. There are so many new products coming onto the market that I want to get and try but with me not working because I am too tired all the time.... well want is going to be my master for a while. I never want to leave the house, I hole up here either just sleeping or playing games on the computer. I never talk to anyone,Alan just tells anyone who calls that I am sleeping. The only time I leave the house is if I need something that I can't explain to Alan what to get, then it is slap on my cap to cover my hair, pull on a pair of pants over my PJ's and a heavy coat, get out, get what I need and get the heck back home. I have started chain smoking and this is not good... this has to change but so help me I have no idea how I am going to change it because I have tried everything I know of and nothing has worked.

I am going to be happy no matter what happens. Time is too short to waste it on sadness. Depression sometimes overcomes me but at the same time I can still smile through the tears because I do have a lot to happy about.

I am thinking we are going to have to start looking for a new home. This house that we are renting is starting to give us some problems. This is too bad because I love this little place It is the perfect size for us. The problem is that it isn't insulated very well and in the winter it is very cold causing a huge gas bill and in the summer it is very hot causing a huge electric bill. We have two air condioning units, one for downstairs and one for upstairs, we also have two Infra red heaters one for down and one for up... problem there is that when we are running the ones for upstairs we can't run the microwave or the washer.. or even worse, I can't run my heat gun in my craft room or any other electric tool because it throws the breaker. We just don't have the electrical capacity to run it with anything else :(
I dread the thought of moving... shudder... but maybe we can find a larger place where I can have a nice big scrap room........oh that sounds nice :)


I am looking forward to this new year, I am planning on learning a lot of new techniques and using mixed media. I think that translates into spending a lot of money... oops, Alan could get very upset with me on that one. I am not going to worry about that bridge til I cross it though because he could get himself an hobby too if he wanted to and I wouldn't be upset with him spending money on his hobby.


I am seriously thinking of quitting my job in May but that will depend on how much pension I could draw if I drew it early. If I would lose too much I would just have to wait til 65 instead of 60.

Anyway, when all is said and done.. I never mentioned Christmas and we did indeed have Christmas and a wonderful one at that. On the 22 of December we spent the day with Janet and Dan and the kids. Awwwwwww it was a terrific day. I filled a stocking for each of the children and then I warned them that since the only lists that I got from them included such items as IPods, Blackberries and laptops.. items totally out of my range, they were getting things like underwear and socks so maybe next year they would think twice when writing up their lists for me. LOL
Love their precious little hearts as they unwrapped their underwear and socks they were laughing and giggling and not a bit upset. Of course there were other things in their stockings too, like toys and watches etc.. and in the very toe was money.

The money meant they were going on a shopping trip to the Toy R Us store in London and they were excited. We spent about two hours in the store and each kid bought the toy that they wanted and then we headed back to their house where their parents had a huge Christmas dinner waiting for us.

For the first time in over 15 years I put up a christmas tree here at home.. it was nice to look at it and I think I will put it up again next year. Jack sure seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Oh yeah, I did get some scrapping done too. :) I used Little Yellow Bicycle Papers on this layout. I frayed the burlap pennants and distressed the papers. I also dug deep into my stash and found some magic mesh to add to the mixture. I used alcohol ink on the key. I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Next I did another masculine page. This time I used Prima's Craftsman Collection. I also used Cricut Craftroom to make a gear stencil which I covered with glossy gel medium, once that was dry I sprayed smooch red glitz over it and then wiped off the excess. I fussy cut gears from the Craftsman paper.

Now for the fun stuff. I did tell you that I have started an Art Journal and I am having lots of fun with that one. Here is the cover.

First I sprayed it with a light blue homemade mist. Next I used several different stencils, mostly Crafters Workshop. The first one I used was the houndstooth and sprayed Heirloom gold. Next I used th very edge of the large chicken wire on the inner edges and sprayed with red. Then I used the burst from the star stencil on the top corners and used Royal blue flocking. I used the bird stencil and daubed on red ink then I used the small chicken wire stencil with aged Marine enamel embossing powder.  I cut the flourishes with my Big Kick from a Spellbinders die and used Aged Hunter embossing powder on them.I cut the flower from the Giant Flowers Cricut Cartridge, embossed each petal with the Aged Marine embossing powder, shaped and then put it together. I used a plain red embossing powder on the center.  I didn't like the binding on the book because I wanted easy access to the pages to be able to remove them when I was working on them so I removed the binding and used binder rings instead.

My first page was a pretty simple one... just getting my feet wet so to speak. I did a bit of  a resist using a stamp with clear embossing powder. Then misted it with pink mist. I mixed Gauche paint to achieve the colour I wanted and then swirled it on.  I found some drywall tape and used a piece of it to add some gesso into which I had swirled some green paint to get a marbling effect. Like I said, just a little step but a first one.

My second page was a bit more involved.. my feet were getting wetter by now.I was streaking, splattering, swirling and daubbing.  I also did some blotching. I just wanted to see how the different strokes reacted with different media, it was a fun page and reminded me of what my mind must look like if it could be photographed.

Okay now this one was fun fun fun. I made another stencil with Cricut Craftroom (love that program, I get more use from my Cricut now that  I have that program than I ever did before). First I Painted the page with gauche paints, mixture of Yellow, white and a bit of Perfect pearls copper thrown in just because. I stenciled across the top of the page using Distress marker Sapphire blue.. then I misted it with water. Next I stenciled the outline of the block stencil in silver, next I used the inner stencil and daubed it with red. After that I wanted to see how one flower would look using different media. The first one I used Gesso.. not bad. Second flower I used destress ink.. iffy.. the third flower I used Aged Hunter embossing powder, Love that look. For the center of the flowers I stamped on Spellbinders foil and then cut them out. Don't look too bad.  A couple of strips of "ribbon", the date and a sentiment stamp finishes off the page.

The last page that I have done so far was resisting. I wanted to find out which media does the best job of resisting and which one looks the best.  I tried five different ones, embossing, gel medium, glaze, Crackle accents, and Crackle Paint. I wasn't expecting the paint to work at all and was surprised that it did, although it didn't work very well. The embossed areas worked the best when it comes to the easiest, the paint just wiped off clean. All the others I needed to use a wet wipe in order to get the paint off although it did wipe off. I liked the results of the Crackle accents the best though even though it is more work.  I didn't use the glossy gel medium on this experiment but I did use it on my layout earlier and I know that the glossy works much better than the matte.

This is a closeup of the Crackle Accents results.

Okay that is it for me for this post.  Hopefully will be back tomorrow with something else to show you.  After I finish drooling over all the new releases from CHA... oh man I need to win the lottery cause there is a lot of new stuff coming out that I NEED!!!!  Okay want but that is the same as NEED.