December Doings

It looks like I'm only posting once a month here! I've been making cards and having fun while weathering the day to day challenge of working with Middle Schoolers.

Christmas Eve was great fun with my friends and their families and in one case pet. Several of us took off at 10 AM in the sunshine to hike up the hills of Ventura. I have never hiked to two trees and it was wonderful to experience this with such a great group of people. Once to the top, we could see the islands.

You can see Anacapa Island if you look carefully.

The gang at two trees. Check the Facebook pic for all the names.

Christmas Eve night was exciting as well. I dropped off Swing for Jack and was invited to dinner with the Lewis-Abriols. I had a great dinner of homemade minestrone with foccacia bread followed by homemade Snickerdoodles fresh out of the oven for dessert. Played with Jake until 9PM and then headed home.

Christmas day was full of fun with my friends and family. Breakfast at the Linders began the day. I even had a gift from Santa, how he knew I'd be there, I'll never know. I surprised some friends before heading home and making a few Christmas greeting calls. Steve treated me to Sherlock Holmes and popcorn at the Century 16. After welcoming Bob home from the islands we were surprised with a plate of homemade cookies from the Lewis-Abriols. What a wonderful day in my wonderful life!

Symmetry

Well, it's getting to be that time of year when student attention is not always the best it can be. Therefore, I've got a symmetry project ready and waiting. This is the kind that students can pick up and work on whenever I need to stop an ineffective lesson. I'm uploading some of the past projects. I hope I get some good ones this year. Enjoy!

Halloween Wedding at Forever Hollywood Cemetery

Today my youngest brother got married in an incredibly entertaining ceremony at Forever Hollywood Cemetery. Douglas Fairbanks could be said to have been in attendance as it was held on the Fairbanks lawn.

Crazy Hair Day

Well this week was certainly interesting. We had Crazy Hair Day, Door Decoration Contest, and Costume Day. Actually the students did well with the academics, all things considered.

They designed doors for Red Ribbon/Halloween Week. They listened to my ideas and came up with their own. I'm all about empowering kids so gave them access to the supplies they needed and watched what they came up with.

The message states, "Don't do crack or I'll eat you as a snack."

Explorations

After spending Saturday birding the Ventura ponds, I got out some binders with samples from classes I've enjoyed. I explored for ideas that use glitter for this week's card swap.

After finding some of my favorites, I chose to play around with collage from a Sandra McCall class. I needed some double sided backing much wider than tape, so I headed over to AJ's Scrap Shack. I got what I needed and Amy showed me some amazing glitter strategies! Call them for more information.

5777 Olivas Park Drive, suite "C"

Ventura, CA
Phone: 805-212-1099
Email: Sales@AJsScrapshack.com

The green part of the card is all glitter on two sided tape.

This photo shows the Be Creative™ Tape Sheets that I used for the backing with a collage piece shown from the back.

Weekly Craft Adventure

After an all day birding trip on Saturday it was time for me to get my weekly card done. The challenge of the week was a card with eyelets or embossing. I've wanted to do a fall card with Judikins Four Leaves stamp for quite awhile. So, today was the day. However, what I wanted to do wasn't as easy as I thought. After several tries, I finally ended up with a few passable cards. Look closely and you will notice some problems I had making the cards. Here they are.

Cambria

Joan Decker, Sharon Chidester, and I went to Cambria so that I could get the "cookies of insanity" at Lily's.

After eating a strawberry scone and enjoying a hot drink at Lily's we walked around Cambria. At Deer Run I picked up a new toy. Later, I bought a bracelet.

Morro Bay Card Class

Today was my initiation into teaching card making. You will be thrilled to hear that it was a success. It might have been nicer if I'd remembered to bring a camera, but luckily Lucille took a phone shot for this blog and sent it to my phone. It just required some new tech learning on my part to get it out of my phone! The cards shown are the design models, but the participants produced some amazing alterations!

Joan let me take photos of her cards.

Can Can

Here is what I did for my buddy. Her goodies are inside. The top is stamped felt, the bottom band is a Mrs. Grossman's sticker, the paper is from a shop in L.A. County, the stamp has been in my collection for years and I don't know where it came from originally.

My New Stamp

More art

These were the first inchies I ever made.

Made at Jerri Sue's

Girly Inchies

My second attempt at inchies is done.

Inchies from my friends

This was my first ever inchie swap. I loved making my hummingbird inchies and am impressed by everyone else's work. Talent galore.

Alcohol Ink

These are some aluminum flowers that Jerri Sue used to show me alcohol inks. What a great technique! Too bad I don't have any.



Gracie is not my cat, she belongs to the neighbor, but thinks she lives here.

Exploring in San Bernardino County

I've been visiting Jerri Sue in Phelan and having a good time. We've been stamping, cutting, chatting, and learning new things.