Find What Brings You Joy

This is the last week for the card swap and I worked like crazy to get a Paris card for Rachel. Thanks to Kim Bailey Sanchez and her Paris stamps, I did it!

Favorite Things

Wow! This weekend I decided to try something way outside of my comfort zone. It took bits of Saturday and Sunday to complete and wasn't looking too good for awhile there. I finally figured out how to use what I had to make a card. Here's what part of the work space looked like.

I chose to take some of the parts that I ended up with to make my buddy card for this week. The final card is on the left and the plain image is on the right. Melted crayon on wax paper is providing the stained glass look.

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.