Biggest Cactus in Arizona

For those of you who are not that familiar with the desert or how big cactus's can get here, this is a picture of my step-father Ray standing by the biggest Saguaro cactus that we know of in Arizona. Pretty big don't you think?

ArtChix Blue Moo Crads

These are the first six Moo cards I made for the up and coming ArtChix swap. I'm not sure or not if I'll be making six more. I've hit a bit of a slump and I'm not sure what direction to go?

I am however very happy to announce that I won the ArtChix Art Doll contest/swap. It was very unexpected and I was very excited. The ART Dolls are here on my blog back in one of the October posts. There were so many amazing entries I was really humbled by the win. That particular Yahoo group has an incredible amount of talented artists.

I want to clarify something I wrote about on my Halloween post from 10/31/09. A few people have commented on what I said and I think they got the wrong idea. I was apologizing for my backgrounds and telling you all how bad they were and that I wish I was better with them. I was not referring to the backgrounds on my art pieces, I'm referring to the background behind the pieces I have scanned.

I probably should put either a white or black piece of cardstock behind each piece I scan, but I forget to do that. Especially on the pieces that aren't square in shape, it's hard to get the backgrounds just right on those. The square ones are easiest because I just crop out everything except all four sides of the art piece I have just scanned. As I had mentioned, my friend Trudi does awesome backgrounds, and so do a lot of you as well. Trudi can give the scanned art piece a framed background or put ribbons around all sides or just get the background all completely blacked out. But like I said I'm not great at it and it's something I need to work on. I probably need to buy photoshop or a similar program like that. Right now I'm using the free IrfanView.

I came across these older cards I made last year sometime I think? I had submitted them to Stampers Sampler but they were never published. Even though my work and techniques have changed quite a bit since I made these, I still thought these were kind of cute when I came across them. You know how when you come across older work that you've done and you either hate it, or you think "Well, that's not too bad."
I thought these weren't too bad. I called them the "Hat Ladies".

These are a few Halloween pieces I did that I thought I'd appropriately show you today. Before I tell you a little about them, I want to apologize for my backgrounds. I wish I could do really even, great backgrounds but I don't know how. My friend Trudi over at Two Dresses Studio can do wonderful backgrounds. I wish I had her digital talents because she's amazing. So try and ignore my sloppy backgrounds if you don't mind?

This first one is a Halloween collage I did on 6x6 bookboard. Granted the witch isn't scary looking, in fact she's quite sweet looking, but there are those good witches too.

The second one is a little house I made initially for Leslie at Alpha Stamps. I thought the little girl coming out of the pumpkin was pretty cute, so I thought I'd show you that one.

And finally I made this little holder for some Halloween tags I made. The tags I actually made pretty quickly one day for my sister Shelly who was going to be having a Halloween party and I was giving her examples of what she could do to decorate her house a bit.

Happy Halloween to everyone out there in blogging land. Tomorrow is November, can you believe it?

Well, Halloween is just around the corner now if you can believe that? Pretty soon it will be turkeys, giving thanks and then the whole holiday rush is officially on. Where this year went I have no idea? I'm at a loss. At any rate, I made this little Halloween piece just for fun. The two witches in training are my two big sisters. Pretty cute weren't they? It's amazing looking at them at this point and how cute they were, that they soon grew up to torture me. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, they have both always been pretty exceptional to me, but what fun would that be if I said how wonderful they were on a Halloween art piece? That wouldn't really fall into the whole witch persona would it?

I'm a little late with this particular post but a very, very happy 50th to my big sister Shelly. Look how darn cute she was? I of course had to rosy her cheeks up a bit with some chalk. This is the card I made for her to celebrate her birthday this year. I can't even believe she's 50. I remember when both my sisters (who are six and seven years older than me) were in their late twenties and me and my friends thought they were so old. Wow, time goes fast doesn't it? I should find a picture of her to show you all what she looks like now. She doesn't even look close to 50, more like 35 to 37, somewhere in there. She has this amazing figure and the big perfect boobs with blonde hair, you know.........she's the whole package. She's incredibly beautiful. It's truly annoying when people think I'm older than she is. But oh well, I've had some physical challenges that she hasn't had and I'm just proud to call her my big sis. At any rate, on October 9th she turned 50 and this is what she looked like back in the day when she was just a little babe in the woods, cute as a button then, cute as a button now.

And of course this is the sixth ATC from set two.

These are of course the first five of the second set I made. Why it wouldn't let me download all six is beyond me?

And these are the next three from set one.

I recently participated in the ArtChix Studios "Royal Birds" ATC swap. I ended up doing two sets. These are the first three of my first set. I'm pretty happy with the outcome I think?

I'm working on a collaborative project right now with the very talented and very popular Carol Murphy. We are making 9x12 pendant flags and the theme is PEACE. Not peace as in no more war, but more like peace of mind, body and soul as I have stamped on my flags. I could have done a whole lot better on this and embellished quite a bit more as far as I'm concerned but I was running short on time and needed to get to them to Carol. Do you want to know the kicker? We had a year to make these and get them to her. Yes that's right, a year and I still was running short on time. I of course waited until the beginning of September (basically the last minute) to start mine, which was ridiculous on my part.

But good or bad this is what mine turned out like. I have to say I love the angel stamp. My Mom actually found it last minute at a stamp shop here in Chandler, Arizona called Stamp Works. The guy who carves these stamps lives in New Mexico I believe and all his stamps are incredibly beautiful, even the stamp itself is beautiful because he carves the images into the wood. His name is Tim K. Stausell and he makes stamps for www.stampamania.com

Some Good News

I have some pretty good news. #1) For the Maya Road "Summertime" contest, I was a finalist in the contest and I won a pretty good sized box of free Maya Road goodies. Who doesn't love Maya Road? They are awesome!! #2) I was one of the winners in Helga's Blog "Pink & Green" contest. I think that everyone who participated in that contest won, but that's okay, I'm still thrilled that she chose my "That's Amour" piece as one of the winners.

And if any of you read the English stamping magazine Craft Stamper, look for me in the December issue as the featured guest artist.

(I just proof read what I wrote and it sound like I'm really tooting my own horn and bragging a bit. I don't mean to sound that way I swear, I'm just excited to share some of my good news with you.)

Helga's Blog Challenge / "Pink & Green"

Helga from ArtChix Studios has weekly challenges on her blog (http://myartisticlife.typepad.com). This week it was to use the colors Pink and Green and see what you could come up with. You could make any size, any type of artwork, I decided to focus on LOVE. I kind of threw this together at the last minute so it's not as polished or up to par as some of the other entries. Check out Lenna's paper art quilt, it's awesome!

If you haven't been over to Helga's blog, check it out. As you can imagine, there's lots to see and lots to be inspired by.

Happy Birthday Dad!! I love you so, so much!!

I have the coolest Dad in the world. He loves to ride his Harley, he has played guitar and sang in bands for fifty years at least and he can fix anything that breaks. I'm not kidding, when me and my two sisters were growing up, if anything ever broke we always immediately called for Dad. He's just one of those guys who has a knack for fixing anything. And not only is he cool, he is also extremely understanding, giving and very supportive. He's always been there for me and I love him dearly. I am so very proud to call Stan Sawyer my father. Happy Birthday Dad!! You are an amazing man and a amazing Father.