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.

and finally the last three Art Dolls.

These are the next five Art Dolls

My new Art Dolls for the ArtChix swap

I have to admit that I am behind the times as far as the whole Art Doll trend goes. I just now made my first few. I did make some for the AlphaStamps swap but I didn't really consider those Art Dolls for some reason. At any rate, for the Art Doll swap over at ArtChix Studios, I ended up making two sets of six. I think they turned out okay being that they were my first effort. I have got to give it up for those of you who make them all the time, and make them well. I didn't realize how hard they were to make. Well, hard for me any way. The arms and legs are of course the hardest to get right in my opinion. There's just a lot more that go into them than I even realized. I ended up using magazine legs and arms that I copied and reduced for four of the dolls and the rest I used a template I found on-line.

I don't know what most people do, but I had to add cardstock to the back of mine. I couldn't stand them being flimsy. If you want to see the master at Art Doll making in my opinion, check out Laura Haviland's blog (http://creativewhispers7.blogspot.com/). I have a whole new appreciation for her and all the hundreds of Art Dolls that she has made. Wow, now I know what a talent she really is. Of course I already knew she was extremely talented though. She has a fondness for the Character Construction doll parts. Like I told her, I actually spent quite a bit of money buying the whole Character Construction's "Queen of Tart's" line and I have literally not used one of those stamps as of yet. But I'll get to them, it's just a matter of time.

These are the first four.

"How do I love thee......let me count the ways."

I made this "love" collage probably two years ago. It was published in Stampers Sampler last year sometime. I just got it back from the magazine today and after not seeing it for so long, I realized that I still really liked it, which is rare. Usually when I get a piece back from one of the Stampington magazines and that much time has gone by, then typically I have obviously progressed and changed myself within my artwork. But when I got this today I was surprised that I still really liked it. Thought I'd share it with you.

There is always something for which to be thankful.......

With Thanksgiving not that far off I have started to think about the holidays, what I am thankful for and all the many blessings I have in my life. It's so easy sometimes to focus on the negative, what we don't have, what has been done or not done to us and so on. I do it myself frequently, I focus on my arthritis and the pain I'm in and how at 40 yrs old I feel 80 yrs old. But it could be so much worse. I still get around on my own two feet, I'm not in a wheel chair or anything like that yet. There are people out there who have lost limbs, or who have horrific cancer, or people who are homeless, and when I think of those people I realize I have nothing at all to bitch about. At any rate, I don't mean to preach &/or get on a soap box, that was just what my frame of mind was when I made this collage.

The one thing I wanted to tell you about this collage that is kind of cool is that the base piece that you see that looks like a tin/copper square, well that is this great product I found at Home Depot. They come in sheets of 18x18 and they are in the kitchen dept. It's really painted plastic and it's for adding to your kitchen walls. They appear to be tin. But they are so great because you can use regular scissors to cut them into squares and then use them to do 5x5 collages on them or whatever you want to do. They are just great. Check them out if you get a chance. You never know what you're going to find at the Home Improvement store that's for sure.

The girl in the green/blue collage is..........

Christina Agulliera. (not sure if I spelled her last name correctly) She was in this jewelry add and the pictures were simply breath taking.

After everything Marsha Jorgensen has gone through with copyright infringemnet, I'm so paranoid now about using pictures from magazines and what not. But as I discussed with her, hopefully if I alter the picture enough to where it's unrecognizable and it looks nothing like it did, the it' hopefully ok?

Can you guess who this woman is??

This is my newest collage. I wanted to do the greens and blues this time. I'm doing a series of them using famous woman in the background. Can you guess who this one is?

I'm going to do the same thing I did with the Penelope Cruz collage, this will be my masterboard and then I will make several copies, some of them reductions, and then I will incorporate those copies back into my projects, cards and so on.