pamgarrison

you are the first to know

My friend, jewelry artist Amy Hanna, has opened up an etsy shop, and she let me tell you before anyone else finds out.  amyhanna.etsy.com Enjoy!

another beautiful sunday

Fresh fruit gathered this morning in the wash basin bought at the flea market. I love having fruit bearing trees. It thrills me as much as the kids when the fruit is ripe and ready for picking. More beautiful Sunday photos here.

sneak peeks

I had to drop some things off at Somerset Studios, just a few little things that I had promised. While there I found out that the now carry the little Janome sewing machine. You can find it here. It is also on sale right now at Stampington. It is a different name than the one at Home Depot, cuter (blue vs. red accents), and maybe a few more features than the one I bought, not sure. Anyway, I love my machine, and highly recommend these little Janome machines for crafting and creating.

While I was there I got to see the new publication, Somerset Home. It's going to be published twice a year. It's got lots of projects like the following by Lynne Perrella, Lisa Kaus, and Jennifer Duncan, respectively.

You should be able to find it at a bookstore near you soon, or order at Stampinton.com

 

saturday night silliness

You do remember Meg, don't you? (If not, you can meet her here.) Here she is in all her photogenic glory. Yesterday afternoon our families went to the beach together. It was just too hot to stay home another minute. Here is a photo of the kids being silly after I said, "let me take your picture":

which then turned into this:

which became this:

and ended like this. I don't know how "let me take your picture" translated to "hey goofballs, start dancing to imaginary music", but it did. Must be the difference between children and adults. Glad to see my kids haven't inherited my tendency to be so literal, ha ha.
 

in the mail

I participated in a group swap hosted by Melissa, in which we each made 35 tags demonstrating some art technique we like to use. These are the tags I sent, paper sewn and covered in wax.

The next photo is of the tags that came back, all compiled together. Thank you Melissa for hosting and doing all the work, and thank you to each of the artists that participated.

I also received this in the mail from Anahata of Papaya!  It is her second volume of clip art pieces for collage art. I think I love this one even more than the first. It has yummy pages like this:

And recently some art gals have started new blogs:

dj pettitt

tammy gilley
lisa call

tracy huskamp

If you have a new blog (or an old one) that you'd like people to visit, feel free to send in a comment with a link and everyone will know that they can check it out.

summertime

and the living is easy. Enjoying the time with my kids and trying to learn to let go of what I think I need or want to do. When I surrender and embrace this time it is always enjoyable. This was taken at 6:30 the other night after a friend and I decided at 3pm to head to the beach with our kids.

gotta love a friend...

who asks you to go to the flea market with her in celebration of her birthday. How can one refuse that?  So I met Amy at the Long Beach flea this Sunday. Here she is examining an old French dishtowel. She truly has the best taste and a knack for spotting treasures. We had a very nice day except for the excruciating heat. Here's what she found (minus a really cool vanity/dresser)...

and  here's what I found:

oh my

Well. Sorry it's been sooooo long since I've posted. After surviving the last week of school with the kids, then Artfiberfest, a family vacation, and then helping my friend move home, I have run headfirst into summertime and my life has been all motherhood, all the time. No crafting, no phonecalls, no emails, no blogging. Until last night. I was sunburned from a day at the beach and couldn't sleep so after all were in bed I headed into my art room. I finished up a couple packages needing sending (left), then picked up a t-shirt that I bought months ago to sew on. Here's the before, a t-shirt on sale at target, and the after, a loose version of a bird in a nest in some branches and flowers.

The kids  have soccer for 3 hours each day next week, so hopefully, I'll be back to some creating and blogging. Off to answer emails...happy Saturday. xo

aren't sunday's lovely?

I love the weekends. Hope you had a good one. Aren't these metal flowers pretty? I bought them so long ago at a flea market and saw them sitting here today. Took the photo for Beautiful Sunday.

These came finally. I am both excited and full of dread for all the stress/work/etc. that will have to occur to get us from here to finished, but this below has me very encouraged. A real studio, not just a poorly converted room.

more catching up

Thank you for all of the nice comments about the article in Sommerset Studios. I am really pleased with how it came out. I love the background they chose for the banners and love how clear the photography is. Here is the second page.

I have also received many questions about how I do the glittered letters. Here's the info:

I bought the alphabet discs (Wendy Addison design for chronicle books) years ago. When I want to make a letter on a garland, I pull out the letter and copy it by drawing it in pencil free hand on the garland. (This can sometimes require many attempts.) Once I am ok with how the letter looks, I outline it with glitter glue. I use a product by Stickles, that you can buy at Stampington. Once that has dried, I fill in the letter with white glue and then cover with vintage glass glitter (that you can also now get at Stampington.) And that's it!

And for those wondering about the pen used in the vacation journal, it is a really cool pen called a Pilot Parallel Pen that I bought while at artfiberfest. At the end of artfiberfest a calligraphers convention was coming in to use the collage, they had set up a shop...of course, I popped in. I saw the super talented artists that are known for their lettering Lisa Engelbrecht and Traci Bautista playing with these pens and had to buy one for myself.

Let's see...what else? Yesterday I received these beautiful papers in the mail from Sofia. Since we both were selling vintage wallpapers, we decided to do a trade. I love them Sofia, thank you. And thank you for the extra goodies. So fun to have authentic French things.

Lastly, the day finally arrived, Deb is back home in California. So happy she's home. Spent the day trying to repay her for her last visit here and all she did for me.
Here we are, tired and well, lets just say less than pretty, after working all day. (I'm on the left, Deb's on the right) Going back over today. When I saw this view of what was accomplished yesterday by everyone, I had to take a photo...probably  half done? 

opening the mail

Every time that Alicia tells us about new things in her shop I want to buy them all. This last time I did not restrain myself. Look at the yummy goodies that were waiting for me when I got home. She also traded some wallpaper with me...look! of course, she has the most delicious wallpaper ever. Thank you, thank you! Here are the boxed goodies. Love everything!

While I was gone, I also received an order I placed with Anima Designs. This way, if I can't find wallpaper for you, maybe I can make my own.

And, after seeing this over at Ali's blog I thought I'd try one more thing to help me get organized...how I hope it works!

Just in case your looking to do some shopping on the web. :)

aloha

Pretty sunset, huh? So, we saved up our frequent flyer miles for the 4 of us and booked our flights to Maui. We checked into our hotel, and hit the pool and beach. The next morning my daughter had these red spots on her stomach. I thought it looked like chicken pox. We went to the hotel doctor, and she said, no, they were bites, and we did have these super small little ants in our room. I called my daughter's pediatrician and confirmed that she was inoculated in 2006, what do I know, right? I'm just the mother. So we changed rooms...(the one silver lining to this story is that we were upgraded to an ocean view = veerrrry nice). The next morning my daughter wakes up with full on chicken pox! She and I spent much of the vacation in beautiful Hawaii in our room. Once she was past the super uncomfortable phase I did occasionally join the boys at the pool or beach, but felt guilty and sorry for my girl. Because she had had the inoculation it was thankfully a mild case. She was able to actually participate on the very last day. Can you believe it?!? Unbelievably bad timing. Oh well, there will be other vacations. Always good to return home safely from any adventure.

While stuck in the room I started playing with papers that my daughter and I bought the night before leaving to try to make a little journal while we were there just for fun. There wasn't much to work with, but that was a good challenge. I'm going to add the few photos I took, have everyone write a little something, add a few more doodles and watercolors, stitch it together, and call it a day.

And, to my ever inspiring art buddy Amy Hanna, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I'm trying to get her to set up an etsy shop so you can all buy some of her cool jewelry...I'll keep you informed.

I'll be getting back to emails and everything else in the next few days! Thanks.