Hey guys…I can’t believe this month is going by so fast. I am so lame that I haven’t posted since the 15th!!!! Anyway. I am extremely busy right now. This week I hang one of my student shows with 225 works of elementary art and on the 12th I hang the other 400! I frame every 2-D work on construction paper…make labels for each work of art. It’s just a lot of work. So I have been so swamped with stuff that I have really not even taken much time to even write or draw in my journal at all. I can think of a thousand things I’d like to draw…do you ever feel so stressed out, that when you do have a few minutes of down time…you just feel like you want to sit and do nothing? That’s me right now. I’ll get back into it. I have to. Actually, maybe if I did I would feel less stressed than I do.
Today, I just forgot about everything. This morning we went to Savannah’s first soccer game of the season. They played a new team and I think it was their first game ever. So they spent pretty much the whole game at one end of the field and Savannah’s team – the princesses – won like 9 to 0. Afterwards we went to Sam’s Club for samples and a few items we needed and then for tacos at Taco Bell (at Savannah’s request). We came home for like 20 minutes to wrap a present for our little friend Isaac and then we were off to his 6 year old birthday party with our friends. We hung out there for a few hours and then headed home. The kids and I spent the rest of the evening outside. I mowed the lawn and had them help me pull weeds. They played in the sandbox and our new surprise mansion (playhouse) that Sam picked up the other day at a garage sale for 75.00! It’s awesome and the kids totally love it. Then we did hotdogs on the grill and the kids ate in the playhouse while we sat at the picnic table and laughed at their conversations. Then it was bath time and now they are sleeping. I am trying to get rid of a horrible headache that is gradually going away as I am typing this post.
As far as anything I have made…well, pretty much all I have done is this Shaker ATC that we made in my Tuesday night class.
I love it, because it is Italy…and it is something new I have never tried before. I know you guys are probably sick of my ATCs…I want to post more from my journal and I will be trying to make that happen soon.

Anyway – in case you are interested in my ATCs…here is what I used to construct it.
2 playing cards
on the bottom one, I attached a picture of a church in Florence, stamped over top of it and embossed part of the stamp in gold.
I attached a transparency sheet to the back of the top card from which I cut the middle from and had embossed with gold around the edges.
I stamped the capital of a column with stazon ink onto the transparency.
I used foam tape around the edge of the opening and then filled it with beads, glitter and a little embellishment “Ciao!”
I then closed everything together…and signed the back. All the stuff I filled it with moves when it is shaken around.
It was fun to make these and a lot of fun to see everyone elses ideas in class.

Dr. Seuss is probably my favorite illustrator/author. I am participating in my second Dr. Seuss swap right now. These are a few of the cards I came up with. I found characters in his books and featured one on each card. They don’t have names and some aren’t even talked about in the book…but I just love them. What a great imagination he had!

I was at my mom & dad’s with the kids the past few days. My sister and her kids came too and we had a great time together. Mom and I really enjoyed working on ATCs and playing with all her stuff. We decided to try a couple of techniques from her new book. We tried the Monet impressionist texture first. You use watercolor crayons on glossy cardstock and you use a technique with a water brush. It really did turn out like impressionist painting…I think it would look great for a background. We also tried some shaving cream marbeling too. I have done that before with my kids at school. I played around some more with the crayons and my water brush and painted some swirls, green and blue on the glossy cardstock. It then spritzed it with water and the colors ran together. After they dried, I began stamping images in a collage kind of way. My mom has these Italian stamps from Stampin’ Up that I absolutely love. I used one and then I used some other stamps that she had for the rest of the images. I used Teal and 2 different shades of green ink. Once I was satisfied with the look of the collage stamped images, I dried it and then embossed it with 2 layers of UTEE. (We both had recently bought some and neither of us had tried it out yet.) In the second layer, while it was still warm, I stamped a Fleur d’ Lis into the surface. I then used some gold metallic rub on stuff and rubbed it over the raised area of the stamp. To finish it, I edged the card with a gold paint pen. I love the way the UTEE looks on the card. It really finishes it off nicely. It is hard to tell from a scan, I think.