Out of Hibernation

*yawn* Oh.  *blink, blink*  Hi.  I hope I haven't completely lost you guys.  I know, I haven't posted anything since Christmas.  Ugh.  Lazy blogger.  In my defense, though, there's a lot I haven't been doing, because it's Winter and I don't deal well with Winter.  It makes me not want to do anything.  I even slow down on art-making. 

This year, though, a tragedy kicked my butt into gear and inspired me to take my art more seriously and devote more time to creating.  Since then, I've been trying to keep my momentum up, and while there have been stretches of days when I haven't done any art, I've mostly been keeping up. 

Blogging, though, I haven't caught up on til now.  So I'm just going to show off some of what I've been doing with my art time, and pledge to blog a little more frequently from here on out.

I'm also trying to work on making some stencils, very slowly.  Got a few stamps I want to carve, too.  And some sewing to do.  As usual, I'm either doing nothing or I'm doing everything.  Maybe one of these days I'll learn to pace myself.

Thursday Theme: Frozen

Hi all!  Back to posts with photos!  Although, ironically after all those posts about inspiration and personal style and such, I have been seriously off my groove.  I have wanted to make things, but just haven't had the inspiration.  I've been keeping up with my sketching, but don't have anything more than a few studies yet.  It's like my artistic impulse and inspiration have been frozen solid by the sudden decisive onset of Winter. 

But last night I sort of forced a thaw.  I had some gift tags to make and some boxes that needed to go out in the mail for some far-flung friends.  I decorated the boxes first, and it was kind of rough.  For a while I just sort of sat there looking at all my stuff, as though I didn't know what I was doing.  I pushed myself to just get started, though, and so I'm not all that thrilled with how they turned out.  Well, they're just shipping boxes, so they're not meant to be kept...

But once I got started on the tags to go with the gifts in them, I started to warm up a little better.

Isn't it strange how you can get so thrown off, and freeze up and feel like you can't do anything anymore?  Or maybe it's just me that happens to.  Well, hopefully I can keep warming up and get the fire burning again.  I have so much to do for Christmas!

Christmas in Sepia

First order of business:  I'M DONE WITH SCHOOL!  *happy dance*

Okay now that that's out of the way, on with the catching-up-on-blogland.  It's December, and I've squeaked out some crafting time - not a lot so far - but I've done some tags and I'm really having fun with them this year.  My Christmas color palette seems to be sepia this year.  You know, those antiquey browns that Distress Inks come in, that give such a warm and aged look to everything you use them on.  And I've been going nuts with the inks. 

Also, I seem to be on a psychic wavelength with Tim Holtz.  I'm really not trying to be pretentious by saying that.  But check it out.  Last Sunday, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, before Tim started his 12 Tags of Christmas, I did this tag:

Ok, see the ticket?  That's a Tim stamp.  I wanted just the 25 to be red, so I pulled up last year's tags and used his method for creating a custom ink pad to get the effect I wanted. 

Well, damn if Tim didn't use that stamp and do a custom ink pad for it for his very first tag of Christmas this year!  I know, not much of a stretch, but with all the techniques he uses, what are the odds?  He even did the 25 in red!  Now, I do copy Tim's techniques, but I try not to copy his exact creations.  And now it looks like I have done that.  Oh well.  I kept makin' tags...

Mom got these beautiful Ink-a-Dink-a-Do clear stamp sets for Christmas, and I loved this reindeer:

Isn't he beautiful?   Especially in gold.  And there had to be snow. 

So then I wanted to do a tag inspired by one of my favorite Christmas carols.  So I scrawled the lyrics all over a tag to start, and let them take me from there.

Do you recognize the lyrics?

They're from "The Peace Carol" by John Denver and the Muppets.  On A Christmas Together, which is probably the best Christmas album ever released.  (You may disagree, but that's ok.)



And then I finally had the inspiration for the tag I'm most pleased with.  (I know, I'm so vain about my creations, but really, it turned out just like I wanted.)  I stayed up late on Tuesday to finish it:

And then two days later, Tim's 9th tag was this.  Now, the paper rosette was bound to show up sooner or later, but on a tag that was all sepias with black accent?  Seriously?  Cue Twilight Zone music. 

Okay, so maybe it's not significant, but these little coincidences have been amusing me all week.  I know that Tim's tags are professional quality, and mine not so much.  But I've been having a lot of fun doing tags, and there are lots more techniques that Tim rolled out this year that I want to try.  But I promise, I won't be too much of a copycat.  I'm just using the techniques, honest.

More to come!