Candy Canes Gone Wrong

I'm not much of a baker and I guess I'm not much of a candy maker either.  Lydia (Understand Blue) post a while back about melting two candy canes to make a heart.  So in one of those rare moments with my oven on (cooking a prime rib roast) I thought I would give it a try.  I totally forgot that it didn't take to much time to melt.  When I checked on it 10 minutes later (which is about 8 minutes to late) they had melted in blob.   It wasn't a good night for things coming out of the oven.  I picked up a prime rib roast at Trader Joe's and it smelled a little funny when I opened the bag, first bad sign.  As it was cooking it smelled off, second bad sign. Not that yummy home cooking smell I get when I cook pot roast.  When it came out of the oven it was cooked perfectly but still tasted funny, the third and final sign. So everything went into a zip lock bag and it's going back to the store.  One good thing about TJ is that they take back everything no questions asked.

Crafting Shirt

I use to eat chocolate when I was in a creative slump.  One pound would always do the trick but of course with the changes in my diet, that's a major no no.  I also had a favorite crafting shirt that I would wear all the time.  Always felt creative when I was working in my cat shirt.  I finally had to say good-bye to my ten year old shirt.  It was torn around the collar and all of the applique had come off years ago.  For the last couple of years, I couldn't wear it out in public. I took off all the button and cut it up to use in my rag pile out in the studio. Not sure why this shirt last so long when I got other ones that did last more than a year.  It was still sad to say good-bye to my old favorite shirt.

Amy Flynn - Found Object Dolls

Many moons ago I started going to auction houses to find the weird and unusual objects so I could make dolls like the famed artist Amy Flynn. (I love her cat and bee dolls below) I dragged home a tons of stuff which morphed into the start of Alley Cats Vintage treasures, my antique business.  I started to haunt auction houses for other alter artists, finding the treasures they didn't have time to hunt down themselves.  I remember listening to "Eat That Frog"(very good audio book) and he talked about all the screen writers in Hollywoood who didn't have a finish script ready if the opportunity came up to show it to someone. They didn't make the time to do the thing they said was important to them.  I've felt like a screen writer without a script for a long time so this year with my new word being "focus", I 'm going to make a alter art doll.  I have all the parts, maybe not all the right tools but that's not an excuse. So today I started to gather the parts and worked on the construction of getting the parts to fit together. My final doll may not be a whimsy as Amy Flynn but I would have at least made one.         

Wet mushroom hunters

I've been playing catch up all week.  Thought I would post of photo from my recent mushroom hunt.  Lother on the left and Tina on the right (her husband Thomas was taking the photo) were our fungus guides.  They are also our bee mentors, who helped us when we first started out keeping bees.  It was wet and cold so we all have about four layers under our coats. Yes we look tired because when this photo was taken, we had been hiking for 3 hours up and down the muddy Santa Cruz Mountians. 

March Card Kits 2010

I'm having a great time design with this medallion style folding. I was asked to come up with card kits for customers at Memories Live On who want to do something quick and simple. Many times it's a parent who wants to have a crafting bonding moment with their child. The hardest part is finding thin paper since most of the scrapbooking paper is heavy card stock weight.

Mushroom Hunting 2010

We spent all day today hunting for Black Trumpet mushrooms. Before any of you freak out that I will ruin my liver, we went with 3 experienced fungus guides. The mushroom that causes all the deaths here in California (can't remember the name right now) looks very much like ones that grow in Mexico and Vietman that aren't poisious. When people from there see them, they don't know here in the states they can be deadly. Black trumpet really don't have a nasty evil twin so we were pretty safe. We hiked up in the Santa Cruz mountian for 4 hours which was a great work out. We were off trail, so we were either going up or down a muddy hill and climbing over fallen trees. It wasn't quite raining but it was wet. With the recent storms we had the run off looked like waterfalls. We came home with over 7 pounds of mushrooms.

Fabulous Fold Class

Another new class I will be doing in March "Fabulous Folds". Some Iris folding and one easy origami folding card. I'm more focused on doing projects for beginners. Some times teachers forget there are newbies out there. These are easy cards to make once you learn how.

Another CAS card

Another card using up some paper from my stash. The stamp is from a new Penny Black set. I will be doing a class with this image in March. It makes a quick and simple card, which is always nice to have around. Penny Black Stamps & Copic Markers

CAS - scraps

I've been working really hard trying to use up my HUGE stack of vintage scrapbooking paper. The background paper is about 7 years old. In the scrapbooking world, that's greatgrandma paper. :)

Alter Art Collage Card

My card making group meets tonight. For several months, I've done CAS cards for the group. Since half the ladies can't make it tonight (so I only have to make 5 instead of 10 cards)I decided to make something a little more time consuming. I pulled out some supplies that haven't seen daylight in years. Sheets of metal, shimmering mist, Adirondack color wash and alcohol inks. I'm the only one in the group that does weird stuff like this. It's not a style the ladies like but they appreciate effort. :) I sprayed the mulberry paper and flocked paper by gcd with different colors and used the alcohol inks on the metal heart that I ran through my Cuttlebug. The whole project made a huge mess in my studio but it was fun to get artfully dirty.

Anniversary Mushroom Hunting

Hubby and I can't agree on what to do for our anniversary coming up in a few weeks. He likes to go back to places he's been and I like to go to place I've never seen. February isn't the best month to go places since it's still cold and wet. Something we both agree on is learning to hunt wild mushrooms. It's been on both of our life list and with all the rain we've been getting it's time. Hubby is good a spot things and cooking with local foods. I like hiking off trail and doing something different so it's a good compromise. Our fungus guides said we will be going out for Black Trumpets this weekend. Guess it's going to be a good year for them. My next trip will be to go hiking for mushrooms in Italy or maybe truffle hunting with pigs in France.

It was auction week this past weekend. There wasn't much there I was interested in but I did manage to come home with this carnival glass bowl/vase. It comes in two pieces which is unusual for carnival glass.