tussie mussies

I am hooked on tussie mussies. Its something about the conical shape and being able to really "foof" them up. I have several in various stages of completion on my desk just waiting for the polka dot books to be finished and the last few Zines to be bound and mailed. (I had to order more) I now have more motivation to finish those other projects up because Maria over at The Junk Drawer is hosting a Tussie Mussie Swap! Sign ups just started today so skip on over and sign up. In addition to the actual tussie mussie we will fill them and swap goodies as well. She used my cherub tussie (which is on its way to a new home in Italy) for the blog side bar banner.. come play!

Speaking of the Polka Dot Fat Book.. I have a sneak peek of the binding process (mess) so you can see how we do it. Shosh came down on Wednesday and we spent at least 4 hours sorting and binding and gluing and eating ice cream and putting the books in bags. Today I worked on labeling the envelopes so they are pretty much ready to go. Following are some pictures of the table when we were binding and some of Shosh's amazing pages. I didn't really take good ones of mine.

random ramblings

Hey all, hope everyone had a great weekend. Ours was jam packed and its looking like this week will be too. I am much tanner and there are many more plants in the ground after this weekend. The big news is that we took H to a little local carnival and she won 2 goldfish all by herself. She is so excited and proud of herself. I am fearing that carnival goldfish may not be the healthiest and they might die sooner rather than later but we'll see.

Not much else to report. I worked on a few more jars this weekend so I can update my Etsy. I know I keep saying I am going to update but somehow I just can't quite get to the posting of product stage.. so uncreative! Anyway, I am hoping.. soon!

I have finally gotten back in the groove with Portals and am churning out pages fairly quickly. I just got the VERY handy Photoshop article from Mike and am waiting on a couple of tutorials to round out an article. I am really hoping to go into production before the end of the month. I feel bad that it has taken so long but overcoming the anger and hurt has been difficult for me. There have been more times than not that I have just wanted to scrap the whole thing.

Anyway, I have some exciting treasures to photograph and share later. I am sharing the las of my tags for Tammy's swap in this post. The fancy birdie with pink polka dots is my fav. Speaking of which, I am closing the polka dot book sign ups today. If you "signed up" but have not joined the Yahoo group, please email me! I will be sharing pictures of the project and am so excited to have some blog friends joining in this time around!

fat books....

Just a quick note for those who inquired about the Polka Dot Fat Book.
A fat book is a book comprised of pages from many different artists. Each artist does "x" number of pages, sends them into a central hostess (me) who collates and binds the book. Then you receive a book back with pages from those several artists. They are VERY fun and the art is generally amazing. The pages are often embellished with all sorts of fun things like beads, feathers, fibers, charms, etc to make them very tactile and delicious.

The polka dot fat book will be 20 pages and it will be round!! The pages are due to me by May 30 allowing for plenty of time to make fabulous art. If you have more interest please EMAIL me and I will send you the official guidelines. You can then sign up either by email or joining our fatbook group: Chubbyville ( its fun!)

And the winner is...

Congrats to Lisa- Oceandreamer for she was lucky number 9 from the random number generator and wins the fun ATC book! Lisa, if you will email me with your address I will mail it off right away!!

It was a hectic day but I tackled my studio and I can actually see the floor. I finished up some things for my Etsy shop but didn't get around to taking any pictures yet because by the time I finally FOUND my charger in said studio is was dark. Its now rainy out and I have been bumming around the computer even though I have a pile ( literal and figurative) of work things to do.

I am in need of a picture for a chubby book page that is soon due. It is for a collaborative page I am doing with Sharon for the Cinquain/ Haiku book. Sharon wrote a lovely haiku about tea and I am in charge of the art. If anyone has any cool vintagey images of tea cups, pots or people having tea that they would not mind sharing, please let me know! I will make an extra page to send to you in thanks! I would ask Sharon to try out another haiku or two, on subjects such as fashionable ladies or birds or cute kids because I have lots of that kind of image stock but her Mum had heart surgery today and I think her thoughts are on other things.

Anyhoo, its late and I am rambling. We are still very much in need of art for both upcoming Portals and Eye Candy issues. Joleen has a nasty UTI and is down for the count and I am trying to handle things as best I can while she gets better. Bottom line is.. PLEASE send art and tell a friend too!!

Pixels, paper and glue

Even though I have been quite productive in the studio lately, I am still without my camera (though Canon says it is done and I should have is SOON! yay) so I cannot really share what I have been up to.
I have been working on several things for my long neglected Etsy shop so maybe its better to do a large upload and surprise everyone who has been waiting to see some new treasures. I got a little bit done today but the little was on a tear and constantly made messes and wrecked havoc. I feel so emotionally drained after days like this that I can barely think much less be productive after she finally goes to bed.
This is my page for the Portals fat book. I need to print them and get them off to Joleen who is binding it. I am late but from what I understand I am not the only one. I still have to get my ArtFest pages printed too (thanks for all of your input) and do my "pages" for the ArtFest ATC book. I think that is it for my art swap commitments for now (yay) which will leave me time to work on Portals #5 and the special edition ArtFest issue which we have decided to call Eye Candy. We are looking for submissions or art and writing for both of these issue and we need it ASAP so if you are interested, please visit the Portals website and check out our submissions guidelines. Remember that the Eye Candy issue will go out to more than 500 people making your art or ad very visible!!

Portals Fat Book

*click to view full size*

Also, in case you haven't seen the post. We now have back orders of Portals Zine available on our website.