just packing up the truck for portobello west.

don’t forget my local bloggy peeps that today, if you attend portobello west and pay the $2 admission fee, show me your stamped hand and i’ll refund you the price of admission! just mention that you read it on my blog and the twoonie is yours.

if you attended our warehouse sale earlier this month then you hopefully received a free admission coupon. please remember to bring that with you to enter the show at no charge!

portobello west is on today from 12-6pm… it is located on the south foot of Cottrell Street just off Terminal Blvd between Main St. and Clark Dr. in Vancouver. hope to see you there!

i’m heading into the hospital for a minor ‘procedure’ to deal with the on-going saga of my freaking right eyelid. they are removing the cyst in the lid today and i’ll be off the computer for a few days over the long weekend to allow recovery time. too bad a few days won’t take care of the massive bruising i’ll have for the next 2-3 weeks. <sigh> it really has been a year for me…

BUT before i forget, i wanted to remind my local peeps that i will be attending portobello west this sunday, august 31 with a whole bunch of new artwork including a few new originals and BIG giclees, buttons and the most adorable button magnets.

the portobello west fashion+art show runs from 12-6pm this sunday… so if you have a little time this sunday before the reality of fall and back to school smack you in the face, please come on by and check out the amazing artists, fashion and jewelry.

admission is $2 and if you tell me that you read about portobello on my blog, i’ll refund you the price of admission. think of it like validating your parking ticket, except your parking is free and now you’ll be able to shop the coolest vancouver fashion+art scene in town.

oh! before i forget… i wanted to mention that a number of my artworks are also now available in the great little shop called ‘the velvet room boutique’. the boutique, a lovely shop full of great fashion, jewelry and art, is located on 41st ave in the kerrisdale neighbourhood of vancouver. if you are in the area, please do visit their store… they have lovely things.  here is their website

one more piece of biz before i sign off…

i will be reopening registration for a fall session of the art of transference online workshop series, so please watch the blog for notification by mid-september announcing registration. let your art friends know about the workshop series if they are interested in image transfer - it’s a really in-depth class and i’ve gotten great feedback on the course content.

registration will be running from mid-september to september 30, with classes commencing on october 1.

have a great long weekend my friends! see you in september =)

my definition of artistic… and merriam-webster’s too =)

To create your own wordle cloud visit : wordle.net

after a 4 day migraine, things are finally getting back on track! it seems as if my lovely HOT days in vegas, in the dry, non-humid, constant climate environment left me a little ‘hung over’ and my sinuses freaked out being back in the damp and pollen-happy northwest lol… that and two lovely days of weather changes and the fact that the botox is wearing off all made for a tired, grumpy and headachy girl.

but ahhhhh… all is right again and i’m back in the groove. creating art and working on graphic design stuff for a few clients. i’m getting jiggy with it as they say and it feels good!

so… a few of you had emailed about getting a better view of a few of my new pieces [plus i have 8 more on the go for portobello west this sunday] so i thought i’d give you a better view of the lovelies that are being dropped off for stretching tomorrow…

I also have a couple of scrappy layouts/projects in my head at the moment, so that will be appearing soon too! think 6×12, panoramic landscapes with twinkly lights [hint hint!!]

Me n T Vegas Monorail

just back from Vegas… we were both hot and now we’re both tired. unfortunately i am working all day today and through the evening until 10pm at a special City event. i will try to post tonight if not i’m too tired. in the meantime, here we are on the LV monorail heading off to dinner. my hubs is one funny dude =)

in a mad frenzy to get a few pieces finished and off to my giclee printers in quebec, so i could have them back and stretched in-time for portobello west on august 31, i finished off 4 new pieces and thought i would give you a sneaky peek at these latest editions.

gotta say…. i love these. they are vibrant and soft at the same time [if that is possible!] and are going to be available as limited edition reproductions on canvas only. yum!

i’m off to land of casinos, pools and sweaty people [its 104F in las vegas!! holy $hit!] for a few much needed days of holiday with the hubs but thought i would leave you with a little eyecandy while i’m gone… i thought you might miss me a little and didn’t want you to be lonely ;^)

click on the thumbnail at the right and enjoy!

Funny/Cute Moments with Robert Downey Jr

LOVE the RDJ…
Enjoy!

ok. so i was asked by Lu Braxton to contribute to her art slam blog - i was super pumped but also my head has been swimming with so much information and wicked deadlines at the moment, that i hit a bit of a creative stumbling block.

Lu emailed me today, confirming my ’slam’, and one little word in her email jumped out at me and led me down my chosen art slam path… digital. now that was a word. a word that led from digital to digital paper projects, digital scrapping, hybrid scrapping and on and on. so, with that pivotal word in my mind, the plan was set… an art slam about hybrid paper arts projects. so let’s get to it!

step 1: picking your subject…

for me, that was the easy part. my hubs. i’ve been with my hubs for 14 years [married for 8 of those] and he is often the focus of my photography and my favorite person to journal about.

step 2: picking your colour palette…

this is usually a little harder for me because i’m a mixed media artist and i love colour. but… lately i’ve been drawn to [almost hypnotically!] to blues and browns, with bright shots of white and contrasting black. it’s my favorite yum-go-to palette.

so… rifling through my vast inventory of supplies - i’m a manufacturer of stamping and scrapping supplies after all lol! - i dug up some of my favorite paper, a few of my favorite newish stamps, a couple of great ink pads, some rubs and kicked-up the computer so i could add some digital goodness to my chosen patterned 12×12 paper.

this is essentially the collection of supplies that i pulled together:

step 3: pick and print a photo…

again. easy. picked a great photo of my hubs terry and printed it in black and white so the colour palette would stay crisp and clean. then i mounted the pic on chipboard, rounded off the corners and sanded the edges for a distress look.

step 4: pick and digitally alter pattern paper…

i decided to use our paperWERX organic collection paper called mud bay since it had light enough areas for digital printing to show up on it. it was also a new and still current favorite of mine. plus i love that it has ‘visual’ texture without the bulk of actual texture. wicked!

i cropped the 12×12 pattern paper to 8×10.5 so i could feed it through my laser printer, then i opened up photoshop on my computer and loaded a digiWERX ledgerbook digital sheet. i converted the ledger page to b/w, adjusted the ‘levels’ of the paper and resized the ledger page to a 8×10.5 digital layout base. then i added a piece of graphic stock for the title frame and finally set up the title using a bold, blocky font.

i placed my cropped 12×12 paper in the by-pass tray of my laser printer and printed the digital layout onto the patterned paper. so cool! i took a regular scrapbook paper and customized it simply by doing a few simple things in a graphics program like photoshop. many paper artists know this as hybrid paper arts or scrapbooking. i just call it like i see it, cool as heck!

step 5: start scrapping…

so first i adhered my mounted, distressed and oh-so-handsome pic of my hubs on the altered pattern paper. i covered up the butterfly in the paper because butterflies aren’t that manly. LOL! then i layered on a hambly screenprints journaling spot and journaled in my own handwriting, i used a black sharpie pen for the journaling. love those!

step 6: breaking out da rubbah!

next, i used two ink pads from the staz-on ink line in timber brown and jet black to stamp layered concentric circles around the edges of the layout. the cool thing about that was that it ‘inked’ the page edges without looking forced and contrived. love that. the randomness of the strong concentric circular stamps perfectly complimented the structured lines and rectangles of the printed pattern and photograph… cool beans man!

step 7: add the rubs…

suddenly as the stamping took over and i got all rubber happy, the layout started looking a little dark! dark stamping, b/w image, dark writing and journaling spot was all adding up to a heavy looking layout. not my plan… so as usual, flying by the seat of my pants, i hauled out the basic grey white rubs and started randomly applying them on the layout. i pretty much added the rubs whereever looked ‘right’ or was too dark. no master plan, just a quick ‘lets do this’ attitude. worked well IMHO =)

then, to spice up the rub-ons, i used a uniball signo white pen and added scribbles, fills and outlines to the basic grey rubs.

step 8: finishing up…

the final step in this fast and fun, add a ’subtitle’ to the layout. using my favorite, hard-to-find american crafts roosevelt jr. alphabet, i added the word ‘baby’. a small word, but one that fit the bill of this layout to a tee.

the final results of this layout are pretty dang cool in my humble opinion. the design of the layout is simple and clean. the graphics trendy, fresh and funky with a touch of tribal. the colour palette a favorite of mine, restrictive and simple - which means it works! it was a layout that took all of 30-45 minutes to complete and the results were quick. dirty. and lots of fun!

i hope that this piece shows you how you can combine what you already have, supply wise, and how you can ‘tweak’ your projects with digital hybrid media. hybrid paper arts are all about chucking everything in your arsenal of supplies, including the kitchen sink and your computer skills, at a project and seeing what sticks. there are no rules. nothing is wrong. as long as you like, or hopefully love it, it’s all good. use what you’ve got… or download digital media to make what you’ve got, better! now go forth and hybridize your projects.

lucrecer braxton of the famed ART SLAM inspiration blog and former design team member for both lazar studiowerx street team and hamble screenprints, has asked me, yep little ole’ me, to be her guest “slammer” this week. an honor to be sure.

i love this arty chick’s art journal/scrapbook work and photography and of course i said yes when she asked. like duh! so tonight, i’ll be updating the bloggy-blog-blog with some coolio new [and old] scrappy artwork, a brief tutorial and examples of hybrid scrapping. can’t wait! but you will have to, until laaaaaaaaaaate tonight or early tomorrow morning [depending on your timezone lol!]

in the meantime… enjoy the following post about RDJ <sigh…>

there is a really great interview with him on the stands now in rolling stone magazine. he’s so intelligent, quick witted and metaphorical about who he, his past and his life today, etc… makes for an interesting read. definitely NOT a fluff piece. it’s him. in a nutshell. warts and all. not that i see any warts at the moment. do you?? the photo is from the interview. and there are more… many more. like i said, it’s a good read. check it out here

i love him. and yes, my husband knows ;^)

caught this on YouTube today while noshing on my healthy salad at lunch…. enjoy!