quote

Life is our teacher. Life communicates with us all the time and it is a lesson to see how life continuously has led me to the people I need to met, to the situations I need to experience, and to the places I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since all small individual rivers are already on their way to the ocean, to the Whole. It is not about swimming, it is about relaxing and to float with the river in a basic trust that life already leads towards the sea of consciousness, towards the Whole.

-Swami Dhyan Giten

Watch Your Paint!

Reading labels is fun, especially when you have a toddler running around the house.
They get in to everything! And, everything potentially ends up in the mouth. So, check your paint to make sure it's safe... and toss the dangerous reds and yellows (they will have warnings on them) before someone eats them. If someone has a list of all the yucky paints, please feel free to post it here too. I went through my paints a few years ago and did it. It's sad to waste paint, but when it's dangerous to your family it's not worth keeping. Have fun tossing!

ATC's

I love these! I just learned how to make them and did my first swap!
Pictured is a series of 12 (you see 9 of them) peachy fun Artist Trading Cards!
The front features my work, and on the back is contact information, my signature, date, and the number 1/12- 12/12! I can't wait to start trading art cards with all the talented artists out here! Please feel free to contact me if you want to swap. Fun!

The Process

PaInT...CuT...AsSeMbLe!

Summer Weddings

Let's make a Wedding card!

1. First choose your card stock. (I used a healthy sheet of textured green)
And make sure you are painting on quality watercolor paper (nothing is more fun to cut or paint on than a fine 140 lb. cold press cotton paper!) Yummy!
2. Now with a blunt tipped brush dipped in red, paint 2 heart shapes. Remember to add some shimmer to your paint if you like that sort of thing! :) Fun!
3. Use your handy-dandy heat tool to dry the paintings quickly. And then cut out your newly created hearts.
4. For the card you'll need a smaller sheet of white 80lb card stock and a slightly larger sheet of translucent vellum. I used a 4 1/2" square sheet of white card stock and the overlay is about 5" square. put a dab of adhesive to hold the 2 sheets together.
5. You can pre cut the edges of the vellum using a pair of scalloped edge scissors, or you can skip this step until after you stitch it.
6. Using sticky adhesive (I like Xyron) place your hearts on the vellum and stitch some stems around them. This will hold all the layers together.
7. Now you're ready to assemble your card. Stick the heart layers on the textured card blank, stamp "grow" with black acrylic paint on silver metallic card stock. Pop that on with some adhesive and a staple (to hold the wire stand on).
8. Finally pop in a decorative brad at the corner and stamp "together" inside your card.
9. You did it! :) Great job!