Fun at April's

Page spread from Karen's folded paper journal.
 
This week we got together at April's.  She baked up a pineapple upside down cake to share with us.  Wow, that was delicious!  Thanks April!

Cover on Jan's folded paper journal using one of her hand cut stencil/masks.

April's completed shell angel.  This will make a great ornament for her Christmas tree this year.  Only about 284 days till Christmas!

Here is Mary's shell angel, beautifully framed.  Nice work ladies!  Thanks to Sharon, Mary's friend, for donating the shells and beads and idea.  It was a fun challenge!

April has been enjoying some doodling on decorative card stock using her Signo Uniball gel pens purchased at Jet Pens, where they have great prices.  We all love the white gel pens, they are the best for writing over just about anything.  These will be great additions to her card making.

This is April's folded paper journal, as she works in it.

Karen was busy making Easter cards.

Pinky continued making the iris folding cards.

She is becoming quite expert at it!

Mary brought some knitting to work on.  This will be a wash cloth.  Pretty colors!

Jan too was knitting, beginning a new hat.

April has a unique characteristic:  She collects dead birds.  Yes, you read it right, she collects dead birds.  She doesn't kill them!  No, she only collects fresh ones that she finds dead.  Here she is holding a bagged Gray Jay she found on her deck.  Evidently it hit the window too hard.  She looks like the cat who bagged the canary!

What does she do with them, you might ask?  That is what we all ask her, anyway.  She has great plans for them although she hasn't fully decided just what those plans are as yet.  In the meantime she keeps them in her freezer.  Here you can see two Varied Thrush, one Stellar Jay, one Western Tanager, a Red Shafted Flicker and one Evening Grosbeak.  We tease her mercilessly about this hobby of hers.

When Jan came across this picture in a Smithsonian magazine she couldn't help but alter it a bit before giving it to April.

We love her anyway.  

That's it for this week.  Be sure and return in two weeks for our next exciting adventure in art!  Happy Spring break!! 

Meeting at Jan's

We met at Jan's this week.  Everyone brought the folded paper journals we have been working on.  The first photos are of Pinky's.  Above is her front cover.

Pinky's pages

Pinky's pages 2

Karen's cover

Karen's pages, her drawing

Karen's pages

Mary's cover

Mary's pages using her hand carved stamps

Mary's pages with more of her and carved stamps.

a card Mary was working on.

A card Karen was working on using some pages from a Citrisolved National Geographic.

April's journal pages.

A folded paper card Pinky created.  Very cool Koi!

Pages from Jan's folded paper journal using her hand cut stencils.

The quilt blocks Jan was working on.  They are ready to start putting together once she does a bit more arranging.

Mary had given us some shells to do something creative with and this is what Pinky made.

The other side of Pinky's shell angel.

Jan's shell dragonfly.

 Karen's shell work.

Mary, Pinky and Karen in Jan's messy cluttered studio.

Karen, April Mary and Pinky.  
That is what we worked on this week.  Next week we will probably be at April's, see you then!

Stencil work with S@B

As I stated in the previous post, Scott at Dot's n Doodles in Astoria gave us an impromptu demonstration in using stencils with molding paste, gel medium and paints.  So this week we gathered at Karen's and everyone brought their supplies and we stenciled away!  It was a blast!  Above you can see one of the pieces April created.  It turned out fabulous!

Here is one from Karen.  Just lovely.  I think both Karen's and April's were created on card stock.

Some pieces that Pinky made.  she colored the molding paste before applying it and we all agreed we like that better than trying to color it afterwards.  I love that flower stencil!

Mary had brought a wonderful Hand stencil and created this piece on black card stock.  I love this!

Not sure who's work this is but it is gorgeous.  These were mostly practice pieces, learning how to use the supplies together.

Above is a project Karen completed.  Mary gave us all a little bag of shells and beads and challenged us to make something from them and this is Karen's.  All packaged up in a pretty box, on decorated card stock.  Very striking!  I believe she is gifting it to one of her sisters.

Here is Karen, Mary, Pinky and April, filling their beverage cups prior to getting down to serious work.

We had a tray with water in it for soaking the stencils.  Karen noticed how beautiful patterns were forming in the water so of course we had to get a photo of it and then.....

put a piece of card stock on and captured this marbled effect from it!  Then we all brought in tags and card stock to capture more images before it muddied up.  Bonus!

Scrabble, Karen's cat, says "Put that camera down and get to work!!  
Next week we plan to gather at Jan's.  See you there!

Karen's Birthday!

This is a very late post, because we celebrated Karen's birthday over two weeks ago!  That doesn't take away from the fun we all had.  So much fun in fact that I forgot to take pictures except for these few.  We met in Astoria at Stephanies Cabin restaurant, as usual.  Above you can see Karen with her rootin' tootin' cowboy gift.

I'm not sure but I think this is a journal that Mary created for Karen.  She looks pretty happy about it, we all know how much she likes blank books.  She fills them all up eventually.

April packaged Karen's gifts in this old suitcase, which Karen loved.  

Inside was plenty of goodness and Karen thoroughly enjoyed going through it.

Our waitress photo bombed this shot, as Karen was looking at the gifts from Pinky.
After breakfast we went on to the fine art supply store, Dot's and Doodles.  Scott, one of the owners, gave us an impromptu demonstration on how to use stencils with molding paste and paints.  You will see how much we took to heart his instructions in the next post.  We all bought one or more items there before moving on to JoAnn's craft store, the Goodwill, and Dollar store.  It was an extremely stormy day but finally it cleared off and we decided to linger in town a little longer and took Karen to a late lunch.  We managed to linger until 5pm!  Didn't make it home until after 6pm, exhausted but happy.  We all enjoy these celebrations as much as the person we are celebrating!
Happy Birthday Karen!!