Long Time No Blog!!!! And Stampaway!!!

 The weeks have just  flown by!!!  Life has been busy... work, family, company... but it is all good!!!  Now that school has started I think things will be their more "normal" busy rather than crazy busy, lol!!!

I have lots of cards and atcs from the summer that I haven't shared yet and will hopefully be getting to those very soon but first my trip to Ohio over Stampaway weekend, the first weekend in August.  Several of us from a small online group had been planning for months to meet up that weekend and I'm so glad I was able to go.  I had an absolutely fabulous time!!!!!  I made the 10 hour drive over on Thursday and drove back on Sunday.  I took one class while there.  It was an art journaling class.  We each received a spiral bound book and then we spent time using several different mediums in different ways to create backgrounds (or the beginnings of backgrounds) in the book.  We used white gesso, black gesso, black gesso with aluminum foil, acrylic paints, tape, various inks, sprays.  It was a lot of fun!!!!  Now to turn all those started pages into finished pages.

We all had tickets to the Stampaway preview party Friday night.  It was wonderful to browse and shop without all the big crowds.  I got to meet Cheryl of  TENseconds Studio.  She was demoing VerDay paint and patina in the Marco's Paper booth.  Here is a pic of her and I.

Some of us, including me, bought the VerDay kit because it's just way cool what you can do.  After I got back to the hotel room I had to have a play.  The night before I had picked up a large sheet of 300# watercolor paper (there was a Hobby Lobby and a Michael's not far from where we had supper) as I was planning to make a book and had already torn it down into pieces about 7 1/2" x 11".  I decided the VerDay would make a way cool cover.  I did make a mistake as I somehow missed the fact that you are supposed to let the first coat of paint dry for at least one hour... I painted the first coat, dried it with a heat tool, sponged on some of every color over it and then sprayed on the patina.  Then went to bed so it could "cook" all night.  In the morning... way cool!!!  But I think I would have had a bit more rusting if I had done the first coat of paint properly.  But I still like it!!!  This is a pic...  the pink you see is from spraying the other side with Dylusion sprays... didn't plan for it to get on the VerDay side but I'm messy and it's all ok!!  

Here is a close-up of an area.  

While at the preview party we decided to get our pics taken with Tim and Mario.  In the pic are Mario, Michael, Trent, Nancy, Tim, Me, Lori, and Deb in the front.  

On Saturday Michael had arranged for us to use the studio area of Stamping Buddies, a stamp store that had just opened this year.  The owner was super sweet and it was so much fun to just play and visit with everyone.  The first thing we did was get out our VerDay so we could do up some things and they'd have time for drying and patinaing while we were there.  I did this manila tag... it is so cool!!!! ... I haven't done anything else with it yet but will although I don't want to cover up too much of it's awesomeness.  

I also started working on my book.  I took each piece of watercolor paper and sprayed it with Dylusion sprays, dried them, and then did Dyan's ghosting technique with various stencils on each one.  Here are just 3 as I've already started finishing pages and hadn't thought to take pics of them all beforehand.  Each of these pages gets folded in half ... they'll all be nestled together and then bound.  I'll share the whole book once it's finished.

Another thing I did was try my hand at Zentangling.  Nancy gave Lori and I a lesson.  I started with a stencil of a flower, just traced the design with a black pen and then went on to fill in all the areas.  Then free-handed with white pen around it and added the words with black pen.  I chose those words because as I was working on the flower I would find myself holding my breath trying to get things "right" and then all of a sudden take a big breath and Nancy would tell me to breathe, this was supposed to be relaxing and fun, lol.  And it was fun... so much fun that the 3 of us are having a little swap of strings and tangling them and sending them back (I'll share all that when we are done).  I did this flower on the inside cover of the book I started. 

Something we had planned ahead of time was to have a tag swap.  We all made tags to swap.  I totally messed up!!!  I forgot that we were supposed to make a tag related to either where we live or where we grew up.  But I had fun making the tags I took and have promised to make Iowa tags for everyone later.  I made these first 3 tags, a few of each, and let everyone just choose which one they wanted.  (I'll share each one separately with info on future blog posts)

These are the tags everyone else made.  Left to right - Trent, Lori, Micheal, Nancy, Deb.  Aren't they all fabulous!!!  These are all going in my book.  

And here is a picture at a Mexican restaurant (can't remember the name) where we had supper Saturday night.  Good food, friends, and fun!!!!