Saturday, October 21: 3:13 pm

Hello Everyone!

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since my last update... I've been very consumed with the Gleaner zine swap. Now that all the packages have been mailed off and out of my studio, I can try to get it organized! Ha! Good luck with that right? I should keep it that way, as sort of a horror display since halloween is coming up!

I've also been working on a little art...... here first are a few ATCs I've worked on for my Monthly Freestyle swap. This time around, I decided to go with an Asian Theme. I call them "Asian Serendipity with Bird 1, 2 & 3" (from left to right). Here they are...

I find that I'm a lot happier with my ATCS when I space the time that I work on them... that is... when I work on them frequently, I find that I'm less inspired to do them... but when I work on them on a more occasional basis, I'm a lot happier with them.

Since these are the first I've done in some time, I'm happy! :)

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Another project I'm involved in is with my group is a calendar project. There are 13 artists involved in this project... Each of the artists is to create 1 piece of artwork (8 x 10.5 inches) for a full sized calendar, and mail it to me. Then I'll be taking the finished pages to Office Depot and having them turn the artwork into a printed, 8.5 x 11 calendar!

The artwork that's been submitted thus far has been astounding! I really am proud to be part of this group!

The page that I made changed a bit from the beginning, as I was originally supposed to do the month of May... but then with a couple of people dropping out and a few people joining in to replace them... I now have the month of March. Rather than doing a collage which is what I would have typically turned to... I decided that I'd do something entirely new to me! Needle felting!

WOW! I had so much fun with this project! I really love needle felting... yes, it's takes a lot of time (a little more than 8 hours!) to do a piece (the reason it took me so long is because I don't have one of those nifty needle handles that hold several needles at once... guess what's on my Christmas list now?)... but I SOOOO loved doing it! Here is my finished piece!

What do you think?

Thanks for reading along!

~Anne

Saturday -- in the wee hours of the morn!

Hello Everyone!

Don't ask what I'm doing up this late. Actually, I'm a night owl, which is really quite inconvenient now, because both of my girls are in school. Fortunately, I'm able to go back to bed after I get them both off.

I've been finishing up the Gleaner zine swap... I should have all the boxes out the door by this time next week! At least, I hope so! I have really loved hosting this swap, but, wow, so many awesome 'zines... and it takes up SO MUCH space... of which I really don't have a lot to spare to begin with.

It's really forced me to become a little more organized, and I'm hoping that those new found habits will carry over into my life after the swap is over and done with! *keeping fingers crossed!*

I've also been working busily on my Paris chunky book pages for a swap with another group. Fortunately I'm not hosting that one!

This past week, I did receive some really amazing mail --besides the amazing zines I've been getting -- I recieved my recipe chunky book that was part of a swap for my tea group, Brunch_Scones_Tea -- this is a group I co-own with a fabulous lady named Valerie. We 'inherited' the group from the group's founder, who decided she needed to break away from a few of her groups a couple of years ago.

Anyway, this group had a recipe chunky book swap, and I recently got my book back, and it's simply gorgeous! I was really very pleasantly surprised, for a group that isn't 'art' based, there are some very talented folks in the group!

And here's a pic of my latest deco spread, for Linda's "It's My Year" deco.

This one was a lot of fun... I really enjoyed working with the vivid psychedelic colors for this one, it was almost like I needed an excuse to break away from my tendency to work with muted, vintage-like colors! Not that I dislike working with those colors either. But it was fun to change it up.

Hmmm... wanna see the cover of my zine for the Gleaner 'zine swap?

The spine is covered with a strip of fabric that I tore. I basically did this to cover up the stitching (and also to ensure it will stay in place!). My stitching isn't the greatest on here, but I guess that should come as no surprise, since I'm hardly a seamstress. I was going to make the cover a color copied cover, but, I decided to save the color for some of the pages inside. (Too expensive to color copy these days! Ack!)

Anyway, the 'zine is basically about... err...um tea! Which... kind of leads me to my tea updates. I don't really have a lot of new news about tea... just kind of a reminder that my tea of the month this month is my Masterpiece Chai. There was a little bit of confusion with that, because I had originally thought I'd do my Caramel tea this month... so... if you're a tea of the month customer and would rather have the caramel, I'll do that too!

In addition, since my Almond Mocha Mate took so long to be made available, I am also extending the special pricing of this tea for the full month of October.

OK... so that will about do it for me this evening... thanks for reading along!

~Anne