Rhonda loved Sparky’s new collar.  In fact, she thought it was fierce ~ even if he didn’t seem to.

I had a very unruly pile of business cards on my desk that I wasn’t quite ready to commit to my roladex, yet I can’t seem to toss a business card for at least 7-10 years after receiving it…so, one evening I decided to decorate a wooden recipe box I had in the craft closet.  I had painted it crakle brown and drawn gold swirlies on it a lifetime ago and used it briefly for a recipe box.  Time for a face-lift and a new career for this box!

I started by gathering some scrapbook papers to decoupodge onto it and ran across some fun wooden rosettes I’d torn out of a magazine.

I tore the papers into odd sized/shaped pieces and then brushed the top of the box with regular gel medium and started sticking the papers on.

I soon moved to using just Matte medium, which is thinner and seemed to work just fine.

Once I had the box covered with a collage of papers, I decided that in addition to some of the rosettes I had cut out, the box needed something dimensional ~ like some pretty glass pieces.

Before sticking them down, I arranged them where I might want them.  I used  good ‘ol white glue to stick the glass pieces on the top & sides, letting each side dry well before turning the box to stick the others on.

Last, but not least, I finished it off by painting the inside with a metallic gold acrylic paint.

My pile of business cards might not be any better organized but they are at least out of sight.  Besides hiding cards or recipes, what would you do with this box?

I decided to give Illustration Friday (IF) a go this week ~ no matter what the subject, I intended to come up with something, anything! When I read “Hoard”, I thought: What do I personally hoard? Instantly I thought of sketchbooks and journals. I can’t get enough of ‘em. Have shelves of ‘em. Buy more even when I (obviously) don’t need more of ‘em. Can’t help myself….

I purposely did not turn this sketch into an actual final illustration as I felt it was fitting, given the subject matter, that it stay a sketch. In one of my books.

During one of my “treasure hunts” at one of my absolute favorite haunts, I came across this large, (and very heavy) somewhat grumpy-looking fellow and knew I just had to bring him home. I think I’d be grumpy too if I were painted that funky green that made me blend in with the scenery ~ and I’m a HUGE green fan! He was just crying out for a make-over. I thought terra-cotta was just the thing! His expression hasn’t changed much, but he now owns that corner of the yard!!!

OK, so I think I have a touch of that procrastination bug that has been going around….

There’s this fun design/decor blog ~ Kari & Kijsa ~ and yesterday they were talking about mantels and everybody was posting their mantels, and since I love a good bandwagon, I thought I’d jump on.  I hung the pine cone garland at Thanksgiving a few years ago and liked so much I left it there.  My current favorite thing about my mantel is the wooden cat statue on the left.  I found him in an antique mall and knew immediately he belonged here at Kitty City.  On my wish list of things to do in the house, is to exchange that bo-ring white tile around the fireplace for something more funky and fun as well as a nicer mantel piece itself.  Shhhhh…don’t tell Captain Hubby I’ve added it to his list!

My flowers were singing happy tunes this morning…

…because for the last few days ~ it has RAINED!  Just a little, not a lot, but more than we’ve had in a loooong time!

I was so happy, I had to make some flowers of my own bloom!

…is a Happy Hour!  So true, so true!  Just got these cute samples from Cape Shore.  Can’t wait to use them when we have guests on Adios!

Since we were on the subject of Christmas in July a couple posts ago, I thought I’d share a gift that I gave my mother for Christmas a couple years ago. I am sharing it now, so that if it gives you inspiration to create one as a gift yourself, you’ll have time to finish it before Christmas! Don’t wait until November to start! ~ as fun as these are to create, they are time-consuming.

In 2000 my mother & I went to Paris together. I kept a journal and upon return, I typed it up and designed it into a booklet with photos and bits & pieces from our trip (not shown here) ~ this was a task since I didn’t have a digital camera back then and had to scan everything! My mother loved it so much she wished that I’d done this for previous trips we’d taken with my brother and Captain Hubby.

When I discovered “Altered Book Art” I loved the concept. The problem with me is, my art is purpose-driven ~ I just can’t make something like that to sit on a shelf, but the idea of a travel journal using this technique excited me.

So I decided to combine all our European trips to that date in one Altered Book travel journal as a gift to my mother. She absolutely went bonkers for this journal. She says that she takes it out and looks at it again and again. Maybe someone you’ve traveled with would treasure such a gift?

I began by sketching out a rough thumbnail of what I wanted to include on each page without actually planning what they would look like. This allowed me to consider how many spreads I would be creating so that I could properly choose a used book size. Garage sales and/or thrift shops are a great source for these. I chose a thin-ish book based on a calculation of about 3-5 pages in the book per page in the finished book because you will use an archival glue stick to glue pages together to make them more rigid. The book I chose contained verses about friendship, and you can always let bits of the original book pages show through, but in this case I did not. I did, however, like the gold foil-stamped flower on the front and allowed that to be part of the end design.

Use the archival glue stick to combine bits & pieces of scrapbook papers, magazine tears, pages from an old foreign language dictionary, things gathered on your trip (like maps, menus, tickets, etc) ~ add paints, inks, rubber stamps, metallic pens and whatever else you can think of ~ anything goes!

Tear the edges of the papers & photos (I recommend color copies or printouts rather than actual photos ~ easier to paint/stamp, etc.) Oh ~ and an old phone book works great as something to use your glue stick against ~ you can just flip the page to a fresh one for the next piece!

Here’s a closer look at the first spread ~ the note on the right is a prescription from a doctor in Venice ~ I was very sick when we went , but that’s another story!

On the next spread, using my x-acto knife I created a die cut window, through which you can see mom & I tossing our coins in the Trevi Fountain. A “must” do if you want to come back! The coins are little pieces of jewelry I clipped off a necklace I picked up at a garage sale because I just knew I’d need those coins for something some day!

If you want to cut a window or cut the edge of a page wavy so that the edge of the next page shows (as I have below to see the red paper), do it after you’ve glued the pages together. However, I decided I wanted a peek-a-boo window on this spread as well, so I chose the pages I would glue together and used a circle punch to punch through them all before gluing them because I wanted to slip a sheer piece of velumn between them so that you could see the picture of my mom on the next spread through it.

Also be mindful about what you’ll see through a die cut or wavy edge when the page is turned.

Pockets are another fun way to add an element of surprise to your design. Here’s a detail of the pocket shown above. When you pull out the tassel you get a photo behind it as well as seeing the whole photo of the little bit you see through the die-cut window of the pocket. In this case we were at the flea market, hence the money images on the page!

For the page above (right), I actually glued down real Euro coins using Elmer’s glue rather than the glue stick. If you do something like this, glue your pages together first (it’s a good idea when adding something as heavy as coinage to glue a few extra pages together to make it sturdier) and give it plenty of time to dry before moving on ~ a good stopping point for the night! I also took a regular single hole punch and punched a line of holes down the right side of the page in a wavy design to see the paper below on the next spread.

I just have to show a closer look at the photo on the lower right…We splurged and had drinks at the Ritz in Paris. Every drink came with rose. Afterwards we went from the Ritz to Pizza Pino on Champs Elysee and this shot just captured the fun of the night ~ my mom laughing with a pocketbook full of roses!

I hope this post has you flying to the shoebox of bits & pieces you’ve been saving because you just knew you’d use them for something someday~

Well, when I got back from NYC, Captain Hubby announced he wanted to purchase a scooter. He presented me with all his research on models, gas mileage, insurance costs, etc. I voiced my concerns about safety, but he was adamant that this was something he wanted to do in an effort to save gas and do his little part for the environment. I’m all for saving gas, money and the environment, but I am still not completely on board with the idea of the love of my life zipping around town among SUVs on this glorified bicycle, even if he has promised to ALWAYS wear his helmet. But, he’s a grown man and I’m not his mommy. I just send out a little prayer every time he leaves the house on it….

Got these darling samples right when I got home from NYC. Great job, Leanin’ Tree! I love the way they packaged them into a little portfolio ~ the envelopes are even printed. You’ll just have to guess which one you’ll get when the holidays roll around!