Here's some eye candy for you . These are some of the fabulous ATCs I received last Sunday at the Grind. These little works of art far too good to not share!

The artists on the left (left to right and top to bottom): Blue ribbon by Penelope Harris, Specimen by Andreaflaa, Angel Fish by Misti Ko, Angel by Leilania Lloyd.

The artists on the right (left to right and top to bottom): Blue Angel by Val Verhagen, Wings (Angel Dog) by Fran , Slide Mount by Char Koehler, Crow by Nancy Sherman

I have so many ideas spinning around in my head, and so much I want to do! I just don't have enough hours in the day. The little altered canvasses I've just discovered are certainly addictive - I ran out and bought a dozen more of them and just cannot wait to get to play on them.

I have a ton of cards to do - both for personal use and for the store - so though I hate to do it,I'm going to have to "step away" from my blog for a little while. Hopefully I won't have to leave for too long - I'm finding this blog addictive!!

Here's the altered canvas I was working on. I included the painted canvas base in the last post.

Here's the finished product. It will be going out in the mail in the morning. Not bad for my first effort!

The ATC swap at the Grind on Sunday was fun. We had a good turnout, probably about 16 swappers, with several new-to-me faces. It was fun to attend again after having missed so many swaps over the last several months. One of the new people and I seemed to hit it off - very nice and very talented lady. It was nice to be able to visit with her and discover that we share a lot of the same interests. Last night we chatted on the phone for about a half hour and are planning to get together next week for coffee so I'm looking forward to that.

The last several days have flown by. Husband came home on Tuesday and it has been busy ever since. Funny how a third person in a house changes the dynamics and "busy-ness" that goes on there. I've now had to shift back into wife and homemaker mode - my selfish "artiste" hat is hungly firmlyin the closet for awhile.

I've been busy trying to finish up some art for a couple of swaps I joined over on CC Swaps. I had challenged myself to try to stretch some of my creative muscles this year; I think that, so far, I've been fairly successful at doing that. I've worked in 2 Chunky books this year, done some cool backgrounds and I am now working in a collaborative journal.

I'm also working on an altered canvas for a swap - another first for me! I think these little gems could become addictive! This picture is what the finished base looks like. The scan doesn't show it well, but there are also some gold highlights mixed in there. The gal I am sending to had stated a preference for green so I'm trying to accomodate her. I just hope the background isn't tooooooo green!

I'm please that I've been able to experiment with new techniques. I feel likeI'm finally growing as an artist and that's a good feeling!

Today I'm attending an ATC swap at "the Grind" in Vancouver. This group meets monthly, but I haven't attended for several months. With shiftwork and other commitments, I just haven't had that particular Sunday of the month, free for ages!

I worked until the very wee hours on some new ATCs. Originally, I was trying to duplicate a background technique shown by Karyn Gartel on the Technique Tuesday site. Since I have an altered canvas that is almost due, I thought I might try this technique on that project. I practiced on watercolour paper so that I would have some neat background paper for ATCs.

I'm reasonably pleased with the results and I was able to use the backgrounds for my ATCs; they are the two ATCs on the extreme left of this picture. The paper isn't quite as vibrant as I would have liked, seems a little muddy to me. I'm not sure if that is a function of what happens when you are creating art at 4 o'clock in the morning or me just needing a little more practice !

I've managed to fritter away yet another day without getting much accomplished - not that that's a bad thing! I'm going to remedy that very soon!

As soon as my program finishes - I'm totally hooked on "What Not to Wear" - I will be knuckling down to get some new art done. Sunday I plan to go to a local ATC swap so I need some new art to trade there; I also signed up for a couple of ATC swaps and I need to create some new art to send out for the end of the month.

Before I retire to my studio I just feel the need to comment on Lord Conrad Black's conviction which I just learned about on th 6 o'clock news. Big surprise there! Well actually it is a big surprise to me as I was pretty sure he was going to walk. Instead he will be incarcerated for quite some time. Hard to have any sympathy for him and his "lady" - they are both arrogant SOB's and IMHO they are getting exactly what they deserve! That is all I'm going to say about that!

This couple of weeks that I've been off work have gone very quickly. I managed to get some stock into the store; I would have gotten more done if I had stayed off the darn computer but I am so addicted to this thing that I have a hard time doing other things some days. Today I spent a couple of hours putzing around with the stupid thing trying to get my scanner working. For some reason the computer wouldn't recognize that the scanner was attached - it wasn't even showing that it was installed. No icon, no nothing! I finally discovered that one of the cords had become disconnected when I was rearranging the furniture. I plugged it back in but that didn't solve the problem. The stupid computer wouldn't read that the scanner was hooked up even though at one point it was showing the icon. Talk about frustrating! On about the seventh re-boot, I unplugged the scanner, waited til it completed the re-boot and then plugged the scanner back in again. That seemed to do the trick as I got a "new hardware" message. Once the computer recognized the "new" hardware, it automatically installed the program and I was good to go. Why didn't I do that the first time around? I certainly would have saved myself a lot of frustration and wasted time. Go figure!
Husband is back in 5 days and I have more tasks left than I have time. This week here on the coast, we got hit with some extremely hot weather. Wednesday the temperature here in Pitt Meadows was 40 celcuis. That is some hot! Tuesday was also very hot as well so I had a hard time getting motivated to do much - mostly lay around. I watched a lot of my decorating shows. This translated to me not getting as much done around the house as I wanted to do but I guess that's why they call it "vacation"! The plan for tomorrow is to paint the entranceway from the garage into the house. It's not a large area but it is dirty, disgusting and so ugly looking that I just cannot stand it another minute! Once that is done I'll feel a lot better.
I've spent a good part of tonight trying to clean up some of the junk and clutter that seems to be taking over the downstairs family room and my work area. I did a bunch of organizing a week or so ago and managed to get my studio in pretty good shape. Got stuff off the floor, into drawers, like things together and so on. So now I'm going through all the stuff I just tossed on the floor to deal with later. Well now it's later and I'm piling up these empty plastic containers and there doesn't seem to be any end to them. I think at some point over the last several months I must have lost my blessed mind. I swear I have no idea when I bought these or why I bought so many of them. It's absolutely ridiculous! I've posted them on freecycle and I'm really hoping that someone will jump on these babies really quick and take them off my hands.

Three days into vacation and I've had a couple of very productive days! Yesterday I sprayed my roses for aphids, fixed the fountain -it was running very sluggish because of too much water, I think - painted a wall in the studio and reorganized my studio - twice.

I had taken the measurments and drawn it out and on paper it looked fine, like everything would fit. Unfortunately when it came time to actually set it up the way I had drawn it, it just wasn't flowing - looked too disjointed and chunky! Does that even make sense? I 've had to set it up pretty much the way it was before except that I've gotten rid of one small desk, moved the chest of drawers and added 2 small bookcases that I scored on Freecycle. I like the way it turned out ! It feels good and is reasonably pleasing to the eye.

Today I worked on getting things on the shelves and reorganizing my stamps. I saw something on one of the lists about organizing your stamps in those big ziplock bags. I think it was a tip from Carole Duval. Prior to this I've had my stamps in drawers and boxes, stacked in layers and deposited all over the place. I tried putting them into the ziplock bags with a piece of cardboard in behind it for support - I absolutely love it! I've taken the bags and they are standing in a large rubbermaid container. I can fit about a dozen bags standing up in there and I can see at a glance exactly what I have. They're grouped by theme - birthday, wedding, hearts, things with wings, and so on. This is fabulous! By storing them this way, it solves a couple of problems. First off it organizes them in a way that they are clearly and easily seen and are all in one place. Secondly, now I have more drawere space because the stamps are stored elsewhere. I think this is going to work out really well !

My workroom still looks a little like a cyclone hit it but it is improving. Tomorrow after I get back from my paper run I'll work on it some more. I really want/need to get my work table cleaned off so I can get to work on some new cards. I've also committed myself to some more swaps, want to work on some tags and ATCs and my 3O minute collages.

This feels really good - like I've finally found a system that works and that I can keep up. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.