This is my first finished page in an Art Journal. Wooohooo! I've finally accomplished one of my goals and I think I may be hooked now.

I'm playing in a card exchange over at CST on Yahoo Groups. The premise is that you must use Magenta Art Stamps on your cards. I'm enjoying myself - Magenta has such wonderful stamps to play with and since I have quite a collection of them, I have lots to choose from.

I'm taking a class with Pam Carriker over at Creative Workshops. It's called Visual Journalism and I'm really enjoying it. It's given me that little push I needed to actually start working in an art journal and I'm sooooo glad I signed up for this course.

Here are a couple of the backgrounds I created. I used cheap craft paint (not all that happy with it) and next time I do some backgrounds I'll use better quality acrylics. I really like the transluscent look you achieve with the better paints - although there may not be anything wrong with the cheap craft store acrylics I used - I may have just been too heavy handed. Anyway, this is what the initial backgrounds look like. Unfortunately, I didn't think to scan the blue one before starting to embellish it so you're seeing the first baby steps on that one!

A few more of my new designs. These 3 D punchouts are fabulous - the finished results are quite amazing! The background paper is from Clipper Street - they have the most beautiful paper and I always end up buying more. It's much like Costco in that you need to buy it when you see it as it probably won't be there the next time. I usually drop some serious coin there! But what's a girl to do?

Here are a couple of engagement cards I've made for the store. Not sure about the pink one - I'm thinking the colour of the cardstock might be wrong. Oh, well, trial and error. Sometimes lots of error!

I'm finally here to provide a little update on how things are going in my little corner of paradise. Since last I posted, I have made some headway on clearing the clutter and getting back on track. I'm gradually working through my "to do" list so I do have a sense of finally control of things that are long overdue in the "needing to be done" department.

My ensuite is 99 % finished and I'm so pleased with it. It turned out really well and it has the spa like feel that I was going for. The linen tower door has finally been installed (what a comedy of errors that was!) so that finishes it nicely. Now I'm just waiting for the tile man to come back and install a few more granite tiles as the trim and then we're good to go. I have new hardware to put up for the towels and toilet roll holder however have run into a little delay there - I found the actual hardware I bought but seem to have lost the mounting plate. I know it hasn't gone far, and suspect that it is somewhere in the pile of junk in the spare room, but at this point I'm not ready to tackle that mess yet so I'll just have to wait a little while longer. Will post pics some other time.

This weekend I had a 5 day weekend and I was able to accomplish a lot. The house finally got a good cleaning so now it actually looks like it's reasonably habitable. Still some clutter clearing to do but I did manage to go through a lot of the paper that had piled up so that's a good thing. Also - drum roll here please - I took my taxes to the accountant today. I'm filing for both DH and myself. I didn't file last year due to me just being overwhelmed after his sudden death, so I have 2 years to submit. Anyway I finally got everything together and it's now in the accountant's hands so that's one less thing to worry about.

On the art front, I'm taking an on-line course called Visual Journalism. I've just started but am running a little behind so don't have the first week's work completed yet - big surprise, that - but I'm really looking forward to being able to do some art for fun's sake. I've also managed to get a few cards made up for the store as well and am just waiting for approval to go ahead and make up.

My big project for this weekend was re-organizing the work room. I had toyed with all kinds of solutions, most of them expensive, and then opted for the very basic one that I always come back to and that seems to work the best. It's still a work in process as I'm trying to weed out the stuff I don't use, re-home some of it or donate to a school teacher I know. I have no idea how I got so much stuff - I don't even want to think about how much money I've spent on my art supplies and rubber stamps. It's absolutely scary! Anyway, I'm pleased with the progress I've made in re-working my studio and I think I'll be able to keep it up (fingers crossed). Pics to be posted at a later date.

Gotta run as I have a few more things I want to do before getting into my jammies. As this post is a little long, I'll post some pictures of the cards separately. I hope you enjoy them.