Saturday, April 30, 2011

Easter fun

This past weekend was Easter and we were busy! I had the kids decorating eggs one night. I had found these egg holders in Target and knowing that it's hard to hold onto eggs when you are a little one, I thought they would be perfect!  So I bought 2... They had a blast painting them and then when I pulled out the Faber Castell Pitt pens, well, it turned into a Zendoodle party!



I also found this cute stamp set~ it was adorable but didn't work as well as I would have liked.  Maybe foam stamps would have been better.  Too hard for Christopher to use. He did like to paint with the "inks" though.  Here he is drawing over the painted egg.




Here are our finished eggs... one was dropped and cracked.  Good thing I hard boiled them first!!!
I love these little masterpieces and it's going to kill me to throw them out soon.   Fun night for all!
On Easter morning we had a little scavenger hunt that the "Easter Bunny" set up the night before.  Late that night might I add... So, due to that fact, the last clue was totally screwed up!  We could NOT find it!  SO, I had to pull out the baskets and ruin it all or it would have lasted all day.  Oh well.  They had fun and I better double check the clues next year before I hide them (and write down where I hid them!).








Okay, I promised to give away a fun basket of Nikki Sivils goodies! Here is my winner (randomly picked):

Katie said...
Wow! What gorgeous stuff! You just HAVE to get picked! My favorite thing about spring? Definitely sidewalk chalk! There is nothing like playing with your kids and drawing on the concrete!

Katie, email me your address and name and I'll get that little basket of goodies out for you!!!  I love sidewalk chalk too!  Being an art teacher and artist, I go all out with my kids too!  I just bought a new box to draw with alongside my boys!

Thank you to those that follow me and leave sweet comments for me!   I'll share more work soon!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Sharing

Just a little post to share some new work!  I haven't shared in a while and sharing is good.  So, while I'm working on teaching my toddler to share nice, I will do the same here!  I might even have some nice goodie sharing to do at the end of the post!


 First up is this layout for the current "Scrap That Baby" challenge blog prompt.  Sonograms was the theme.  I used one from Christopher as a little bean!  I think this was the one where we found out he was a boy!  I used Prima papers, My Mind's Eye kraft embellishments, Prima flowers and bling, and Thickers letters.  The ribbon was from a recent baby shower I went to.  Recycling! Check out the challenge and link a page up there to be in the running for some Nikki Sivils goodness!
 Cute... that's my sweetheart!  My little Christopher looks adorable in this photo from a year ago.  I created this page as part of my PencilLines DT application!  Haven't shared it yet, so I thought I'd do that now.  The sketch was great fun to use!
 Another cute photo of my boo..  Here I used a Studio Calico kit for the page and it was my first PencilLines sketch challenge page!  Lots of Sass here.  Here's a link to the challenge page.
This is the current Pencil Lines sketch page!  I used lots of Faber-Castell products here and featured this page on their blog for my Technique Tuesday this week.  I love the summery feel and the warmth of the glazes!  I soooo want to go back there where it was warm and sunny.  It's cold and snowing (in late April no less) here! BLAH!!

So, those are some of my most recent projects.  I have a bunch of Nikki Sivils stuff to share too in a minute, but here is a Spring project I made using ALL Prima flowers, papers, and embellishments.  I submitted this for my DT application (trying once again... hmmm hmmm) in hopes that they see how I can use their product.  I absolutely LOVE how this turned out.  I had an old cake dome in which the base broke.  I used my Slice die cutter to make the leaves and also used some Prima felts to create the foliage.  The flowers were sprayed with mists and added Ebling to it. There are 4 layers of design here. 
 Here it is without the dome so you can see the layers better.  This took me forever to do!  I have it sitting on my dining room table now for Spring. 


Okay, so now some Nikki Sivils, Scrapbooker pages to share.  I absolutely love their new lines.  This is one using the 'It's Raining, It's Pouring" line:

Mark was about 2 at this time.  He was so cute jumping in puddles.  His brother now does the same at his age.  I need to get some photos of that soon!  I used Faber Castell's Gelatos to make the mists here.

Another page this time using "Max and Mollie" line.  The photos are from our Making Strides for Breast Cancer walk in October this year.  The back of our shirts said, "Fight like a girl". 

I have a couple more, but I save them for another posting this week.  I told you that I'd have a little giveaway at the end.  So, I will give away a little Easter basket full of Nikki stuff!  A couple mini pads of papers, cord brads, flags, and some of her sticker treats along with some candy goodies.  This is open to US participants only unfortunately.  Not sure the candy will be okay to ship overseas.  So, if you post a comment about what you love about Spring, I'll pick a winner on Friday, April 29th!  Thanks for visiting!

XOXO
Jen

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Bits and Pieces of Perspective

It's been a long while since I posted.  It's been a busy couple months!  Between school, home, and designing for some wonderful companies, I'm a little crazy! It's bound to slow down soon.  I hope.... Well, at least for the next week, I'll be on "vacation" for Spring Break!!!  YAY!  The kids will be off and so will I.  We plan to play, make stuff, and relax! At least for a few days and then I'm sure I'll be pulling my hair out with trying to figure out what to do with them! 


So, I'm going to share a little of what has been going on in my world lately.  First, I have been featured here and here. The blog, Just Perspective, is one that I found by chance.  The owner of the blog, Sue Mylde, is one of the girls that I design with on Pencillines Sketch blog.  I was asked to create 3 pages with 3 different words that mean something to me and give me perspective.  So, I chose Ability, Communication, and Inscription.   I LOVED doing these pages and the canvas that hasn't been shown yet.  I used Faber Castell products for the color and am proud to say that I came up with a few new ways to use the Gelatos.  One is on this post here at the Faber Castell site.  I created these sprays and I have a new post coming up next Tuesday that shows how to make glazes or paints from them!  It's a lot of fun!

Now on to my work life... I have been so busy with getting work hung up, labeled, teaching, and Open House!  We've had 3 artshows in the last 2 months + one BIG fundraising event called Empty Bowls.  I wrote about that several posts ago.  Well, it was a HUGE success and we raised over $600 for our area Food Bank!  So happy that the kids, families, and staff has such a great time.  I know I did!
Here are some photos of the events and artshows:
    
My son at the Empty Bowls event.  He's standing in front of the kid's bowls!

my bowl for the "celebrity bowl Auction"


My son with his artwork and just a sampling of the over 3000 artworks at the Adventures in the Arts exhibit!

Adventures in the Arts was our district wide Elementary showcase of the arts.  There were over 3000 artworks there from 8 of our Elementary schools!  Music concerts were played for the attendees featuring our student bands, orchestras, and chorus.  I worked a hand's on activity table making Artist Trading Cards with kids who came to the show. It was fun for all!!! LOTS of work, but a well attended and worth it-kind of tired! 

Our Open House was this past Tuesday so here are some photos of the artwork hanging in our halls for the event!

















I'm so proud to teach the kids in grades Kindergarten through sixth grade here!  What fabulous work they do!  It makes my job crazy to push them to do this kind of work but LOOK at it!  WOW!  It's worth it!

I'll be posting more work from me later! Have a great week!