CANDLE MONTH: for quite a number of years I have thought of November as candle month. True to form the day entered with a cloudy sky. I am grateful now that as the days are getting shorter and shorter the sun has once again triumphed

and is bringing us another glorious autumn day.

I was a little bit slow, as usual, but finished late last night, Halloween day, the little book I had been planning. A couple of days previous I got in a rush with the gluing - typical for me to get in rush - but I learned. I put the letters in a row instead of top of page, bottom of page. Oh well. Good lesson.











Please view the entire set here.

I had been hoping to use my yet unused zutter binder, BUT, it won't run away. I should say the pages are made with recycled cardboard from larger duotang folders which was painted. I did the pictures digitally using collage images which I cut out and applied with gel medium with another layer on top. After dry I sanded. I just used black ribbon to put the pages together.

Back to my long to-do list.

Angels be with you dear friends.

Creating and design:
The painter has finally started in our house today after 20 days have passed since the fire. Our patience has been wearing thin. In the meantime I decided to rip the wall paper off the one wall in our bedroom and paint all the walls there. Insurance is paying for painting in the kitchen, living room and back entrance. We have decided to paint two of the bedrooms and the main room in the basement as nearly everything is out of the house. It's quite scary in the basement especially as we had SO MUCH STUFF there. I had many of my vintage books which I recently acquired as well as many magazines and also most of my cardstock. Fortunately my main studio which was recently completed has not been affected. Big sigh.



I won't show you colours yet. We are in process of getting ready to move back to our house on Friday. The painting will not be finished but Greg's Mom has a big birthday celebration happening on Saturday so out of town family are coming to stay. We will be very glad to move out of the basement here after 19 days. We were SO LUCKY to be able to move in temporarily as the hotel would just not have cut it for this lengthy time period especially with a teenage daughter and all of our special food needs. I really dislike restaurant food at the best of times and if I'd have to do it everyday for every meal - YIPES.

So we'll kind of be camping in our own home for awhile till the kitchen is finished (could be a number of weeks yet, but, we'll try to enjoy it. Kat has been fantastic with the whole thing. I actually had a meeting with her teacher this morning to do wrap up for this year and make plans for next. I was so impressed with how attuned the school has become to our daughter and her needs. Teacher also commented on how terrific Kat has been doing. THANK GOODNESS FOR ALL THE ANGELS AND FOR OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH WHICH HAS GOTTEN US THROUGH MANY CHALLENGES.



And so I've been buying numerous magazines and borrowing many from the library to help me through this difficult time.


I've been trying to do designing on a budget to help myself with the design and colour choices that insurance is not covering. Unfortunately our flooring is in really bad shape as is our bathroom. We'll have to wait. Other things have been priority.



It's now Thursday. I want only to say about the painting that I walked past our house at 10 p.m. last night. The painter was still there with his bright lights shining. I am SO impressed with his concern and time commitment. So many people have NO CLUE what it is like to not be in your home for an extended time period, without having planned to do so.

I'll quickly share a link to a blog that I absolutely love. the photographs, the designs, the colours. lafifole.blogspot touches me, and I think many others, at many levels. Take a moment to check Anne's blog if you are able. You may fall in love with it just as I have. I know numerous of my friends will enjoy the most recent photos from teatime.

Angels be with you dear friends in whatever adventures you may be finding.

Creative every day: sometimes I lose track of what I've done, shared and completed. These are some sketches, some from quite a while ago. They were mostly done while I was waiting for appointments of one kind or another, as with the journal page with lots of rub on letters. I ran out of my fave black letters. I guess I should have known better. That's OK. The message is still the same. I finished the two journal pages yesterday. Actually has been quite awhile since I've felt like doing any.


I also did some preliminary painting on some canvases yesterday.I've got a caulking transfer happening on one of those. I have to wait till later tonight (24 hours) to see results of that.

CREATIVE EVERY DAY - WOW, I can hardly believe that it's so close to April and I've hardly been doing any creating. I think I'll have to peruse what I have all created for creative every day 2008 and for myself. Maybe I've forgotten. More so I've been busy creating organization from what often seemed chaos.

I've been busy the past 3 months with lots of cleaning. Initially I was doing major work in our basement so I might have my very own studio. Now more recently I've been trying to clean in my brother and parent's place a bit at the farm so there might be room to place some of the things they are choosing to bring from the house in the City in which my parents lived for a number of years. My parents have been mainly living at the farm again recently so my brother might provide the care and attention they both need as their age increases and their memories continue to fail. The house in Regina has been sold. Fortunately the purchasers are neighbours who have agreed to keep much of the furniture my parents are not interested in keeping. This even includes dishes, pots and pans, and pictures on the wall. They have also advised not to worry about doing a major cleanup as they will be moving things in and out, so agreed we should not look after those details. How fortunate we are.

The REALLY EXCITING piece of all this is that I have been finding and acquiring some treasures, to me. As I was cleaning the basement here I had found old stencils from more than ten years ago. I can't remember what else I found here. I CAN tell you about the pieces which Greg just brought in. He had made a trip to Regina to help with some more packing and moving. He went by himself to have more room in our van to bring a love seat which I needed for the basement. I was wishing to have room in the studio for it. Instead I will choose to put in a vintage cupboard that had actually belonged to my aunt and uncle. They had built the house initially. It had never been taken out by their daughter. I also got a small green cupboard which I had totally not remembered. Greg KNEW I would want it. He also brought some vintage sock dryers and wooden apple boxes. All these finds make the sweat and tears worth it to me. I forgot to mention the box of magazines - more Chatelaines from the 60s, a couple of Post and Life magazines also.

A couple of weeks ago we brought a buffet cupboard from the farm that was in one of the outer buildings. The buffet used to be inside the farm house. My family agreed I could have that a few years ago. It looks great in the studio.

To keep this post of reasonable length I won't take time now to show the backgrounds I FINALLY got to do last night and today. I'll show them tomorrow. I think I'll try to do a video about my studio and the vintage finds. Might take a while. I'll see what I can do.





The pictures are from a journal I worked with for a project of a friend's niece. The journal is to travel as far as possible in a certain amount of time. I felt very honoured to be asked to participate and really had fun doing it.







Till tomorrow, may angels be with you.

Dreaming for spring: Over the past days I have put together these journal pages as well as doing a video surrounding them and the idea of waiting for spring. One of the pictures on the video actually shows the journal on top of snow. I fear we may have snow for many weeks yet. If we are fortunate it will disappear sooner. If not, well, I'll just keep dreaming.




I had so much fun with these journal pages. I look forward to creating many more. And the next step will of course be canvases. I've one started, a flat canvas. I must see where I might take that.








I have also been adding items slowly to my etsy shop. Between writing descriptions, taking pictures, listing items, putting together videos, and trying to do my regular routine, sigh, there's little room for creating. Ah, creating. I will get to it, all in good time.


Thanks to everyone for the support through these times when I've had little room for visiting your lives. I do intend to get back to that. And thanks for any prayers that might be coming our way. They are so greatly appreciated.

Please remember to stop by my etsy at angelsdreams.

Now it's back to investigating - a place where I might get my photos enlarged. I hope to put many more photos on my etsy shortly.

Angels be with you in all your endeavours.
Wendy

Etsy - I AM REGISTERED! Now I have to get my shop set up. Hmmpphhh. We have to go to the farm for the weekend and as usual I have run out of time. Would have helped if dog hadn't met up with a piece of metal in the yard last night when we were playing fetch and gotten a couple of nasty gashes on his leg. He's been very good about going to vet and getting a bandage put on. It's not infected so saves the cost of antibiotics. I'm no sure how things will go at the farm as he usually loves to run and play.
My password has already given me problems also for starting to set up shop. Next week looks kind of BUSY but hopefully I'll get things in gear. Stay tuned. My shop name will be angelsdreams.

I also didn't quite finish a video that I was working on. I have about three happening at the same time. Actually I think it's four.

I'll try to get a picture here before we leave for the farm.



A couple of links to check out. My friends Mary Ann and Karen have some exciting giveaways happening. Take a moment to leave a comment.

Please note that I've put a survey in the sidebar. I'd be very happy if you take a moment to vote.

Angels be with you

About self love, self esteem, loving what you do, what you create, what you are.
These are some of the art journal pages I have been starting in the last couple of days. What can I say about self love? I can say that I am really starting to love what I am creating. It really doesn't matter what others think - the best is when I can feel comfortable with what I think.









I needed to share this wonderful video with you. Tam has so much to say about self-love. I so agree with what she says. I so love how she says it.



Angels be with you,
Wendy XO

Now is the time when I get REALLY tired of the snow. I'm not at all interested in taking outdoor photos. Even the sunrises and sets hold little interest. We finally had a warmer day last Saturday and then later it was pouring rain. That was followed by back to the freezer for a couple of days with wind chills - YUCK! So now even on the days when it is finally warming a bit there are hard drifts of snow AND extremely slippery walking surfaces. :-)))) Thank goodness for ART! I LOVE HER :D

Now that I have my artroom and the basement nearly organized (just a few finishing touches) I can finally get back to being creative every day. And that other project is right now on the front burner. Stay tuned.

I tossed together another video yesterday morning. I'm really having fun making them and using that side of my creativity. I've been doing more journal pages lately. I'm finding them good for practicing techniques and experimenting. this one is called FINDING STRENGTH

Creative Every Day:
I don't think I've taken time to say that I joined a group about being creative every day. It is for this year and started by the wonderful Leah who has done art everyday month (November). This is for the entire year. I know that there is rarely a day that goes by in which I am not creative, in one way or another, but this will be more about trying to document that more regularly. I realize that it is nearly the end of the month and I have not been documenting my art BUT I have been working slowly, diligently, at cleaning in the basement and particularly trying to organize my art supplies and room. As I've said before - it's about slow as molasses. But I think it will feel about as sweet as molasses too once I ever get it finished.
Here are a number of the boxes I've been decorating in the process of trying to organize all my stamps. I always had to dig through layers of stamps in just a couple of boxes to find the ones I wanted. With this collection of unusual boxes I will be able to, hopefully, have just one layer of stamps in each box. We'll see how it goes. I will be decorating a couple more boxes for yarn and fibres. I've got some of those already in purchased boxes but ran out. Good thing I found some more shoe boxes to empty. Now I can have the fun of decorating them.

















And here are some stamps I've been making - fun foam pieces and carved from rubber. I have plans especially for fabric:







I've also been doing a couple of videos in the past weeks for creating. I'll be sharing another one about the farm tomorrow.

angels be with you,
Wendy XO

Unfortunately our modem died last night and I was unable to submit this for Inspire Me Thursday as I would have liked. That is quite fine. Fitting to my resolutions I laughed and will share it here with you now.

Resolutions: while I am not much for New Year’s Resolutions I have decided to share with you a couple of hopes I hold in my heart for this year. I realize that it is also quite late to be sharing these but Inspire Me Thursday still has “New Year Resolutions” for its theme. I thought I would go ahead.

The art journal page is about laughter. It looks at kisses tickling. I was thinking of any kind of tickling, including tickles of one’s sense of humour. It all works. My hope for this year is to try to remember to laugh more often. Laughter is very good for my body and soul.



The flat canvas is 8 x 10 inches. “Sunshine on my shoulder” brings to me the hope that I might feel sunshine within my heart even on the cloudiest of days.





Angels be with you,
Wendy