Published in Altered Arts again!

I bet you thought I dropped off the face of the earth. I have been busy doing a lot of things but one of them obviously is not keeping up with my blog.

This was published in the Nov/Dec edition of Altered Arts Magazine. It is titled Life House and I got inspired by seeing the books shaped like houses. I had some great collage images from Altered Pages and some fabulous papers from WorldWin Papers so I figured I would make my own little house of life.

I hope you enjoy it.

Paper Crazy and Art Declassified

Good afternoon! I have been laid up with a bad back for too long and have not been posting much but finally after weeks of physical therapy, medication and rest I am feeling so much better. I was beginning to give up hope but they kept telling me to keep going to PT and I listened and now I am so glad that I did. For the first time in ages I can actually lift my right arm in the air and sit in one place for more than a few minutes. Yay

Enough about me. WorldWin Paper and The Paper Mill Store have joined forces with Art Declassified rubber stamps to bring you some great projects. Please go to the Paper Crazy blog to see the instructions for some of these terrific projects. http://www.thepapermillstore.com/papercrazy/?cat=75

Also Art Declassified has a wonderful gallery that show off their wonderful stamps. Fell free to wander through their gallery and browse through their store when you get the chance. http://www.artdeclassified.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1394&limit=recent

I have included some of my favorite works. I hope you enjoy them?

Some Simple Paper Crazy Projects for Fall

I wanted to share some quick and easy projects that I made for TPMS blog. http://www.thepapermillstore.com/papercrazy/ All of the products and instructions are on the blog.

The first project are quick and easy napkin rings. These are really fun to make! Inexpensive and these would make a great project for kids.

The second project is an simple door hanger. What a nice way to greet your visitors. Made from crafty board and paper!

Visit our Paper Crazy blog and browse around for more fabulous gifts to make. You will enjoy the creativity. Thanks for looking!

CHA is over

Sorry that I have not posted in a while. Seems like everything I want to share is either being considered for publication or for the WWP/TPMS blog.

I can share with you the project that I did do for the WWP/TPMS booth at the CHA Summer 2008 convention in Chicago. My fellow teammates came out with some awesome stuff. I had to work with one of my fave things and that would be White High Gloss paper from WWP. I fell in love with WorldWin Papers High Gloss paper. It is the best glossy paper I have ever used. I am forever and hopelessly spoiled by the quality. If you ever want a great glossy paper for sure try High Gloss white.

Anyway, I had to come up with a wall hanging for my project. I love my inks and Ranger is one of my favorite ink companies. Especially the Adirondack and Distressed lines. I used the Adirondack alcohol inks on the polished stone background and the Distressed inks on the tiger to do photo tinting. The total size of the piece fit into an 8" x 10" frame.

I used some really small gold sticker letters to simply spell grace. The tiger is my OnyXpressions, it is one of my most favorite stamps. Krylon webbing spray is the other finishing touch along with the Krylon gold leafing pen. I don't know what I would do without either one of those products either. All the products I used are ones that I use on a constant basis. Hope you enjoy it. Hope you got to see it in person if you were at CHA.

Revisting The Boys of Summer

One of my favorite pieces that I have ever done was an altered board book about the game of baseball I did, four years ago. I made it in honor of my dad and to this day I believe he helped me put it together. He passed away just a few months before I started making it. He used to love to do art projects with me when I was a child. Some of my best memories are sitting on the floor in the living room with him and coloring. He would draw, cut out numbers and letters from cardboard boxes so he could teach me how to read and spell. I would color them in and we would just talk. He made me a clock with movable hands so I could learn to tell time. So, I know this is just the kind of thing he enjoyed doing. He was a great dad.

My grandson is a very good ball player and got chosen for the all stars team this year. He was the youngest and the smallest player to be picked. He made it because he wanted it so badly. Like his dad said (my son) he made that team because he of his heart. I am so proud of him.

So I am dedicating this book to my grandson David and of course my dad.

I can only share five pages per blog entry but you can see the book in it's entirety and read the story behind it here: http://www.ssreflections.com/cindy_oct05.html I hope you enjoy it. A part of this book was published in Somerset Memories magazine also.

Have a happy July 4th! Have a safe, happy and healthy one!

Innovative Stamp Creations - My newest stamp sheet

Betsy wrote me and told me to look for a surprise in the mail last week. I was surprised! She had a brand new sheet of rubber with one of my sketches on it. I was really pleased with what she came up with. I just send her sketches and she does the magic! http://www.innovativestampcreations.com/ischomepage.html

I am loving these smaller sheets and this stamp image is a substantial size and a fun one to work with. I dabbled a bit with it and used some of my new papers that I received from my newest companies that I design for The Paper Mill Store. http://www.thepapermillstore.com/

I stamped her face onto some oil painting paper and used some of ISC's other stamps. I just did a little something to start me off. You can see more of her on the ISC Architect's blog. They did some fantastic works with her. http://www.innovativestampcreations.blogspot.com/

Oh, and if that wasn't enough I got the latest issue of Just Cards from Scott Publications and there were two more of my cards in there. I had forgotten all about them, they are silly little simple cards but were fun to make. I will include them in this blog. Lots of fun surprises for me this week! Yay!!
Thanks for looking!

Happy Father's Day

I am a little late in posting this as it seems like every time I get ready to put something on this blog, I have to shut down the computer because of electrical storms. I hope everyone in this path of bad weather sees some relief from it soon.
Anyway, I digress.
My dad has been gone almost 4 years now. I was so lucky to have him around for as long as I did. He lived to be 89 and half, and up until he broke his hip he lived a healthy happy life with a sound mind. Not many people get to say that. I could write volumes about my dad. He was the most wonderful man I have ever known. I never met anyone who could hold a candle to his presence. He was an attentive father, he was strict and soft and gentle. I honestly can say that he never raised his voice to me but if I did get in trouble he would give me this soulful passionate look and tell me how disappointed he was in my behaviour. Let me tell you that I would have rather had him spank me than to do that. I would be so remorseful and regretful that it made me think the next time I decided to go against what he told me not to do. I was an adventuresome kid too, not afraid to try anything. Because of my parents, it probably kept me from turning to a life of debauchery! :)
My dad was even a better grandparent. All of his grandchildren idolized him and it was so evident on the day he died. His entire family including grandchildren, great grandchildren and of course his children were all in that room and we saw him off onto another place. He took his last breath with me and my sister holding his hand and I cannot tell you the look of peace that was on his face. Of course he has left me all kinds of signs that he still keeps his eye on us. Once a doting parent, always a doting parent. I was so lucky to call him Dad. Happy Father's Day Dad.

The picture in the layout was taken 7 months before he left us. He buried his 2nd wife that day. I loved how reflective he was in this picture. He was married to my mom 41 years, lost her and married Winnie 5 years after he lost Mom, and they were married for 19 years. He was ready to go home. We miss him but I told him it was OK to leave us. I know I will be with him again. The other picture was taken of him when he was 24 and he just met my mom. He was a handsome devil wasn't he? I can see why she grabbed him!

An Inchie a Day Makes My Muse Want to Play

I have surprised myself this month and actually did an article in SSR for a change. I know some of you out there complain that I am not in the zine every month but I am always there, just in the background and of course the monthly Caption Contest http://www.ssreflections.com/captioncontest.html on the Editorial Deck that I host every month. So if you can't find me in my Day Spa on the Altered Arts deck http://www.ssreflections.com/cindy.html or the Designers Challenge http://www.ssreflections.com/design_challenge.html keep reading every month and I do show up! You can always check me out in the archives, some of us have been at this for FIVE years!! Can you believe it? http://www.ssreflections.com/archives.html along with our countless other talented designers past and present.
Dawn Heath our tireless and dedicated publisher/editor does a fantastic job of keeping them up to date. Drop her a line sometime and let her know how much the zine is an inspiration to you. She loves hearing from our readers as do the rest of us. Each of us has an email address on our article page. Feel free to write anytime. We love feedback.
Anyway, we had a great inchie swap that I have mentioned in past posts and the alphabet inchie swap was a real treat to be in. I took all of my one inch masterpieces and put them together in a nifty little wall hanging. I have twenty six original pieces in 7.5" x 12" wall hanging. How cool is that. On the backside I have each artist listed beside the letter that they created. I was really pleased with how it turned out. So visit my Day Spa and there is links to other inchie art on there too. Thanks for peeking in on me today. I hope you all have a great Sunday!
Blessings

Once Upon a Time..............Published

My goodness!! I am so far behind in blogging! I have been so busy that I just haven't been able to dedicate the time. Well, I am here finally! Thanks for being patient.

Several months ago Valerie of Third Coast Rubber Stamps was kind enough to ask me to participate in an article that was being done for Scrap & Stamp Magazine. I meant to offer her more choices but I was only able to get two to her using the Victory stamp line, which I absolutely adore! I have used these stamps a lot. I must confess that I am a rubber stamp addict and I collect plenty of stamps that have never been touched by ink (I will get around to it!) I can say that this set has seen a lot of ink. I use them often, love the dramatic images. I do have a gallery on her website http://www.thirdcoastrs.com/cindy_roland.htm

Val wrote this to me: The card you created using our "Ocean Blue" image for the Victory Art feature was published in the July 2008 issue of Scrap & Stamp Arts! Ten artists answered my call for art for the feature, and I submitted their 33 creations to the editor to chose from. They only selected six cards, but one of them was yours.

So I am very honored!

The technique that I used is colored pencils w/gamasol (oderless mineral spirits) I used mainly WorldWin papers with a few DCWV patterned papers for accents. Prismacolor pencils were used to color in the images. As you can see it is hard not to do a wonderful card when you use these lovely Victory images. Go to Val's site and check out the tons of other images she carries and let her know I sent you.

I will try not to take so long to change my blog this next time. So until next time. Happy creating!

Blessings!

Mother's Day

I created a Mother's Day card even though my mom has been gone for 28 years, I still miss her. She was the best mom. She always had a smile on her face and a positive attitude. Her name was Peggy and she stood barely 5 feet tall with beautiful auburn hair. She had a beautiful smile and laughing kind eyes. I loved her attitude, she may have been small but nobody got bigger or meaner if you picked on her family. She was loyal to the bone. I loved how she loved my dad. She may have been mad as hell at him but she kept it to herself. If one of us kids were mad at him, she would not stand for it. Her famous words were, "Your daddy is one in a million (he was) and you should be grateful everyday to be blessed with a daddy like him (we were)". I never heard either of them say a bad word about one another in front of us, ever. My mother was a wonderful cook and delighted in cooking for her family. She was in that kitchen every day for hours. She always had something cooking on the stovetop, in the oven or sitting out to cool.

She had the best sense of humor and she always kept an open mind about everything. She didn't judge anyone for anything except what they were like on the inside. She wasn't biased about anything and always looked on the positive side. She never allowed us to feel sorry for ourselves about anything. If we started to complain she would stop us and have us look at how blessed we were. I guess that was from being raised during the depression. She knew what it was like to live without and we never really had to. She never allowed vanity either, her famous words were "Pretty is as pretty does" and "Beauty is fleeting but goodness lasts you a lifetime." I told you she was a great mom!

When she did get mad, she really got mad and I would think that she was going to stay mad forever but I would go downstairs to my room and by the time I came back up she would be humming and working and always would turn around with that smile and say "Hi Honey!" She never stayed mad, and sometimes she would laugh so hard about getting mad that she would snort which made us laugh even more.

She was a great mom, and she left us early. I miss her every day and I will always be proud and thankful that I had her for my mom. Happy Mother's Day Mom, wherever you are.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Mother's Day this year. Enjoy your mom if you are lucky enough to have her around and celebrate her even if she is no longer there.

The card was made from WorldWin Cascata Lilac paper, and Purple swirl vellum. The stamp is from Magenta.

The photo is of my mom and me in 1952, she was 40 the year I was born so you might call me a surprise. She said I made her feel young again. I say I was pretty lucky to call her my mom.

Moonlight!!!

Well after weeks and weeks of waiting after the writer's strike, I was not disappointed! I forgive them for taking so long. They really made the wait worthwhile as they did an outstanding job of tying in the past episodes with this one and making room for all sorts of scenarios for the future. I want this program to stay on for a long long time. Alex O'Loughlin is a great actor besides being a total BABE. Can you tell I love this show! I haven't felt this way about a show since Boston Legal first came on and yes I still love that adorable Alan Cross (James Spader) with his delicious dry humor, sharp wit and dirty mind.

Mick St. John has made me a lover of vampires! I will no longer think of Bela Lugosi when it comes to blood sucking creatures of the night. The storyline is so great and the chemistry between he and his mortal love, "my Beth" (as he refers to her to his friends-so sweeeet!!). Well, just go to the link on the title of this blog entry and it will take you to all the goodies you will need to know to get hooked on this show. He is awfully pretty to look at too! Hey! I may be getting old but I ain't dead yet!

OK, besides at looking at my new boyfriend (he is younger than my son for cryin' out loud!) I did make up a whole batch of thank you cards to send out to the nice people that send me toys to try out and play with. I am forever making different backgrounds playing around with my plentiful inks and colorwashes. I am a compulsive webbing spray user, I would take a 12 step program for it but I really don't want to! Webbing spray is just too darn fun to play with and it makes the plainest old paper look so dramatic! So, I needed some quick solutions. I took some of my background papers, some trusty black ink and the closest stamps to me and started stamping out all my frustrations. I cut them all up, edged them with my Krylon pens (another constant staple for me) and attached them to cardstock. In a matter of minutes, cards were done! My guilt is alleviated for now! I know there will be something else to replace this with another guilt in no time but one more notch in my lipstick case!

Now there is a huge pile of laundry that is calling my name.........Wash me Cindy, please wash me! If you don't, you will run out of underwear and then you will be sorry. Ooooops, better go! Another guilt trip awaits! Enjoy your day!

Happy Earth Day!

Today is a gorgeous day outside. After the long hard winter we have experienced it is so nice to see the flowers blooming, the squirrels, bunnies, birds and other outdoor creatures scurrying around looking for food for their young families. Everyone is out doing yardwork, planting and just spending time enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. What a great day to celebrate Earth Day. We all can do our part! I am a big believer that if we all commit ourselves to do something to save our planet from wastefullness that all those little things add up and make this a better place to live for us today and for generations to come. Every little effort adds up. The paper company that I do design work for is very aware of the effort to save our planet. They have a great website to visit to learn more about their efforts http://www.thepapermillstore.com/ make sure to sign up for their newsletter and our Design Team Blog as well.http://thepapermillstore.com/papercrazy/ Lots of inspiration and we have been on a real "green" kick for the past month as well as this month. Check out our contest too. Who doesn't want to win paper? I will share more inchies today as well as some pictures that were taken in my own backyard. I hope you enjoy them and I hope you are inspired to go out and make the most of your Earth Day, today and everyday!

Inchie fever is still burning

Well, I still have the fever and I just had to make a couple of pages of these babies for my nifty little book. They are so fun! Big art in a teeny tiny square!

I have been dinkin' around with my 'puter all day trying to iron out a technical problem and I may have a handle on it. It has taken time away from my inchies and the other gazillion things I was planning to do today. Anyway, so much for my silly whining.

Just thought I would share them before I hit the hay.........again (I was napping in my chair for most of the evening!)

I also made my 26 "C's" for the inchie swap on the SSR zine http://www.ssreflections.com/ group list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SSReflectionsezine/ I swear it only took me about 45 minutes to make about 30 of them. That is how quickly they come together. If you belong to the group and want to join in, there are just a few letters left to sign up for. Hurry up and sign up! You can be the owner of 26 little works of art!

Well, I am off to the land of nod. See you all in the morning! Sweet dreams!

The Inchie Bug

OK, it hasn't quite bit yet but I am preparing myself for the onset! I wanted to make a little book with my Bind it All and since I signed up for my very first alpha inchie swap. This was a good excuse to make one to put my anticipated alphabet inchies in. I recently made a friend an atc using a reflection theme for an atc swap on one of my atc groups. I loved it so much, that I had to make another one just for myself. It was a good reason to make myself one and use it as the front cover of my little inchie book. The image is by one of my favorite rubber stamps companies, Third Coast Rubberstamps http://www.thirdcoastrs.com/ and it was a perfect one to make a reflection on vellum. All the paper and cardstock is by WorldWin Papers (Ruche, Vellum and Treasures) and the rub on is by Melissa Frances. Anyway, since I needed to practice I made my very first inchies. I have a lot to learn about them. These are pretty primative looking but hey, I gotta start somewhere! Inchie world, here I come!!!

Damn the Flu!/Technique Junkies guest DT Member

Well, I have been lagging on this blog as well as everything else I am supposed to be doing, something fierce this last month. I was bragging that I had not come down with that damned flu bug but I was sadly mistaken. I have been sick with it for half a month now. It seems to like to come back on you when you think it is going away. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Oh Joy!

I was honored and pleased to be asked to be a guest Design Team Member for Technique Junkies this month. If you ever wanted to be inspired daily, this is the site to do it on. Not only do you get the best newsletter and website but they have the most dedicated Yahoo group that daily adds all sorts of inspiration to the wonderful techniques that Pat Huntoon cranks out with each and every newsletter. Well worth the small change she charges. Do yourself a favor and join! I have been lucky enough to have a couple of my techniques in there. First was the Veined Marble which has remained very popular and this time was my Color Collage and I am thrilled with the entries that the members have come up with so far. http://www.techniquejunkies.com/ So join us for the fun and make sure you tell Pat that I sent you! :)

Here are some of the techniques that I have played with so far. There are hundreds and hundreds from past newsletters. Enough to keep you busy for a long time! Happy creating!