Confession time- I feel behind on my Christmas journal last year. So far behind, it was never finished. I took a great class from SherrieJD called Countdown to Christmas. She’s got an new one this year. Her classes are so full of videos and images – a fantastic value!!!!I made the journal but my inner critic was harsh as I made it and I was busy with so many other holiday plans that I let it sit with the crazy notion I would catch up after the holidays. Shocker, right? Now, a year later, I realize I have grown so much as an artist and person. I love this journal (what was I thinking last year?) and I am thrilled to be able to put 2011 into it!

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Still loving my raindrop stencil from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer – this time I used it on denim then stitched the raindrops with a bit of batting inside them. I guess rain does bring flowers. I am so happy I have this for Friday, since that means Paint Party Friday!
This was a canvas I wasn’t in love with so I glued a bunch of left overs from my die cutting with both the Silhouette and my Sizzix.
I slathered paint on and then paused – okay I was stuck. Grabbed some dimensional paint and wrote large words across it.
After the paint had been on a while I decided it wasn’t what I was looking for so I wiped it off. Then happiness struck – there was this great ghost of the word. Oh, happiness! This was also late a night so the lighting wasn’t the best.
Here’s the background in the morning light. I liked this so much I debated leaving it just as it was, but those raindrops just called to me.
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I’m into Christmas – especially trees. Now that all my trees are up at home I decided to make a canvas of trees. This one is 18×24 and it came together faster than I ever imagined. I’ve been making lots of papers – just experimenting so there was a nice stash of choices for making my trees. Something unexpected happened while I was going through the papers – I used some of my absolute favorites that I had been saving for the “perfect” project. You might have guessed that I am an art supply hoarder – we all know the perfect project rarely comes along. Yeah- I might be letting go of perfect!!!!!
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