Another Present

I've been enjoying time with my extended family since arriving in chilly Ohio. We have an assortment of family that includes in-laws and outlaws of various flavors. But I have a grand nephew who just turned 2, and without a doubt, he was the star. There is nothing like having a little one at the holidays.

With the rush to get me and my presents out the door, I haven't posted pictures of several presents. Here is one I gave to my sister-in-law. She is an avid scrapbooker, and makes beautiful things. I thought that with all of the things she makes for other people, it was nice to give her something she can fill in for herself.

What Happened to My Lemon Tree?

When I bought my house, it had been a rental for the first ten years of its life. As a result, the landscaping had been reduced to require the minimum of maintenance. In other words, what used to be desert landscaping had turned into just a gravel pit.

The saving grace (in my opinion) were the fruit trees in the back yard, a lemon, an orange, and a pomelo, a Chinese grapefruit. While I'm not a fan of orange or grapefruit, I was thrilled to have a mature lemon tree. I've enjoyed the fruit every year except last year, when the tree had no fruit. I thought that was strange, but I did my summer fertilizing and decided to see what happened.

This summer, I was thrilled to see hundreds of small fruit appearing on the tree. As summer became fall, I was excited to see they began to change color, and couldn't believe the huge number of them. They were smaller than the other years, but I didn't think that was too unusual.


The last couple of days, I started to notice some of the fruit on the ground, so I went out to check and see if the fruit was starting to ripen. I thought it was too early for this. But I wasn't prepared for what I found.

First, the fruit has gone past being yellow and is starting to turn ORANGE. And it is the wrong shape, it looks like a tangerine. Then, I picked an unripened fruit and smelled the skin. It SMELLS like an orange. I brought it in the house and cut it open. The juice is orange. While the fruit obviously isn't ripe, I tasted the juice, and it tastes like lemon juice!


A couple of years ago, I decided that the relandscaping of my backyard would involve removing all three fruit trees, and replacing them with a lemon, a mesquite (or perhaps another desert native), and two espalier fruit trees, most likely a lime and a pomegranate. It was a hard decision to remove mature trees, but they take over the small backyard, and I don't like the fruit from two of them. This new development makes it so much easier to implement this plan. I heard a chain saw in my near future!

San Francisco Travel Memory Book

I'm too tired tonight to start the next project, so I decided I would blog this one and then hit the bed. I've already triaged my holiday gifts, and I'm going to call people tomorrow and explain that I don't have their gift done, but will finish it after I return to Phoenix. I'm sorry it has come to that, but I won't drive myself crazy to finish projects when I know people won't mind at all.

So, here is the second finished holiday gift for my family. This one is for my sister. She visited San Francisco this year, and hasn't done anything with her photos. I've made this book using a combination of travel guide pages, scrapbook papers, and photographs (reduced in size to act as embellishments). She can add 12 of her favorite pictures into this book.


This book doesn't have much dimension on the cover, but I did add a few layers. Notice the screen over the cable car picture (white scroll box) attached with an eyelet. I'm going to make a tag book to go inside the library pocket on the right (Bazzill).


As usual, I've added tags and tabs and clips along the outer edges of the pages along the top and side. I love the way this adds dimension to the book. I really love the grungy, distressed character of the paper, and have used the Tim Holtz distress inks to add to that feeling. The brown is Brushed Corduroy, and I've used it everywhere. I used a stamp to make the tabs out of the remnants of the scrapbook paper series.


Here's a page based on a travel guide page. I've used the description of Chinatown along with a reduced photograph from Chinatown, and added a small coin envelope (Bazzill) so she can tuck away a small treasure or two. I used Stazon ink to stamp over the glossy travel guide page and photograph.

There are more pictures on Flickr.

Holiday Gift Tags

I'm so excited to share these with you! These are my holiday gift tags this year. I normally make nice tags, but I decided to go all out this year. This is my first holidays with my studio, and it is the best present I have ever given myself! Here's some of the back story on how I made these tags.

[Ooopps. I guess Jamie and Tyson now know they are getting something from me! Maybe I should have posted a spoiler alert.]

First, I pulled out everything I could think of related to a holiday theme from my stamp collection. I ended up going with a star theme because I have a nice star quote stamp. It speaks to the holidays without specifically being about Christmas or any specific holiday.

Then, I spent about an hour designing and mocking up a tag. I focused on placement and layout, and once I had it the way I liked it, I started thinking about the colors. My inspiration for the colors was a ball of recycled silk yarn from Tibet. I love this stuff, and want to use it where it has a big impact. I pulled colors from this to select which of my Tim Holtz Distress inks I would use. Because I love green and all shades of blue-green, that's my main color. The red really contrasts nicely with the coolness of the blues and greens. I wasn't thinking Christmas when I picked this scheme, but it works.


I started by using the applicator to put a background coat of Broken China (blue) on each tag. Next, I used one of the Tim Holtz masks along the left border and applied a coat of Peeled Paint (green) with the applicator. I turned each card over and lightly covered the back. I really hate raw surfaces in my projects.

As you can see, I went through a learning curve with the ink and applicator. After a few tags, I figured out that rubbing the applicator over the ink pad and then rubbing it over the tag gives the best color coat without applicator sized blotches. That's what I love about my art right now, I'm starting to master tools because I'm using them more often.


I added a shooting star stamp across the top of the tag over the hole. I tried using silver because I thought it would go nicely with the aluminum ring around the circle tag, but in the end, I went with copper. The copper blends into the background colors and I liked that look better than the shiny look of the silver.


I started adding content from the bottom, starting with the year. I love the way this Fired Brick red contrasts with the cool blue green background.


While playing around with the prototype, I decided that I wanted some sort of scrolling image in the middle of the tag, but subtle so it doesn't make it hard to read the quote. I tried several scrolls, but ended up with this one because it is light handed. I used the Pine Needles ink for this, which is more of an olive, yellow green. I love using adjacent colors on the color wheel like this because I love the richness it adds to the palette.


I used the Fired Brick again on the quote to make this the most prominent part of the design. It took a bit to figure out the placement for the stamp so I had the words in the best location. It was fun watching them suddenly appear nearly finished on the table.


I finished up the inking by using Pine Needles on the edges and doing a bit of distressing on top and bottom. I love the distressed grunge feel it gives. I wrote the recipient names on the circle tags, and using a paper piercers, I punched a hole and inserted a star brad to attach the circle tag to the gift tag. I noticed that the circle repeats the scrolling design underneath, and love the way it lines up with the scrolls. I wish I could say I planned that, but in truth, it was a happy accident.

I cut the yarn and attached them to the tags. They are so pretty I keep one near me when I'm at the computer just to cheer me up!

More pictures on Flickr.

Disco Dancing Me!

Okay, this is hilarious. This is what goes on in my living room nearly every day, sans mirrored ball and striped socks. (Just ask my neighbors.)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Thinking About Art

Events in my professional life (my writer life) created a need for a professional portrait. That's another story that I'll tell another time. I know several photographers in Phoenix, and when I knew I needed a portrait, I also knew which one I wanted for this job.

Tyson Crosbie is a photographer, but he's an artist who works in the medium of photography. The other photographers I consider to be commercial photographers. They all do very nice work, and I'm sure each of them would have captured great images for me to use. But I didn't want a standard corporate PR headshot kind of portrait, or even a pretty portrait or a creative/clever portrait. I wanted something unconventional, something real, something honest. I haven't always wanted that. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's the natural arc of my personal journey--I don't know.

I'm still in the process of selecting my final image, and when that is done, I'll write about the experience here. But in the meantime, I want to introduce you to my friend, the artist Tyson Crosbie, through his video blog (vlog). I especially like this post. Check him out, and watch his other posts.