Oops, Bless me Blogger for I have sinned...

Well, I let too long happen before blogging again...8 days. My lame excuse is that I was struggling to get 7 Valentine cards made early enough to mail off, and when I'm under stress my brain reverts to one-track-mind linear thinking only. But I'm back now. Glad to see me? LOL I think over the next few days I shall share Valentine cards. Seems appropriate, no?

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FMS sketch 153

 First up (above), I made this card for my cousin and her hubby, and I used an old FMS sketch 153, turning it upside down. The birds and the sentiment are from Ronna Farrer's Doodle Birds Autumn Leaves set (very old), and the sentiment frame is from Artist Outpost's Whimsical Melange set (I cut off the rooftop of the house frame and used it on its side). I colored everything with Copics, and used a corner rounder punch. The innie sentiment is my own, made in PSE, and I used the round Tim foam tool and fired brick distress ink to make a border.

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FMS sketch 213

Using another FMS sketch #213, I made the card above for my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who live together. This is all old papers and cardstock scraps from my Black Hole of Stash, only two diecuts (I used MFT Die-Namics Pinking Shears Mat Stax on the patterned papers and had a WPlus9 stamped and diecut Cupid left over from last week). Bugs Bunny is one of those kiddie valentines you buy in a pack, that I had left over from Dear Daughter's grade school exchanging 20 years ago. I kept the few extras and through the years have been able to use them. There's only one left now, and I'm thinking of making another card like this with it before putting up the Valentines stuff.

I was majorly sleep-deprived when I finished this card, and it looked really plain so without thinking I whipped out a red gel pen and doodled, yay me! lol. It doesn't look too terribly bad and I give myself props for spontaneity and risk-taking. I was going to go back and pierce holes along the faux stitching but remembered after the envelope was sealed and in the mailbox. Oh well!

 

More Valentine cards tomorrow. Yes, I finally snapped to the fact that since I took a 3-year leave of absence from blogging, I've got a LOT of art that I haven't shared, so I have plenty of material. I shall try to burn the blogging habit into my brain by doing it daily (or close) for a while. Just Valentine cards alone there's gotta be at least a dozen.

 

I had to admit defeat at doing weekly challenges. I'm just too slow and unreliably focused. New rule: only a few monthly challenges on a regular basis. I have piles of materials for about 3 weekly challenge pieces that's as far as I got before the deadlines, but on the bright side I've got 3 pieces of art ready to make. Not a loss, but not a way to live either. I hate feeling like I'm always bad-girl behind.

 

 

I will leave you with a page I recently finally finished in my Little Book of Wisdom quotations art journal. I originally shared how I made the background HERE , if you want to read about it. Then it sat for a couple years waiting for me to find just the right quote. 

 

One night not long ago I was watching an old movie on TCM, an old British WWII war film about a couple of families enduring the London bombings from Nazi air raids. I got so into it that I did some independent research on what that was like. I'm just in awe of the courage and fortitude of the civilian population. I think it's Twilight-Zone funny that this background was originally inspired by Ghostbusters, but was finished by (quotes from) Churchill. Don't run into that too often, eh? After all that research, suddenly the background looked to me to be similar to what the British people must have seen during those dark, scary, ominous nights. Add to that, the collage bits up the two sides were at first allusions to NYC gargoyles and gothic, and then became symbols of the royal courts and governments whose conflicts caused both world wars. When serendipitous things like that happen to me (and they have quite a bit in my life), I get the chicken skin (goosebumps), but I do like it. Makes me feel kinda special, even if in a creepy Carrie-way, lol.

 

Anyway, if I'm not remembering wrong, I believe that the 75th anniversary of the night the most British civilians died during the bombings is coming up on May 10, 2016.  I will definitely be thinking about those brave folks. They knew the REAL meaning of Keep Calm and Carry On! They are the ones who invented and first used the phrase we so casually and faddishly adopt in our arty lives today.

 

Have a great Thursday!