The first book will discuss techniques to cover chipboard in creating a cloth covered ribbon bound book. Unfortunately the fabric shown in this picture is not available for the class, but you have your choice of three fabrics when you sign up. You are also welcome to bring your own.

The second book is also a cloth covering (your choice of three) to dress up the new Zutter Bind it all Covers. These covers are terrific, easy to use, and hide the metal coils when you want a more finished look.

Both books have an enormous number of pages. Cost for both books and instruction is $39. Class size is limited to 8. Please contact the Cabin at www.nhscrapbookcabin.com or 603-769-3333.

I hope to see some old friends and some new faces! It’s been awhile! CAN’T WAIT!!!

In any case, drum roll. Oliver chose Huggly this year. He did an amazing job.

Mine did not come out as well, though it’s still festive. I chose Steve from Dumpster Diver. It’s a cute book that we just checked out of the library the other day. He had a nice round pumpkin shaped head. And vinyl tubing does not like to stick with glue. AND I’m amazed at how much junk we have around the house. Very convenient for last minute pumpkins.

After hearing this book several times over the course of Marty Kelley’s presentations at our school’s Writers’ Festival, I was PSYCHED to be able to get my grubby little hands on a copy. To be able to write a review is an honor. Thanks to the good people at Zino Press for sending me a copy!

Marty Kelley is brilliant. His latest book, “The Messiest Desk”, does not disappoint! Marty Kelley truly has the pulse of a 2nd grade boy – he has the gift of writing stories that children just “get”. With another layer of humor to entertain his adult audience it is always gut busting fun for my child and I to share one of Mr. Kelley’s books. It’s the subtleties that I especially appreciate. The “life is adequate” mug on the teacher’s desk. The “Extra Hard Math” and “The Collected Works of Marty Kelley” curriculum. The ever-alert class pet in the background. Although you could probably read the book in five minutes, you’d be missing out. Each illustration has some hidden gems and, if you discuss them with your child, you’re sure to enjoy several additional stories. I highly recommend partaking in the child-eating-desk adventures of “The Messiest Desk”. It will definitely entertain you, and perhaps even inspire you to clean your desk.

“Okay, now stuff the sock full so it’s all round and snowmanlike…”  Meanwhile I’m off doing something else.  When I come back in the room….

“Arrrrrgggg, I have too much hair!”  (Love that cruddy point and shoot just sitting on the table!)

Such a little comedian.  What a goofy grin in that photo. He’s funny and he knows it.  great.  But besides all that…he is *SO* making me a snowman that has a huge ‘fro.  But not tonight because I needed him to finish the project since it’s the example for tomorrow….
He did a great job — hope it’s not a frustrating project.  The kids will all need help with the rubberbands to sausage the socks into snowman shape.  Hopefully the teacher, the aid, and I can  whip those rubberbands around in no time!

And now I’m off to finish up my other project for the week.  Sweet dreams.

Totally overwhelmed (IN A GOOD WAY!) by Kal’s class at Inspired.  Really have been giving a lot of thought to art since then and have been wanting some formal training. 

After just having moved to the east coast from Colorado in the 7th grade (TOTALLY TRAUMATIC!), my art teacher told me (in about my second class here) that I was useless and should get out of art as quickly as possible.  nice.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the personality then that I have now (otherwise y’all know what I would have told him to do with his opinion….).  So, 7th grade art class was *IT* for me.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I was encouraged at home.  Lots LOTS of arts and crafts.  No formal training.  No drawing or painting (other than Crayola-freestyle.)  So how excited was I when my rockin’ library threw a “Pastel Workshop” at the Andres Institute? 

Gregory Maichack came and taught a two hour class.  I’m shocked at what I learned and was able to do in two hours.  And what he was able to present.  Scumbling.  What a fun word.  Blending.  Hello pastel fingertip to elbow (oh how I wish I had a photo of that!) 

Here he is with a drawing he did (I love dandelion puffs!) and used to demonstrate what fixative does to your work (you may be able to see a masked corner of a piece of paper on the stem of the fuller puff.)  His drawings were amazing in person — my picture does not do it justice.  He had great tips and techniques and was highly entertaining.  I asked him if he was offering other classes/had a website with a class listing (in case anyone’s interested — me included…)  He mentioned that his website was ABOUT to be updated with classes, so you may have to check back in…  And give me a call if you’re going — we can carpool!

It seemed everyone in the class was hugely talented.  Unfortunately I was so busy trying to work on my piece I didn’t get many pictures.  Did manage to catch these two — loved both of their pieces.  Super nice people too.

I really hate to post my work….I’m so new at this whole drawing-thing.  Painting-thing.  Anything but cutting-paper-up-with-my-paper-cutter-thing.  (I love you Bertha!)  So so much fun, but you can’t help but feel self conscious with something so new. 

In retrospect….I’m thinking that portraits are HARD and maybe I should have gone with a flower piece of grass or something a little simpler for my foray into drawing.  Anyone who has ever taken a class with me knows how well I start off simple.  So, it’s not my thing.  I like to make my life as difficult as possible.  Life, in general, is WAY more FUN as a challenge!

My scanner didn’t fit half the picture…let’s pretend it didn’t fit the BETTER half.  HA!

I know his face is not the correct shape.  It looked right sketched out, but then when I started to fill it in, I realized…WHOOPS.  I put down too much color to fix it — lessons 1, and 2.  What you (I?) see in your sketch is probably not what the finished product looks like and GO EASY.  (Another one of my strong suits.)

I botched his lips and it’s REALLY hard to fix RED with white (or light.)  Lesson 3.  Love red.  I’ll have to get over the not being easy to fix thing.  Plus, if I learned lesson 2 the first time, his face wouldn’t have been correct, but his lips could have.  Probably one of those “Three times a charm” things.  Speaking of red…it was a really hot day.  His cheeks actually WERE that red. 

Don’t you just love that we’re to the time of year where it is warm enough to make rosy cheeks?!?!

I SHOULD finish this drawing.  There’s MUCH still to do.  It was time to pack up and leave — just how the drawing was.  I think the forced stop was good.  I just kept working on something that I wasn’t happy with in the first ten minutes.  I think I would like to start over with something that I will like the finished product better.  I learned so so much in this class and am anxious to do some more with Pastels.

But for now, I’m off to bed early.  Tomorrow is an information night for Andy’s new life at Annapolis — I’m all excited, but nervous and sad that he’s leaving so soon.  Must get a good night’s rest so I’m not a human hosepipe tomorrow. Sweet dreams.

These were to be some Mother’s Day presents — my mum and I both loved ours even though they weren’t surprises.  Well, hers sort of was a surprise.  We had a great time at Oliver’s school making them with the kids.  A HUGELY FUN day!  I want to go back to pre-school.  Can’t think of anything more fun.  And, although Oliver wanted nothing more to do with flowers at this point, my mum and I made a pot for each mother who had a little baby stuck in her unit (NICU) at the hospital for mother’s day.  I heard they were a huge hit!

The flowers Oliver was REALLY interested in making were for Kal.  And she posted a great picture (far better than any of mine!) and I think some people are looking for directions, so, this blog is brought to you by Oliver.

[Please excuse the pictures -- Oliver was a new kind of crazy while making his tutorial.  It's difficult to take pictures while your five year old is bum-rushing the camera.  Or waving his flower about WILDLY.  Or trying to dump all the buttons off the paper he just spent 20 minutes making a button frame for?!?!  If I spent 20 minutes when I was his age I would have made asked nicely for my mum to GLUE them down.]

The wire was 24 Guage green stuff that I found in the flower department of our local craft store.
The foam, and crazy looking nest stuff was also there.  I’m not sure what it’s called.
The little plastic petals we used were American Crafts.  Some petals/leaves were pre-punched, some were not.

Happy Spring!

EDITED! OH I FORGOT!  If any of you happen to be in Milford, NH tomorrow, stop by the high school between 7:30am-1pm and visit my friend Wendy and I.  I just have boring scrapbooking stuff and some books that I made to sell, but Wendy’s got Tastefully Simple stuff and I bet she’s gonna have samples (at least until she leaves me alone with them for five minutes while she either a) goes out to get the rest of her stuff or b) has to go to the bathroom.  Mental note to work on my best “I don’t know what happened to all your samples?” face tonight.)

Okay, so one of the techniques I learned at inspired was photo transfer. with tape.  with paint.  with gelatinous medium (alas, I do not have an ink jet printer!)  it’s all fabulous.  I have been LOVING it.  Been driving my family nuts.  Packing-tape-photo-transfers glued taped all over my house.  “Oh, wouldn’t this look lovely on the refrigerator?” (We have a black frig — you can’t see it!)  I can fix that, I’ll stick one on my mum’s.  And about every other page in my journal.  And on my notebooks at work.  And on the super-secret-surprise gifts.  And up on my cubby wall at work…  Anyway, you see what’s happening.  It’s kind of obnoxious.  Well, here I go again.  Started playing around with the paint transfer and did one on plastic.  LOVE IT!  Not sure how good it looks in the scan, but posting here anyway.  So even though this is an art post,  you STILL have to check out my kid.  Had to blur the other kid’s face just in case you were wondering what was going on there.

If you know me at all, you know I’m all about distressed, grungy, dirty lookin’, ol’ piece of….well, I think this is just perfect!  Again, this is on clear plastic so you don’t quite get it on the scan, but use your imagination a little.  I think this technique is especially good for sports stuff. I like it a little raw.  And the details don’t matter so much for the most part.  If you are going to take my class at The Paper Tree in May, PLEASE invest in some cruddy paper.  I have a lot of really nice printing paper at the house and I basically have no fingerprints left to speak of.  I’ve rubbed them off completely.

Alright, other half project I can post tonight is another piece of cork.  I liked the texture, but it was hard to work on.  Right after inspired I painted a piece of cork with acrylic paint and have YET to finish it, but here’s a little corner.  The colored pencil works MUCH better on acrylic painted surface.  I also used water colors over the acrylics.

So sometime later this week/early next week I promise to have a challenge/work your art up.  Since I’ve been so INCREDIBLY good about posting ideas, I’ve decided to just steal someone else’s.  And now I’m off to bed.  Sweet dreams jelly beans! (for those of you with small children….do you ever realize you talk like your five year old?  It’s really embarrassing when you ask someone to please excuse you to go to the potty!)

Next item.  LEGOS!  WHOOOOOP! Specifically, Star Wars.   Oliver mostly just asked for Legos for Christmas and boy oh boy did he get them.  And mostly Star Wars at that.  And what was not legos, was….you guessed it, Star Wars.  I have been enjoying the Legos so much, well, more specifically Oliver playing with the Legos.  He has been so funny.  The conversations he has while playing with them crack me up — oh, to have a child’s view of the world!  I have loved Legos since my own childhood and man have they changed.  They have such good ones now.  Check these out:

This is from the Lego police station — a little tiny desk with a “sheet of paper” with finger prints on it.  And a REAL WORKING magnifying glass.  Seriously, is that not cool?!  And tonight, after Oliver went to bed, I was able to make myself.  He got a camera with his police station (along with a wall to take mugshots – HA!) and if you didn’t think I was all over that, where have you been?!  His big gift from HoHo was Jabba’s Sail Barge, along with all sorts of Star Wars figures, including Princess Leia with a pony tail.  If her head didn’t pop right off tonight so I could make myself.  Had to use Luke’s body because y’all know I wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress-thing or especially a bikini.  Anyway, will have to change my blog picture now that I have a good one of me (as shown below.)

It might be a little better if her hair were curly (AND BANGS?!  WHAT?!?!), but just the fact that you can’t see her face because it’s stuck behind a camera is good enough.  Hard to see the camera in that particular photo, but believe me, it’s good.  Boy, oh boy, how Legos have changed since I was a kid.  I will have to post a little lego photo mosaic of some of the other good ones later.  I’m just fascinated.  One of my favorites is a tiny little frog that came with the barge (I think it’s Jabba’s snack…uck!)  So we have been playing all day.  Mostly Oliver just wants to move the little people around.  He doesn’t necessarily want to build (bummer for me because I’d rather build than play little people, but good for me because he lets me build his sets sometimes.)  Anyway, the conversations he has are hysterical.  First off, he is so into Star Wars I’m certain he’s going to be like those crazy boys in Galaxy Quest that navigate the crew through the dangers because they’ve memorized all the shows.  Anyway, if you EVER get a Star Wars fact wrong he’s all over you.  So it cracks me up when he talks about “light savers” [light sabers] and “Jabba the Hunt” [Jabba the Hut].  We’ve been staging all sorts of situations and I do think we’re going to have to get out the video camera and dabble in another area of art….anyone up on video making?!!?  uh, I just have to get off this Star Wars track — all you artisty people are tuning out right about now?….unless you have boys? or girls like me?

So the other night I did get to paint a bit.  Well, over the last two nights and today with Oliver.  He did a nice canvas for … well, I best not say who here…but someone’s going to be happy when their mail comes.  Wish it were me. I got three canvasses done (hey, they’re only (2) 6″ x 6″ and (1) 4″ x 4″.)  All people.  Think I have people on the brain with all the little people play. Painting is a totally new thing for me.  I got painting supplies for my birthday in November — first time I’ve actually PAINTED.  I did paint a background for the needle felting class, but that was just color.  This was the first time I painted a thing.  The whole time I was painting all I could think was “I wish I had taken an art class at some point in time.”  I have never taken an art class after the mandatory ones when you were in grade school.  And I loved art classes.  WHY?!?!  WHY OH WHY?!?!  My last art class was in 7th grade right after we moved to NH from Colorado.  A totally traumatic period on my life ANYWAY and the MEAN-UNENCOURAGING art teacher could not understand what was wrong with me that I could not draw the other half of a magazine picture.  I think it really brought me down.  Anyway, am so sad now.  Must try to find some art classes to take!  Anyway, I painted three pictures of people – a girl and a boy set (planned) done the last two nights that didn’t turn out as I’d hoped and one extra girl that I did today with Oliver.    Liked the girl I did today best:

Holy crud have I blathered on enough tonight.  So sorry….  before midnight, off to bed EARLY!  Yeehaw!

Mine’s a little funky, but that’s what I like.  Hopefully those of you who aren’t into fake dreads and weird little orange hats can see past that and think of something fabulous to hang on your wall.  Also, horrible picture (not sure what all those splotchy little white dots are all over the picture on the canvas – I assure you they’re not there in real life!), but I’m off and running again.

If you are going to be joining us for class, please bring 1 (or two or three or four or five!) photos that you can cut up and put something fuzzy on.  While you’re picking photos, think about what kind of fuzzy you want.  Think flowers, hair, mittens, scarves, bunnies, snakes (oh wait, they’re not fuzzy….), sweaters, carpets, curtains, snowflakes, etc.  It’s a 6″ x 6″ canvas, so plan accordingly.  Call The Paper Tree for full details.  One would think midnight was time to go to bed.  One would be wrong…On your mark, get set, GO!