Needed a couple of cards for today...

...one of them from the all-occasion category, so I decided to combine a painting by Van Gogh...

...with a little chipboard lantern that a girlfriend from Poland sent me last summer. I have a whole sheet of them, and I'm rejoicing, because they are fun! I didn't have the time to experiment too much, but just putting two coats of acrylic paint on it did the job.

The second card needed to be music-themed. I used a bunch of recycled materials here - I'm an incurable, genetically-predestined packrat (which has its pluses and minuses), and sometimes my craft room discoveries surprise even myself. This card includes the following:
- background from cardstock donated by a friend who was destashing;
- music from a Second Chance Store;
- chipboard intercepted in our mail center while on the way to the recycling bin;
- coffee cup wrapper;
- paper towel used at school to clean paintbrushes, gifted by a ten-year old ("Here, I'm sure you can use it somehow", he said, pulling a crinkly ball of paper out of his coat pocket. Yes, I can.)

A linguistic bookmark

My attempt to learn Spanish was going so well... until I stood on the shore of the Ocean of Verb Endings. And there is no way around it - you just have to jump in and memorize them.

Still far, far away from any sort of success in this matter, I made myself a bookmark with all possible forms of a very popular (and regular) verb - hablar. Of course, it's not going to teach me everything, but at least I may be able to recognize the tense when I attempt to read Spanish texts, and in this way I will familiarize myself with the endings in general.

I used a cover from some old brochure, by now recycled, and papers from the scrap box. And a bunch of beads and buttons for the danglies. Danglies are so fun :)

Canada Collectionary

We returned from Canada a few days ago and my Collectionary - travel journal written on the road - is pretty much ready! 95% of the process takes place in the car; the passenger door in our Impala is equipped with a couple of very convenient box-like spaces, where I can keep tools and pieces of memorabilia. I was never able to finish a journal if I started working on it after we had returned, and this new method is amazing!

Almost nothing is forgotten, since it's put down in writing right away. I also stopped pack-ratting larger travel brochures, which don't necessarily relate to our trip as a whole; I cut what I need and toss. Another advantage is that I had a reason to buy a bunch of cool pens - Sharpies and others :)

Here is the cover that I put together yesterday - the background is made from a Lake Superior map, and the images came from miscellaneous travel brochures:

And here are a few spreads:

On another note - I signed up for another craftshow (beginning of November in Elmhurst), so I will be working on the little purses again!

bright colors

Our little garden on the balcony did not fare too well this summer - some sort of bugs got into the flowers and then invaded the tomato as well. However, the basil and the hot peppers did great; we loved the freshly made pesto and now we are drying the hot red little babies to use them in winter.

The colors are so wonderful; almost too bright to look at in the morning sun. Enjoy!