Fat Book Entry #10: Aged and Tattered Wings

Well, here it is! My final entry in the Fat Book Swap! Yeah! I really, really struggled with this one for a while. I kept getting stuck on the “aged and tattered” part. My overall style, both in jewelry and in mixed media, is definitely not aged and tattered…I lean more towards the bling! But then I decided to use this quote, which I use at work in my service learning and volunteerism student presentation. And while the art I came up with is definitely not aged and tattered, I felt like the quote had an aged and tattered feel to it. As I said last week, I have thoroughly enjoyed this project…yes, it’s stressed me out at times due to my master’s degree in procrastination, but it’s truly been fun. Now the challenge is what to do with them all! At 100 pieces of original art, that’s going to be one heck of a thick “book”. I’ll let you know once they all arrive at my door! Click here to see all ten entires.

Fat Book Entry #9: Pin-Ups

Oh, the end is finally drawing near! I have thoroughly enjoyed this Fat Book swap from a creative standpoint, but I have to admit creating 10 originals of each piece has been a big challenge added to an already full plate. Yeah, I know, I know. I did it to myself! But I wanted the challenge to try something new, and it has definitely given me that opportunity. I’ve learned so much! I like these little 4 x 4 pieces of art! Here’s entry number nine. Given that I have two gorgeous redheads, I immediately searched for a red-headed pin-up for this one. Nice bonus that this gorgeous redhead also happens to have blue eyes, like my gorgeous redheads. And I love the Lucille Ball quote. I have number 10 done as well but I’ll save that for you till next week.

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Fat Book Entry #8: Famous Women

Here’s my eighth entry for the Fat Book swap. Famous women... thousands of choices! Not sure how I settled on Madonna (I recall “Like a Virgin” being stuck in my head that day), but I felt that my all-time favorite quote fit her perfectly. I have a feeling my entries are really going to stick out in this book since, from what I’ve seen of the others, I am the “crazy color” rebellious girl (not sure if that's good or bad!). For this one, I searched out Madonna pictures on Google and settled on this one since it was such a big, uncluttered shot…you know, so I could add my own clutter. :-) I covered my cardboard with the zebra print paper and then over-stamped the card with hot pink script. From there, I trimmed and layered the photo on some hot pink torn cloth rag paper, added the rhinestones for my trademark bling, and added the quote. I have to admit, I put these last two entries together in one Sunday afternoon marathon, so as usual, I procrastinated until the very last minute! Two more entries to go and then I’ll get to see the whole book.

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Fat Book Entry #7: Snarky Moms

Here’s my latest entry for my mammoth Fat Book swap. I have to admit I really struggled with this one, though as we all know, procrastination is my strong suit. :-) The topic for this entry was supposed to be “Snarky Moms”. I just don’t like the word “snarky”. Never have. Here’s Google Answer’s take on the word. So anywho, since I don’t like the word to begin with, I was really struggling with how to turn it into a piece of art. I’m not a big fan of using vintage art in my mixed media work, but when I saw this old ad, I could just hear three catty, or “snarky”, women sitting around the table talking about someone. So there you have it: not only Snarky Moms, but PTA Snarky Moms. Okay, I admit, yes, I just joined the PTA at my girls' school. And I think I should wear a slinky purple dress to the first meeting I attend...you know, just to get ‘em talking! What do you think?

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Fat Book Entry #6: Cowgirls

I had a lot of fun with this one! One of our swap members sent out a great website with all these vintage cowgirl pictures on it. When I saw this one, the old Mae West quote “So many men, so little time...” quickly changed to “So many cowboys, so little rope...” When I showed this to DH, he said, “So were you a little trollop or something when you were younger? The nerve! :-) Don’t you like that word? Trollop? It’s always cracked me up. I kept this design simple because I really wanted to highlight the picture. No faux postage on this one either since I wanted to keep the picture as big as possible. I started by covering my card stock with that fun orange gingham paper. Rather cowgirlish, don’t you think? Then I inked the edges of the photo to make it stand out a little more, placed it on a piece of solid green paper cut with stamp-edged scissors, added a strip of ribbon on one side, my quote on the other, and embellished the rope with little rhinestones. Very sparkly! So far, this one and the Go Go’s Retro entry are my two favorites. Next set of themes are “Snarky Mothers” and “Famous Women”. I’m currently stumped, so send me your suggestions!

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Fat Book Entry #5: Independent!

Here’s entry #5 for my Fat Book swap. Since I’m so new to all this stuff, I’m really learning a lot about my “style”. And vintage, it’s not! I’m so drawn to color that when I do stuff that’s not very bright and colorful, I feel like a fish out of water. The topic for this one was “independent”. As you can see, I chose Amelia Earhart. I stuck with the faux postage idea for this one. I covered each piece (remember, I have to do 10 originals of each entry!) with pages of a 1980 atlas, and then added the stamp I created and the embellishments. I think what I do like most about the piece are the quote and the picture. That quote really makes you think, doesn’t it? And she seems happy and ready to tackle the world in this photo.

I enjoyed reading more about Amelia on Wikipedia again. She's such an interesting figure in history. Years ago, I read a fiction work based around Amelia, and I still have it. It’s called “I Was Amelia Earhart”, and it was written by Jane Mendelsohn in 1996. There’s a short excerpt on the back cover that sums up the book: “This is the story of what happened to me when I died. It’s also the story of my life. Destiny, the alchemy of fate and luck. I think about it sometimes, under a radiant sun… Today when I think of my former life, I think of it as a dream. In the dream I am another person. In the dream I am the most famous aviatrix of my day, a heroine. I am Amelia Earhart.” I think I’m going to have to reread it now! Stay tuned for entry #6, Cowgirls. I had a lot of fun with that one! See the rest of my entries so far in the Challenges and Swaps category over there in the right column.

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Fat Book Entry #4: Retro!

Well I’m once again showing my rebellious streak here. For our FatBook Entry #4, the theme was 50’s-70’s Retro. I was stuck for weeks. Then while I was driving over to Tallahassee one bright and sunny Friday morning to catch an FSU baseball game (during the semifinals last month…of course, we choked as usual as soon as we got to the College World Series, but I digress….), I was listening to my favorite radio station out of Valdosta when inspiration struck! That station has a great Friday Night Retro Radio Show…..um, but it's Retro 80’s. I hesitated for a minute and then thought, what the heck! It’s still Retro! The first thing that popped in my mind was the image of the Go Go's waterskiing. So here you have it! These little things have been so much fun to make (even though I’m making 11 of each one!). I can’t wait to see everyone else’s!

And for more creative inspiration, go over there and check out Creative Construction. We had several entries for last week’s creativity prompt, “Chinese restaurant”. You can see my first attempt at an ACEO there; I’m not a big fan of Asian art, but it didn’t come out half bad for a quick 15 minutes of playing around! I also have a post on there from my bad day last week that drummed up some great discussion in the comments; feel free to add yours here or there! I'm really enjoying getting to know this wonderful group of creative women. And no worries, my girlies and I are much better now! :-)

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Fat Book Entry #3: Driven

Well, I think I may be showing my rebel side with this one….not that this is a very rebel-looking piece, but rather that I may be stretching the theme a bit farther than it was designed. “Driven”. I think Carmen suggested this theme, and she probably meant a woman who was “driven” to do something, like “driven to succeed” or “driven to create” or “driven to lose twenty pounds". Well, the one thing that kept popping in my mind was the film Driving Miss Daisy. Daisy was certainly “driven”, wasn’t she? She was “driven” around by Hoke, literally! But the more I thought about it, the more I felt Daisy was appropriate for this entry. Yes, she was driven around town by an old black man who became her best friend. But she was also figuratively driven to live her life, driven to carry on after the death of her husband, and driven to develop a close friendship with her black driver, despite the racial barriers of her time. She was driven to do all this with a dignity and grace that stands the test of time. You go, Daisy! I’ll have entry #4, Retro, for you later this week…

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Fat Book Entry #2: Classic Writers

Since I have a master’s degree in English, I’ll admit to submitting the topic for our second entry. And of course, since all my literature courses were in Southern literature, I had to go with a Southern writer. I was initially thinking of Eudora Welty, but then I thought it might be more fun to do something with Margaret Mitchell for Gone with the Wind. The first quote that popped in my head was Rhett’s “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn” but when I was telling my friend KT about it, she reminded me of all Scarlett’s “Fiddle-dee-dee’s!”. That’s much more fun! That's a corset hanging off the edge there in case that's not too clear. I just thought of all the scenes of Mamie tightening up Scarlett's corsets. I’ve seen a sneak peak of a few other entries and I’m really excited about this project. It’ll be really fun to see all the final pieces (100 of ‘em!) all together to see how everyone interpreted the topics. Yeah! The back of this one gives a little info about the faux postage again, this one at $19.36. Though the film was released in 1939, the original book was published in 1936.

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Fat Book Entry #1: Bombshells!

I can’t stand it! I have to share! I finally finished my first two entries for the Fat Book swap I’m participating in. Just as a refresher: I found out about this swap through my friend Carmen’s blog who found out from Roni’s blog, who sent out the challenge and is putting everything together. There are 10 women participating. The overall theme is “Women”, with 10 different subthemes we are to carry out. Each piece has to be easily replicated since we have to produce 10 originals of each topic. That means that each of us will end up with 100 originals when it’s all said and done; each piece is 4” x 4”. I thought it would be a great way for me to get my feet wet with mixed media a little more. Little did I know it sounds like I’m the rookie of the group! We have a Yahoo group set up and I’ve seen things posted about glazes and copic markers and all sorts of things I know very little about! Saturday, I sent out a note to the group with the topic “Who are you people, anyway? :-)” since we’ve been carrying on these conversations for several weeks now, and I really had no clue who I was talking to. Thankfully others had the same thought, so it was great to learn more about everyone. It’s a very neat group of gals, coming from all over the country with all kinds of experiences. I look forward to getting to know them all better over the next four months.

So back to my first entry; our first topic is “Bombshells”. I showed you the faux postage stamp I made for this one a while back, so now you can see the finished piece. I cut up the 9” x 12” light cardboard I collected from our graduation program boxes as the base (recycling at its best!), and covered it with hot pink rag paper. Let me back up a minute here…I actually started out with a deep red paper flecked with gold accents, but once I placed my postage stamp on there I hated it, so I had to rethink it and start over. I like the pink much better! I stamped the pink with a French writing stamp, googled Lana Turner quotes for a good quote, and then brought all the bits and pieces together. I glued each piece on the other with an acid free glue stick and still have glue all over my workshop. Then before adding the rhinestones and the smooch, I sealed it and gave the paper a little sheen with Mod Podge. The smooch is sealed as well, and I quickly learned my lesson on that one. I cut them all out before I sealed them! That meant I had to individually seal each one. For my next entry, I remembered to seal before I cut, making things much easier! I’ll share the second entry with you later. For now it’s back to the jewelry bench; I'm participating in the three-day 17th Annual Lakeridge Winery Harvest Festival this weekend!

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Gettin' Ready to Get Crabby...

I never got around to working any further on my first Fat Book Swap entry this weekend. In my excitement to get started, I apparently had a momentary lapse of reason. My DH reminded me that I have not one but TWO shows in the next seven days. I’m doing a private trunk show Wednesday night and then participating in the Blue Crab Festival Memorial Day weekend in Palatka. This will be my first time showing at the Blue Crab Festival--which reportedly draws more than 200,000 people over the three-day weekend--and my first time doing a three-day show, so I thought I might better beef up my inventory! I have a large collection of beads I’ve been hoarding, so I’ve decided to turn some of them into simple, casual pendants. With gas nearing $4.00 a gallon, I know I’d have a hard time splurging on one of my Showstopper pieces right now, so I thought I’d add some more affordable pieces to my line. Here’s a sample! Just one gorgeous bead jazzed up with sterling silver wire and Swarovski crystals, all wrapped up with a leather cord. Whatcha think?

And BTW, I'm sure I'm a little behind the curve on this, but the guy who invented the new peel back resealable Oreo bag? Genius! My morning fix has become much easier! Like this post? Click here to sign up for free weekly email reminders. Click here for the Happy Shack Designs website.

Fat Books and Skinny Time

Getting started on my first Fat Book Swap entry! Our overall theme for the 10 entries is women, but we have sub-themes for each of the entries. The first two are “bombshells” and “classic writers” (my contribution, go figure!), both due June 17. I’m creating each of the 10 4” x 4” pieces centered around a faux postage stamp, and this is the stamp I created for the first one. The bombshell I chose, in case you don’t recognize her in this dramatic “Kiss me, you fool!” pose, is Lana Turner. Cool picture, huh!?! I’m guessing it’s a piece of a movie poster, but not sure which movie. Notice my post amount? $8.00? Well, guess how many times Lana was married! Eight! Twice to the same man! The longest marriage was four years, the shortest, less than one year. Busy woman! We have to include a quote in each piece as well, so the quote I selected also goes along with her eight husbands. I’ll save that for you until I show you the completed piece. Hope to get it done on my day off Friday!

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks around here. I’ve been working on ways to find more time, so we’ll see if any of them pan out in the coming weeks. It’s all about finding balance, which I’ve yet to find with all the things on my plate. I know some of it is self-imposed, but a girl’s gotta find time to do the things she loves to do along with the things she must do, doesn’t she? The “love to do’s” are the self-imposed pieces; the “must do’s” put Cheerios in the pantry. Now if I could just find a way for the “love to do’s” to put Cheerios in the pantry, I could probably also solve all the world’s problems. You think? The girls and I sat on the back porch swing for a while after dinner tonight, just soaking up the evening sunshine and enjoying the breeze while taking calls from our adoring fans on Livvie’s Little Mermaid phone. That doesn’t put Cheerios in the pantry, but it sure is good for the soul.

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