French fries that are totally not fattening

Finally, something yummy that won't increase my waistline LOL! I found the pattern for this French fry container on the Fairies with 'Tude blog and just had to make one for my mom to celebrate her 60th birthday. The best part was that I got to deliver it to her in person last week! (She's in Florida so I don't get to see her as often as I'd like.)

For the box, I created my own paper by tearing scraps of different black and white printed papers and such and gluing them to a piece of freezer paper, overlapping as I went (I used Modge Podge). Then I painted an acrylic colorwash of yellow. Next, I stamped some images onto a thin paper napkin and randomly glued them on top of the paper. Then added two more colorwashes of purple and deep red ... love the antique look I ended up with! The flower is a fabric pin that I colored the petals with watercolor crayons. The inserts are cardstock that I balled up and then smoothed out, stamped with brown ink and then rubbed brown chalk over. Then I glued the images, words and flowers (with a bead in the center of each flower) to both sides of the inserts. Too fun!

Red, red, red ...

Dawn posted a challenge to the CompositionArtJournals group over the weekend to do a grid page. At first I wasn't planning to join in, but, as I usually do, I kept thinking about it and thinking about it and this morning I finally had to just do it. Besides, I had this spread already painted in black and hadn't yet come up with something to do to it, so it worked out perfectly. I decided to thumb through a couple magazines and pick out as many red things that caught my eye. My daughter had fun helping me with that part! In fact, she added to it by coloring on a scrap of paper with a red crayon ... it's the one in the bottom row, third from the right ... love it! After gluing the squares down, I doodled with a metallic marker ... very simple, but I think it added just the right touch. This was such a fun thing to do! I just might try it again someday ... maybe a different color, or a certain shape or ... well, who knows! Thanks, Dawn, for the challenge!

Calendar journal -- January

This one was okay, but a bit darker than I was trying for. That's what happens when I don't dilute the acrylics.Background done with acrylics, boxes outlined with silver marking pencil (the kind usually used for quilting!), title and snowflakes are metallic marker.