Art Journal Page

The Smeared and Smudged journal prompt was Duality. What a great prompt and I was all set to get all deep and dark. Then a couple of the responses were bright and cheerful and I decided to join the party. I used my Balance set from Stampsmith. I love this set and haven't used it much.

Yummy Black Bean Soup

I don't do food posts often and this will be short. This is a recipe for a pureed black bean soup with a dash of sherry. Friends we made while we were doing craft shows gave us the recipe years ago and although we love it and make it once in a while, I've always just used the canned black beans. Two days ago I hauled out the Joy Of Cooking and followed their instructions for cooking dried beans (not one of my skills).
So I am extremely proud of this batch. I grew and dried the beans, I grew and canned the tomatoes, and I grew the onions and garlic. So invested and so delicious!!

BLACK BEAN SOUP

3 cans black beans, undrained  ( I cooked 2 cups of dry beans and maybe could have used 1/4 c more.
1 large can of crushed tomatoes
1 can low-salt chicken broth
3 T sugar (I only use 1 T)
2 T Worcestershire sauce
Generous dash sherry
2 cloves minced garlic
Chopped onion to taste (I've used anything from 1 medium to 2 large)
5 slices uncooked bacon cut up

Simmer all ingredients for a minimum of 3 hours, stirring as needed. Blend until smooth before serving.

For toppings, use seasoned croutons, chopped hard cooked egg. I don't think you could go wrong here - sour cream, whatever!

April Guest Design spot on Smeared and Smudged

As a fairly infrequent stamper and paper player, I was honored to be asked to host the Guest Design spot on Smeared and Smudged's Challenger group for April. I was pretty intimidated by the two designers from January and February, Julia Vazquez and Leigh Snaith-Brunton, who both created just amazing projects and challenges. And seriously, I thought to myself that the only way they could make it more intimidating was to have Mark Gould go right before me. On March 1, I had quite a laugh as that was exactly what happened.

My project is a tunnel book that I'm calling "Into the Woods." I used three of the SnS Goth Fairies Set as the characters and altered them to fit the plan. Precious got a red hood, Cornelius got a wolf's head and Jenna got an axe. I had worked on the layers previously and had to rework them to  make them fit together as when I had used them before, they opened inside a book so they were all different sizes and contained other characters that had to be removed.

It was all colored in Photoshop with a little twist; for the flowers and some of the trees, I put real flowers and trees behind the top layer and then erased those sections so the real stuff showed through.

There are four layers, including the background layer. I tried to create additional depth by using pop dots to hold the characters off of their layers. Red Riding Hood had to be supported by a dowel that connects to the back layer. My basic plan was to make a cohesive scene (the path, rolling grass and background) and then add additional elements to each layer as the viewing holes got smaller. Since each layer needed to be able to support itself and I was printing onto photo paper, I adhered each layer to heavy black card stock and used 1/2" x 1/2" wood pieces cut to length to hold the layers apart.

A Few Journal Pages

These are a few of my Art Journaling pages I've done in the last few weeks for the Art Journaling Every Day group at Smeared and Smudged.

I seem to find lots of inspiration in song lyrics.

Smeared and Smudged Challenges

Smeared and Smudged is a forum that my friend Pam introduced me to. I know, I know, don't end a sentence with a preposition but sometimes it's just impossible to back out of! Anyway, they foster the alternative stampers - the ones who love vampires and Steampunk and zombies and gore and Halloween every day of the year. And they are the nicest, most nurturing folks! They also have a challenge blog Smudgy Antics and a shop Smeared Ink. I haven't gone hogwild participating other than doing their yearly 31 Days of Halloween in 2011 and 2012. But the past few weeks I've played along with a few of their monthly challenges.

For the first piece the challenge was to interpret a video called You Da One by Rihanna. The particular challenge is called the Rock and Rolla Challenge and features a video to use as inspiration once a month. I love taking really old art pieces like this Titian "Venus of Urbino" and playing with them digitally so this was so much fun! The video wasn't anything I've heard or seen before but I find myself humming and bouncing to it all the time now!

The challenge for the second piece was from their Guest Designer for February, Leigh Snaith-Brunton and basically anything Alice worked. I had been working on these (mostly) Rick St. Dennis images for a couple of weeks with this in mind. The last piece of the puzzle was Rick's Dormouse that I had requested from him. So in the end this came together very nicely. I will be printing it out to put into my over-sized Alice altered board book. That's my woods in the background with a couple of stamped trees to integrate it with the foreground. Another of my favorite techniques!!

The Incredible Fairy Queen Palace

I'm quite a bit behind here on my blog so I'm going to do several posts today. As I said in the title, this is one incredible digital stamp that Rick St. Dennis has in his Etsy stop here . I had so much fun making up stories for each wing of the lovely palace that was constructed with stardust and magic in an old gnarly tree. I intend to do a lot more with this, adding all sorts of naughty and nice fairies to reside here but currently the only occupant is Rick's Dormouse .

The background I've used is a sunrise shot off the deck of our house in Washington with some color variations applied to turn it into dusk. I adore fairytales and fantasy and in my mind this couldn't be more magical!

A very Special Birthday Card

I will be 70 in a couple of days. The years certainly sneak up on you. And to paraphrase the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey, "At my age, one must ration one's excitement." But I got a very nice surprise in the mail today - one of my sister's collages as a birthday card. At about 9" x 12" it may be the largest one she's ever made and it's spectacular. She tells me the quote is from Mark Twain and it's a doozie too. I hope you will enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed getting it!!

Thank you, my wonderful sister, Kate!