Tony Stewart Wins at Atlanta and Cinches a Spot in the Chase

Last weekend, Tony Stewart, co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing and driver of the #14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Emory Healthcare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia.

Let's go Tony! Take it away!

Credit: Getty Images

More Soldered Bottles

I told you I was on the hunt for some more bottles for soldering. I found this beautiful blue bottle in an antique store in La Mesa. It matches my first bottle. Now I have a pair of pretty blue, soldered bottles.

Elena Etcheverry and I spent the day at Suzi Blu's house soldering. The temperature outside was in the 90's, but we thought it would be a good idea to solder out on the patio (first mistake). Since none of us were especially experienced at soldering, it turned into a bit of "the blind leading the blind." In fact, it was downright scary at times. Since we were live on the web, many people across the world witnessed this fun but rather hysterical episode. Suzi was getting wild with the soldering iron and I was getting so nervous that she would burn herself that I had to unplug her. Then she dropped her bottle, which, of course, broke. Elena came to the rescue and foil taped and soldered the broken bottle along the JAGGED EDGE (eek). By now, I was a basket case. In the end, the broken bottle became a very interesting wind chime for Suzi's patio.

As the day progressed, we were so hot and near crazed. At one point my two friends looked at me and freaked out. I was red as a tomato and looking like a total stroke victim. Suzi immediately made me go inside and we were done...not only with our bottles but cooked well-done from the sun.

I must say, we made some pretty bottles, we laughed, and I'm happy to say, no one was hurt during the filming of that event.

This is a close up of the original bottle I soldered at the Art Bar in Miss Vicky's class.

Tags with Claire

Tags were made with Tim Holtz distress inks, grundge board and grundge paper. My friend Sally and I had fun grunging up the grundge board in a class with Claire, at Stamping Details. These are all Claire's clever and creative designs.

Out of The Box at Urban Barn

What’s more fun than a group of girlfriends getting together and sharing art. It’s definitely one of my favorite things. Tonight our Out of the Box Book Club gathered at the Urban Barn in Escondido. What an awesome, inspirational place. It’s a store in a warehouse setting with tons of fun vignettes of vintage and shabby chic. I don’t think there’s another place in San Diego that comes close to matching the unique experience this store offers. We are so thrilled that Urban Barn owner, Linda, decided to move into our neighbor hood from Temecula.

We just set up a couple of tables and chairs right in the front of the store. The doors were up, the sun was setting and it couldn't have been a more beautiful night.

Glenna's gorgeous banner

Kat's Happy Girl painting - taught by Suzi Blu

Pam went to the CREATE Retreat in Chicago and learned the techniques for this custom book.

Pam also shared this beautiful collage.

Each cycle we do an art exchange. This cycle it was birds.

Here are Bonnie's fabulous soldered charm birds.

Kat's chipboard birds with butterfly hanger

Elena's creative magnetic boards with a little birdie magnet.

Allison's sweet paper piecing birds

Danette's cute little fat birds all made with circles.

Sheila's awesome embellished birds using items that she currently had on hand.

Pam's gorgeous smooch birdies.

Judy took an example from our book and added her own flair, which turned out adorable.

Glenna's lovely vintage bird tag.

We each took home quite a collection of pretty birds.

We couldn't end the night without a tune from our lovely Book Club leader, Elena.

Jodi Ohl Online Class

Do you love Jodi Ohl? Head over to her website and check out her new online class entitled Let's Face It. While you're there, sign up for her newsletter.

Italian Composition with Chris Cozen

Several weeks ago I was lucky enough to get into one of Chris Cozen's classes at Stamping Details. Chris is a world renowned artist and has a gift for color. Please check out her website and online classes. The class was called Italian Composition. Chris had just returned from France and Italy armed with wonderful background ideas. My class was the last of five classes in one weekend so I actually was a bit behind everyone. Most of the students had signed up for all five classes and had already made many backgrounds that were extraordinary.

I made two panels and don't ask me how I ended up with these colors. Orange is my least favorite color and my second least favorite is yellow. Talk about stepping out of your box! I managed to get the paint on, but I really didn't have time to build it up because it wouldn't have dried in time to do the decoupage portion of the class. I find it odd, but the more I looked at it, the more I began to like it.

Chris had taken tons of pictures of architecture while in Europe. Plus, she had picked up some old journals and different bits of ephemera, which she shared with the class. The written collage element on my panel was taken from a journal that was hand written in the 1800's.

At this point, I have the collage portion on and then I courageously added a little swipe of blue paint and called it done. As I looked at it, it seemed a little flat to me. Well, of course, there was no build up. At the advise of my friend Suzi Blu, who is also an artist and an online teacher, I added some Golden Bead Gel and Molding Medium and let it dry. I loved that, but it still wasn't quite right. At the advice of another artist friend, Nina, I added the brown paint to one of the panels and a very dark purple paint to the other.

After working on these panels and playing with them and showing them to my friends, I think they're finally fun. I think I'm finished. I wish you could see the depth that they finally have. I took the pictures on an angle so maybe you could see. It's funny how sometimes art can take you a couple of hours and you're done. Other times, it takes however long it takes to get to that place, wherever that may be in your own head, when you finally say, ok, I think it's done...mmm, but maybe not. Ha Ha

I hope Chris would be happy with my novice work.

Art Bar With Miss Vicky

The Crew with their bottles

The Carlsbad Book Club ladies have been trying to think of a fun place to go on a field trip. Elena came up with the idea of going to the Art Bar, which is located in Orange County, or Santa Ana to be precise. If you want to go somewhere really cool for a class or just to visit and shop, the Art Bar is the place to go. It's an art store, but I found the allure to be the ambiance. It is truly designed for people to go there and make art. This fun store is heaped with wonderful art supplies to play with and a whole bunch of unusual items to purchase. You feel totally comfortable just digging in and getting your hands dirty. There's something so unique and quaint about the Art Bar that you are truly inspired to create.

Kat & Pam

My Sister and I drove up to OC last Saturday and met up with 10 girlfriends, including Miss Vicky. Miss Vicky brought all the supplies and instructed us on how to make beautiful soldered bottles. We had crystals, beads, shells, and various other embellies to add to the inside of our bottles. Then we learned how to embellish the outside of the bottle and solder it all together. Once soldered, we added a patina that gave the bottle an old-world sort of look.

Kat & Pam

I loved it so much that I've already been on the hunt for bottles and I believe I have found my next beautiful creation.

Miss Vicky

Then we went into downtown Santa Ana, which is full of European stores and antique shops. We had a delicious lunch, went shopping, but most of all we laughed and giggled and really did have a hoot of a time. It was a great day. Good idea Elena!

Suzi Blu's Birthday Bash/Fundraiser

What a crazy fun day we had at Stamping Details a couple of weeks ago. A group of like minded, artsy girls got together and celebrated Suzi Blu's birthday by having a fundraiser for Holly's Garden Rescue. The final count was $530 with only 12 ladies.

We spent the day journaling and chatting and just generally playing. Suzi shared some fun techniques and provided birthday gifty bags that included templates for us to use in our journals. We commented on how all of us could use the same templates and end up with pages that were completely different. Everyone went home with a couple of journal pages that they really loved.

We went live on Suzi's website and many of our online visitors stayed with us all day.

As with only the classiest birthday parties, we enjoyed birthday hats, balloons, flowers, presents, awesome cupcakes from Cupcake Love, fun prizes from Suzi, singing and lots of artsy love.

We also had a stream of visitors, including members of Holly's Garden Rescue, a registered non-profit, who spoke to us about their organization, which rescues small breed dogs who are in danger of being euthanized. They will get the call from a shelter that 1 or more dogs is going to be killed that day and Holly's Garden jumps in the car and rescues them. They will drive all over, sometimes several counties to different shelters in one day. If you are inspired to help by fostering a dog, or donating to this wonderful mission, I encourage you to go to their website.

A couple of our most popular guests were Gigi and Finney who came dressed in their birthday best. Suzi has some wonderful pictures of them on her website.

Our own private photographer, Rhiana spent the entire day taking pictures of this fabulous event. I hope you get a chance to see them. We had such a fantastic time.

Suzi Blu's Birthday Partaay!

Suzi Blu is celebrating her birthday

by hosting a wonderful charity event for

Holly's Garden.

Holly's Garden is a local non-profit organization that

rescues dogs in jeopardy of being euthanized.

Suzi recently adopted Finnegan from

Holly's Garden

and would love for you to join her in giving back.

Birthday Party all Day

The theme of the event will be a super fun and colorful

birthday party.



Papier Story

But wait, you will be creating a Papier Story in your art journals using Suzi's templates and designs.

Bring your journals and your colored pencils.

You will learn some incredibly fun techniques and

there will be surprises and prizes all day long.


Partaay Details


Where:
Stamping Details
14009 Midland Road
Poway, CA 92064
858-513-8024
http://www.stampingdetails.com/
Call to reserve your spot today as there is limited seating.


Here is the website for your

supply list:
www.stampingdetails.com/cgi-bin/evinfo.php?on=9202439
Suzi will also be bringing fun and interesting items for us to play with.


When:
Sunday, August 8th, 2010
11:00 am - 4:00 pm


Cost: $45

Suzi is so excited to say that absolutely all proceeds from the workshop fees
will be donated to

Holly's Garden.

I seem to be so inspired when I do art at other people's houses. Again, I was at Suzi's house and we were in the creative groove. Suzi made the most adorable board book. Go to her website to see her work and take her classes. You'll love everything you learn from her.

I made this piece from beginning (blank board) to completion. It's the first time I've ever collaged and painted in a grid like this. I've done smaller grids, but this was fun. I especially like the black and white check on the side. I used Golden's crackle paste, which was fun. There is a lot of paint on this board. Strangely, my least favorite colors are yellow and orange. How this ended up being those colors is crazy. It just simply evolved that way. It was fun to step out of my color box.

I'm a huge fan of many of the Stampington magazines. I was inspired to do this particular grid process by an article in this month's Somerset Studio. The artist is E'layne Koeningsberg.

"For Tomorrow and It's Needs"

I liked the first one so much that I made another one for my pig loving girlfriend Elena. This one is super grungy...but it's purple so it's all good. Now purple...I like...no I love. I really enjoyed making this painting. I added beads and ribbons to it because Elena's a princess and she needed a little bit of glitz.

Grunge Panels

Recently took a fun class at Stamping Details with Carol Murphy and created these collages. She calls them Garden Girl Grunge Panels. There were inspired by Carol's Spotlight Artist article published in Somerset Studio Gallery Summer 2007.

Soldering 101

I've been lucky to spend some quality time with my friend and teacher, Suzi Blu . Every time we get together I make something fun. She totally inspires me. This particular day, we went bead shopping at South Sun Beads, and then ended up breaking out the soldering stuff. I haven't soldered in literally over 10 years when I took a stained glass class. Needless to say, it's not like riding a bike. (Actually, I got on a bike recently and that was not an easy or pretty sight either...so I don't know where that saying came from!) It takes tons of practice. However, there's something to be said about the rough bad soldering job too. I think it looks kind of old and rustic. Suzi gave me this pretty picture and I added some beads and made it into a little wall hanging.

Beading

I really like beading and I made these jewelry pieces for my mom. It's mostly turquoise and crystal. There's an awesome bead store in No. California where she lives. It's called Talisman. I usually try to go whenever I'm up there. She picked out most of the beads herself when I was visiting her last month. I brought them home, added a few of my own beads and this is what came of it. I made necklaces long enough to go over her head, and a memory wire bracelet because she can't do clasps. It's fun and relaxing. I hope she likes them.

BirthWeek

I told Dave that I feel like I'm at the age where from now on, instead of a "Birthday", I'm going to have a "Birthweek". He said, "Does that mean I have to get you a present everyday of the week?" WELL YEAH!!! (He totally stepped right into that one.) So today he buys me this beautiful new Boise SoundDock. My birthday isn't until Friday, but OMGosh, he learns quick. Thank you baby! You're my heart.

Fourth of July Goodness

Sparkler Girl

OMGosh! I've been so busy with my Suzi Blu paintings. I created Sparkler Girl all by myself. You know how I'm always talking about my Suzi Blu classes. You really must check out her online school. She teaches us how to make pretty girls with pretty faces. It's opened a whole new creative world for me. I'm a scrapbooker, but now I can paint pretty faces and I'm making pretty paintings all the time. Her classes are so inexpensive and you absolutely get way more than your money's worth. Taking her classes have changed my creative life and given me confidence in my art. Incidentally, that's what Suzi's teachings are all about...helping you not only learn how to draw and paint, but inspiring you to know that you can do it. She is a very positive influence that you will love.

Yesterday, Suzi taught us how to do angels in a class at Stamping Details. What a wonderful class. Right after class I had to come home and look at my videos again. Oh yes, she let's you keep the videos. I don't know any other online art teacher that lets you download and keep the videos. In fact, I don't want to show you my angel yet because, after watching a couple of videos last night, I now see things that I want to redo. In fact, I think I need to touch up Sparkler Girl's eyes a little bit. Ha Ha! Woooo Suzi, I'm addicted to Petite Dolls!

Can't wait for Mermaid class. I love making pretty mermaids.

Thank you Suzi Blu for all that you do.

My First This Year

There is so much unfinished business around here that my head swims. And there, right in the middle, is my first tomato of the season. It's called Husky Red Cherry. It's so cute!

My friend Debra use to grow tomatoes all the time and when I tried, I got worms. Not this year!

This year, I have three pots of beautiful tomatoes and I can't wait to eat them and give them away.

Dad has been working in the yard lately and it's all ready for summer. Things are trimmed and cleaned up.

I love taking pictures of florals and this year, I'm going to have a couple of plants to photograph and maybe collage.