rubber stamping, collage, mixed media & altered art

And once again, the lovely, talented and inspirational Tiffini Elektra X has eloquently verbalized exactly what I’ve been thinking for ages.

Click the logo to visit her site and read more. I would like to add to this thought, however:
As much as I love comments (and I DO read them ALL!), I simply cannot reply to them all. If I did, I’d never create art (which keeps me ticking) or build websites (which is my bread and butter) or, more importantly, read your blogs! Thank you for your support and understanding.

I have a number of new posts in progress, but none of them are ready to go now. They’ll get done when they get done. *kisses*

My excitement knows no bounds today. Christine at The Artists’ Nook just announced she’s taking preorders for two new products. The first one is the morpheus box that Michael deMeng has been teaching in his workshops recently. I wasn’t able to take that particular class, and I was so hoping that I’d be able to buy a “blank” morpheus box and wing it myself. And WOOHOO! Here it is!

In June, I was junking for a bit with Christine and Leighanna Light at one of the cooler stores in the “antique store row” of Fort Collins. I found a printers tray I really liked, but couldn’t afford and then I found a knockoff which I could afford and I was delighted. Christine had told me she was thinking of having some made and lo and behold, here it is. I am so giddy, I can barely contain myself.

If you click on these images, you will be taken to the shop at The Artists’ Nook, where you can preorder these items. I knew all of my arty friends would be into these cool finds! I’m thinking of getting a couple of the printers trays…one for my most used wood mounted stamps and one for some sort of special soul-searching project. For the morpheus box, I’m thinking something like “the many faces of tracey” is a good starting point.

What will YOU do with these cool treasures?

This past weekend, I took a workshop called “Voluptuous Discards” with Lynne Perella. Lynne is an excellent teacher and takes a lot of time with all of her students. I learn a lot from her and I appreciate the attention she gives to everybody’s work. I had taken this class two years ago, so I felt a bit more confident that last time and I just went nuts and had a great time with my layers. I rarely have this kind of time to spend on one piece, so I really enjoyed the process. At the end of the class, we turned our paintings into “easy books”, with some folding and one cut. My flickr set for this class shows each “page” of the book. The book is rather large (9″x14″) so the whole thing doesn’t fit on my scanner bed, but you’ll get the idea.

I also had some fun with gift wrap this weekend. My sister Angela turned 40 and I wrapped up a bunch of little gifts for her. I also wrote her a letter describing my story behind the gifts and stamped corresponding tags for each gift. It was fun to pull out my funny, off color stamps. I’m hoping my sister will enjoy opening her gifts as much as I hope she likes the gifts themselves.