Holiday brunch

This holiday season
has been about giving thanks for all of this year's blessings,
relaxing, spending time with friends...

and doing a little crafting on the side :)

I recently made 4 very colorful patchwork table runners
inspired by a pattern in one of my Lotta Jansdotter books.

Hope you have a very happy
New Year!

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Merry Christmas and a Happy 2008!

My son Daniel's version of the
Charlie Brown Christmas tree :)
(he made it to put in his room)

Wishing all of you a very merry Christmas!!
It has been a wonderful year of blogging for me
thanks to all of you who visited :)
BIG hug for each one of you!

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Busy, busy, busy

I gifted myself some pretty amazing books this year
(staring from the top):

A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson

The Knitter's Handbook by Eleanor Van Zandt

Handmade Project by Lotta Jansdotter

You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail

The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman

Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter

Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson

Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson

Last Minute Fabric Gifts by Cynthia Treen

Simple Sewing with a French Twist by Céline Dupuy

Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson

Lotta's Lifestyle by Lotta Jansdotter

Lotta's Travel Style by Lotta Jansdotter

The Boy Who Drew Birds by Jacqueline Davies & Melissa Sweet

I highly recommend
each & every one of them,
They're all little treasures.

I've been super busy
hand stamping my sister in law's wedding invitations
& I'm only half way done! Yikes!
Got to get back to work...

Happy Thursday!

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Oven Mitts

These are a pair of oven mitts I made yesterday
using a pattern from Lotta Jansdotter's "Simple Sewing" book.
It's so full of ideas and inspiration.
I highly recommend it.

The light has been so beautiful & warm these days,
perfect for crafty afternoons.

My shop will be closed till mid January 2008.
I'll restock it with new goodies & prints next year
hoping you'll visit :)

Have a great weekend!
And thank you so much for visiting this blog,
it's a pleasure to have you here.
Hugs!

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Snowy Owl

Watercolor and acrylic in on paper.

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Four Things Meme

I was tagged a long, long time ago
by the incredibly fabulous & talented Kate Hamilton to do the 4 things meme:

Four jobs I've had:
1. Apple computers sales person (LCs, Classics, SEs etc...you get the idea...a loooong time ago)
at a distributor in Mexico City during my college years.
2. Senior Designer at Softec, Inc. (a consulting firm).
3. As a teen my sister and I made hot dogs & burgers at our family's beach shack in Maitencillo, Chile. So fun!
4. My favorite: being a stay at home -home schooling- mom.

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Ratatouille
2. Home Alone
3. A Night at the Museum
4. The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin

Four countries I have been to:
1. Spain
2. Argentina
3. Brazil
4. Venezuela

Four places I'd rather be right now:
1. In Tenerife visiting with my little sister Karyn (I haven't seen her in 8 years!)
2. Walking at the beach.
3. At the Field Museum's Division of Birds with the lovely Diana Sudyka as my guide :)
4. On a camping trip with Manolo and the boys to the spectacular Southern Chile.

Four foods I like to eat:
1. Spicy Mexican
2. Any kind of pasta
3. Ice cream (preferably Häagen-Dazs coffee flavor)
4. Middle eastern food

Four places I have lived:
1. Viña del Mar, Chile
2. Greenwich, CT
3. Sao Paulo, Brazil
4. Buenos Aires, Argentina

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5 Things about me...

The super talented Livia Coloji
tagged me to tell 5 random facts about me so here goes:

Tomorrow: another tag :)

Happy Tuesday friends.
Two more weeks till Christmas!

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Bible verse of the week: PROVERBS 15:30

Proverbs 15:30
A cheerful look brings joy to the heart,
and good news gives health to the bones. (NIV)

Next week's Bible verse will be:
Luke 2:14

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Illustration Friday: LITTLE THINGS

Happy lil single cell guys
Watercolor & ink on paper

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White Christmas

I will be dressing my tree
in paper snowflakes this year :)

Instructions on how to make
your own paper snowflakes can be found here

I've got lots of snowflakes to cut out still...
I'll be back tomorrow.

Happy Thursday friends...be well.

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Flock of birds

All birdies made it into the shop today :)
This is the last Etsy shop update for 2007!

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4 more specimens for the shop

These 4 new guys

will be going into the shop tomorrow

at 12 PM Central Time.

along with another one I'll finish up tomorrow morning :)
They are all painted on beautiful 200lb (440 grs) Twinrocker Handmade Watercolor paper
that has really cool irregular borders on all four sides.
I'll try and photograph them if weather permits,
it's been raining here in the mountain like there's no tomorrow...

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Bible verse of the week: PSALM 23.1

A great reminder to start the week :)
Happy monday!

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Shop update

A BIG flock of birdies
Will be flying into my Etsy shop on next week!
All original watercolors on gorgeous handmade paper.

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Illustration Friday: EXCESS

"Excess baggage"
Watercolor & acrylic ink on paper
for this week's Illo Friday :)

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Hand Carved Stamps Tutorial Part 2

Whew!
The weather has been unseasonably rainy this week
and I thought I wouldn't have time to do Part 2 of the tutorial,
but the sun came out this morning :)
I'll be adding the explanatory text over the weekend
...I didn't want to leave you hangin'
I bet you can even start carving by just looking at the pictures.
This tutorial was done with plain white erasers. you don't need to have
a special carving block to make simple & fun stamps.
Click on the images to see them LARGER
and look at all the details.
Part 3 next week!

Have a lovely weekend friends.

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Custom pieces

Custom pieces for my friend Mariana,

she will frame and give these as Christmas gifts

to her little nephews and niece :)

Two "to do" lists down
and 5 more to go...

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Stickers

My friend Mariana
makes the BEST cookies & baked goods
and she asked me to design two stickers:
One to use as a label for a jar she'll use to give
her delicious cookies as gifts this Christmas (see below)
and another one to have on hand for when she brings her baked goods
as gifts to her friends and family the rest of the year (above).

I did the illustrations with watercolor
and printed them on self adhesive paper.

...and had lots of fun packaging them!

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To do lists...

I'm trying to tackle a whole bunch of to do lists these days
to be able to have a nice and relaxing holiday season.
I recently moved my "sand box" shelf from the wall on my right
to make room for the new inspiration boards and it's working really well.
It's great to be able to look up and see all the little treasures I have on the shelf
and get inspired to put a dent on those loooooong to do lists.
Wish me luck!

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A lotta Lotta

I just recently bough these wonderful books by Lotta Jansdotter

and they're so full of inspiration!

Starting from the left there's
"Simple Sewing", "Travel Style" and "Handmade project"

Inspired by one of the projects in the "Simple Sewing" book
I made this cute and very simple draft snake filled with dry lentils
to keep the chilly winter drafts away.
I used an old pair of jeans and some more
Etsuko Furuya "Echino" fabrics.
And this pretty sun hat that I took with me to Acapulco.
I used a linen/cotton canvas
and lined it with some beautiful
Nani Iro fabric.

You can purchase Lotta's Books at
www.jansdotter.com

...and see some pretty handmade goods inspired by Lotta
in this Flickr Group

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Bible verse of the week: Psalm 19:1 & 4:8

Psalm 4:8 says:
I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep:
for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.

I LOVE that verse!
Great choice Oliver :)

I didn't post my verse for last week because I was away,
but here it is :)

Visit our Flickr Group
to see more illustrated Bible verses.

Next week's verse is:
Psalm 23:1
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

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Illustration Friday: THE ZOO

Although I am not particularly fond of looking at caged animals
I think these guys look quite content :)

Watercolor and micron pen on Fabriano paper.
5 x 7 inches

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Hand Carved Stamps Tutorial Part 1

This is a list of the tools that I use to make my stamps.
You can certainly use other alternatives.
I am linking each item to Blick Art Supplies
simply because they have good photos
and it's where I usually buy my supplies,
but any of these things can be bought at any other
art/office supply store in your area.

1- A Speedball linoleum cutter is the tool you will use to carve your stamps. I use the No.1 and No.5 cutters. The No.1 is for carving out fine lines and the No. 5 for carving out large areas of the stamp.

2- You can use any kind of dense/soft eraser to make your stamps (I recommend Staedtler erasers, they work like a charm) or carving blocks made specifically for this purpose like MasterCarve, E-Z Cut, Soft-Kut and many more. For the purpose of this tutorial I will make stamps with erasers which are easily available to everyone.

3- A trusty (and highly dangerous) X-Acto knife for cutting the eraser or block material to the desired size or shape. Be careful with this tool! and always put the protective cap back on after each use.

4- Any type of archival ink pad. There are so many kinds of ink pads available out there! I use StazOn, or VersaColor, you can also use black ink pads from office supply shops.

5- A No.2 pencil.

6- Some plain white paper to do some stamping tests and to draw the image you want to transfer on to your carving block.

7- And last but not least: an idea ;) You have to decide what it is that you want to make...I would start with a basic simple shape. I use my teardrop shapes all the time or just a basic triangle like the happy Christmas trees I recently posted. Practice, practice, practice and in no time you will be making more intricate shapes.

Part 2 of the tutorial will be posted next friday so stay tuned!

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Carving the bird

Although I didn't do any turkey carving yesterday
I did have fun doing some unconventional bird carvings
with my Speedball cutter :)

I can't believe we're almost at the end of 2007.
Where did time go?
I'm getting ready with some new Christmas stamps to play around.

I haven't had time to do the Hand Carved Stamp tutorial
I told you I would do...
but it's at the top of my list :)
I'll post some resources tomorrow so you can start gathering the tools you'll need
to make some beautiful stamps for this holiday season.
Beware: It's highly addictive!

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