My Latest Creation

Meg and I spent a wonderful weekend with my parents, my brother and his family. It was both relaxing and extremely productive.   Along with now being able to wirelessly print from a tablet, my parents can now stream Netflix and YouTube videos from two television sets.  I am an enabler as many of you already know.     It's a gift.  :-)

In my last post I briefly mentioned other crafty projects that had recently caught my eye which I would like to share with you now.

A popular trend right now are mixed media art journals.  I was never particularly interested but after watching a few YouTube videos this area was gaining in appeal with me.  One designer in particular who I love is Vicki Papaioannou.  She, along with her husband, are coincidentally also the owners of Inlinkz, a site that many of you are probably familiar with.  Vicki is extremely talented, very creative and I just love all of her cards and journal pages.  If you're not familiar with art journaling here's a link to one of my favorite pages from her.  Take Life One Cup at a Time.

A newer trend also gaining in popularity are Prima Paper Dolls by designer/artist Julie Nutting. They were first introduced as stamps only but her latest release included coordinating die cuts.  I'm dating myself here but I LOVED Betsy McCall paper dolls as a child. (Here is a link to an awesome Pinterest page if you're too young to remember them.  *sigh*)  What great memories!  After seeing what everyone was doing with the new Prima dolls, I had to have one.  (Ok, maybe two....or three. LOL!)

Knowing that I wanted to start an art journal and begin playing with paper dolls, I decided to combine the two into a single project.  Here is what I came up with....

I had more fun with this project than any I've done in a very, very long time.   I started with a blank journal that I picked up at Michael's and following Vicki's instructions I added a tissue paper background and gesso.  After that it was just a matter of pulling stencils, stamps, inks, markers, etc., from my stash and slowly layering them.  I paper pieced Halie (each doll has a name) by cutting her dress out in three different patterned papers and used Copic markers to color her hair.  I used the paper piecing technique on the cute little poodle as well.  I really love how this turned out and thought the title of "Take Time to Play" was very fitting for the introduction to my new journal.  I haven't shown this to Meggie yet but I know she's going to love it.  And yes, I'm secretly hoping that she will want to create her own doll(s) alongside me.  :-)

As always, thanks for stopping by!