building a house...

About a month ago, I received an exciting email from Tim Holtz asking me to be a participant in the Ranger Ink CHA Designer Challenge. Of course, I said yes. I think I must've been the first to respond...maybe just 3 minutes after the email was sent.

The challenge was to fashion a house of whatever style we fancy using Claudine Hellmuth's Studio line of paints and brushes and sticky back canvas. All of the supplies, including the fabulous paints, were provided. All I had to do was build a house.

Using a paper mache rectangle as the base and chipboard for the roof. I painted a sheet of the sticky back canvas and then cut it into strips to use for the siding. I applied the siding from the bottom up, overlapping the edges to mimic siding of a real house. I added a door and windows and flowerboxes, all made with the sticky back canvas.

I put flowers in the flower box and a little clay birdy. The doorknob is a shiny button and the topiaries are vintage pom-poms.

The whole business got a coat of glitter, because it didn't seem complete without it. Although, in retrospect, I miss seeing the quality of the paint on canvas which gave the piece so much charm. If I were to do it over, I'd only glitter the flowers and the trees, I think.

It was a real joy working with Claudine's Studio line, especially the paints. They are so pigment rich!

So here is the final result, shipping out today to {hopefully} make the Friday deadline.

next week!

Next week we leave to visit Baby for his second birthday. We can't wait. We have no idea what to expect...whether he'll come to us or need to warm up. In my dreams, he comes running into our arms and we hold him as if we never let him go.

We miss him so much but we're doing so much better than a couple of months ago. The ache is still there and we still cry often, especially when we think of how beautiful our life was with him.

We are preparing our home for more children to visit us soon. There's something HUGE in the works but it's too early to talk about yet. You won't believe me when I tell you. Seriously.

p.s. The font I used for my parents' golden anniversary invitations (which I'm still putting together!) is Chopin Script. The secret is to vary the size of some of the initial caps.

scenes from a sunday morning

My parents' golden anniversary is coming up in about a month. Before Christmas, February 7 seemed like a world away. Now it's just around the corner. I'm working like crazy today to make 200 invitations for the celebration we have planned. I thought you might like to see what my world looks like today.