What have I been up to Lately??? A little Recap...

July is just flying by and the excitement of CHA is upon us. Things have been crazy buzy at the day job, but I am not forgetting about my artsy/craftsy life! Since it's tough blogging everyday - I think I like giving a weekly round-up of what I've been up to and I hope you all enjoy this format too. 

Here's a recap of what's been going on in my creative world over the past week.

Thursday: my weekly Sketch-It Saturday with Unscripted Sketches creation. I made this fun Christmas layout using Unscripted Sketches #167 and papers from my Grinch papercrafting kit. Way back on National Scrapbooking Day, May 5th, I created the matching left hand side of this layout using Unscripted Sketches #157. Now I have a complete pair to go in my Holiday Scrapbook!

Unscripted Sketches is celebrating Christmas in July all month long with fun projects, games and prizes...drop on by UnscriptedSketches.com to join in the festivities. I will be featured on July 24th with some fun Christmas in July goodness.


Friday, I had a special fun project: a mixed media collage piece for an altered art/stamping collaborative between Viva Las Vegastamps! and Guache Alchemy. 

I began with this assortment of goodies from Guache Alchemy along with several stamps from Viva Las Vegastamps!

Here is my completed piece - sort of a tribute to "DAD". I made a faux aged leather background for this assortment of manly details. To see how I made my stamped pieces, CLICK HERE.

Sunday was my Altered Pages project day. I really appreciate being able to share what I make on my "OFF" Day. For Sunday's installment, I shared a how-to video on faux leather paper background techniques early in the day and shared my completed project later that evening. I like to call it Early Bird/Nite Owl crafting. CLICK HERE to see entire post.

Torn brown paper collaged to a black book cover makes a wonderful faux leather. My hairdresser has a a whole door covered like this in his Salon - it's so chic!

I used the newsprint aged faux leather technique to alter the cover of my art journal. I'm so happy how the cover looks accented with an assortment of collage images from Altered Pages. For durability I'm going to seal it with a coat of acrylic matte varnish. I added some metal book corners to the edges, too. CLICK HERE to see the technique how-to video.

FINALLY...yesterday I had a featured how-to at Sakura Hobby Crafts blog...making your own mists using Sakura 3D Crystal Lacquer and Terri Sproul Mixers. This was a fun project  and I used my stash of new stencils and punchinella to make masked layers of color to highlight one of my all-time favorite quotes. This is art journal page number 4 - started a in a second art journal with a white paper {my other art journal has black pages}. CLICK HERE to see the how-to.

Thanks for stopping by! Next week is jam-packed with lots of fun stuff and two blog hops.  Can't wait to get back to my art journal...and I've been challenged to do a live stream on Saturday...YIKES!

: ) Sb