Blue Christmas & Red Hot Thanksgiving

This week, my parents came to visit for Thanksgiving. I was so excited to have them come here! My mom is by very best friend and usually I only get to see her once or twice a year. My dad is a cool guy too and I love doing things with him. When I go home, we often go fishing together. This weekend, we took a drive up to the Florissant Fossil Beds and took a short hike - although the melting snow made the trail alternately slick and muddy. We had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner and did some Black Friday shopping too.

My mom shares my artistic interests and we do a lot of projects together, often participating in online swaps through Paper Traders or other groups. As I posted earlier, our Paper Traders group puts together a CafePress calendar each year. We had to come up with one more spread for December so mom and I watched a few of Teesha Moore's tutorials and then put our heads together for this collaborative creation using magazine ads:


I had so much fun with this! It is unlike anything I've ever done and was very freeing... I think I'll try doing an ATC this afternoon in the same style. Take some time to watch Teesha's how-to videos... she's so easy going with her art - I love it!


UPDATE: Our extra calendar page wasn't needed after all but there are still many lovely pieces of art to display, including my pear mosaic. If you're interested in a calendar, you can order one here: http://www.cafepress.com/PaperTraders.324251835

The Sweet Fruit of Patience

Every year our Paper Traders group puts together an art calendar produced by CafePress. Here is my submission for the upcoming 2010 Calendar (I think this will be for the month of September). I'll add a link here once they're available for purchase - the calendars are sold at the cost of production, there is no profit on these.

I did the paper mosaic of the pear last year but then lost my muse and didn't really know how to finish it. One of our calendar participants had to drop out at the last minute due to health issues so I pulled out this unfinished piece, added the side panels, the leaf, and the words... and I'm much happier with the results =)