"House" Themed Tags for No. 8 Tag Swap

These are the latest tags from the No. 8 Tag Round Robin. This has been such a fun swap for me. I have not ever done tags before. Since it is October and almost Halloween, I did one of the tags in a Halloween theme. We were challenged to use some of our favorite papers and to be creative and come up with different roof lines for our tags. I primarily added a chimney to one style that had already been done.

"Alice in Wonderland Halloween" Altered Book Pages

These are two duplicate altered book spreads that I made for an altered book round robin. One was done as a mock-up for the one I made for another participant's book - her theme was "Vintage Halloween". I found this piece of scrapbook paper with Alice on it that I used as my inspiration piece and cut the image out for the focal point.  I used paint scraping, rubber stamping, paper cut-outs and ink splotches to do the background. All in all, it's very spooky, don't you think?

Rosie the Riveter - Happy Halloween

One of my daughters is attending a Halloween party as Rosie the Riveter, and after researching to help her with her costume, I found out some interesting things about the model for the famous recruiting poster. Her name was Geraldine Hoff Doyle and was from near Ann Arbor, MI.  She only worked in the plant for 2 weeks. I found only one place that had the original photo of her working in the plant which prompted her use as the poster girl.  The poster, which was done by J. Howard Miller., became an iconic symbol for women in the workforce. She only died last year - Dec. 26, 2010, at the age of 86. She was married for 66 years and had 5 children, 18 grandchildren and 25 great grandchildren. Quite an accomplishment, I'd say!

Here are some pictures.

lhttp://www.bestcelebrity.net/rosie-the-riveter-geraldine-hoff-doyle-dead-at-86-photos.html

 This is the original photo that was the inspiration for the poster.

http://www.dnadropbox.com/2010/12/30/iconic-face-of-rosie-the-riveter-poster-dies/

I just thought you might want to know!

Trick or Treat in Wonderland

I just finished a spread for an altered book round robin that I am participating in. It's theme is Vintage Halloween. I came across a Halloween version of Alice in Wonderland and that was my inspiration for this piece. Here is the finished product.

Below are some of the steps I went through to create this. First I taped the center of the page with book repair tape, as it had a very thick section of book pages that had been cut out. The remainder was sort of prohibitive toward working on the pages, so the book repair tape was very helpful.  I then added some ephemera onto both pages to add texture and gessoed the pages again.

Then I scraped various colors of acrylic paint onto the page.

 I rubber stamped some images, including a crackle or aging stamp and added drops of walnut ink.

I felt the page was lighter than the look I wanted, so I covered the entire page with brown acrylic paint and then wiped off a lot of it with baby wipes, ala Paula Phillips at  Journal Artista. I love the look of her art and use a lot of her techniques that I learned from watching her free you-tube videos. I am so thankful for all the artists out there that freely share what they have learned.

I then added some drops of black acrylic paint along the sides of one page, closed the book and re-opened the book. You can't see it very well, but it left a cool texture as the pages pulled apart.

I dripped some acrylic paint and some ink down the pages. I then added the images, the bunting and the ribbon, along with some more yellow paint circles to tone down some of the black spots. I also re-stamped some of the images that had been obscured by the brown paint.

My final step was to do some shading to make each element pop, ink the edges of the page, doodle jack-o-lantern faces on two of the black spots & sign and date it. I just got the book off in the mail to then next recipient and I was pretty happy with the final product. I hope the book owner likes it! : )

ENTER IF YOU DARE!

I am linking up with Art Journal Every Day at Balzer Designs. If you are in the mood for some wonderful art journaling inspiration, visit Julie's blog - you won't be disappointed.

http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/

Trick or Treat - Smell my Feet

This year there was quite a gang over here that went out trick or treating. The weather was unseasonably nice. The girls gathered here and painted faces, while the guys got into their costumes. We adults sat around and drank wonderful French press coffee and caught up on our lives. There seems to be so little time for that any more. But here are the pictures just before the crew went out.

Here are the girls - mine is on the right.

And here is the girl in the newspaper dress. Quite creative, don't you think?

And here is the entire crew.

We had lots of goodies, homemade chili, fresh salsa, hot apple cider, chai, cookies and more.  It has been an annual Leng tradition for many years. Nowadays, we have - let's see - 11 chaperones and one bonafide trick or treater.

A Halloween Review

We had a wonderful night of treats and friends and FUN! We have a tradition that everyone gathers at our house and goes Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. It got started years ago when my bff had a new little guy and they live way out in the rural part of the county with no place to go Trick-or-treating, so....they came here and the rest is history. My college age daughter and her friends along with my high school daughter and her friends are still taking the "little guy" around, even though he is 9 now. They still LOVE taking him around. My 24yo ds and one of his friends got into the act by carving Darth Vader there and assembling our scary-guy mannequin. Some of our smaller trick-or-treaters were taking a closer look to see if he was real. It was soooo cute.


So here are some pictures of the fun. We had a total of twenty-two people! And that doesn't include the pets! What I love about these Halloween gatherings is that all my friends pitch in and bring goodies to share and while the kids go out, the adults get to hang around and socialize.

My dd as a gypsy.

She and her syncronized swimming pals.

The Jonas Brothers?!?

 

You may not be able to tell, but that is Hanna Montana on the left.

My other dd and her kitty, Elliot.

Her college friends!

The Trick-or-Treating Crew minus the boys

Does this kitty look like she wants to go Trick-or Treating? Not!

We had chili and bean soup, chips, dip, brie cheese and crackers, cupcakes, cake, ice cream, pretzels and hot mustard dip, cider and coffee and more. It is sort of funny how much food we have because all the kids want to do is eat their candy!

The Pumpkin Cupcakes! Yummy!

Well, this is a Halloween tradition that I hope continues for many years - even as the little guy gets older, I hope I'll have some grandchildren some day to add to the mix.  But for now, we just have lots of good, clean FUN!

TRICK-OR-TREAT!

Egyptians and Hebrews - Oh, My!

Here is my contribution to the Halloween Party over at fiberdoodles. Stop on over there and see what the fun is all about.

Well, here are the pictures I promised from our Konos History Co-op Class. We are getting ready for a wonderful Egyptian/Hebrew celebration just before Christmas. It will wrap up our first semester of classes. The students did an awesome job with their costumes, although they will continue to work on embellishing.

This would be Noah!

Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter

Pharoah Menes, founder of the First Egyptian Dynasty

The Egyptian god - Amun

 

and his twin sister - Egyptian goddess Amunet

Pharoah Hatshepsut - the first female Pharoah (18th Dynasty)

The world-famous King Tut

and last but not least - Queen Nerfertari - wife of Pharoah Rameses II

Aren't they all grand?! We are having a blast in this class and the students are all delightful to work with. We will be switching our study to the Ancient Hebrews soon. But for now, we are enjoying all the excitement that was Ancient Egypt.

 

Pink Saturday - A Fall Walk in the Neighborhood : Part 2

Here are a few "pinks" from my walk around the neighborhood. I have just been in awe of the beauty of the fall this year and it was hard to find pink out there, but I did find a few. Even a hot pink skeleton to say hello!

The blog I would like to highlight today is A Charming Home. She is a lovely lady with a lovely blog. Stop by and say hello.

Thanks to Beverly over at How Sweet the Sound. Go stop by for a visit and check out the other Pink Saturday posts. You'll be glad you did.