How delicious is that shot, above?  That is they Floral Paper Ephemera Kit.  And the other pretty bits, now available, are below.

Aimez-vous toutes les choses françaises ?

Oui!  (Take my word for it) 

Yesterday, my good art buddy, Christy Laudig, dropped by for an art date which ended up being a photo shoot (my kind of date). After very little persuasion, Christy shepherded Draw and I to her car and took us on a tour of some back roads and ‘the’ Historic National Road into “Historic” Knightstown (I think if you’re situated along this road you’re automatically dubbed ‘historic’ and well you should).

A charming (and possibly haunted) bookshop, lunch at a tea room, taking photos of cool rusty stuff, browsing through antiques…  a heavenly day to enjoy absurdly beautiful weather dripping in sunshine and soft breezes.

Here’s the thing about Christy… she knows everything.  Ev.er.y.thing.  If you have a question she has an answer.  I love going places with this lady.  You are never lost with her and you never wont for an adventure.

Five minutes out of our driveway and she was already taking us down roads we’d never traversed.  And we call ourselves explorers.  Ha!  Draw and I have a lot to learn but we’re up for it.

Draw and I were like happy little kids going to a candy shop.  Wheeeeeee…

Amongst the highlights:

• A nice little lunch at a tea room (we need more of these in Indiana)
• Great shots of rust
• Abundant finds at the antique mall (I can always tell I’m gonna be in trouble if I find something within the first 60 seconds of walking through the door)
• Stopping, uninvited, at a wonderful old house wearing her age in a way that only artists can appreciate  (thank you Mr. Stranger, for not kicking Christy in the bum when she drove up your driveway and asked if we could take pictures of your house.  And thanks for the offer of mooshine…)
• An adventurous stop at an abandoned and dilapidated school to sneak some photos (even though there was a big old Rottweiler watching us from the house down the hill)

A few of the photos I took with postwork…

Come back, soon, Christy!  We miss you, already

Have a great week!
G xo

After the near-conclusion of our ‘Reading Room Project’, Draw sighed…

“I really think we should have a clock.”

Well, heck, all you have to say is ‘we should have’ and I am on that team!

Draw mentioned the Village Clock Shop which is located in a small town on the northwest side of Indy and since it was Friday and he was off on Saturday we decided to visit.

HOMEWORK: Our first measure of business was to look on Amazon and scope out the prices of wall clocks.  And since we are an internet family that does most of their shopping online, Amazon is our first-stop-shop.  We wanted a nice wall clock, not too expensive, made by a reputable clockmaker (I’d seen lots of ads for Howard Miller in decorating mags when I used to read them religiously) and it had to be made of WOOD.  You know ‘wood’ – that stuff they use in place of MDF and particle board?

THE PLAN: Pick out a couple of Howard Miller wall clocks on Amazon that we like,  go to the Village Clock Shop, check out the clocks, do a bit of antique browsing (more on that in another post), head home and order THE clock in April.  And our pinky-swear pledge, one we even uttered as we got out of the car and walked to the Village Clock Shop:

“We are NOT going to buy the clock, today!”

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT: We walked through the door of the charming Village Clock Shop and were immediately surrounded,  not by salespeople but… the melodic sounds of ticks and tocks and bims and bams from the scores of clocks that peppered every room and wall of the lovely store.  And to top it all off, the shop was having a BIG sale and both the clocks we had selected to check out were priced even better at the store than on Amazon (even including the sales tax which you can avoid when shopping on Amazon).

Well, how can one resist the song of that siren?  The one that sings that you ARE going to buy a clock and you CAN get it cheaper than on Amazon if you BUY it TODAY.

THE FINIS: We have a Howard Miller wall clock… and two less pinkies.  And I’m really quite tickled that we bought it from a brick-and-mortar store in the lovely town of Zionsville.

Tick tock… bing bong… it took me 45 minutes to write this post and I know that for a fact without even looking at the clock.

Ta!

g xo

This one 90 square foot space of a conundrum has gone through many an incarnation in eight years but it has never been a dining room, the original intent of the builder, hence my earlier comment, above, in quotes.

It’s lived it’s life with us as an empty room, a PaperWhimsy stock room (least favorite), a pseudo-library that held a lot of haphazard piles of books and magazines but nowhere to sit and read them, and lately it’s been storage for our new patio furniture because I didn’t want to leave the stuff outside during the winter and our garage is now the PaperWhimsy stockroom.   (You can see the remnants of this last in the photo, above.  That table in the center belongs on the patio.)

On and off we’ve dabbled with this space but our ‘project’ took on a degree of earnestness about five years ago after a trip to England.  That was a period of intense focus where we added mouldings, painted the room a sage green (several shades darker than my signature vanilla), painted the ceiling a pale robin’s egg blue with dabbed on white clouds and changed out the light fixture to something a bit fancy.

And now… at last,  it is what we’d always wanted it to be but stumbled all around it: a comfy place to sit and read or have a conversation while drinking a latte or a cup of tea.  And perhaps to even  have a bite to eat though not in the way a dining room would have you eat.  (I don’t know what it is about me and dining rooms but they seem like a precious waste of space when you’re just two people).

I’d like to introduce you to the Drawbridge-Blair Reading Room…

Now that we’ve almost reached the finish line (a couple more chairs to replace those patio chairs you see peeking into the photo bottom right and left) I can’t help but wonder why it took us so long to get to where we finally are.  No matter.  We made it.

(By the way, that wonderful breakfront was disassembled for most of those eight years of transition with the hutch part shoved into a corner of the garage gathering dust and spider webs.  What a grand discovery to learn that I still LOVED this piece when it was in its altogether.  What was I thinking?)

(not) The End.

G xo

I have been thinking about PanPastels for such a long time, now, and finally decided to get some in. Oh the colors, my friends. Just delicious. And so very easy to add to your mixed media and paper arts. No special tools, just your creative noggin’ thinking of ways to use these glorious pigments.

Anyway… I don’t want to wax too poetic because my ‘poetry’ never outdoes the photos. Hope these new treats whet your creative appetite as much as they did mine.

By clicking on any of the thumbnails, below, the corresponding product will open up in a new page at the PaperWhimsy shoppe so you can get a closer look. If you decide to add an item or item/s to your shopping cart, do so and then simply close the new window to come back to this blog post. Anything added to your shopping cart this way will be saved for you.

Available in printed or PDF download for $3.00, regular $5.00, until 1/28/2012.  Click on the image above to get a closer look and add to your shopping cart to take advantage of this cool deal.

Other new goodies in the shoppe this week:
(Click on any of the thumbnails, below, and the corresponding product will open in a new window at the PaperWhimsy shoppe. You can add the item to your shopping cart, if you wish. When you close the window you’ll come back to this blog post. Any items added to your shopping cart this way will be saved for you.)

Ahoy!  I just happen to have a few spiffy bits for your consideration.  I’ll let the photos, below, do the talking because we artists are a very visual lot, we are.  And if truth be told I hardly ever read the print and mostly always just look at the pictures.

Read this print though: by clicking on any of the product thumbs a new window will open and take you to that corresponding product in the PaperWhimsy shoppe.  You can add to your shopping cart, if you wish, and then simply close that window and come back here.  Your shopping cart should save any items you add, this way.

By the way, Happy National Hat Day!  Be sure to don your favorite ‘tit for tat’, me Chinas.

Cheers then,
g xo

Introducing Julie Loeschke:

New Design Team member, Julie Loeschke, makes her home with her best friend and husband of 40 years, Tim, in the beautiful mountains of southwest Montana near Dillon.  Their sons Ben and Dan, both soft-wear engineers, have flown the coop, but do return periodically for some home cooking, old movie watching, and a rousing game of “Harry Potter Clue”.

Julie has a BS in Art, English and Earth Science education.  She’s done everything from nursing aide, ground crew for an ag pilot to owning her own floral shop.  She sold the shop in 2002, but still helps out during holidays.

An avid quilter for many years, 2004 found Julie looking for a new artistic outlet.  Always a lover of paper, she rediscovered those roots.  One of her favorite childhood activities was cutting out paper dolls, and oddly, she still is.  A collector of old photos and ephemera, the paper arts were a perfect fit and discovering PaperWhimsy was Nirvana, according to Julie!  When not making art, Julie spends her time tending her dogs, Leo and Lucy, reading detective stories and watching movies with Tim.

A peek at some of Julie’s wonderful art:

Watch for more of Julie’s amazing art on the Inspire blog starting in February.

Introducing Jill McCall:

Jill has loved art since she was a little girl, and has always dabbled in it in one form or another.  ‘In Fact’, she writes, ‘you Could Probably Match Decades to what I was Up to: Dried & Silk Flower-the 70′s, Victorian Style-the 80′s and a Home Based Business called Victorian Accents, a reprisal of my Silk Flower Days-the90′s.’   Jill is pretty sure her aunt still has pieces of her work from each and every decade, treasuring each and every one despite Jill’s persistence in trying to get her aunt to give them back or, preferably, to ‘burn them’.

Jill went to college to become a Dental Assistant but that didn’t really nurture her creative side.  So, once her children had grown a bit she went to work in a local florist and gift shop.   It was while Jill worked at the florist shop that she learned amazing skills in visual merchandising from an incredibly talented lady.  Eventually, the times and family pulled Jill back home.   Then in June 2010, Jill started blogging and discovered mixed media art.  As Jill puts it, ‘It was like someone created this art form just for me!  It was a Blend of All of My Favorite Things!’

Jill loves all things vintage, repurposed, paper, paint, fabrics, lace, buttons and bling… ‘anything and everything’, as she puts it.

Jill has been married to Mark for 28 years and is the mother of three children, Lauren, Sawyer and Katelyn.  She also has a ‘small zoo’, as she put it, with Cleo the Sheltie, Cody the Golden Retriever (who resembles Dug from the movie Up)., and Macy, Lily and Teddy the Felines of the Family.  ‘One Big Happy Menagerie… Asylum?… oh …Family!’

A peek at some of Jill’s beautiful work:

You can see more of Jill’s beautiful art on her blog, Feathers & Flight, and on the PaperWhimsy Inspire blog starting in February.

I hope you’ll take a sec to offer a warm and whimsical welcome to Julie & Jill, and watch for their upcoming projects to be featured on the PaperWhimsy Inspire Blog.

~g  xo

He’d been quietly working on this all evening, stuffing the bottle patiently with Lindor chocolate candy wrappers.  Eating all that candy must have been such a burden on the poor guy but an artist’s gotta do what an artist’s gotta do.  We all sacrifice for our art.

close up

Step-by-step tutorial

You’ll need:

Clear empty water bottle (Draw used Iced Mountain)

Several pounds of Lindor Truffles or similar gourmet chocolate candy

Patience

1. Drink the water

2. Eat the candy

3. Stuff the candy wrappers into the bottle

4. Screw on bottle cap

5. Have your wife (or other) wrap a bow around the top of the bottle

Given the time it takes to drink the water and eat the candy, please allow up to six hours to complete this project.

~g xo

So this here’s my catch-up post for the Third and the Fourth Days of Whimsy:

On the Third Day of Whimsy my true love gave to me…

… little shabby mittens?

But of course!  We love shabby!  We adore it!  And these Sweet Shabby Mittens, dripping with laces and buttons and tea-stained to look old, can be strung in a bunting or hung individually on a Christmas tree or on a Christmas gift OR on a Christmas card  … how sweetly and delightfully “shabby” they are.  Nancy includes detailed instructions as well as a mitten template for you to download and use.

***

On the Fourth Day of Whimsy my true love gave to me…

… pretty lacy Book Tags…

Glorious in sepia tones with a pop of color and loads of glitter… as if they were made by some ancient great-auntie who was the village librarian.  Again, make one or make more… string these tags as a bunting or add them to your tree, Christmas gifts or on Christmas cards (there is, simply, nothing so wonderful as a handmade Christmas card), and you’ll be creating something that will become a Christmas treasure for years to come.

And now here we sit… with bated breath wondering what awaits us for the Fifth Day of Whimsy.  Something tells me we shall NOT be disappointed!

If you’re following along and creating art inspired by Nancy’s delicious projects, we’d love to see it!  You can share your creations on Nancy’s blog posts for those specific projects, the 12 Days of Whimsy events page on facebook and the PaperWhimsy facebook page.

And each and every whimsical day there is a drawing with three lucky people receiving $5 coupons to the PaperWhimsy shoppe!  Thus far we’ve had NINE winners and tomorrow three more will be randomly selected.

How to be eligible to win one of those coupons?

Easy peasy – be a fan of SugarLumpStudios and PaperWhimsy on facebook (if you’re not on facebook, no worries, just add that you’re not on facebook when you leave your comment).   Then each day that you leave a comment on Nancy’s blog is another day that your name is entered into the drawing for the daily giveaway.  And yes, you can win more than once!

On Day 13 – December 13th – there will be a drawing from amongst ALL the eligible commenters for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to PaperWhimsy.  And with the turnout we’ve had thus far I think I’ll up those stakes.

There will be TWO $50 gift certificates awarded on the 13th day!

How ya like them apples, my little Christmas cranberries?

Our daily $5 coupon winners thus far:

Robyn, JudyB, Irene Walas, Kathie Pieper, Jan D, Sandy S, DoreneElizabeth, Debbie Ellerd and Cat Dodt-Ellis

Congratulations, dear friends of Whimsy

And now… on to the Fifth Day of Whimsy which will post at 12 bells midnight at one of the most whimsical places on earth, SugarLumpStudios.

Stay whimsy, my friends…

~g xo