Kristin’s

So the title of this blog comes from a little contest my friend Chrysti is having over on her blog.  She challenged us to really take in the world around us.  Since I’m currently waiting to go back to work at Michaels after the kids go back to school….my world is pretty much my home…and when I’m at home I’m usually in my bedroom.  My bedroom acts as my living center and well basically my studio as well.  I have pretty much all I need to be, my little creative self, right here in my room. It’s all pretty close to my finger tips. 

I also learned that it doesn’t take much in life to make me happy and content!  Just give me my nice comfy sleep number bed to sleep in and to sit on and my two kitties and my hubby and I’m good to go…but then throw in some of my favorite creature comforts on top of that…and then I’m a HAPPY CAMPER!!

I can’t go to sleep at night without reading…and it varies what I’m reading, but it’s usually something fiction…a novel of some sort.  I’m currently reading Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer.  It is the last book in her Twilight series. My teenage daugter Sarah and I started reading this series when it first came out in 2005, and we’re both avid readers and share books all the time!!  We were attracted to this series because I’ve passed on my obsession with all things Vampire.  Not sure why I have it, but I DO!! I love movies, books and TV shows about vampires!!  And I find that I almost always get inspired by reading one of these books and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  And I have to add that I have quite the crush and would gladly offer up my neck to one vampire in particular from the Buffy series and that would be Spike. So now I must add a pic of Spike here…..

Next comes my night stand….it is home to my many favorite pens that I use in my art and art journals and is also the home of my paint brushes, TV & DVD remotes and also my much loved OTT Light to help me work on my art!  And in this pic you can also see some of my current projects.

Isn’t aLaNi talented?!  Anyway….I love this piece because of the bright colors and because she used elements like the Eiffel Tower as the hat and a picture of a window as the body. But it made me feel like the quote used on the piece is all too true…we become who we create ourself to be…not by searching or trying to find ourselves.  And I feel that creating art is an integral part of who I am.  So it applies well to me!! So in response to aLaNi’s piece I made my own piece of art.  It’s not really like aLaNi’s piece but I used the same quote on mine.  I used my new metallic watercolors to paint the background after I drew circles on the paper with regular ole’ Crayola crayons.  I altered the face from a magazine ad that I stole from one of my daughter’s magazines that I just had to swipe once I saw the colored hair.  (And if I had the guts…I’d LOVE to actually die my hair like this.)  I created her body from a piece of Basic Grey scrapbook paper that I also altered a bit with different gel pens and markers because I wanted it to be a bit brighter.  And the quote  was created using again markers, gel pens and paint pens.  Anyway…now that I’ve made it I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with it.  I might sell it or I might just frame it and keep it.  Not sure yet….but I’ll finally put it in this post so you can see what it looks like.

I decided to call it, “Create Yourself,” and I’m a little disappointed that you can’t really see the sparkly detail of the background because it makes it very pretty!!  Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow and post another pic that I take outside with the sun shining on it so you can see the sparkly detail.

I hope you all have a blessed week as we’re leading up to the day of celebrating Jesus’ resurrection!!  Please pray for my kids and myself as we’ll be traveling to Miami, Oklahoma to go on a Spring Break retreat with our church youthgroup called Clayhouse.

Well it’s LONG over due but I’m FINALLY posting my first blog for 2008 and it’s to let all know that I’ll be continuing my post on the ZNE Design Team for 2008!! Something that I’m so excited to be continuing this year!!

Here’s a glimpse of our new graphic to use for being on the team this year.

The “E is for Eclectic” card on the left, pictured above, is one of the cards I made on last year’s team.   We did a little project where we created ACEO’s/ATC’s for the Design Team using letters of the alphabet (see post dated 5-14-07 below).  All 3 of the above art cards were created at that time.  The one in the middle was created by Susan Tidwell and the one on the right was created by Tiffany Jane Marshall.

The next exciting thing to share, is that all of the art cards pictured above along with all of the other ABC cards created by the Design Team are featured in a wonderful YouTube video that our fearless leader Chel produced for us.  It was created back in June of last year (yes…I know…I’m running behind on my news about this….)  And by clicking the link below you can go watch it.

ZNE Little Letterz

OH and a little tid bit I noticed over on Chel’s Blog….is this little nifty gif she has up to direct you to the ZNE website…and well it has a little bitty part of a piece of my art blinking on it as well.  It’s the bit with the ladies face. So you can see it too…and click on it if you want to (to see where it takes you) I’ve included it below!

Thanks for stopping by to check in with me!!  I’ll be back again soon with news about an art show at church for the youth group, Clayhouse.   There will also be more news on the Desgin Team and on the ZNE book club too!!

So I finally took the plunge and have opened a store on ETSY!!  I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, but just haven’t sat down to do it.  A while back I scanned in these backgrounds that I painted to cut up for little 1×1 collages that I made way back in February (I think…) with the intentions of using them to resale as preprinted ATC/ACEO backgrounds for sale.  So….I’ve finally done it!!  You can get them as digital downloads as either a PDF or a jpg file that I’ll email directly to your email address so there is NO SHIPPING costs!!  And they’re only $2.00 a piece!!  My DH is in the process of helping me set up a website as well…and once we’ve done that, I’ll also be offering my collage sheets printed out on a color laser jet printer, and printed onto high quality and acid free papers.  I’ll keep you all updated on the progress of that happening in upcoming posts.

Right now just the digital versions of my collage sheets are available for sale. Soon….I’ll also be making collage sheets available with highquality 300 dpi images of pictures from my personal collection of vintage images.  Some of you will probably recoginize some of these images because I’ve already used some of them in my own art.  Again, keep watching this blog to find out when those will be available.  It should be within the next week or so!

So without furter ado….here’s the direct link to my Etsy Store!!  And here are a few examples of what the collage sheets look like.

There is a total of 7 ATC/ACEO background collage sheets available right now, but these pictures above, are just a few of the examples. Please leave me some comments here to let me know what you think of them.  And please be sure to go and “HEART” my Etsy store while there as well!!

Now onto some other news….my kids are officially driving on the road!! And it has me scared to death!!! But at the sametime I’m excited for them too!!  Bryce got his learners permit on Friday and Sarah will be getting her’s on Tuesday (if she passes……).  And on Wednesday they officially start the behind the wheel portion of their driver’s ed class.  Their Dad took them out today for their first official driving lesson and he’ll be taking them out again tomorrow night as well.  Sarah is currently only driving around in the parking lot at the highschool since she does’t have her permit yet.

In other art news…I’ve also been working on some art for swaps.  I sent out my Altered Journal for the AAO Altered Journal Round Robin at the beginning of June.  And here are a few examples of what I did in my journal before sending it out.

In a later post I’ll share what the cover looks like, and how I made it and all that fun stuff!!!  I’d love to hear what ya’ll think of what I’ve done in it so far.  I decided to do this journal in the theme of Zettiology because I fell in love with this style when we did it for the AAO Style Try Fatbook.  If you’re not sure what I’m talking about you can go look at this post to refresh your memory.

I also recently made some mermaid themed ATC’s for another AAO swap.  I really liked doing these a LOT!!  And I used some palette paper that looked really KEWL after it was used under the baby wipes that I used water colors on (see previous post).  In fact I actually liked the the way the palette paper looked better than the wipe did, so that’s what the backgrounds of these ATC’s is made of.

I’ll be back in a day or two to share what I’ve made for the ZNE Design Team this month, and also to share my latest stuff for the ZNE book club as well.  I also hope to be able to share some other new collage sheets for my Etsy store as well.

My next bit of news is that I’ve been working on the Circle Journals that I mentioned briefly in a post on the 3rd of April.  Just to refresh your memory if you hadn’t read that post, it’s through a digital scrapbooking website, called Devine Digital.  If you’d like to see the pages that I’ve done so far you can go to my gallery on their site.  You can go there by clicking on this link. MY DIVINE GALLERY!!  So far, you’ll find my cover page for my journal, a page for a journal about “Favorite Places” a couple of pages about ”The Year I was Born,” and the last 2 pages about “My Favorite Scripture.”  You’ll also find the ATC’s that I’ve made for each persons sign in page.  We’re working on one person’s journal each week.  Our next theme is going to be posted later this week, so I dunno what it is yet…and well I also don’t know who’s journal we’ll be working in next.  It should be fun to see!!

Soooooo…. that brings me to May’s assignment for the ZNE Design Team!!  This month we’re all making ATC’s (artist trading cards).   Each person on the team has two letters from the alphabet to work with.  We then have to make one ATC for each letter.  My two letters are “K” and “E.”  After picking our letters we were given backgrounds to use on the ATC’s.  To get a preview of what these look like you can click here.  Of course mine didn’t have the copyright symbol on it, but I thought you’d like to see an example.  So, we printed out the backgrounds, and picked two of the four that we wanted to use.  I used the ones on the upper right and the one on the bottom left.  Then we had to pick a word that we wanted to illustrate on the card that started with the letters we picked.  For the letter “K” I used “Kitty” and for the letter “E” I used “Eclectic.”  We then had to go to this website and type in our letter and our word to make labels to use on the ATC’s, with the settings Chel assigned to us.  And here is what the cards looked like when I was done.

“K is for Kitty”

“E is for Eclectic”

If you’d like to see the other cards that other members of Design Team made you can go to the DT gallery to see them by clicking on this LINK.  I’m not sure everyone has their cards done yet, but when we’re all done you should be able to see the whole alphabet!!

My next big project that I’ve been working on for the last week is stuff for the ZNE Book Club.  I also mentioned this briefly on my post on the 3rd of April.  Right now we’re reading the book, Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin.  At the beginning of May we were trying out watercolor techniques that are covered on pages 12-16 in the book.  The technique I wanted to try out was the one where you put watercolors onto baby wipes and then use those for backgrounds on ATC’s.  I tried just putting the colors on randomly first.  Then I tried folding one in half and then added color.  On the next one I folded it into quarters and then added color.  Then I was thinking that I’d try to get a tie-dye affect and did that with great results by folding it into a triangle shape.  Then last, but not least…I cut up a wipe into fourth and made little tie-dyed looking backgrounds.  I mainly did that because I liked the way the big tie-dyed one turned out and didn’t have the heart to cut it up to put onto ATC’s.  So…here are some of the examples of what I made.  

The above images are of the wipes I just put random color onto. If you’d like to see more detail you can click on the thumbnails.

This is the one I folded in half.

This is the one I folded in quarters.

This is the one I tried the tie-dye effect on.  I really like how this one turned out.  I think I’m going to use this one on the cover of a journal I’m going to be using for an altered journal round robin for AAO. 

 

This is the one that I cut up into quarters and then did the tie-dye effect on.  These are the ones that I actually turned into ATC’s.

 

This is the ATC that I made with the background that is in the lower right corner of the image above.  I call it “Hugs and Kisses.”

For this one, I thought the little magenta shape in the middle of the background already looked like a heart (refer to the image above, of the baby wipe I cut up).  So I used a brush pen to outline it and then added the quote to it.  I don’t like how the brush pen bled a bit, but I guess it was just because a baby wipes texture is a lot like fabric. so that’s why it turned out like that.

The ATC’s pictured below are what the cut up baby wipes from above looked like after I adhered them to ATC’s.  I like the red/orange/yellow one, but the one that’s directly below this writing doesn’t look as nice as it did before I trimmed it to fit on the ATC.  Most of the blue and green coloring from the corners was lost when I trimmed it.  Oh well…. live and learn. 

The last thing I have to share today is what we were working on for Book Club last week.  It is techniques using magazine clippings on our ATC’s.  You can find the techniques for magazines on pages 24 - 33 in the Artist Trading Card Workshop book.  I decided to try the method on pages 32 & 33.  For this method you pick a magazine image.  (I picked a neat looking ad for lipstick.)  You cut it up to fit on an ATC back measuring 2.5 x 3.5 inches.  After adhering it to the background of the card you add Elmer’s Glue-All to the image where ever you’d like.  I added it along a lot of the lines in the image.  Then you use this stuff called “Nevr Dull“, which is a metal polish.  When you rub it on the magazine image it rubs off the ink on the page.  Where the glue is on the image it leaves behind the ink, so the glue acts as a resist.  After I took the ink away I went back in with my water-soluble pastels and added color back in.  Here are the examples of what I got….

Well I know I said I was gonna post this last week….but I got busy and kinda forgot….so here it is now!!! 

This is an excerpt of what my wittle bro posted about Toshi being born. It’s a funny story!!!  And MORE great pic’s of Toshi and the family and even the guys who helped deliver Tosh.

****************************************************

The day of Satoshi James being born started like any other. Alisha and Mako woke up at about 5:45 am on Wednesday 05/02/07. Mako asked for chocolate milk and Power Rangers, as usual, while Alisha snoozed in and out of sleep after setting him up with his early morning necessities. Alisha had her water break earlier that morning at about 1:00 am, right when I was going to bed. Her contractions started to get between 10 and 8 minutes apart around 6:30am and she woke me up at that time to start a game plan. We got up, took showers, made breakfast, called Grandma Polly to pick up Mako, and then called the doctor. The doctor said since Alisha was still about seven minutes apart on her contractions at 8:00 am that we should come in around 10:00 am. We agreed, since Mako had taken 13 hours to deliver after we arrived at the hospital, and when we left the hospital for him we left the house when the contractions were 6 minutes apart. We felt like we had all the time in the world. At this point of the story I should tell you that Alisha and I were trying a new technique of birthing called Hypno Birthing. This technique helps the mother deal with the pain by relaxing themselves to the point where it is almost hypnotic. You also wait as long as you can before you go to the hospital, since that will help you relax more. Also, with each contraction you visualize the baby being pushed more and more down and out! Studies show that babies who are delivered, drug free, through Hypno Birthing breast feed better and barley cry since the adrenaline levels are lower in their bodies since the mother was so relaxed when delivering. This obviously works since Alisha didn’t realize, till she felt Toshi’s head, that she was crowning and ready to deliver! At 9:00 am Alisha felt Toshi’s head when she was in the bathroom. I had her get off the toilet, I then saw and felt the head! Alisha had me call an ambulance while Toshi’s head was coming more into view! The 911 operator was talking through how to deliver the baby! I was freaking out a little bit but acted calm for Alisha’s sake. Then I heard the sirens outside! Thank GOD!!! I ran to the front door and propped them open! Then ran back to Alisha, still in the bathroom! The paramedics helped me lift her up and we got her on a gurney in the dinning room! She then bossed them around and told them the proper positioning she knew she had to be in from her Hypno Birthing book! It was pretty funny! She totally took charge!! 2 contractions later at 9:12 am Toshi was delivered in our dinning room!!! We got Alisha in the ambulance, while I took pictures, and we went to the hospital! Alisha had her after birth there and everything went GREAT!!! The rest went perfect! CRAZY.. huh?! That’s everything! I hope you enjoyed our wild story!

And now for the pictures!!!  (Please click on them to see the larger version.)

Satoshi “Toshi” James Wetstine

The EMT’s and firefighter that delivered Toshi with my wittle bro Sean!

The whole family, Alisha, Mako, Toshi and Sean

The proud Daddy with Toshi

Just the Wetstine guys!! Sean, Mako and Toshi!!

The proud Mommy with her boys, Mako and Toshi!!

Toshi in the car, ready to go home from the hospital!

My next post will be about my ZNE Design team work for the month of May and about the stuff I’ve been making the ZNE book club this month!  I’ll be back to post sooner, this time….I PROMISE!! LOL!!

I’ve been tagged by Shabby Cottage Studio - Gail Schmidt. I’ve heard of this blog tagging, but have never actually been tagged, so I had to learn about it on Gail’s blog. So you start with 7 random facts about yourself. People tagged then have to write 7 random facts on their blog. The tagee’s then become the tagger’s and choose another 7 people to get tagged and list their names on their blog. And then you have to leave a comment on the tagee’s blog’s to let them know they’ve been tagged and tell them to read about it on your blog.

So here are my 7 random things about me….

       1)  I was my kiddo’s kindergarten teacher.

       2)  When people first meet me they usually  think I’m Hispanic (in the mid west and the western coast) or Italian (on the east coast).  But I’m not in the least bit Hispanic.  I’m am actually half Japanese, a little Hawaiian, a bit Chinese, Irish, British, German and Armenian.

       3)  I hate some commonly liked foods like Olives and Yams/Sweet potato’s.

       4)  I LOVE some what some people consider to be weird foods, like Sushi (Tekka-Makki RULES!!!) and Kimchi.

       5)  I love crazy socks and have TONS of them in BRIGHT colors, weird patterns and for almost every holiday!!  I want St. Patrick’s Day sock’s next!!!

       6)  I have a collection of teddy bears that I’ve been collecting since I was a kid.  My most recent additions (in the last 6 to 7 years) have been many beanie baby bears!!   

       7)  My Dad was a Catholic Priest before he met my Mom.  But my MOM was NOT the reason he decided he didn’t want to be a priest anymore.  It was for many more complicated reasons than that. 

Wow…that was harder than I thought it would be. I wanted to think of some things that people didn’t already know about me so they’d truly be random.

 Now I gotta think of the 7 people to tag.  So let’s see…….

       1.  Beyond the Vintage Path - Tiffany Jane Marshall

       2.  Once Upon a Cottage - Lennea

       3. Other Peoples Flowers - Crystal Neubauer

       4.  The Bag Lady’s Art - Pam Carriker

       5. Artful Musings - Susan Tidwell

       6. Emma Fashokun Fine Art Contemporary Florals

       7. Sherre’s Art & Photos

Now I’m off to let the people I picked that I tagged them!!!  I’ll be back later today to post my wittle bro’s story about Toshi being born and some more pic’s of Toshi!!!

As of Wednesday, May 2nd at 9:12 AM, I have a new nephew!!  His name is Satoshi “Toshi” James Wetstine!!  His proud parents are Sean (my wittle bro) and Alisha Wetstine and his big brother is Makoto “Mako” Wetstine!!  He decided he wanted to be born at home, in the diningroom instead of waiting to make his appearance to the world at the hospital and was delivered with the help of EMT’s and Firefighter’s.  Toshi weighs in at 6 lbs. and 3 oz. and measures out to be be almost 19 and a half inches long.  He sure made a lot of hoopla for Mom and Dad being such a little guy!  Here’s the first pic his Daddy sent to me via text message.

Isn’t he just the cutest?!!  Well I know I’m a bit impartial, but still!!! I’m in love already!!!  Thanks for taking a peek and sharing in my happy news!!!

Well I’m finally getting around to posting my first works for the ZNE Design Team.   I made these pieces using the “Fabulous Faces #1” college sheet from the ZNE store.  If you go to that link you can see what the images looked like before I used them in my art and you can also see a couple of my art pieces on that page as well. 

Anyway….I made these pieces in the style of what is called Zetti or Zettiology.  This style refers to the type of work that Teesha and Tracy Moore use in their art journals.  You can see examples of Teesha’s work here.

So I started these pieces with some regular wax crayons on watercolor paper and then painted over the crayon with watercolor paints.  I then went on to collage with the images from the collage sheet for ZNE along with some scrapbook papers.  I then added some color to the collages by using water soluable patels and glaze and souffle pens made by Sakura.   After I did this I added the text.  On one of these peieces I wrote directly on to the piece and on the other 3 added the text after I scanned in the pieces to my computer.  I know it looks like I used stamps to add the text but it was just using some KEWL fonts that look like stamps. LOL!!  I wanted to scan in these pieces without the text so that I could use them in other work if I wanted to.  Something Teesha and Tracy both suggest doing. 

This was the piece I wrote on directly. To see the full size image, please click on it.

(Please click on image to see full size image.)

I call this piece “Chasing Happiness.

(Please click on image to see full size image.)

This piece is titled, “Be Original.”

(Please click on image to see full size image.)

This piece is titled “Celebrate Life.”

(Please click on image to see full size image.)

And this finaly piece is titled, “Wasted Days.”

Please leave me comments to let me know you’ve come by to peek at my art!! THANKS!!!

Hey look what my wonderful friend and fearless leader at ZNE, Chelise, made for me…..

She made one of these for everyone on the ZNE design team!! I love how cute it is!! And I also love that she personalized one for each person on the team!!  If you’re interested you can go look at all of them here.  If you click on the picture of each person you can read a little bit about each artist on the team. At the bottom of each bio you can follow the links that Chel included for each of us at the bottom of each of our bios!!  She’s always a busy women, but she’s really working fast and hard on this new endevor for ZNE!!

Ms. Chel…you’ve out done yourself, yet again!! I LOVE YOU SWEETIE!!

I also wanted to write a bit about my good and dear friend, JoAnnA Pierotti, in this blog.  She is currently undergoing chemo for breast cancer.  She lives in northern California, and is a wonderful mixed media and altered art artist.  As is normal for most people undergoing chemo, she’s not feeling her best and as a result not able to create much lately.  I’m writing here to ask you all to say prayers for her and/or send her good thoughts (as I know all are not of the praying sort) for good health, to stay strong, and that she have more good days than bad during her chemo.  And last but not least…TOTAL HEALING from her cancer!!  I also thought I’d share her beautiful self portait here as well.

If you’d like to read more about JoAnnA and her daily struggles, and her creativeness, you can go to her heartfelt and earnest blog to read more.

I LOVE YOU dear JoAnnA and I pray for and think of you daily!!!!