Second visit to gridlock

I did get some time in the studio tonight to both finish a "real time" grid lock spread for this month's Street Team Challenge (click button in left sidebar to visit the challenge!) get a decent photo of it and photoshop the photo :)  Since I haven't been doing too much in the studio of late (except making curtains and reorganizing--ehem, cleaning--) there wasn't much in the way of "evidence" to glue into my journal--but the things that did turn up actually went well together (blue and purple pens laying around, deep blue flower rescued from the floor, a plastic scrabble tile that escaped from its friends and a usps express envelope with lovely stamps on it)--

without further ado--my second grid of the month....

Sneak Preview

Here is a little preview of a couple of the items I will have for sale in the not too distant future---

Jungle Cat

Princess Hidey loves to hide in the jungle that is my window sill of house plants :)

Grid Lock

Since I don't know when I will get to any "real time" art, I decided to do this month's Street Team challenge (see button link at left) as virtual (digital) art :) I chopped up the last of my digi tutorials and put them into a grid form:

playing with the elements

i adore digital image manipulation!! i've spent several years admiring and tinkering with digital art in various forms--yesterday i picked up a fantastic book (with a 40% off coupon--even better!) called Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle. Absolutely perfect for me! I have the basic  knowledge of what Photoshop Elements can do, but this book acts like tutorials showing step by step how to achieve certain looks!

the first little lesson was an easy vignette--i took it a step further and altered the color to be less saturated and a touch sepia--

next was a lesson in selecting objects, desaturation and color popping--because the statue had no color to begin with though, i added a spectrum gradient layer--

third lesson was all over the board--multiple photos, text, filters, brushes...

so much fun!

What a deal!

On a mission to locate "bead ends" for my sister, I stopped at a local shell shop that also carries some jewelry stuff (Raider's Reef--if you are ever on Anna Maria Island, you gotta check it out!)--they had a bin of "vintage jewelry" in little zip bags for 50 cents, $1 and $2--so for less than $12 i found these treasures!

the dark chain bracelet with the crown pendant has already been usurped by my hunny--glad I could please her for a dollar...lol

a pretty pendant for $2

and how could i pass up the libra earrings for 50 cents??

Greetings from the sunny coast of Florida

Wow--i'm not sure where the month of May has gone!!

We are down in Florida now over the Memorial Day holiday, and I purposely only brought my laptop and a sketchbook hoping to catch up on my own blog and reading everyone else's--much to my own chagrin, the internet connection here is elusive at best!!  So I will hurry through a post, and hope the connection holds out!!

So maybe it is because I miss our little Hidey Cat, but this little ring holder kitty just meowed at me and I had to have her.

I finally made it to a crop before we left for Florida, but instead of scrapbooking, Becky and I worked on some jewelry. Now, my big box of bead projects is somewhere in storage, but I did have my grandmother's broken jewelery box of miss-matched jewelry bits.  Seven sterling charms (still on their cards), a brand new charm bracelet, and two broken ankle bracelets became a colorful new bracelet for me!!  Unfortunately, the jumprings i used were ineffective and I almost lost my two favorite charms--While sunning by the pool, i replaced the rings with wrapped wire and voila! my charms are safe for wearing!!