The last two weeks were filled with friends and family who came out to Oregon to help me recover. I was treated royally by my sister, Sigrid, and by my childhood best friend, Lorah, who both kept me busy seeing the sights and enjoying the local hipster ‘hoods. I had very little time for my CT duties but am trying to catch up now…

Here are the latest from Crowabout Studio B

here is a submission to Tumblefish Studio’s monthly challenge on tattoo’s

my entry was an altered vintage portrait done in photoshop:

and today I made the world’s largest bookmark! 4×12 and filled with images from Crowabout Studio B!

Deb saw the ‘Be Glad’ 16×16 commision and decided she wanted HER favorite Psalm done for her birthday April 25th:

and this one is the leftovers: while making a collage for a friend, little leftover scraps and pieces kept catching my eye. The central body shape was for a jewelry spread in some fashion rag. The are always extras of everything I cut….arms, legs, flowers. She was wanting to dance I guess so I found this quote on the interwebz and learned that Mata Hari was really Dutch and not the double agent I thought she was…back ground paper Life’s Journey K&Co; distress ink, pen, TOMBO markers, black sharpie….

created for the Flickr group ‘Pointy Hats and Wings’ my witch fairy is ready to learn your fate thru her Ouija board. Ask anything! Ouija knows all. The group is a collection of some serious pointy hat artists, especially my favorite, TumbleFish, aka Marsha Jorgensen. The admin is the ever lovely and creative Nancy Baumiller who has taken many of us art witches under her wing.

I spent only a couple of hours on this peice which included cut & paste, scanning, hand coloring, scanning, photo shop and more scanning. I increased the contrast to bring out her ghastly complexion and make the Ouija float beneath her hands.

Today marked the first day of Autumn but you would never know it as it was 93 degrees here in Portland, Oregon. It is hard to wear my pointy hat when it is that hot!

week 43 was really hard for me…it took about five tries before i gave up and came out with this…so now everyone wants a BOOK/zine with the stories on the inside….I need a manager. i am up too late…had to wait for the frieworks to stop…

here is the collage sheet from Nancy; I used almost all the elements. I am seriously considering a small 12 page zine for my flickr crowabout friends.  maybe magcloud?

I used bubbles on some images…

and photo slides on others…..

also pull outs and fold outs

the hard cover was made with card board and masking tape and then wrapped with designer paper and adhesive…

I drilled a screw into the  back cover and inserted some velour yarn to the front cover to bind the book shut cause it is so thick. I trimmed the bottom edge with some leftover trims from the sewing box.

I had started it in November and finished after the Christmas Donner Party snow event.

Unfortunately the story did not all fit on 14 pages–so I will have to do volume two!

The cover was rubber stamped and embossed with black detail powder. It is OOAK and was a wonderful learning experience. Stay posted for Volume Two.

Mother Electra was one of the many vintage images found in the 19th century ephemera stash. I had read an article about making *mini books* and I thought I would give it a whirl. I began by gathering images that would tell the story and then wrote the story to go with the images. I used some of the tricks from the article and added doors, pockets and sliders within the book. The interior pages were designed with a repeat leaf pattern which I embellished with gold ink. Two pages were glued together back to back  and cut into 6″ strips. I created four strips which folded in half and stapled in the center made 16 pages. I knew that a hard cover would eventually conceal pages 1 and 16 so I left those blank.  See Mother Electra’s Pride and Joy for page construction.