From Grassy Hill a kit by Nancy’s Crowabout Studio_B at www.deviantscrap.com

I posted this to Flickr as ‘Dream It and BE FREE’ and my friend Sue (aka Zibelline) thought it said “Damn It and Be Free”…This one is for you ZiB!

computer crashed so I was unable to add any more layers to this piece. also I am out of printer ink so I could not finish it the old skool way. And now, another wild story: Winnie fried bacon in the office microwave and stunk up the entire building several days a week. Four and a half years later, after countless complaints from the office vegans and those who claimed disability from bacon gease induced migraines, the management removed the microwave from the office. Winnie was so upset that she could no longer have bacon every morning she threw a blood clot and was forced into early retirement.

thanks mixiepixie for the images!

The first rubberstamp I ever used on a consistent basis was an image of a cheese with a slice cut out of it. I used it on my Cheese zine correspondence and on all my letters to friends and family (1990 pre Internet) .  Around that time I also purchased a set of zoo animals stamps that were unmounted cheapies. Those were the only rubberstamps in my collection until 2005 when I picked up an issue of “Rubber Stamp Madness”, a magazine that featured readers submissions of gorgeous handmade rubberstamped cards and clever little mini-artworks called ATC’s (artist trading cards).  I was impressed with the simplicity of the craft and said, “Heck, I can do THAT!”

Since that time I have aquired an immense collection of rubberstamps and the paraphenalia that accompanies ‘stamping’. I let my OCD run rampant when I discovered a little tiny shop in old downtown Beaverton called “The Peddler’s Pack” that carried every imaginable rubberstamp and all the supplies a card artist would ever need for a lifetime. Eventually, Jessica caught the stamping fever and not a weekend went by without us giving in to our rubberstamp hunger and art supply craving.

It has become a joke with us, that we simply don’t have enough and that we NEED MORE! Honestly we have run out of boxes to hold all the stamps and so I made my own store display (Ala Peddler’s Pack) on my fireplace mantle.

This is three photos merged in a triptych. Someday I will lay out the CLEAR stamps. But I have idea where to put them.

happy easter to all you egg heads….see flickr stream for story…good nite@

when Zibelline posted her last crowabout collage i commented “you know what green hearts mean…”

no she didn’t. neither did half a dozen other members. so i created this as a reply and definition of a term that has absolutely not been coined ever; until now.

green heart~adjective used to describe engaged or married gentlemen who betray or who are disloyal to their spouse. “Elsie never forgot when her husband strayed and she became the original Fat Cat Lady”

the neck thing has not let up. working part time helps but i will have to return to work soon. getting a steroid blast in C5-6-7 in the morning. hopefully this will stop the constant burning vibration in my neck and shoulder. here is the blue baby that i gave up on due to the pain in the neck (saturdays crowabout) this was photo impression work…my right shoulder was sore after this much color smudge. i was real unhappy with how it turned out-but lo and behold nayski and a few others in the group had the SAME problemo! that damn blue baby. so i took it a step further and found some great images in the interwebz…see next post. wish me luck. and jess, i’m thinking about ya and sending the love!

“it was by the shores of the Temple of the Giant Blue Baby Heads that Nayski’s great great grandfather, the illustrious Captain Isiah Nayski discovered the curative powers of the sea where the ancient Egyptian god Serapa Kitty peed magical crystals.
Thanks to Nancy B whose week 45 Crowabout  collage sheet featured a giant blue baby that few of us could translate into a proper Christmas themed collage; also thanks to ArtsyFartsyQueen for the game boards, other images various sources including the NYPL digital gallery.
For Nayski: thanks for giving me another insane idea….”

this is an afterthought. there was a hideous blue baby on this weeks collage sheet and for the life of me i could not get it to look like a human child. and i wasn’t the only one! it was a “Christmas in July” theme so I created a Christmas tree from this sheet:

i tried several variations and ended up destroying all. i was so tired and my neck was hurting so i shredded all the images and made this:

if my neck felt better I may have done this collage on paper but since I was low on ink and also feeling sort of crappy I cheated and made it in the collage creator. this is not my best and if you felt like you had a 5 inch mutant wasp biting and stinging your neck with electricity pulsing after each bite you’d do that same as i did…sort of surprised myself when I guessed “flinch” was a card card game. and for some reason cut & paste to wiki is not working….

patrick???

found a new group on Flickr called RETRO_COLLAGE. Dang! This is what most of them look like. My first attempt.

8×11 collage done old school cut and paste. Kirsten is responsible for this madness that has come over me. She also suggested Mona Leasha. Vincent Van Go Go was pretty easy. Found the ‘dancers’ on a Google search for 60′s dancers. Not sure if they were costumes or the real thing-they looked kind of staged. Printed them out full size and cut off their heads (including their ears) Easy to find the Van Gogh self portraits-chose two of four-flipped one and printed, cut  & pasted. I hand colored the images for added contrast. The background and dance floor were out of the scrap pile!

I did a little research and learned of the new theory about the ‘ear’. Some French scholars are claiming that Vincent and Paul Gauguin were arguing over their favorite hooker, Rachel. Gauguin, who liked to carry a SWORD got angry at Vincent for shoving him and thus retaliated by pulling out the ‘epee’ in self defense. The ear was severed off but Vincent was so in love with Gauguin he did not file charges and instead claimed he did it to himself. He then gave the ear to Rachel for safe keeping. Gauguin split and never talked to Vincent again! It’s sound plausible-but you have to wonder why Gauguin never fessed up to it. Oh, and by the way, they were drunk. On absinthe, no doubt.

Vincent died two years later at age 37 of a self inflicted gun shot wound.

Stay tuned for KBP’s debut art work here soon….