I did get my pot rack hung last night and I will have to show you a picture once I clean the bottom of my wok!!  It was a beautiful day here in San Antonio in the mid 70's sunny with a breeze!  I had the privilege of making lunch for a new friend "BeBe"!  We ate out on my balcony and enjoyed the spring weather!  I also able to get a few cards made today , the three of them are for Oriental Stamp Art swaps:

This first one is for a postage stamp swap:

and the Second is for a Asian Elephant Mingle:

The back ground on the elephant is using a "black Magic" technique,   

Click here for the you tube tutorial!

Tomorrow we are off and traveling to a town near Austin!

Thanks for stopping by!

Ginny M

What I've been doing..

I haven't posted in almost two weeks.  I have been busy Sorting; sorting out my craft room, my closets, my ministry,  my kitchen and my life.  We all come to crossroads in our lives and at those points things change.  Staying at the crossroad is also an option, but it is never a healthy one.

There are a few things in my life that are unchangeable, my love of God, my husband and my family my friends.  Everything else is subject to fire, flood, hormones and flat tires.  You all KNOW what I mean, We all take up the paddle in this boat from time to time.
 I am still making cards and doing DT work, I have downsized my collection and taken it off the high boil.  Why?  Because the season is changing.  I go through this every year, spring comes and I can't sit at my desk all day.  It is time for me to get out of my little apartment and start finding connections.
It is time for me to start having people here and making connections.  Hopefully my craft will be apart of that, but right now I don't have crafty friends  here in Texas.

What do you do when Spring starts to bloom in your life?

I overhaul everything.  I've been focusing on our health and gotten back to whole food cooking.  I've lost a dress size and have more to go but I am feeling and sleeping better.  I used to have a "whole foods" page here on my blog and I have gotten away from it. I brought it back today and as I try out new recipes I will add them.

Cooking is another passion of mine and a wonderful one to share.  Here In San Antonio, in my little section I would have to say there are close to 65 restaurants (I can walk to!) I googled and asked how many restaurants in San Antonio, anwser 4467.   Why am I telling you this, because it would be very easy to eat our way through the city and never take a pan off the shelf again!!   This would be very bad for our health and our wallet!  I want this time in our life to be healthy and vital and the best way I can help that happen is through my kitchen.  We really are what we eat!

When we lived in our house in MA I thought well there won't be a smaller kitchen when we move. Well I was pretty wrong, I went from a 9x13 galley style kitchen to a 8x10 galley kitchen.  The apartment literature boasted "gourmet kitchen"  I for the life of me haven't figured out where that might be in my apartment!  But I have turned a pretty lifeless kitchen into a micro gourmet kitchen and it works, some how, it works.
Back at the house I had a huge freezer, a whole room for food storage and a pantry that steve built in my mini kitchen.  Here I have an apartment sized fridge and a closet. A few cabinets and some counter space.  Good thing I haven't unpacked the china yet!

 These two cabinets are for spices and some foods.   Here I am trying to find a home for everything.  85% of my food is unprocessed.  I do buy organic canned tomatoes and tomato paste.

My grains for milling and grains ready to use go in this kitchen closet

Along with a large variety of dried beans

Pressure cookers are wonderful for dried ban cooking!

My next job may be opening my own bean truck!

I am milling my own rice to make four for asian noodles, once those boxed noodles are gone I hope I will have it down.  I discovered here in SA I love Thai food!!

I have dehydrated veg powders, Pumpkin, Spinach, Beet to make delicious Homemade pasta!

Spinach fettucini, so good with steam sauted veg and a drizzle of olive oil and fresh shaved parmesan!

My new Kitchen aid has been running full speed,

In an effort to keep us running full speed!

Things put away

My Gourmet MICRO kitchen!

Tonight the pot rack is being hung.

Thanks for stopping by and who knows what will be here tomorrow!

Ginny M

Word Art Wednesday and Challenge #218

What a wonderful Verse we have this week at Word Art Wednesday!  

When I make a card as a design team member for WAW, I take time to let the Bible verse sink into my heart and work in me.  I want it to become a "Rhema" for me for the week. 

 I try to bring images that will compliment the verse.  This week when I read the verse immediately the thought of iron works came to my mind and then behind the ironworks, a beautiful green garden.   How many Brass gates do we face in our life, how many iron bars keep us from our promises?  The Lord in this verse promises to go before us and make the crooked places straight, cast down the brass gates of judgment and break the bars of our prison.  What strong and powerful words the Lord promises to those who love him, To those who allow Him to be mighty in their lives!!

Choose Him and be Free!

Thanks for stopping by here and click over to Word Art Wednesday, Make a card , mail it and enter our family friendly anything goes challenge, you just might win a very nice prize!

Ginny M

Dood Good and Avoid Evil

Beautiful illustration of this verse!  My Calander a day Card Challenge for today!  Original Art by Mary Englebreit:

Thanks for stopping by!

Ginny M

Layout Challenge

 We had a fun Layout Challenge over at Oriental Stamp Arts 

These challenges force me to try to do something a little different!!

Here is the Layout:

Here is my card:

I fussy cut the Geisha Image added it to a hand stamped background and then layered on to the designer paper.  A fun layout to try!

My CCADC 01/07/16

Great saying!!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have time to check out all the fun things

 at Oriental Stamp Arts!

Ginny M

Word Art Wednesday!!

Happy New Year and Happy new Challenge art Word Art Wednesday!!!

Today is challenge # 217 with lots of inspiration and gifts!! Simon Says Stamps will be one of our new sponsors this year offering a $25.00 Gift Certificate every month!!  How awesome is that??  For all the details, a devotion and a digital scripture ( Win, Win, Win!!)  Head over to the blog!!!

I have  a great tip for those of you who make digital and hybrid cards like I do too!!

Here is today's verse:

Here is my card:

And here is my tip:

When I printed this beautiful ballerina, I printed her on 140# water color paper on standard print.  I should have used photo print setting.  The image came with those tell tale printer lines running horizontally across the image.  You that  do digitals know what I am talking about.  This image used a lot of ink and I did not really want to reprint it.   So I thought what can I use to mix out those lines?  I thought well the T H distress inks have some pretty amazing properties in them , I have no idea what they are but it never quite acts like any other ink, so I'll give it a try!  I used two colors, old paper and vintage photo, I just gently rubbed in the inks and Voila`  the lines literally disappeared, the ink did not just add another layer, it blended with the printer ink!  How cool is that!!

I hope you will enter in the challenge at WAW, a $25.00 prize is pretty nice!!

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful day!!

Ginny M

Whats on your Work Desk # 344

Happy New Year everyone!  After the holidays and after  having a crafty break for about two weeks (craft room turned into guest room), I feel charged and ready for a new creative year.  I've got a few fun challenges going on in my face book group and look forward to upcoming planned events.

Here is my Desk today:

I've got thank yous  made and waiting to be written out, I've done a  calendar coloring page and made it into a card , and lots of fun things this week, just visit a couple of previous posts if you are interested!

This is a calendar page, about  5x5.  I purchased this desk top calendar for a few dollars a t a book store going out of business.  I'm not a great color-er, so I thought this might be a good exercise. 

A lot of time for not much results!   

 I did make a card out of it.

For more desk top fun, hop- over to Julias' and join the run the world desk top hop!

Thanks for stopping by!

Ginny M

Quick Bible cover, or cover for any book!

Steve and I spent the day shopping , one of our stops was the Christian Book Store in town. He needed a new journal for 2016 and I needed a new "church" bible. I gave my other "church" bible to a guy I met while I was walking my dog in the park.  I've been lugging my Thompson Chain Reference around, which is fine, but they are expensive and heavy and I like something lighter to take around.  I still prefer a "real" bible.  I use one on my PC but I like to carry mine in hopes of someday another person saying "hey is that a bible and how can you understand it"?

I found what I was looking for, Large print, not to thick, white paper and clear print, and under 20.00.

A basic KJV

Good print on good paper

I picked out a few sheets of cardstock- you only need 2.

Drizzeled rubber cement - nothing high tech here!

Placed the paper and burnished (rubbed down the surface to insure smoothness and adhesion.

A little scissor trimming

I added a card front that I had made:

I also jazzed up my daytimer while I was at it:

I also added a thin layer of PVC protection, so it will handle getting caught in the rain!

I am happy with the out come and it only took about 10 minutes!

I'm going to have to look around to see what else I can jazz up!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Ginny M

My CCAD 01/05/16

We're enjoying a nice restful Sunday

  I hope you're catching your breath today and having  a restful day!                                                        After Church and dinner I'll be working on a few gifts, I did want to show you my Card a day card: 

What an Appropriate quote!!

Thank  you for stopping by and have a great day!

Ginny M

Card a Day Calendar Challenge

I Enjoy using desk top day calendars, My favorite are Mary Engelbreit's' I get at least one every year! I also enjoy making cards from the pages, Mary's' artwork is just to wonderful to throw away!! Just in case you are wondering about the legality of that , you can read this from Mary Herself:

This all has to do with license and the huge market in this country for theft of license product.  I am making cards with Mary's product for personal use, I am not using her art work to resell that would require being  licensed and all that goes along with that.

With that out of the way, I challenged my face book group to make a card a day from one of their desk top calendars!  I also decided to make mine using scraps.  

Here is my First Day's card:

Nothing fancy, I'll let the Art speak for itself!

I'm going to keep these on a separate page in my blog if you would like to follow along, it will be on a page called Card A Day!

I hope you are enjoying what ever you enjoy on this holiday weekend!  Our Daughters 2 week leave is up and she is back on the road to her base to day, it was so good to have here here, next week Steve is leave and we will be enjoying exploring South West Texas!

Happy New Year and May God Bless you richly!

A new a year and a Fresh Challenge for Oriental Stamp Arts

This year I have taken on the challenge of teaching a technique every month at Oriental Stamp Arts!

This Month's challenge is one of my favorite: Faux Cloisonne! I'm going to walk you through this wonderful technique and I hope you give it a try!  It is easy and with a little practice you will have an outstanding bit of art for your cards!

What you will need:

An "outline" style stamp, 

A pigment or heat embossing ink pad.  

Heat embossing Gold powder. 

Heat tool (or a toaster if you don't have a heat gun!).

Watercolors, or watercolors markers

Fine paint brush

Watercolor paper

Standard card making supplies

This Beautiful Line style stamp is from my Art Neko Collection and works perfectly for this technique!

I purchased a Versa Mark Embossing Stamp pad a few years ago and re-ink it with plan ole glycerin. This bottle will last years and only costs 2.99.

Stamp your image, and cover with heat embossing powder.  I am showing black here It photographed a little better, for the maiko I used gold.

Heat embossed on watercolor paper, ready for painting 

I am using a product called H2O's, these are a lovely shimmery watercolor.

I simply painted in the embossed lines, a little at a time. I tend to go from dark to light and let the paper absorb the pigments. This really only takes a few seconds and the tiniest amount of paint on a fine brush.

You can see just how pretty this is and it is really very easy!

Here is my finished card:

Another example using another Art Neko Stamp and  Liquid Pearls to paint with:

See how simple?  I hope you try this and if you love 

Oriental Stamp Art, Check out the OSA Group!

Thanks for stopping by, Happy New Year!

Ginny M