Almost Garden Party time

 The Garden Party Artist Class is coming soon. The brainchild of Mary Green at Green Paper, it runs throughout the month of April with a dozen pretty spring projects by a dozen different artists. I took the February class and it was a lot of fun. This time I'm back as one of the instructors! You can see details of all the projects here.

One of the fun aspects of the class is all the little freebie projects that are sprinkled in on the days when you don't have a regular project. Last time we got free clip art, instructions for mini projects, information about art-related web sites and much more.

You won't have time to do all the projects but they can be printed out and saved.

Check out the details and if you want to sign up, you can save $10 on the $49 fee by using my code: just abby and me.

The Easter Blog Hop

Today's the Blog Hop, where you can see other people's vintage Easter decorations and maybe pick up some free Easter images just by visiting the participating blogs.

You can check it out at:
http://thepottingshed-anythinggoeshere.blogspot.com/2010/03/welcome-to-vintage-easter-blog-hop.html

My contribution is some freebie art, including a couple of unusual postcards I found when I went antiquing earlier this week, including these funny bunnies in a rowboat:

And for something really different, how about these girls in a weird eggshell swing:

I paid $1 for this 1933 pamphlet made of tissue thin paper, so thin that the type from the back side of each page shows through. I wonder how it survived all these years.

Here are two pages from the pamphlet with Easter songs. I thought these would be good backgrounds for an Easter collage:

Some old-fashioned boys

Collage artists seem to love collecting old photos of children, especially little girls. Since we are mostly women, I guess we see ourselves reflected in them somehow. Lately I've been making an effort to add some boys to the mix. Not sure how I'll use them, but I found these two dapper fellows when I went antiquing Wednesday. Feel free to copy them if you like.

The boy with the bow and the ruffles remains nameless but his photo was taken in Jersey City as you can see.

This little fellow has a big name: James Garwood (or possibly Harwood) Closson 3rd, age 2 years. The photo was taken in Philadelphia, June 18, 1899.

A fun jewelry class

We had a great time on Saturday making pendants at Kecia DeVeney's home/studio in Wall Township, NJ. It was an hour and a half away for me, but it was such a gorgeous day I didn't mind the drive at all. We made pendants using old tintype photos, brass findings, old rhinestones and chandelier crystals and put it all together with solder, glue and resin. What fun!

My pendant is the heart-shaped guy, second row, far right.

It was also fun to see Kecia's home and her artwork, which I'd only seen photos of before. I'll tell  you one thing, that girl knows how to work a flea market...

More info on Kecia's classes:

www.lemoncholys.blogspot.com
www.lemoncholys.com

It's a Garden Party...

I had such a great time taking the February Artist Class run by Mary Green, which featured 12 projects by 12 different artists, that I couldn't resist proposing a project of my own. The new Artist Class, with a Garden Party theme, will run throughout the month of April. My project will be an altered antique bottle with pretty paper flowers. You can get $10 off the price by mentioning my code: justabbyandme

For information, go to:  http://artistclass.typepad.com/artist-class/

The direct link to register is http://www.e-junkie.com/artistclass/product/347271.php#Artist+Class+-+Garden+Party+April+2010

Enough already ...

Love this photo, stolen today from the web site of my old employer, The Press of Atlantic City. This is the main entrance to Wildwood's beach and boardwalk, complete with numerous colorful concrete beach balls.

We had a lull for a couple hours this afternoon but the snow picked up around 3 p.m. and is coming down thick and fast again. It's expected to end around 8 or 9 tonight.

Art & Dolls Gone Wild

I belong to a private Facebook group called Art & Dolls Gone Wild. But if there's anything wild about this group, it's the dollmakers themselves. There are eight people in the group, and we divided into two groups of four for a collaborative art project, which we started a few months ago and are just finishing up.


Each of us made a doll head, then mailed it to the next person on the list. That person added a body and sent it to the next person, who added arms and legs. The fourth person added finishing touches and sent the completed doll back to the person who made the head.

My head was pretty basic -- an old wooden block, decoupaged with a photo of a really shabby old doll head, some rub-on letters, a bottle cap crown. The next person added a body made from a rusty old trowel.  The next person added strips of metal for arms and a nutcracker for legs. Finishing touches included a skirt of pen points, some copper pennies with a green patina and polymer clay hands and feet. During her journey, she even acquired a name: Dolly.

Not all the dolls are finished yet, but we're already talking about our next project.  What a fun, creative group of women.