Thursday, January 13, 2011

Blizzard Number 2 and a Dreamweaver Challenge -

This post was supposed to automatically post on 1/13/11 but when looking at the previous information, I see it did not.  Well, I'm posting now.  No sense in letting a good post go to waste - even if it's almost a month old...

Welcome to 2011!  We've been hit here in Boston by two blizzards in the past two weeks.  We have a LOT of snow on the ground.  I know it's New England and we get a lot of snow but usually it's over a period of time.  This is a picture from my driveway.  Hubby was at work, so I had to snowblow the driveway myself!


These crazy snow storms have knocked out power!  The first one, my Mom, two Sisters and my infant niece had to come stay with me for about 2 days.  This one has knocked out power to much of my town, and two other nearby towns.  While our electricity is back on for now, I can see a power line caked with ice and swinging very low.  Several of my trees and bushes in the yard are being 'naturally' pruned this year.  This poor dogwood is in my front yard.  I planted that tree the Spring that we moved into our house.  It was shorter then me when I planted it and now, several branches are snapped and I haven't a clue how much other damage was done to the front of it.  :-(



The kids are out of school for another day tomorrow and with hubby off for the day, maybe we'll go into Boston and see the sites. 

I haven't been lacking in my Dreamweaver Thursday posts.  Don't fret, I'm back and ready with a nice Springy one!  Lots of flowers, butterflies and the proclamation of LOVE!



I used two older stencils.  Both were introduced in 1996.  The Love is a tiny little stencil and it has two words on it, both Love, in different fonts.  It is number LS21.  The second is part of a butterfly and musical notes stencil.  It's still a little stencil but can create a LARGE impact!  I only used part of it here.  This stencil is number LM149. 

Both stencils were attached to white paper and then I used pigment inks to color the sections I wanted.  The Love is colored in with a red while the butterfly has red, purple, pink and yellow in it.  The musical notes are colored with brown and copper and the bee in yellow and gold.  After cleaning my stencils, I placed them back on and used the transparent paste on top of the colors.  I like to clean my stencils in between coloring and pasting.  Sometimes it takes a little patience to get the stencil back in place just right but I like the fact that it doesn't color my paste with the inks.  Well, unless I was going for a Party Mix (Sludge Pasting) coloring, then leave the color on the stencil and paste over it.  Just be careful not to put the colored paste back in to the original jar! 

I let the paste dry and then put my card together.  Oh, wait!  I needed to color the outside with a bluish-green to match my patterned paper.  Easy enough, when the transluscent paste dries it's glossy.  If you use a sponge and some dye based ink, you can color right over the dried paste and it won't effect your pasted design at all!  Just like magic!

I've just been given the go-ahead to start giving out hints of stencils that will be released at CHA.  Let me tell you a little about my favorite....

"How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?"

OK, I'll give you more hints next week too!  And when I can post them, I will!!

School's out ...for Summer?

Last night the Governor of Massachusetts cancelled all school until May 4th.  He did this on March 25th.  That is about 6 weeks of no sc...