Last Swaps Out Before Surgery!!

So, this is the last stack of mail that will be sent out until after I have my surgery tomorrow. I have other crafting pictures to share later, but this will be my last post until after it too. I am having a radical hysterectomy on the 22nd of Feb. Tomorrow. Today I will get a call between 2 and 6 to let me know when I need to arrive at UVA tomorrow. It will be a 6 week no pushing, pulling, lifting 10 lbs or more recovery. One week after the surgery we will get the news if the cancer has spread outside of the cervix or not. If it has then I will have radiation treatments. So, yea...that is what is happening now for me. I have been crafting like crazy the past couple of days. My mom is here from NC to stay with the kids while my hubby, Matt, takes me to the hospital tomorrow....she will stay for several weeks helping....COOK....she's mainly gonna cook....she is the cooker of the family.....I did NOT inherit any of those genes! LOL! Wish I had though. ;)

Well, there I am...I hope I remember to post them off today!!! LOL!!

Thanks or stopping by!!

FBs n Deco entries

This post is a few different things. It starts out with a swap I received from Australia, from a new swapper friend that I recently made....and she is currently my only fb swapper friend. And that is enough for now;) Then I also got a homer with this swap!! YAY! It's one I made. Then there are some Art Deco entries I decorated so I can get these girls decos moving on. Then just the envelopes of two swaps that are for a Facebook group. And that is all;)

There is about 30 fbs in all from this swap. I am not sure that I will be able to send that many back. I am pretty sure I said that I can send only a small amount. If I had to guess to send this same weight back to Aussi land would be like $15 dollars to me. I do remember reading in a group if you break it up in 2 smaller envelopes you can send more. So, I may try that depending on how time consuming and just really the effort will be a deal breaker for me. I will just send around 3 ounces back...unless its like 10 bucks, and I will have figure something out then:/

Here is Olof I made this fb a long time ago. I was just starting to get into mixed media....like JUST STARTING to get into it...I didn't even know about mixed media, but you can see the stamped shading on the edges....that is how it all started!!! LOL...ahhahahahahahhaha!!!

Here is a "colorful" frog Art Deco. Well, I didn't have colorful frogs, but I did happen to find some stickers. They are foil stickers with mirror-like reflection....so hopefully that counts. I'm hoping one of these days i will be able to decently draw whatever I need to for these deco and other art projects. This is not my favorite theme, but I do like decorating non interesting themes just to see how it comes out and even learn from it. 

This was very cute. I had these cutouts from a swap on Swap-bot. I usually do not remember I have these little things to use, and they just sit somewhere. But this worked out very well. I cut the background from a gelli print I made a few months ago. I need to have another gelli printing session. It's just so much fun;) and you make a stack of papers that last for ever.

This was another theme I was not thrilled with, but had a great time making this page. BUUUUTT...the theme is beach...not under the sea....which is what it seems like I was thinking....hope that is okay though!!!LOL!

Here are two envelopes that were gelli printed a long time ago. I swear...I make something....try to find it and can't...then find it weeks later and use it;)

That is it for this post. Thanks for looking!!

Backgrounds, Decos, n Messy Desk

These are some backgrounds that I have been working on. I think they will be cut up and made for some ATCs. I am in an ATC group where we can post pictures of our ATCs, then other members of the group can comment if they want to trade some of theirs for mine. I have not posted any of mine yet, but I have several that I have made and plan to post as soon as I am a bit better after my surgery I will have tomorrow.

Just painted circles with my fingers in various colors, then used a fine liner to  mark around them....that's it.

This one turned out better then I thought. I use the make up wedges to stamp little rectangles....I didn't plan, just added them to fill the page. Then I used the fine liner around the border of each rectangle.

This was fun, a lot of these pages are done on  cereal boxes that have been gesso'd, and they start out as a scrap page.....where I use up all the ink that is left over from the "main" project. Then when it starts to get some character, I will give it more attention and care more about making it look good/usable for some projects. I am still practicing and basically using "trial and error" with my fine liner....since these will be cut up and layered several times more, it will hide "mistakes";)

This started out as inspired by a "mood board" in one of my  Facebook groups....but I am not quite sure it will fit that mood. Maybe once I cut it down to ATCs, some I can continue with the mood board inspiration. I really like this one though, it turned out pretty cool looking. I have also been practicing with a calligraphy dip pen I have recently purchased. Yea, there is gonna be a huge learning curve with that thing;) I was listening my my preachers sermon on my computer and just writing some things down that he was saying. 

And of course, I cannot go a crafting day without taking lovely picture of my mess;) It is pretty much  always looking like this. I do go through and try to clean and organize....not to clean really, but to see what I have forgotten about and try to use it! LOL!

These are Art Decos I made for swaps with new private swappers, and swap-bot.  I REALLY love the way these turned out. I just started to cover the cardstock, laying a background and add some texture with stencils. Add some other paper for more textures. Then more stencils and did some fine liner drawing and framing in with that. I drew a few back ground things in, added the focal point, then wanted to do light shades over the focal point to blend in with the background. Then added a sentiment and some texture paste with the cursive stencil. If I really wanted to finish it off, I would go through and do some time consuming shading around the focal points to really get them to pop....but I thought these looked pretty good as is. 

That was it for that day/days. I did these things a few weeks ago. I posted them on my new crafting instagram page...its marlowesmakingsnmail. Thanks for looking!!!