NEW BLOG -- Sumthin' Creative

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http://www.sumthincreative.blogspot.com/

2010, 05-13 Waiting at St Joseph Hospital (Joliet)

2010, 05-13
Originally uploaded by smtheus

While waiting for my sister-in-law to come out of surgery I created this 5x7 Zentangle/Zendoodle. The image is a little washed out due to using my camera instead of the scanner. But I think it turned out better than I expected. I'm on to another one - we will be here for a while - they took her in to surgery an hour and a half later than scheduled and expect the surgery to last 4 1/2 - 5 hours. I may get another one done!

Slide Show

Today I finally figured out how to actually add the slide show in my blog without blowing everything up!  That makes me very happy!!

I haven't had much time to work on my cards nor my blog.  In the beginning of April we had the entire house painted. To say that I had a lot of stuff to move around so that the painters could get in to work is a MAJOR understatement. I should have taken better pictures of the process but alas.... I didn't. It is quite amazing what you can accumulate in 18+ years... We had to move stuff from room to room and then back again so they could get in the rooms to paint - just putting it in the middle of the room wasn't enough, they would not have been able to get to the center of the room to do the ceilings.

A silver lining is that we did do a complete cleaning - it reminded me of the old Beverly Hillbillies show where Granny wants to do Spring cleaning and they had to move all the furniture out of the house so she could clean... (Okay, now I'm showing my age)  We moved very old and tired bookcases to the curb as well as the workstation in the office that Scott used. It was solid oak and each peice weighed in at least 100#. We got it down the stairs and out of the house.  I did take a picture of the pieces by the dumpster.

I almost have the house part done, not everything is the way that I want it - some of our things are still being stored in the garage -- who needs to put a car there anyway? So far we have donated at least 6 full (and I mean there was no way to look out the rear view mirror) truck loads (I have an old 1999 GMC Yukon) to the Library, Goodwill and the dumpster. 

So now I'm on to the storage unit (I keep calling it "the lock-up" and one of my friends thought I was talking about going to jail - well, in a way it is!) - I have enlisted the help of the young man who was our Summer Intern last year - he had absolutley no idea what he was in for. He has just graduated college in December (Virginia Tech) and wanted to live in Chicago and lucky for us we hired him. As soon as he moved into his new apartment I asked what he was doing the next weekend and if he wanted to help me organize/empty the storage unit we have. I said I would even buy lunch and he could have almost anything we find in the lock-up. He said, sure I'll help (that was easy) - he had no idea what he was getting himself into - we opened the door the first time and he said, "I thougtht you were kidding when you said it was large, and full, I assumed we would be done in one afternoon." 

We have pulled four FULL truckloads out (one of which is in the garage being sorted as I type this note - I just can't go back in there tonight). Oh, the things I've found so far - receipts and checks dating back to 1979, old journals (they have been interesting to say the least). Kitchen stuff to rival some cooking stores. Boxes of books and magazines. Now tell me who needs to save boxes and boxes of magazines? They are a combination of cooking, Cooks Illustrated (I have all the bound editions), Fine Cooking (I have some of the bound editions) Saveur, and Cuisine at Home, Gourmet, Bon Appetite, Food and Wine I also have quite a few Crafting magazines, Rubberstamper, RubberStampMadness, VSN - do I need to go on here? Can you say pack rat????

Everytime I find something I ask Trevore "so do you want this?"  He has said yes a few times. Last weekend I asked what he still needed for the aprtment and he told me "pictures of cars". Okay, I thought, there is no way I'm going to have anything like that in storage - I've never been too into cars.  But I have to tell you I found three 1950s-ish framed photos of a guy changing a tire - he was thrilled at getting those pictures. He told me the pictures are the highlight of this procedure (so far). You never know what we will find next. We aren't even a fifth of the way through this nightmare.

I have completed three swaps in the past weeks though, a Grid Swap, Butterfly Swap and Anything goes black and white swap.

Here is also a link to one of  my Flikr images that was recently swaped - You will see all of the pictures on my site:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/7255011@N08/4584219696/

Created Header

I thought I would create a header for my blog so... I did! A zentangle header that is.... I had to add the white space to the header so that the Title would be readable.  So here is the entire zen that I created for the header.  What do you think?

Doodles are Theraputic!

Doodles are "theraputic". I can recall creating "doodles" when I was younger - while on the phone, or while  in class... Now it's whenever I have to wait somewhere, on the phone, in a meeting, or in essence where ever I have a piece of paper and a pen/pencil. (Which means anywhere, anytime!) I feel that the process is very relaxing.

Here are some other drawings that I have done.

I tried my hand at coloring this last tulip - I'm not sure that I really like it.

I entered an Easter Egg swap and this is one of the eggs that I came up with...

Zentangles

I found Zentanlges about a year ago and became completely enthralled with them. The Zentangle site is an amazing wealth of knowledge, the newsletters contain many different "tangles".  Maria & Rick make it very easy to understand how to create the different patterns.

When I first looked at the site I thought "there is NO WAY that I will ever be able to make those..." It took me a while to actually try to draw something, I kept looking for more information and found a few websites that have images and some where the authors have created patterns of their own that they share on their sites. There are some amazing artists out there!

I was afraid of putting the pen on the paper - isn't that silly? So, I thought OK an ATC (2.5" x 3.5") would be easy to start with.

I finally took the plunge and this is what I came up with. this is an ATC that I created on 80# White Cardstock with a black Micron 005 pen.  It didn't take me long, and was very relaxing; and now I'm hooked.

ATC THEME - Valentine

Lady & the Tramp
How can you not love the image on the front of this card???