Good Morning! It is Saturday and a gorgeous start to the day with sunshine and warm temps. expected; woohoo!! We deserve it wouldn't you say?

I took some time, this morning, to work on another coaster for my DIL. This is coaster #3 and it's part of a series, of sorts, with a children's theme.

I thought this image fitting as it brings to my mind my son proposing to Kate :)

I wish everyone a wonderful day and enjoy the onset of spring!! Love, Marilyn

This is coaster #2 for my daughter-in-law. I'm using some vintage images that a dear friend of mine shared with me. It's so hard going through them as I have so many favorites. Kate (DIL) loves children so I thought I'd go with this theme.

More to come ....................

Well; it's good to be back to some art for a change. What a week! I've been on and offline for about a week and a half and I think we've finally got it! A very nice Verizon technician came to our house, this a.m., and really helped us out. There was a little glitch between here and the central office that he discovered very quickly. :)

My husband and I have also been busy in our basement suckin' up water as we fell victim to the heavy snow and rains beginning Sunday. We're in pretty good shape here now and things are drying out. I know there are a lot of people worse off than we are so I'm not going to whine about it too much.

I needed a break from even thinking about water and tech stuff so I decided to turn to some art. My daughter-in-law asked me over the weekend if I'd make some coasters for her and my son's new home. They just recently decorated their living room in blues, burgundy and cream colors. I was honored and thrilled that she asked so I'm going to make 4 for starters. This is a picture of the first one and I'll try to remember to upload pics as I create the others. I will add felt to the bottom of each coaster and also will use several coats of paint varnish on top as a protectant so they can actually be used :)

A Special House Guest......

This weekend my husband and I have had the privilege of having a very special house guest. These are pictures of Haley, a 3-year old Golden who is just a pleasure and joy to know.

Her "Dad" is in NYC proposing to his girlfriend (they should be officially engaged at this writing) and we offered to take care of Haley while James (her "Dad") is busy working on a "mom" for Haley.
James has been helping me with my new computer set-up and all and is also a very close friend of my son's. James has trained Haley and she is such a well-behaved dog. She responds to so many command words and I think I've challenged her to the max. I've tried teaching her to respond to two words...."cook" and "laundry" but she just doesn't seem to be responding. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. James is picking her up, soon, so I'd better get back to my training :)

This is a picture of a necklace that was a class project I taught at Art Connection last night (Thurs., April 12). The class was called "Eggcellent" Vintage Jewelry.

Two pieces of matboard are used for the necklace. One piece for base and the other for the image which I "popped" on the base with mounting tape. Students got to choose images for their piece. We had fun adding bead fringe to our pieces, too.

The real fun part was creating mosaic embellishments using eggshells! Students brought two cracked, dried eggshells and we painted with Lumieres, alcohol inks, then added glitter on top w/ Diamond Glaze. We had a lot of eggshell pieces left that can be used for embellishments for cards, collages and even boxes. I love to use embossing paste as "grout" for the eggshell pieces to create beautiful mosaics for box tops.

We ended the class with Melanie showing us how to "spin". No; not with a bicycle :) but with a fiber spinner to create the necklace hanger that is fed through a jump ring.

Students also created a pin using the same technique with the eggshells. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I'm able to upload pics, now, to my Blog with the help of my friend Kerri advising me to use another browser! Thank you Kerri! I happened to get a call from our computer friend James and we went through things step-by-step and here I am Blogging away again! Man; this feels great!!

Thanks for all the support and your loving comments to my pictures and postings. I just look forward to sharing with all of you and cannot be without it. :)

Anyway; this is a picture of ATC's that I recently created for the Art Connection ATC Exchange program. The theme for this month is Paper Dolls and I had fun creating these using one of my favorite stamped images, Madame Paris by A Stamp in the Hand. I used sewing pattern tissue paper for the dress, some ribbon, mixture of background paper and gel pens.

More to come.......................................

This is a test; well sort of :)

Well; I'm back online after almost two weeks! I feel like I've been in the black hole of cyber space. I'm still trying to adjust to the high-speed DSL but so far I'm lovin' it - very fast!! wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I wanted to try posting something, today, on my Blog to see if it goes through.

The only problem I'm having, right now, is my inability to upload pictures. I'm not sure if it's the Blog problem or me yet! But; I will figure it out in time. I do have some more recent pictures to share of some of my art.

I hope all is well with everyone and, again, it's good to be back online so I can start sharing artie things with you!! I've missed you!

Love, Marilyn