5 Minutes to Art

from CLOTH, PAPER, SCISSORS!
(Art by Melissa P. Hackmann)

No time to make art, you say? Here are tips to show that if you get organized and do a little at a time, you can get a lot of art done in five minutes.

1. Organize a basic, portable toolkit. Get a a small compartmentalized tote and put in supplies you use most often, such as: your favorite background stamp and a small set of alphabet stamps, a black or brown Staz-On inkpad, a fat quarter of fabric, watercolor paper, a pair of scissors, a embroidery needle and floss. Keep basic materials in a handy place, ready to go when you have five minutes to spare.

2. Make backgrounds. paint a wash on the watercolor paper with watercolors. Stamp words and/or images over the wash. Let dry… (It’s now prepped for later use!)

3. Practice your embroidery skills

4. Add to your sketchbook. Keep a fine-point black pen and/or a small set of watercolor pencils in your bag with your sketchbook in your bag. Then when you're waiting … sketch an object or write down an idea. Add a glue stick to the kit, and you can paste in fun found objects.

5. Embellish. Sew or glue a button, charm, sequin, or bead on a project you've already started, or to a piece of fabric you can appliqué onto a project later.

a few more ...

v Pre- Cut up ATC backs. ( 2½” x 3½”)…

v Dye fabric. Trims, fabric squares, cheesecloth, and other natural fibers …

v “Age” fabric.

v Stamp …. Stash fun improvised stamps in your everyday tool kit, and next time you have five minutes, stamp like crazy!

v Cut out individual letters from old magazines to use in a collage at a later time.

v Make a “sandwich” - Fuse fabric to one or both sides of a sheet acrylic felt (the kind you buy at craft stores). When you have another five minutes, slice them into ATC- or postcard-sized pieces.

bLoG cAnDy! and.....

Comming soon: Fall Idea book ~ get your idea book! ~>>>

* CTMH August SPECIAL! = Paper Picnic!

>>papers featured in the summer idea book ~
to get your Idea Book contact me ~

* See my favorite papers ~ Floral Tapestry ~ from the SUMMER Idea Book: ~>>>

Stamp set i will be playing with this week:
* Vintage Postcards!

~ok, go *take a look*, but come back...



and let me know what your favorites are!
Who knows, there might even be some BLOG CANDY! .... first 3 people to email or post will receive a mini album! happy scrapping! ....

~ What I am READING today ~

Inspiration Today ~ through @ Harpers Quilt shop I not only learned of the "Art Quilt Workbook" ... which i can't wait to play with, but I also I had the pleasure of meeting fabric designer & Soryteller : Sonie Ruffin, the author of "THE SOULFUL ART OF AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILTS" ... I love that she too considers quiltmaking a form of PRAYER! ... very inspiring!

TO DO: this week ~
~ QUILTING ~
i will be working on Zachary's ALL RED, IRISH CHAIN ...
~ SCRAPBOOKING ~
i will select photos to scrapbook for zac/mo wedding album...
~ family ~ i will be juggling time with kids b4 school starts!

WHY I SCRAPBOOK? I LOVE MY FAMILY! PARENTING: watchin' you-rodney atkins

I LOVE these Books!

L@@K!
Getting Organized!

Book of ME: Close to my Heart products, by toni

~ Good bye Melissa, 3/08
be TOUGH! *Link~Craig Morgan* 
 Fighting Ovarian Cancer!

the "BOOK OF ME" a gift for  MELISSA
from ME, not about ME

sCraps of This and ScrapS of that ....

Fabric Scraps, Paper Scraps, Fiber scraps, ANY Scraps
... When Life Gives you sCRAP ... CreATe!

A little bit of fabric Scraps ....

Color Magic Class, Summer '06
Just part of my "to do" ~ Project List
and all that sCRAP.... Not just SCRAPBOOKING!

DRAWING, CRAYOLA'S... inspiration ~

LIVING, LOVING & LEARNING

Excerpted from the book, by Leo Buscaglia

As an individual, you must not be satisfied with just becoming like everybody else. You must think for yourself. For example, art supervisors. I can remember when they used to come to my classroom in elementary school, and I'm sure you can remember it, too. You were given a paper, and the teacher would put up the drawing in front of you and you were really excited. It was going to be art time. You had all the crayolas in front of you, and you folded your hands and you waited. And soon the art teacher would come running in, because she had been to fourteen other classrooms that day teaching art. She ran in, and she'd huff and puff and she'd say, "Good morning girls and boys. Today we are going to draw a tree." And all the kids would say, "Goody, we're going to draw a tree!" And then she'd get up there with a green crayola and she'd draw this great big green thing. And then she put a brown base on it and a few blades of grass. And she'd say, "There is a tree." And all the kids would look at it and they'd say, "That isn't a tree. That's a lollipop." But she said that was a tree, and then she's pass out these papers and say, "Now, draw a tree."

She didn't really say, "Draw a tree" -- she said, "Draw my tree." And the sooner you found out that's what she meant and could reproduce this lollipop and hand it to her, the sooner you would get an A.

But here was little Janie who knew that wasn't a tree, because she'd seen a tree such as this art teacher had never experienced! So she got magenta, and orange, and blue, and purple, and green, and she scribbled all over her page and happily brought it up and gave it to the teacher. She looked at it and said, "Oh my God...."

How long does it take somebody to realize that what they're really saying is, "To pass, I want you to reproduce my tree." And so it goes through the first grade, second, third and right on into seminars in graduate school. I teach seminars in graduate school. It's amazing how people have learned to parrot by then. Think? Don't be ridiculous. They can give you the facts, verbatim, just as you've given it to them. And you can't blame those students, because that's what they've been taught. You say to them, "Be creative," and they're fearful. And so what happens to our uniqueness; what happens to our tree? All this beautiful uniqueness has gone right down the drain. Everybody is like everybody else, and everybody is happy. R.D. Laing says, "we are satisfied when we've made people like ourselves out of our children: Frustrated, sick, blind, deaf.....

Harry Chapin sings FLOWERS ARE RED Live

~ if the YouTube video does not open, double click on the image, turn up the volume & enjoy! ~

Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.
~Leo Buscaglia

wHo AM i? ...

~ HERE I AM! ~
I went to dinner with my best scrapbook buddies, had THREE DR. Peppers .. & now, i am having the BEST TIME... putting together a play list & figuring out how to upload things! I am having a swell time! ~ So Why blog?

? ~why?... WHY blog? ...
well... call it my "accountability partner" ...

I was reading and "working" in THe Artists way and I sure was motivated, and it helped me WANT to CReATe ART EVERYDAY ... but, wow. LIFE gets in the way ... so, its about ME, '07.

above: page 1. {Memorial album for MELISSA's family}

Summer Joy

GREETINGS! July - the month of birthday celebrations for our family! ~ So, Yesterday we visited Derek @ camp for family day... two years ago we took him "out for breakfast" a surprise to Worlds of Fun! Tomarrow marks the first day of his last year to be a "kid" ... he is a "tween" - not yet a teen, growing out of being a kid, 'be-tween' ...