My little "Philly Steak and Cheese" aka Phillip, my youngest grandson, just turned two on the 26th.I can't believe how fast it went! We are having his party this coming Saturday and Kayla and I made the invitations using my Cricut Expressions. They turned out so cute, that I decided to duplicate the Little Tykes car with his photo in it for his card as well. Mama better keep this for his book!

Can you believe it's already Week # 16 of the CCC. Don't know what I'm talking about? Hop on over to Linda's blog and check out the deets. http://studiol3.blogspot.com/ I decided to go with a Christmas theme this week. I love this technique and use it all the time so it was fun for me. For the background, I used peeled paint and fired brick distress inks. i over-stamped my images with Pine Needles and archival black. Made my banner using designer paper and a nesties die. Then made it again and cut with scalloped scissors and layered and added the pebble letters to spell out "Joy." Cut the smallest stars and added Glossy Accent. I strung them onto tiny hemp twine and threaded through to the back and attached. Pop-dotted them and then added the stars with thicker dots.Blended the edges with aged mahogany ink. Fun!

I had a short day at work today FINALLY, so was able to make up my challenge page for my book of techniques from Tim's Compendium of Curiosities book. I have been playing along on Linda's blog Studio L3 every week and here we are already on week #15 of this fun adventure. It's not too late to join in if you aren't already playing, just get the book and check out her blog for instructions and not only learn, but have the opportunity to see some wonderful art each week as you see how everyone else interpreted it as well as have a chance to win some awesome art prizes! We are on page #53 this week and it is called Alcohol Ink Agate on Grunge. I love grunge paper and board, so was anxious to play; plus Simon Says Stamps challenge this week is Grunge, so double the fun. I used lots of colors on blue AI's and silver for my metallic. Used a new frame sizzix die to cut my grunge and then outlined it and the background page, which is wrinkle-free distress, with a denim paint dabber. That really made it pop. Black archival ink for my verse, and denim distress ink for the snowflakes on the background. Some sparkly buttons from my stash for a little bling to embellish it with.

I am finally using one of the pieces of 2 x 4's that I had my local hardware store cut into chunky atc size for me after all this time. I had them cut the entire length into chunks 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" x 1 1/2" thick to make chunky atc's. I signed up for the swap in my Everything Wendy Vecchi yahoo group and have put one together for my swap partner. I will be sending to Cindy. I hope she likes it. I painted it first on three sides, then I stamped my flower and house and bird from grungepaper and inked them up. Trimmed around them and added along with Tim's tissue tape for the edges and some felt vine trim from my stash. Made some paper flowers from my cricut on designer paper and a hot-glue gun. Fun! Pop-dotted these into place and added some mulberry leaves. I hope she likes it and I wish I would have made two of them!

Another week has passed and we are onto page #58 in our Tim Holtz books, Masks Basics. If you are not playing along each week, get yourself a copy of this book and head over to my friend Linda's blog. It is called Studio L3 and you can find it on my blog list here. Each week she posts the new page number for the technique and we create something using it for a chance to win some great prizes but the real bonus is we are all learning these from the Master himself, Lord Tim of Holtz! I used several distress inks on mine. Ruffled some ribbon by stapling it down as I can't find my tiny attacher on my messy desk! Note to self, clean that pigsty you call a studio. I added some tissue tape to the little frames to tone down the bright colors and used old images under them. A memo pin holds an adage ticket from the ribbon. The photo did NOT turn out very well. I hope it's because it's kind of dark down here tonight but don't know why I can't get it in better focus than this. Too tired to fight with it any more tonight.

Somehow my pictures got cut off and I can't seem to edit it, so will add this view with the fireplace again.

We wanted to give our family room some color for a while now and I went and selected paints a few weeks ago and bought them but got no further than that! well, my husband, Jay, had a few days off last week, so we took everything down off the walls and he filled in the holes and started the top portion. When I got home form work the next day, he had that color done and it looked really yellow instead of the greenish color we thought we had chosen. We continued on the next day when I was on my lunch-break of 3 hours and painted the dark accent color on the bottom. He did the second coat while I was at work and the next day, removed the tape and I went around with a tiny paintbrush and got the little missed spots next to trim. The next evening, savanna, my youngest daughter who has recently moved back home helped us decide where to hang things and made me keep lots of stuff off the walls. I tend to overdo it seems! LOL Now that it's all done, the top is the nice light green look we wanted in the first place but it was scary before we took the tape off.

We are now into Week #13 at Linda's blog Studio L3 and her CCC challenge. This week we turned our books to page 65 for Grunge flowers. I used distress inks in mustard seed, wild honey, and rusty hinge. I wanted to go with fall colors so went with a Halloween look again. I used Tim's tissue tape, some die-cuts, covered my grungepaper with designer paper from my stash. added skeleton leaves in black and a leaf brad for the flower center. The eye of my crow on the jack-o-lantern is white enamel accents. It is so much fun every week to follow along and do these challenges.

have you visited my art friend, Stephen's blog and heard the news of his giveaway? It is a great one if you love Tim as much as I do! Here's the details:

In Celebration of my blog turning 1 year old I am having a blog candy giveaway. I have included some of my favorite things and hope they will become favorites of yours too. In order to be eligible to win I need you to:

1. Become a follower of my blog.
2. Leave a comment.
3. Post a link about my giveaway on your blog.

When I have reached 100 followers I will randomly select a winner from all participants.
http://bearcrazyman.blogspot.com/2010/09/bearcrazymans-blog-birthday-giveaway.html
Sound like a plan?