What A Tragedy

It's going on midnight and I'm just getting home from my company's annual holiday party, which started at noon today.  We had a lovely buffet luncheon, mingled with co-workers and enjoyed an afternoon away from the office.  Afterwards, several of us went to a nearby landmark hotel for drinks and more camaraderie.  Someone early in the afternoon mentioned there had been a shooting at a school in Connecticut but at the time, the news didn't really sink in.  It wasn't until I got home just now and had a look at the news highlights and various messages on Facebook that the extent of this tragedy really sunk in for me. 


My heart goes out to all of those who lives have been torn apart by this senseless killing and especially the parents who are now having to deal with the shocking and unexpected loss of their beloved children.  I can't imagine the pain they must be going through right now.  Their lives will never be the same again and for that, we should all grieve.

Customer Appreciation Night

Tonight was customer appreciation night at Bizzy B.   There were demonstrations:

Daniza demoing decorative techniques with foil

and make and takes.  Bettina showed us how to make this cute little snowman tag:

Bettina (in red sweater) teaching how to make tags

Later on, Daniza showed us how to make these beautiful snowflakes

using a Big Shot.

There was lots of delicious treats, mostly made by Kelly so you know they were delicious, door prizes and they even gave away an iPad Mini!  Sadly, I did not win it but it was fun to hear the response of the woman who did when they called her on the speaker phone. 

Many thanks to Barb and Tony and their staff, a good time was had by all!

JJ Self-Portraits - Part 2

Here are the rest of the self-portraits created by my fellow Journal Junkies group members for December's meeting, which was held this past Monday night at Bizzy B. (click on any of the images to see an enlarged version of the photo)

Marilyn, as always, had many journal pages to share with us.  She seemed to be channelling Picasso for most of them!

Laura made this page using leftover alphabet letters:

Kelly made two very different pages, both on the same theme:

We were all delighted that store owner Barb had a finished page to share with us this month, the first in her brand new Dylusions journal:

All in all, another extremely creative collection from our wonderful group!

JJ Self-Portraits - Part 1

Here are some of the "self-portrait" journal pages created by my fellow Journal Junkies group members, as revealed at last night's meeting at Bizzy B.

Colleen made this beautiful page - I love the soft colours and the self-portrait is gorgeous!

Diana made this page using various collage elements and a favourite colour scheme, based on the idea of masks we each wear.

Bette told us she was feeling a little stressed with everything that needs to be done this time of year:

Marissa's page is half photograph, half drawing:

Donna drew this lovely collection of images from her past and present:

Louise was focused on all the "stuff" she has in her head.

Stay tuned for the rest of the group's pages, which I will share in tomorrow's post.

Journal Junkies December 2012

The theme for this month's Journal Junkies page at Bizzy B is self portrait.  I was going to try to draw or paint myself but I ran out to time so I ended up using a photo that I sketched on and then sprayed with 3 colours of Dylusions ink.   Attached the photo to a collaged, painted and stencilled background, added handwritten text and...voila!

As you can see, I botched up the "W" but didn't have time to fix it before the meeting tonight, will do that later. Invoked the Dina Wakley mantra of "better done than perfect" and moved on! :)

Sunday Crafternoon

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer mentioned yesterday on Facebook that she was having some friends over for a "crafternoon", so I've borrowed that term because today, it's my turn.

A couple of weeks ago, I went over to my friend Diane's for lunch and an afternoon of playing in our Ranger journals with Dylusions sprays, stamps and stencils.  We had watched this video on Joggles.com beforehand and ended up making the coolest designs:

 

 

We only had 5 colours of sprays between the two of us but we got some pretty amazing results.

Today's itinerary is to make tags, possibly Christmas themed, possibly using more sprays, stamps and stencils.  Lorraine is also going to be joining us and she is going to show us how to make an ornament.  Stay tuned, I'll share details of our creations over the next couple of days!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a quiche to put in the oven and a salad to toss.

One Thousand, Five Hundred!

According to Blogger's count, this will be my 1500th post.  WOW!!  I am pretty excited about that number.  It seems a rather remarkable accomplishment, all in all.  Thank you so much to everyone who has joined me here, for coming along to read what I write. 

People often ask me why I blog and I have to say that I'm not entirely sure, I just know that I want to and that I enjoy doing so.  It helps knowing that others are out there reading but that's not why I do it. 

Maybe I'll have a better answer after the next 1,500 posts!