Cheeka In The Garden

So today was a workday at church in our rain garden. Boy did it look sad when we got there! Today's task was weed eating (well really weed chopping as we had pizza for lunch, not weeds - I even stayed away from the salad - bad memories), weed pulling and mulch spreading. It was VERY MUDDY! I had taken a sweat towel which quickly became my situpon - remember those from girl scouts? A BIG FAT SPIDER CRAWLED OVER ME. So that ended my weed pulling sojurn.

I turned my attention to mulch spreading - that is hard work! By the time I left I had a blister which had popped and is probably getting infected as I type, scratches, bugs had been biting me and I was hurting all over. I'm sure at some point I was unconscious and someone rolled over me with a wheelbarrow. Can you tell I'm not exactly the outdoorsy type? MW was there which made it all worth it. Oh and when I got home my tired self fell up the stairs and cracked my leg just for good measure. I'm sure my whole body will be one big bruise when I get to church tomorrow. Very attractive.

Okay enough of the whining - although I do enjoy it! For your viewing pleasure I submit four ATCs I made the other night. . .

Radiance

Transform Yourself

Longing

Sweet Dreams

(starring Zeke)

I've made a bunch of cards, etc., for swaps but they are drying right now so you'll have to wait till tomorrow. That's of course, if I am alive by then.

Till next time! Cheeka

Artist Trading Card Ideas

Just a quick post to pat myself on the back for being the Artist Trading Card of the Day on the Artist Trading Card Ideas website for this card. How cool is that? And to my winners - getting the goodie bags out this weekend! Well except for Mary's as I've never heard back from her - Mary, where are you?

Cheeka Revealed!

Okay we have two winners! Carolyn & Mary both gave it a go and although Carolyn was 100% correct - Mary was very close. Plus, as she pointed out, I did kind of cheat by saying I was wearing a sleeveless shirt. Well I was, under my cassock! And ya know, before the service and all. Yes, I am one of the robed beings. I am privileged to be an acolyte in my church. Kinda like an altar boy except well I'm a girl and it's been awhile since childhood. So thanks for playing, thanks for reading and I'll get your goodie bags out to you toot sweet!

I have been having so much fun trading ATC's, I haven't had much time for ART. That needs to change because I am almost out of stuff to trade! Nothing new to post today, but hopefully I'll get busy tonight.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Wow what a weekend! First off, I had a meeting at church for the Cursillo coming up in November! If you don't know what Cursillo is, feel free to ask me! Basically, it is a movement in the Episcopal Church to prepare us to be apostles and leaders in the church - which is scary to think of me that way!

Anyway, I left the meeting early to go have an art play date with Road Princess. She made me the bestest birthday lunch ever - meatloaf, au gratin potatoes (from a box - that is important! none of that nasty homemade stuff for me - I want the dish to be made the way God intended - dehydrated potatoes, powdered cheese and water), black cherry jello with no lumpy stuff in it, biscuits and chocolate cake for dessert. Also from a box. I can appreciate a home made cake, but hey, Betty Crocker and the Fatboy have been perfecting these things for years and can make a mean cake.

Okay so I'll admit it - we didn't get any art done, but we did head over to Archiver's because they don't have one in my neighborhood. OMG!!! What a cool place! And how come nobody's told me about Stickles before? Seriously!

So that was a great time - I didn't want to leave (the guest from HELL). We brainstormed and shared and talked about our lives with Christ - it was a glorious day!

Sunday the Bishop was at church. Here's a picture of him and his wife, Mrs. Bishop, getting food at the brunch before the service - they look like ordinary people, right? The amazing thing is, I didn't do or say anything particularly stupid! Awesome! I didn't drop an F-Bomb, I didn't trip in the middle of the floor and maybe hit the Bish with my overflowing pile of bacon, nothing! Mother Pat I'm sure is proud. Although I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and everyone could see my tattoos. I always wonder if I should cover everything up when the Bishop is here, but then I figure he has worse things to worry about than my body art. All sorts of important Bishop stuff.

So the next picture is me and the Bishop, chilling at the altar - okay there are some more people, but I am in the picture (the only one of the MANY that my friend took with MY camera and they are mostly of some stinky kids getting baptized. HELLO???? My camera! Like I need all those pictures of children? Giggle - hey we had 3 baptisms - Thanks be to God! New children in Christ's kingdom! Right on! So the first person who posts a comment and correctly identifies ME (and no fair if you already know me - you can't play this game) will receive a goodie bag of groovy stuff off one of my work tables - you've all seen the pictures and know that's a veritable treasure trove!

Finally, a picture of the Bishop leading the service. Check out that hat! I wish I had one! I asked him if I could hold his big hook thing for him, he said no. Probably would have burned my sinful self anyway. Hmmm.
























So like I said in the last post, this week was another collage-a-thon. My muse was taking a nap this weekend - she might have been a little hungover too, I'm not sure what she was doing most of the weekend. But the hateful B was not there when I needed her, and did not show up till about 10:00 on Sunday - then I didn't want to go to bed, I couldn't stop creating! Most of these are traded!

Till next time! Cheeka

Blog Jewels

This deserves a seperate post! Princess Matilda at her blog is doing a give-away and wants to spread the word! In her post Blog Jewels she tells what she's giving away and how to get it. I'm going to participate as well - but will edit this post later to say what I'm giving away - we all have too much stuff, don't we and getting more is always fun! So let's all clean out our studios and spread the love!

Cheeka

Collage-A-Thon

As I mentioned in a previous post, I participated in part 1 of the 2 part collage-a-thon on http://atcsforall.com/ this weekend - I had a blast! The collaging and trading starts at 5:00 p.m. Friday in whatever time zone you're in and ends at 11:59 pm on Sunday. The trading can be fast and furious - it is all arranged by private message. You do need to be a member of the board, but that doesn't take but a minute to set up.

First of all, I took an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of glossy white paper that someone saved for me at work (my friends are learning to throw NOTHING away - unless they want me to ask them if they are perhaps smoking crack when they throw away a postcard that came in the mail or well anything - I recycle as much as I can!) and I did an alcohol ink background with the adirondack line from Ranger. This is so awesome!!!! Then I cut the paper into 2" x 3" rectangles and adhered them to my ATC blanks.

Cool, huh? I really enjoyed the process! Then I just made my ATCs - here they are, all traded except for one!

This really was so much fun and two people I traded with twice! Since this was my first time participating, I was amazed at how open people are to trading! There is another one next weekend, again, it starts Friday night at 5:00 pm and ends Sunday night at 11:59 p.m. in whatever time zone you reside. I am so going to be prepared this time, with plenty of backgrounds already made. I think the only rule in this CAT is that there should be some kind of collaged image on your ATC. I am so down with that - I love collage! By the way, the vintage images are all from vintage sewing patterns - aren't they a hoot?

I hope to see some of you there this weekend - trust you won't regret it, except the lack of sleep - Friday night I was up till 4:30 a.m. I was so excited and having so much fun. Since I'm not a good sleeper anyway, it was okay - I was up at 6:30 because I had a church meeting at 9:00 and well you know the rest regarding MW. Blush.

Peace out! Cheeka

Today Is The Best Day EVER!

So could this day get any better? First off, I met Mr. Wonderful (who will be known as MW going forward) for coffee - he is a great conversationalist! So I am tickled PINK about how that turned out. You never know! I also learned that his hero, Jacques Cousteau, and I share a birthday - who woulda thunk it? I picked up some KFC on the way home, which was great! Got on the computer and found out I'd won the May challenge in the Not Just Charms category on the Latest Trends yahoo group. Score! I won a $10 gift certificate to Crafters Cafe! Then I had a lovely nap. Now I'm kicked back, drinking a diet coke (which must be what God gave the Jews in the desert - I could live on this stuff, for real, y'all). Life couldn't be better.

Last night kicked off a Collage-A-Thon on atcsforall.com - come and join! I've already made two trades! You can check out the 6 cards i made last night - I had a blast with my new adirondack alcohol inks from Ranger. I gave one to my friend at church, Mary Beth, so I only have 3 left.

Yesterday was my last day at my job. It went okay, it really did. Everyone there is so nice - it's only the evil clowns in Chicago that made this happen, not my homies there. Thursday the secretaries brought wonderful food for us and had a party and one woman made each of us a beautiful centerpiece which was a birdcage with a plant in it. Very pretty!

Time out for a little Godspeak again - I'm not sure why I was there for the 3 months, but I'm so glad I had the opportunity. I met so many wonderful people, and several I know will be lifelong friends. I am truly blessed. To see tough female attorneys with tears in their eyes about the whole situation was very humbling. So it's off to the next adventure - I won't say my bumpy ride is ever very easy, but it's always worth it!

Namaste!

Cheeka

Mail Call!

Okay so today was kinda ugghh. I made 2 doctor appointments and ordered a new pair of glasses ($600! can you believe it????) anyway, going to work and realizing I still have 2 days left - I am so over it, you know? I'm ready for my next adventure! I piled all this stuff on my bed to take a picture and dang - batteries are dead! Phooey! So I'll just describe it for y 'all.

Anyway, I come home, tired, my belly hurts and wow there's all kinds of crap sticking out of the mailbox - score! First, my eBay order of lumiere paints came - wow that was fast! Sugarplums Art Supplies is highly recommended! I mean, seriously, I ordered this on Sunday and got it today!

2 things from my mom - not so uggh. It's always a crapshoot. Could be lecturing articles she thinks I want to read, could be something good. You never know! First up was a cd of pictures because I asked her for digital photos of her and my step-daddy because I have a project I want to do for her. Then was a birthday card with 1) a package of embellishments (she was really listening when we talked the other day! and they are fairy ballerina things - very cool! and 2) a check for $50. Super score! she thought by post-dating it I would have to wait to cash it - silly wabbit! They never look at stuff like that. It is going in the bank TOMORROW. Which is good because my account is down to $10 and the 15th is well a few days away! In fact, this morning it was overdrawn .43 but my good friend at the bank, my personal banker who's name shall be ummm Fairy Godmother reversed the overdraw charge and let the payment to my credit card go through. I really love Fairy Godmother. I want to marry her. Life is good.

The best of course, is my very first ATC trade from Smiling Girl on Flickr. It is called 'daydream' and is so very cool. I was amazed someone so talented would trade with little old me. I have a LOT to learn about trading, though. She put it in a nice handmade card, and added some old book pages as a present and she used very cool stamps on it. I, on the other hand, stuffed it into an SNR envelope between two pieces of cardboard and added a note with a post-it. Ran it through the office postage machine, too. I'M NOT WORTHY! Seriously! I am off to the post office to buy cool stamps right away! Toot sweet!

Question: is there a cooler word to say than "cool"? It's so overused, especially by me. I tried using some new slang i heard from my friend's teenagers, "sick" but it just isn't doing it for me. I try being all British and saying something is "fab" or "super" but I still fall back on cool. I must say though, anyone who spells it "kewl" is so NOT. Just like people who use the term "classy" aren't.

That's all for now! Later!

Sammie's Album

As promised, here are pictures of what I finished last night. It is an album of sorts for my friend Carol of her dog Sammie and their cat friend Buddy.
Of course, I am enamoured with the formica samples and also with Lori's oil pastel tutorial, so those are the backgrounds I used mostly. One at least I used acrylic paints.
It was fun finding the quotes! I went to http://www.dogquotes.com/ and picked out my favorites that I thought Carol would like. It is a blessing having no printer because now my lettering is improving. Okay that sounds annoying, but really it is a blessing.


That's all for now!

Cheeka

I Have A Job!

So the awesome thing is, I barely had to look! And I get to work with my fabulous friend Kelley - we used to sit next to each other at SMH. We are definitely going to have to dust off our capes - the Dynamic Duo is back in action!

Time out for a little Godspeak - sorry, heathens. I am so blessed! In my email to all my friends telling them that I had a job and thanking them for their prayers, the last line was "Thanks be to God!" And one smart-aleck heathen friend of mine (and you know I love you!) said, "no, thanks be to Kelley." This of course, led me to a small paraphrasing of a sermon Mother Pat gave a few weeks ago about the hand of God. And i will probably get this almost all wrong, but I will hopefully give you the flavor of it. See, God's hand isn't hardly ever this big celestial hand coming out of the sky, handing you whatever it is you lack, money, your car fixed, a bag of dog food, etc. Sometimes (in fact almost always) the hand of God looks like your great friend Kelley, one of your church sisterchicks, Donna or Abbey or Peggy, your art soul sister Road Princess or even the guy at the gas station imparting a great religious truth to you in the form of hillbillyspeak.

I try to always trust in God - that His plan for me will never be revealed all at once, but in bits and pieces. I fail, but I am human. After my initial shock at getting laid off, and y'all know I had to have a pity party with myself, I just said, Okay Lord, I will trust you know the way I'm going, and go there. Your will be done. And I had this strange calm about the no job, almost homeless situation. I was able to go to work and be cheerful, do my job and not sit there glaring and crying. And it ALL WORKED OUT. Thanks be to God.

Okay, enough of that. How does that phrase go? Don't tease or feed the heathens? I spose I should explain my use of the term - I use it quite affectionately, and my friends know that (or at least I hope they do!). I just use it for my friends who don't yet know God, or just don't think they do.

Well this is getting long, I don't have any art to share (yet - I did finish a present for my friend Carol that I will scan today!) so I think I will sign off now - more later!

Cheeka