In Love with Vintage

I'm so glad vintage is in right now! I created this card for my dear sister, and I hope she'll love it. I incorporated a page from an antique children's music book and lots of pearls!


Here's a vintage inspired tag using embossing and all my favorite Kristii tricks! I know I'll find many uses for this beautiful portrait stamp.

Cosmo Cricket Coffee Set

Everyone who knows me well knows that I can't make it through the day without my coffee! I used some Cosmo Cricket scraps to create a card set that centers around my favorite beverage.

Christmas is Over!

Christmas in March? Holiday crafting is the best crafting, so I like to keep it going for a few months after Christmas. This is my favorite Christmas photo of Sophia, who tends to be more photogenic than the rest of us put together.

I also finished scrapping my favorite picture of the girls together. Aren't they gorgeous? What better use of a Prima flower than drawing attention to faces as beautiful as those?

Scrapbooking Sick Days

We're all hit with something this time of year, so what could be a better use of our sick day time than sitting around doing some scrapping. Everything else takes waaaay too much energy, but semi-delirium can make for good brainstorming. :)

Here are a couple of layouts I finished this week. I may not be able to do much, but I can sit around and cut things out!

This page was tons of fun! There's nothing I like better than looking at my darling girls. This page has tons of messy stitching and some layered flowers created with the Cricut. The papers are Eskimo Kisses leftovers. I made a million projects this year with this gorgeous paper!

I finally finished up my Halloween layouts, and I think they turned out super cute! On the first, I used Night Lights bat background paper as embellishment, and on the second I did a ton of stitching and used a googley-eyed spider as a journaling block. My little Hermione and her bodyguard the Musketeer looked sooo cute!

Crafty Christmas

Handmade gifts and decorations are wonderful, and this year they seem to be a necessity around our house. With our current job situation, economizing this holiday season has become a must, and so the girls and I have been busy making gifts and decorations that are inexpensive and fun!

A lot of these projects (if not most) are inspired by my dear friend and scrapbooking mentor, Kristii Lockart. Check out her blog if you want some great inspiration too! (http://kristiilockartdesigns.blogspot.com/)

Our first project this year was a set of paper "gingerbread" houses. We did a real gingerbread house last year, but the process was just too long and involved for little fingers to really help with. This year we got glitter and artificial snow everywhere, but the results were worth it. I did the bulk of the tedious work and the girls helped me add all the decorations from the Eskimo Kisses Christmas line.

The tops of the houses are removable to hold Christmas photos, treasures, or ornaments. Aren't they cute? Thank you, Kristii, for the great idea!

The Book is Out!

Earlier this year I created a set of doll-making tutorials for Doll World Reborn. The book is currently available for sale as a hard copy and e-book through the OOAK Reborn Baby web site at http://ooakrebornbaby.com/Book1.html. I hope that my work on the book will bring joy to many hobbyists in many places! Thanks to Michelle Brunell for the wonderful opportunity!

I Love My Cricut!

Okay, I know it's not as fancy as the Expression, but my little Cricut sure keeps me busy for now! I love all the seasonal designs, and I know I haven't even begun to explore its creative possibilities.

I'm still learning the basics, so I decided to design a fall project that would be quick and easy to assemble. Using the fall themes on the "Stretch Your Imagination" cartridge, I cut a series of designs, layered them with a simple shadow, and connected them with some scraps of homespun. I think these simple banners turned out really cute!

Hooray for Wintumn!

When the leaves start to turn and the snow starts to fall, it's autumn in Montana. The inclement weather and 5:30 sunset causes us to do all sorts of things: eat too much, spend too much money on seasonal decorations, and, of course, break out all of those craft projects that have been hanging around.

I finally finished a few that have been hanging over my head for a long time. (Or at least they've been stuffed in the closet for a long time.)

What do you do with those adorable punch-needle designs? They're so cute, but I'm always at a loss as to what to do with them when they're done. I designed and completed this punch needle pattern a few years ago after watching the good old Charlie Brown "Great Pumpkin" Halloween special. I layered the design over hand-dyed felt, stitched it onto a scrap of fall fabric and added a ribbon hanger.

Here's another fall pillow I finished recently. The center is a cross-stitch design I started two Halloween's ago that I thought would be "quick" and "easy." Is anything ever quick and easy when you have kids? Here it is with a Debbie Mum ghost and pumpkin border fabric. I think it was worth the wait.

Happy crafting, and eat some extra pumpkin pie for me!

Teacher at Heart

I love reborning, and I get great satisfaction from each new doll I create. Each one is different, and I love to watch each baby unfold. I'm constantly reminded of just how sweet children are, and how precious life is!

As much as I love the artistic process, my favorite part of reborning has to be teaching others this wonderful art form. Face to face or online, in the piano studio or the doll studio, it's the excitement other people feel when they create something beautiful that motivates me to keep sharing my experiences. My students and colleagues also share a great deal with me, which keeps me learning and growing.

In the spirit of teaching, I've been working very hard on a new set of tutorials for my web site and for inclusion in a book about reborning being compiled by Michelle Brunnell of Las Vegas. I'll keep you posted on the book, but in the mean time, check out my new tutorials online! More will follow, and I'm grateful to Michelle for allowing me to share my love of art dolls on a wider basis.

My Kids Are So Lucky!

The daughters of reborners have to be the luckiest little girls in the world. When I'm about to finish a doll, I call my little girls into the room to witness the "birth," and then they get to cuddle test the new doll. Invariably, there are some they love and have a hard time parting with, like little Rene. I think they're lucky to get to hold so many babies.



Some little girls get to play with cloth dolls or baby Chou Chou, but my girls get to experience a wide variety of life-like babies of every color, shape, and size. They're all precious, and they all represent something wonderfully real: Whatever their skin color, hair color, eye color, size, or shape, all babies are beautiful. Because we were all once babies, we're beautiful as well.