Riverside Rubber Stamp & Paper Arts Festival

I've had quite the day! I spent my afternoon at the Riverside Convention Center, at a scrapbook and rubber stamp convention. It was lots of fun, and I spent way too much money. Look tomorrow for a picture of all my treasures! This ATC was made by Kate at Invoke Arts. I loved their products and I learned a lot of new techniques by watching her work. I'm actually eager to carve out some time to play. She recommends three to five hours at a time, so that you have time to not just make a card or a few ATCs, but to really play with your materials and techniques. I'm not sure when I'll find three hours -- much less five! -- but I'm going to try to very soon.

I made this ATC in a class taught by Miss Jennifer of Auntie Amy's. It was so good to see those ladies again. I've really missed them since Amy decided to close her store. This ATC was made on a metal substrate -- how cool is that? In addition to using papers, stamps, and buttons, we used rub-ons, which I'd only used a couple of times before. Would you believe that a crop-a-dile made the hole for the ribbon? It was like butter!

Tonight, I was in such a mood to play with art that I gesso'd several pages in my new art journal. Note that I still didn't do anything actually creative, but I came a lot closer. Prep work ought to count! Even though I wasn't doing anything particularly expressive, it felt good to be smearing that white stuff around on my pages. My new art journal is a moleskine -- the lavender one -- and I'm already loving it. I'll have to work hard the next few days to get caught up at RAA and around the house, so I have time to play!