There are a few factors that lead to my lack of blog posts since moving to China: 

I still create on weekends and on nights when I have some mysterious mojo flowing, but really, the musical I'm directing (Addams Family) is taking everything I got right now..

I am still creating with the kids at school, though! I have a craft club and we have a table for our "Arts Festival Carnival" on Thursday and I'm excited about our offerings: 

First, an altered picture frame

Hi there! The blog has been slow lately because the husband and I just got back from an amazing trip to Rome. What a fantastic city - I must have said "WOW" a thousand times. The amount of priceless treasures and buildings/sculptures that adorn the city is just too much to handle sometimes. We definitely suffered from historical overload some days... 

But now I'm back in Shanghai taking it easy for the rest of the New Years holiday (3 weeks!!) and that means spring cleaning... Last year we did some work around the house to spruce it up, and this year I wanted to do the same. So we bought a new refrigerator (almost normal size) and I chalk painted our coffee table. 

Over the holidays (when I went home to Canada) I picked up a whole bunch of mixed media supplies with the intention of getting busy in the new year. I feel like art journaling has really been pushed to the back-burner and WHY? I mean, I really like it, I have tonnes of stuff, I just feel like I go through these phases and it's hard for me to do everything.  (Card-making, art journaling, scrapbooking...ha!) 

But anyway. One of the things I purchased was a Dyan Reveley BLACK journal.. I was kind of scared to get started but once I slapped some gesso on the paper the ideas started flowing! 

Before doing anything I slapped a coat of clear gesso onto the paper just to give it some strength (I felt it was a little thin) and then I got down to business. I sprayed it with Dylusions mists then scraped white gesso all over. The gesso kind of sucks up the inks to give some subtle colouring. 

Then I sketched the flowers with the Stabilo "all" pencil and painted the petals in. The rainbow colours are Gelatos! I applied them straight from the tube, then rubbed them with my fingers, then I sprayed them with water. I LOVE how the colours faded away... 

The stamp (Stampendous!), and the dotty stencil (TCW Stencils) completed the piece and I was happy! 

This week's Inspiration Wednesday is a favorite of mine. 

The colours are fantastic, 

The texture, OMG... 

It's funny because this spread isn't "about" anything, but I like it so much! 

Sometimes, it's just about the process...

And the colours... 

In addition to joining Donna's Inspiration Wednesday, I decided to join the Documented Life Project, aka, DLP. It's free to join, and every week they give you two prompts to help you get inspired to do a journal page. There's a very vibrant Facebook group with endless inspiration and support.. I encourage any of you who want to get started with mixed media and art journaling to take a look. It's been a lot of fun... 

Here are the first three spreads from the first 3 Saturdays in January:

Background created with PanPastels. 

Using black gesso and masks! 

Dina Wakley paints and stamps. 

When I decided to move to China I figured I would have to let a design team or two go and it's never easy to say goodbye - but I had to say byebye to Stampendous. They only work with local designers and also, it would cost me a FORTUNE to ship my cards to them, so we said farewell until I am state-side again. 

BUT, one of the Stampendous! girls mentioned DecoArt was looking for bloggers to work with them and guess what? They wanted me! 

When I arrived in China the paints were here waiting for me, and I requested to work with their new Media Line of paints - geared towards the mixed media artist... Well that's me! I have loved working with their paints and find their fluid acrylics completely comparable to my Golden fluids... Easily. LOVE! 

I've been working on some projects behind-the-scenes but I figured I should get started with my Christmas tags, so I made one today using a bunch of my new DecoArt paints and mediums.. 

Then I covered the tag in various Metallic Lustre paints (if you've ever used Viva Decor metallic paints they are very similar. Kind of waxy...) Then I covered the whole tag in Titan Buff (a Vanilla creme colour) 

To make it more Christmas-y I added some Matte Medium to the snowflakes (through the stencil) and added some of Tim Holtz's Rock Candy dry glitter. 

And because I'm a cardmaker and a hoarder I have a million of these chipboard shapes that were just calling for a home. (These two shapes were from last year's MME line)

SO pretty cool, right? I will be submitting some articles for the DecoArt Blog very soon, but in the meantime, head over there and check it out. I have been loving the Chalk Paint projects... Yummy!