Merry Christmas

to 

One and All!

New Items in my Etsy Store

Here are a few items I've added to my Etsy store. Still more to come.

These are a pack of 6 quilted coasters made from 100% cotton fabric. More styles and colors to come. They are reversible, so you can choose which ever side suits your decor the best or just change it up.

Also I've added some Christmas Cards, I just have the one type so far, they come as a set of 5 for $15.

What I've Been Up To

Wow it's been way too long again since I've last posted! I certainly haven't stopped creating, I've just had no time to post lately. So today I thought I'd share some of the more recent layouts I've done for Prairie Chicks, where I work. These have already been posted on the Prairie Chicks blog so some of you may have already seen them.

Bo Bunny paper and stickers, Kaisercraft lamp post and Prima flowers

Stencil from Crafter's workshop

Echo Park paper, Prima flowers, various ribbons, beach umbrella sticker

Echo Park paper and embellishments?

Simple Stories paper and stickers. Tim Holtz Alterations Rosette dies.

Outdoors and explore def. clear stickers(?) Fabscraps chipboard

words, tree die-Tim Holtz Alterations, Paper?

My New (old) Garden Feature

I'm enjoying these beautiful spring days (even though the wind is unforgiving). This spring I haven't been too motivated to get into gardening. I will plant some "eat for enjoyment" veggies. I won't grow any for long term storage. I find in the fall I just can't get myself to do all that work anymore even though I used to do it with a lot of excitement and enjoyment , I loved seeing jars lined up on the counter waiting for lids to seal.

I do have an area I'm happy to make a little more beautiful though. It started with winter projects inside. We decided we wanted more room in the living room to be able to move the furniture around better. I have had this piano since about 1994. I bought it used from someone who was making room in their home. 3 years ago I had  it tuned and asked the tuner what he though it was worth because I was thinking of reselling it. He basically told me I'd be lucky if I could get $300 for it. Extremely disheartened I decided to put a poster up to see if anyone wanted it. No one offered. I tried to give it away, again no one was interested.

Sooo I saw something on Pinterest that gave me an idea where I could still enjoy my beloved piano but not as a musical instrument but a piece of landscape. This year I will only have the potted plants beside it but in the future I will build a nice landscaped garden around it. The thing that kind of made me sad was how quickly it became weathered although that is the look I wanted.

 People driving by have asked my husband "Is that a piano on your lawn?" Maybe it will start a new trend and instead of old pianos being used for expensive firewood they will become beautiful pieces of landscape.

While I was taking pictures I decided to take a few of our very large poplar tree in our front yard. Although I find beauty in these seed pods I know the torment they will bring me once they blossom into giant fuzz balls that will fill the air with nose tickling seeds, clogging the lawnmower and covering the ground like freshly fallen snow. Then I hope the wind will blast them away almost as soon as they come :)

Jen Unger Fine Arts on Etsy

I am now open for business on Etsy. I have been wanting to find an outlet for selling my handmade items for a while now and finally took the plunge to make it into an official business. You can click the Etsy tab on the top of the screen to go to my store. I will be selling finished products that I have made including my artwork, cards, mini albums and possibly some quilted items.

Two New Cards

I hope everyone has been able to switch over to my new blog here. I've moved all my old posts over here and removed them from my old blog. Please feel free to follow me here if you were a follower on the other blog.

Lately I've been digging deep into my creative spirit and learned some new things digitally, this is why the new blog design and background. I have been having fun creating digital artwork and hope to do a lot more.

Back to the non-digital world here are 2 cards I created for the Prairie Chicks Scrapbook Challenge that you can find here .

The paper I used was MME's Miss Caroline and Follow Your Heart.

Welcome !

Welcome to my new site!

If you like what you see feel free to follow me either by email, which will give you my posts right in your mailbox, or through blogger. Thanks again for your support!

Jen

Tammy and Jen's CHA Adventure Comes to an End

 It's now been a week since we came home from CHA, and I'm finally able to absorb all that I saw and learned. Seeing that much crafty inspiration has had our brains in overload mode. One of the things that stood out for me was the mixed media techniques that were showing up on pages, canvas and altered art, which had me digging out my glues, mists and glitter to see if I could get some of the same looks. Let's just say I'll need some more practice ;) I did learn something cool you could do with CraftWorkCards Candi.

 The owner of the company showed me how to make these wonderful flowers using the Candi by gluing down one piece onto a 1'' punched circle in the center and then placing a bead of glue around the Candi piece and tucking pieces of the Candi around the center in a spiral pattern until you have the size of flower you want. For the center take three-five pieces, fold in half and snip off a corner so you can glue the snipped side onto the center piece to get the bud of the flower. For the leaves slightly pinch one side of the Candi piece to give a point and adhere just under your flower.

Some of the products that I found were really popular were thin dies like Spellbinders, Lifestyle Crafts, CheeryLynn Designs. Die Cutting in general was very popular. There was no shortage of people at the Ellison(Sizzix), Spellbinders, Cricut and  Tim Holtz Alterations booths.

Stamps are still very popular with companies producing stamps that go with dies and co-ordinating with paper lines and of course the ever popular stamps for coloring like Magnolia, The Greeting Farm Stamps, Tim Holtz's new line of Alterations stamps, La Blanche and many more.

 Magnolia

 Just-rite Stamps and Spellbinders

 I want this :)

This is a guide to stamp around from Inkadinkado, it comes with a block that fits into the slots, and you can use different stamps to get different looks.

 soooo cool!

Look what you can make with this, awesome art!



Flowers and lacy trims are still very popular. But I did see more masculine hardware items added to pages such as keys, gears, clocks and more masculine charms. Of course metal trinkets in general are still a big thing.

Layering is really big, cutting out the designs from the paper and layering them on top of the layouts giving a paper tole look or just adding layers of different things to make your page, tag or banner 3D.

Another thing I thought was interesting was the use of glitter as an art medium with beautiful pieces done with stencils and mixing glitter with glue and art gel medium. I can't even describe how beautiful this looked.

The Tim Holtz Distress markers were a big hit as well as Ranger's new Stamping paper. 

And we can't forget the beautiful new paper lines from BoBunny, Authentique, My Mind's Eye, Kaiser Craft, Prima Marketing, Echo Park, Graphic 45, Karen Foster and more.

Tuesday night we did some shopping and had supper in Downtown Disney. We ate at the Rainforest Cafe where I was so enthralled by the scenery( thunder and lightening occurred every 20 min) it wouldn't have mattered if the food wasn't that good but it was delicious!

such a pretty bus stop

beautiful tree lined walk

On our final day in Anaheim we had to make one last trip to Disneyland and the California Adventure Park. At the end of the day we watched World of Color, sooo pretty!

Doesn't Tammy just look thrilled ;)

Veiw from the Ferris wheel

Gotta love these fashionable 3D glasses for the Toy Story ride

This ride was so fun. It was a shooting game where you played the person next to you. I won in points but Tammy was more accurate in her shooting.

Waiting for this awesome roller coaster, we went twice as well as the Tower of Terror :)

Stopping to have coffee and put up our feet

I had to go on this ride for my son, who used to be an avid fan and watched Star Wars almost every day. I loved the ride, I think he would like it too.

Anyone who knows me knows I love all things vintage and Victorian so this was the perfect place for me to eat.

World of Color

I hope you enjoyed sharing a bit of this trip with us. We had a wonderful time being inspired and entertained. Being warmed by the California sunshine and surrounded by beautiful palm trees.