Rolled Taco Casserole

Inspired by Pinterest by all of the wonderful recipes I've been seeing lately; I decided to post a favorite of mine.  This has been made in my family for as long as I can remember and it is always a favorite.  I also make it without the rolled tacos on occasion, when I'm feeling a little lazy. I make my own rolled tacos one night and then save the appropriate amount to make this the next day.  Yields: About 6 to 12 Servings.

Halloween Accordion Scene

This is the scene I made from the original post of just one Halloween arch.  I finished this last night and am really happy with how it turned out. I made "hinges" out of card stock and rotated them so the scene would open up accordion style.  I am thinking about starting a swap for this type of scene.

I have some other arches in various themes that I didn't want to punch holes in and am thinking about doing this to those as well, so I can enjoy them by setting them out around the house.

2nd Annual Halloween Fun Swap

I usually only do hand drawn/hand painted swaps, but I love Halloween so much I decided to do the 2nd Annual Halloween Fun Swap over at ATCs for All!  I found a stash of fun Halloween pieces and came up with these four cards for the swap.  I am now going to make some more to add to my collection.

Then I found an arch laying around, so I used some of those Halloween pieces and made this "Gone Haunting" Halloween Arch.  I am thinking about making two more and hinging them together for an accordion type scene to put out for the holiday with the rest of my decorations.

Fiendish HELLoween PAT swap

So, I joined another Pick-A-Theme (PAT) swap over at ATCs for All!  This one is called Fiendish HELLoween.  I'm not sure if these are "Fiendish", but I worked really hard on them. 

I was able to use my new Sakura Glaze pens on two of them and I love these pens.  They are so much fun and once they dry the texture is so cool.

For:
locatray - black cat
Shawnicaitlin - cats in hats
pixiecorpse - crows
mrubyjean - witch

Birds & An Octopus!

Progressive Dinner Party-SOUPs 'N SALADs

Wake Up & Smell the Coffee Swap

Who doesn't like a good brew of coffee in the morning?  I know I do, so this swap was right up my alley.  I haven't done mixed media collage in a while and I wanted to make coffee cups with a little more than just the cup.  I used permanent markers and white gel pen for accents.

HandDrawn/HandPainted "A Face, Fowl, & a Fruit Color Palette" Swap

Shrunken Head Wind Chime

Ancient Tree (Traded)

Chicken in Wellington Boots

ATCs: Hand Drawn/Hand Painted "Stained Glass" Swap!

I hosted this swap and made a psd file to send to Admin for adding to AFA's Swap Gallery.  I had alot of returns that I was able to keep and made it from some of those.  Kind of a bummer that I could only use 24 of the over 30 cards I received, but I think it worked out well.

Whooo Wants Owls?

JAMing with kiddos swap III - The other 2 cards

Mountains at Night - My daughter drew the mountains, clouds, and stars. My husband added the river, sidewalk, and finished off the mountain. I added everything else!

Smiley Girl - My daughter drew the girls face, hair, and sun . My husband added the neck, shirt, and smiley pin. I added everything else!

My 9 yo wanted to color in these two, so I let her!

JAMing with kiddos swap III - 2 of 4 cards

What is a JAM ATC you may be asking.  Well, “JAM - A JAM Card is an ATC worked on by more than one artist. Each person adds to the card, leaving room for others to add on. The card is then passed on to the next person...”

My husband and I took our 9 year old daughter to Braum's last night for ice cream and while we were sitting there we worked on four cards for this swap.  She started and worked on one for two minutes, then my husband would work on it for two minutes, and then I would finish the card up in two minutes.

Then last night I painstakingly went over each one with a black fine permanent marker.  I colored in the two I am posting now and she is going to color in the other two.  I'll post those when she is finished coloring them in.

 

Fun in the sun! - My daughter drew the Palm tree, line for sand, sun, clouds, and words "fun in the sun!".  My husband added the sail boat and starfish.  I added everything else, including the leaves for the palm tree!

Sleeping Cat - My daughter drew the sleeping cat.  My husband added the ball of yarn and stripes on the cat.  I added everything else!

New Art Markers & A Mad Flower Child

Since I can't afford the Prismacolor or other expensive art markers I found that Dick Blick Art Materials had a set of 24 "Art Markers" for like dirt cheap.  I usually use permanent markers and I'm not sure that I'm sold on these new art markers just yet.  For one thing they are super bright, which could just be that I'm used to the subdued colors of the permanent markers.  Or, they are just super bright!

I made several cards tonight, but my favorite out of all of them was the Mad Flower Child.  I'm not quite sure what she is mad about, but by the look on her face I don't think I want to know.

Mixed Media Collage

Wow, it's been a while since I've done any collage work and I have this box sitting next to me of stuff that was just asking to be put together.  Last night I was able to make four cards and I was really happy with how they turned out.  They all incorporated a piece of a sheet I put together from a YouTube video I watched like over a year ago. 

Basically, you take all of your scrap paper and start gluing, with gel medium, down to a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper.  You can tear the extra paper, cut it, do whatever you want, but you have to fill up the entire piece of paper.  Then when that is dry, you take out large stamps, preferably ones with wording, and start stamp all over the sheet.

When all is said and done, you then cut the sheet down to 2.5 x 3.5 pieces to use as the background for ATCs.  I kept the "extras" and this is what I used on the cards I made last night.

Follow Your Heart

Sweet Child of Mine

Hearts Flutter

Flower Vine

KID Friendly Swap: Summer

I get so excited when ATCs for All! has KID friendly swaps and so does my 9 year old.  This particular swap is going to be awesome as the participation includes an elementary class.  My daughter thought really hard as to what she wanted to do on each card and I printed her out some "Summer" type images to help encourage her imagination.  The end result was the following and I am so proud of her.

1) Catching Butterflies, 2) Summer Picnic, 3) Summer Time, and 4) Moonlight Camping

It's an Unnaturally Colored Face World Swap

Orange, Green, Blue, and Purple

Wow, talk about out of the comfort zone.  I have gotten much better at faces, but I feel I am still not where I want to be.  So, I joined the It's an Unnaturally Colored Face World Swap and came up with orange, green, blue, and purple faces.  Hmmm, wonder what kind of prejudice problems they have.

Creativity Combo Swap: Pick One from One and One from Two

So, the key to this particular swap was to pick something from the first column of words and then pick something from the second column of words.  I used the Random Integer Set Generator at RANDOM.ORG to pick out my combos.  There were 64 options in each column, so I did 4 sets of 2 numbers and then went to my spreadsheet that I created out of the lists and put the two words together.  What I got were the following:

Surreal Prune, Cracked Cat, Dog in Drag, & Flaming Hot Dog Vendor

What was really funny was that I wasn't paying attention and created the following card, which should have been the "Surreal Prune"!

Surreal Pear

I really like this one and as soon as I put it up for trade it was gone.  I can't wait to see what the other players come up.  I think I'm going to keep the list and work from it once in a while too!