9 women create

I have a great friend, Sarah, who urged me to join her last December, in putting up at a silent auction - a collage day, at her amazing house, with 8 spots for people to join us. We would feed them a nice lunch, then share our materials (sarah and I take a collage class together already and have a lot of materials between us) and teach some simple techniques to our attendees.
The spaces filled up fast! And with good friends! She and I have been working on this for the past few weeks and Saturday was the big day. We got everything ready and hoped everyone would show up and have a good time. One friend couldn't make it, but we saved supplies for her. The other 9 of us had a day full of creativity.

It was so much more fun than I even anticipated, and 4 hours to make art on a Saturday is always fun. But this was dear. And creative. And joy•building for sure.
Everyone walked away with finished art pieces, as well as some traded Artist Trading Cards - our first activity was to make artist trading cards to share with everyone else as a warm up and a commemorative keepsake. Of course I made goodie bags too, with candy, new scissors and glue sticks... (all three are vital to my collaging!)

I felt so blessed to know these women, or to meet the ones I hadn't yet met... We kept joking that now we were a collage clique and we have to do it again. I sure hope so.

Paint by Numbers Party (I have the coolest friends!)

I forgot to tell you about the paint by numbers party we went to. It was hosted by a friend of mine from Art Center and her funny group that calls themselves "The Society of Interesting People for the Advancement of Unique Social Recreation" and they sent out an email invitation that I simply couldn't turn down....

Everyone was told to bring 2oz of paint in any color and we were assigned a number when we arrived. The hosts had combined 3 different (hideous) paint by number designs and blown them up onto this massive canvas.

The  perspective was hysterical (note the ridiculously mammoth trees coming up behind the mountains) and the colors were whack. (pink glitter eagle)...

But it was one of the most fun parties we have ever been to and at the beginning of the night, we only knew one person there. (by the end, we were chummy with everyone)

I'm going to find a way to do this myself somehow.

My Holiday Party outfit

I mentioned earlier that it was agonizing to try and figure out what to wear to J's holiday work party. I get really intimidated dressing for his work events, especially when I know there will be movie stars in attendance. I'm not a big star watcher, I rarely recognize them before he points them out to me, but still the fashion... ah, what to wear???? The tough thing about LA parties is that the men all wear jeans and shirts - rarely jackets, but the women dress up. And I don't really do heels, so what to do?
Here's what I did... and here are the designers (or some like them) that made my outfit work.
1- simple dress - you can see it here. Here's a cute one kind of like it, and this one is similar (though tighter!)
2 - headband. My pal, Tori, gave mine to me and the designer who made it doesn't sell online,
but here is a similar one on etsy. I wore my hair very "flippy" - inspired by Alice Cullen's hair. eek, Twilight dorkdom strikes again!
3 - woven tights from Anthropologie. (about a year ago)
4 - flashy disco earrings. Forever 21. also from last year. (I liked the idea of mixing the flapper style headband and the disco earrings) I think you can see them in the above pic. I actually removed a gem that was hanging from the bottom when I first bought them.
5 - Necklace by International Sanctuary (for this outfit, I actually tucked it into my dress (um, bra) and used just the chain for an accent piece)
6 - leather studded and blingy bracelet - new this month... i love it! The designer is just getting her etsy site up right now, I have the bracelet that is dark brown with big rhinestones. (upper left corner)
7 - shiny shoes. brown patent leather... they were flats - though I toyed with red kitten heeled ones, too... I ended up with the flats for comfort sake. These aren't the ones I wore, but they'd do.
8 - okay. I didn't want to mention this, but seriously, it helped my outfit greatly. Victoria's Secret. It really worked. "Miraculously" well, considering I have almost nothing to begin with. (enough said)

anyhow... it made for a fun outfit that will likely be my New Years' outfit as well when I head to my sister's Appetizer Cookoff Contest. It was fun putting the outfit together and fun getting this post together, too. Hope you enjoyed it - I haven't done anything like this before... (oh, and with DSL issues that we've been having, this took me 3 days to write!)

The big office clean up

a pic of a sweet tree my sister's girls made at camp this summer... because...

I am NOT posting photos of how the studio looks halfway organized, but suffice it to say that I nearly cried a few times and was sweating bullets all day as Tif and I worked on getting it organized. It's not far. We're going to try and finish it on Thursday. (but I can't leave it like this in the meantime and am torturing myself by slowly going through it over and over trying to find places for things.)
Tif has given me hope that this is going to work, though.
The one outcropping of today's cleaning is that there is a lot of purging happening too. Which means that I am for sure going to have my "First Ever Upscale Backyard Yard Sale". It will be in Los Angeles on November 21. (if you want an invitation, send me an email.) Anyhow... I already have 5 boxes of $2 grab bags... and then I have a pile of half finished projects that I am going to finish and plan on selling at the sale. There will be my entire inventory of skirts (for the first time ever!), my spinny skirts, baby slings, jewelry closeouts from my handmade jewelry days, journals, doorstops, candles, baby onesies, swaddle blankets, tea cozies, embellished tees... and yes... COFFEE and SCONES!
I'm planning on making it a cute and sweet experience for everyone to come and be a part of. And even if it's outside in November - Los Angeles rarely has bad weather, so we'll just bank on some sunshine, or at least haze - and then prepare for the worst as well.
=)
so now I have an almost organized studio AND a party to plan! (I asked Tif for her help on that too)