Theme Thursday - Santa

Although today is a national holiday in America, Thanksgiving Day, I am displaying here on my blog a digital Christmas 4x4. This was made for the Theme Thursday challenge this week where the theme is Santa. My background is a pale green with a special effects, thanks to Photoshop Elements. I have added some freebie digital images, the Christmas tree and the Santa, that I got from Dover Publications.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all my fellow Americans. We have much to be thankful for.

Arty Girlz Favorite Color

Arty Girlz Challenge has us using our favorite color. This is a digital piece, using a background of lavender. I overlaid this with an altered photo of a petunia and the saying: When I grow old, I shall wear purple. This isn't the exact quote, but it's close enough for me. I think I'm old enough that I can wear purple, which at this moment, is my favorite color.

Today was such a busy day that I didn't have time to do any pasting or cutting. I did that this morning in my volunteer job at the nursing home. This afternoon we drove 90 minutes to pick up our college granddaughter to bring her home for the Thanksgiving holidays.

New Award from Paula

What an honor Paula has given me when she passed on this award to my blog. Here is the text that goes with the honor, the wording of which is not mine.

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY -nearness in space, time  and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers, who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

There are so many blogs that I look forward to viewing and there are so many blogs that already have been awarded this honor. I am choosing the following eight for this time:

Hermine

Marie

Jaqi

Wil

Bev

Simone

Louise

Ginger

Gothic Arches - Celebration

Sunday Gothic Arches challenge this week is Celebration! I found this image of a little girl celebrating her first birthday. I can't quite decide if she's happy with her buggy cake or not.

The background is alcohol inks. The balloon stamp is PSX. The colors are Le Plume brush inks, embossed with Stamp-n-Stuff Stardust.

One Stop & SaWo Challenges

Saturday's Workout this week is using a split negative technique as its theme. I am combining my rendition of that technique described here in my One Stop Craft challenge entry.

Art Creations Friday Challenge

This is a new challenge, Art Creations Friday, where we are given an image or background to use in making a piece of art. The woman in this card was the image given this week. I had trouble keeping the image sharp, since it came from the internet as 72 pixels. Maybe someone can cue me in how they are getting a sharp image.

Cowboys/West

Theme Thursday's challenge this week is Cowboys or American West. I have chosen as my focal image a magazine picture of Teddy Roosevelt, whose 150th anniversary of his birth was October this year. The group of cowboys shown here are known as the "Rough Riders" led by Col. Roosevelt. An article on the Spanish American War Centennial Website refers to them as the "First United States Volunteer Cavalry, made up of an odd but effective assemblage of Western cowboys and Frontiersmen, and Eastern athletes and sons of prominent citizens."

My background is the bandana technique, where I stamped my design in Stazon over a Moon Shadow mist treated card stock, and outlined that design in white pen.

Sketch Challenge 38

A sketch challenge is following a set design and creating one's own piece of art using this pattern. This week's challenge for Tuesday Sketch was fairly simple but filled with wonderful possibilities. Here is my entry. The ivory background was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder. The dark background is misting of Moon Glow Shadow mists.

The photo is of my grandmother. It is ok to rotate the design.