Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Farewell to Cookie Puss

This sucky economy is causing horrible things to happen. All my favorite stores and restaurants are either struggling to survive or have already closed. Pretty soon the only store we're going to have left to shop in is going to be Walmart. Not cool at all.

I came close to tears the other day when my sister and I went into the last Carvel store in AZ and saw the big sign on the wall saying they were going out of business. I have loved Carvel ice cream ever since I lived in NJ, where they are one of the biggest names in cool, tasty treats. I was ecstatic when they started opening stores here in AZ a few years ago, and made sure someone bought me a Cookie Puss every year for my birthday. One by one, these stores closed over the years until there was only one left. Now that one is closing too.

One thing I am learning in the meditation classes I've been going to lately is that in order to not create suffering for yourself, you have to change the way you react to things. So as I was standing in the middle of the near-empty Carvel store choking back tears, I was trying to come up with something positive to think about its closing. I did manage to come up with two positive thoughts. One was that at least they were here for a little while and two was that now I will have one less calorie overloaded treat to eat. But I am still very sad.

Luckily I was able to stock up on Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale before the official closing this Friday, since they are offering them at half price. Mr. Puss is only $13! We bought 4 since they stay fresh for 60 days. I thought it would be nice to bring home a whole fudgie family. Unfortunately, after they are gone I will have to hop on a plane and go all the way to NJ to get my fix of delicious ice cream and chocolate cookie crumbs.

By the way...if you've never had chocolate ice cream blended with chocolate cake mix, you haven't experienced heaven in a cup. I highly recommend getting your hands on some.



Thursday, July 16, 2009

Sunshiny Day


That's an understatement here in AZ...This was my take for a 'yellow' swap. I have just rediscovered my love for vellum. I happened to buy a sheet of vellum paper a few days before I signed up for the swap so I decided to use it. I also got to use my favorite cat stamp and shrink plastic. All in all it was a very fun project...Hope you like!

Transparency Technique

These are the cards I made for a transparency swap I recently participated in. I decided to go old school and make shaker cards. I used double sided foam tape to adhere the transparencies, then built up the edges around it with modeling paste. I painted them with acrylic paint and used scraps of painted cardboard for the accent paper and confetti.








Monday, July 13, 2009

ArtistTradingCards Home Page

I just went to the ArtistTradingCards yahoo group that I belong to, and low and behold there was my mermaid card featured on the home page. How exciting! And what an honor to be chosen out of all the other talented artists who post their work on the site. I kind of feel a little famous now...hee hee hee....

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/artisttradingcards/

What a nice way to start off a Monday morning....