Well thanks everyone! You are always so supportive. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and very therapeutic. :-) Saucy, I hope Sara does do one of Zeuss. It's a lot of fun and anyone can do it, ages 5 - 85! :-) PM2, yes, I did do most of the painting. Well, painting/drawing. I use watercolor pencils, which I think are a lot easier to work with than paints and brushes. For the trees in the one pic that you liked, I did have to use acrylic paint cause I wanted to give the leaves texture. Some things I didn't draw, for instance, the picture that Cynthia admires. I love the very Art Deco look of that...it's from an old postcard I saved. For that one I scanned the postcard, printed it out and changed the color of the dog to black and white so it would look like Scout. Cynthia, I'll try to get a closeup shot of that for you. I really like it too and wish I knew who the artist was. Unfortunately the print is old and wasn't signed. Marian - yes, all the photos of Scout were scanned or printed from my camera software, as I didn't want to use the originals. I use a product called Matt Medium to bond the pieces to the canvas. I don't know what the difference is between Matt Medium and Decoupage/glue, but that's what was recommended to me, so that's what I use :-) What kind of collages did you make for the Extension Fair? Did you save any of them? If so, I'd love to see them. How neat that you were involved in the Extension Fair exhibit. I love going to those types of fairs. It's so wonderful to see what everyone has created. I especially love to see the kids works of art. Some of them are so advanced, I'm just amazed. We go to the fair at my garden girlfriend's cottage every year and we always time it so that we come on the week-end of the fair.

I have made this one with 1 half lights and the other half darks . It is called "Sunshine And Shadows"

Vellum is a semi transparent paper that has kind of (in my opinion) a stiff waxy type feel to it. It comes in a lot of colors (mostly pastels) and is used for example to make a ghost, water in a glass, or fishbowl, or any type of image you want to see through, or to tone down the color of a back ground paper that is too bold. It is really quite pretty and has lots of uses. Penny

I saw a similar messsage on another site: Getting Started with Scrapping Decide which size album you are going to use. Personally, I use 8.5 x 11 for my everyday stuff, and 12 x 12 for special occassions. Buy your album and refill pages. (I use 8.5 x 11 because it was cheaper for me. I use a plain white binder and then I buy the sheet protectors from the office supply store or BJs wholesale club.) Buy an assortment of cardstock= 2 or three of each color that you like. (Some people like brights, others like pastels- I generally stick to primary colors and natural colors for some reason.) Buy a few sheets of patterned paper, according to your tastes. Adhesive- either the photo squares, double sided tape, or acid free glue. Good scissors. Some people buy the decorative edge scissors. I own every pair ever made, and I hardly ever use them. I wish I hadn't wasted my money on them, but that's just me. I have a small paper cutter. It was $14.00 at Michael's, but I love it because I like using sqaures and rectangles in my scrapping. Maybe one stencil of gemetric figures. My advice would be, don't spend a lot of money at first. I spent SO much money on the hobby, and I swear, I don't use most of the stuff I bought, and I feel guilty. I finally gave most of it to other friends who scrap, because I cringed every time I saw how much stuff I bought at first! I wish I had bought just a little, then gotten started and added as I needed more stuff. Here are things I have also learned- Be careful how much you crop. When I first started, I cropped a LOT of the backgrounds from my pictures, and now I really regret it, because a LOT of the memories are in the surroundings. Be conservative with shapes. For me, I did a few stupid things, which I am almost ashamed to admit. I cut a picture into the shape of a sailboat. Now I look at it and say, "What the heck was I thinking???" Oh, and for me, the BEST thing I did was to subscribe to a scrapbooking magazine. I get creatingkeepsakes, which you can order through www.creatingkeepsakes.com I cut out the layouts that I like and put them in a little brag book. Then, when I am about to do a new page and can't think of an idea, I flip through the layouts to get some inspiration. (I guess you could do the same by looking at two peas or dmarie.com, but I like having the magazine pick out the good layouts instead of wading through the thousands of ideas that are on line.)