Look what I got!

On what can be the LONGEST day of the year, especially if you have little ones (because it's not quite Christmas Eve yet, it's getting very, very difficult to WAIT); today's the day we open our Artist Trading Cards for the Canadian Chickies ATC Christmas swap.

Here is a photo of the endearly, lovely hand-crafted ATC Martha created for Dawn. It has already found it's home on Dawn's tree, and looks very much at home.

Please remember to upload a photo or two on the Yahoo site for everyone to enjoy the ATCs you received from your swap partner.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

No peeking!

It won't be long now folks ...
just over a week until we get to open
our Christmas ATCs and
hang them on our trees.
December 23rd is the day
we get to finally see our treasures!

No peeking!

Photo: ATCs created
and wrapped by Martha Brown

3 ATCs to grace our Christmas trees

Our Canadian Chickies 2009 Christmas swap will be a simple but sweet exchange. We will create 3 ATCs with our partner in mind, something that he/she can hang on their Christmas tree. Here is the Partner List for our Christmas ATC swap:

Arlene and Jennifer
Brittni and Sabina
Josh and Mar
Martha and Dawn
Nicolette and Kim

We will need to mail out our 3 ATCs by December 1st. Once the ATCs arrive in the mail we must be very patient, because we will wait until December 23rd to open our gifts from our each other together. The anticipation will drive us crazy, but that's half the fun, isn't it?

More Journal photos!

This jazzy number is the cover of the journal Mar created for Kathryn.

So colourful ... so much texture.












Oh! And look at the whimsical journal Kathryn made for Marcy in return. Is that an outhouse? Someone understands Mar's goofy sense of humour.

Chickie Journals start arriving!

Look at the beautiful journal Kim created for Arlene ...



Who wouldn't love this book?



Love and friendship on every page.



Beautiful!

Journals almost done ...?

It has been quite some time since we touched base, Canadian Chickies (and token Rooster).

How is the ART Journal prepping coming along for your partner? Are you done? Have you started? Are you excited? Are you panicking?

September 30th is the deadline to send off your journal to the person you're exchanging with.

Please remember to take photos (at least of the front cover of the journal) so we can post them here and on the Yahoo group too!

It's going to be so much fun to see what everyone has created to inspire their swap partner with, won't it?

Chickie Journals!

So far we have 6 people signed up to join our Chickie Journal Swap. Eeeek! Can you stand the excitement of creating a ART journal with wonderful prompts with your trading partner in mind?!

Deadline for sign ups is June 30th. Then we'll pair everyone off and you will have all the way until the end of September to make your journal for your partner and mail it off to her, if necessary.

Photo: Shabby Doodles Journal created by Arlene for Canadian Chickies' Christmas Swap 2008. (It's even more gorgeous in person!

Retro apron , simply lovely

Jennifer really outdid herself in creating an apron with vintage-y flair for Dawn. One can only appreciate wearing this beauty when one has a hot pink feather duster, a cookbook in hand and high heals, bright red lipstick on!



This has been an amazing swap, wouldn't you agree? Each and every apron is so personal and sweet. Thank you Canadian Chickies for making this swap a enormous success!

Sabina showers Martha with a beautiful gift

Martha was thrilled to receive this re-purposed shower curtain turned apron.
How ingenious!

When Sabina's supervisor gave Sabina a floor display fabric shower curtain, she had no doubt knew that Sabina would find a creative use for it. The sash was craft from a scarf. What an elegant apron ~ we all look forward to seeing a photo of Martha wearing this beauty.

Arrival of this apron went swimmingly

Forget Canada Post and their ridiculously high rates and delays at the Canada-US border; Kim has received her apron from Arlene!

When Arlene began formulating ideas in her head of the apron she would make for Kim, she knew one thing, that it would include an ocean and mermaid theme.

Look at the mermaid apron she created. It's perfect from its many little enclosed pockets containing buttons, sea glass, pearls and more right down to the bottom ruffly, wispy waves.

Blooming beauty!

Kim created this apron of textures and words for Arlene.

Hopefully Arlene will take some photos of the completed project (hint, hint!) as Kim did not ~ but at least you get a sense of what it looks like.

These aprons are so unique and obviously each and every one, a labour of love.

Apron with flower flourish

Look at the beauty Martha created for Sabina.
No wonder Sabina could hardly contain herself when she receive her apron in the mail!

Vanessa's created re-purposed beauty!

Look at the sweet apron Vanessa crafted out of an old pillow case! What amazing precision she wielded when she embroidered Pat's inititials on the pocket? Won't her Gram-in-law love this?

1st Mother-of-all-aprons Swap first arrival

Very exciting news! Our first Mother-of-all-Aprons apron has arrived in Jennifer's hands. A hand painted portrait dons her apron with some of the things that Jen holds near and dear. Luckily, Jennifer had a photo on her blog and Dawn copied her likeness on the apron.

I've gone and done it Chickies!

Good morning Chickies ... I have just this minute sent this photo along with a submission pitch to Somerset Studios publications this morning!

I'm not overly confident that anything will happen because I'm not able to pay for shipping and insurance costs for the Faux Gogh chairs to be sent to California! Who knows though. If they like the idea perhaps they'll either let us take the photos or maybe even hire a professional Edmonton based photographer to take photos of the chairs.

Arlene and I have been throwing the idea around for quite a while about submitting this idea to a publication of some sort, and so this morning felt like the appropriate time to walk out on a limb and give it a try. All they can say is "no", right?

New name ~ new look!

Are you confused yet? Keeping the Canadian Valentine blog going seemed like a good idea, but it also made sense to change the name, header and background for a more year round place to play. The name came to me in a dream one night after the Valentine swap was over, so naturally I decided that it was destiny that we use this name for any swapping stuff we do. Thus the name Canadian Chickies!

On this post, I'll share some of the headers I created before I settled on the one that I finally chose. Do you think I chose the right one? Hope so.

The-Mother-of-All-Apron-Swap's title is thanks to Kim ~ amazing title! We're still open to having people join this swap for a few more days. All you have to do is either sew a cool apron or gussy up an existing one. But you only have to make one! We will exchange aprons in time for Mother's Day. Whether you're a mother or not ~ doesn't matter, you can join. So let's say March 1st is the deadline for sign ups. Leave a comment here or email me to let me know you want to be a part of this cool swap.

Don't you think we have a very nice core group of artists here? We've established some great friendships which is awesome. Let's keep in touch, people.
Oh! and I've changed the Yahoo group too, to Canadian Art Swaps. Thinking out loud here ... maybe I should change that name to Canadian Chickies too. Let me know what you think. Is our tranformation almost complete?
I hope so!

A lavish touch for Day 10

On Day 10, the group was presented with a beautiful hand-bound fabric book made by Arlene. She stitched pages together and then crafted covers with scrumptious, tactile fabrics to suit each person's likes.

She calls these lavish lovelies Shabby Doodles and wishes everyone to place them in their purses to use whenever a creative thought pops into their heads or a doodle needs to be doodled. What a perfect ending to this beautiful Valentine ART swap!

Many of the participants have never done an ART swap before, so this has been a wonderful learning experience for everyone.
Thank you for sharing your love.
Happy Valentine's Day!

Desire's the theme for Day Nine

A sense of romance was created by Nicolette with her hanging ATC, complete with a "Desire quote" on the reverse side. With the wonderful glittering danglies, this little piece of art will be beautiful almost anywhere in the home.

The story of Day 8

One upon a time
in a land far, far away,
the lovely Kimberly, Queen of Arts wrapped up a parcel with care

When her gifts arrived in the Kingdom of Edmonton, they looked more like this because of the work of the infamous dastardly villain named Canada Post

A bit of a mix up to be sure, but soon they looked more like this again

And then one day, something miraculous happened!
Everything that the wicked mail system tried to prevent actually happened. A beautiful necklace appeared from the tangled mess!

Day 7 features the Key to Love

Dawn created some Shabby Chic-ish altered keys for everyone on Day 7. She chose different sayings and gussied up the keys to suit each individual.

Then she added a couple other goodies: a pair of Valentine socks and Timmy Horton's Doughnut Seeds. It seems that Vanessa's not the only one who was thinking about planting seeds.

Finally, tucked into the package was some relaxing Rose Petal Green Tea for everyone to enjoy after the day's gift opening frenzy.

Day 6 is all about pretty, indeed!

Up until Day 6, we weren't exactly sure why Laura's (aka All About Pretty) gift smelled so wonderful. The mystery was solved when we opened her gift: an Aromatherapy Heart! What a hand stitched gem.
She also included a luscious Loonie sized Vintage magnet.

Day 5 blossoms with hope

Like many of us,
Vanessa is obviously tiring of winter and
looking forward to warmer, sunnier, "plantable" days ahead.

She has carefully gathered seeds from her flower patch and created 3 seed packages including Maiden Pinks, Columbine and Onion Chives. Then she painted individual delicate watercolour illustrations of the blooms that we can expect to grow in our gardens this summer once we've planted them.
To read more about the process of harvesting the seeds, check out Vanessa's blog here.

Sweet touches for Day 4

Valentine's Day wouldn't be complete without cinnamon hearts. Lisa made sure that she added the yummy treats to her gift on Day 4, which just happened to be a lacy bookmark complete with a love-filled quote and beautiful frou-frou fibres.

Day 3 is stitched with love

On Day 3, Martha's cleverly stamped pink tissue bound gift was waiting for us to discover. Inside the wrapping, we discovered a little Valentine hanging perfect for a doorknob or some other location.

Day 2 brings out the bling!

WOW, Holly's work is amazing! If you hop around to some of our blogs today, you'll see an awe-inspiring variety of styles and stones.

Earrings on the left are Arlene's and on the right are Dawn's. These are wonderful treasures, are they not?