Have you been naughty or nice?

Hello! I hope Santa brought you everything you wanted!
Apparently I have been very naughty because he totally forgot about me........... :-(

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hope Santa will bring you all you wish for!
oxox
Marina

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse........

This is Gino, Cherry Pie's employee of the month!
(now you know why I don't email so often....... my typist is on another siesta break)

Dreaming of a white Christmas........ (not really!)

I like the Florida sun better!

Holiday wishes to the World!

Are you waiting for Santa?

Xmas card 2008 - version #1

This is the first version of my Xmas card 2008.
Not the definitive one.
I will post more in the next days and
the final version on Christmas day :-)

Christmas doll - Thea

Thea is my new creation, a little 9 inch (22 cm) girl made of paperclay. She is holding a Christmas ornament I made out of rolled paperclay and stamped (both sides) with the large Klimt swirls.

Evolution of a Xmas card

My prototype cards of some days ago evolved into this one you see here.
After finding out how many versions of that same face I had done, I decided I had to use a different face this year!
This is la Belle Ferroniere by Leonardo da Vinci, probably my favorite woman by Leo. I cut out just the face features and neck and doodled around it.
I did this last night before switching off and I'm quite pleased with it. Now I must decide how to fill the wig.........

The Cherry Pie tree

I nearly missed my daily "countdown to Xmas" post!
It's been a busy day at Cherry Pie's........
Anyway, no card or ornament to show you today so I photographed my tree :-)
It's adorned mainly with crystals and ornaments that were hand made by me or other artists of my yahoo group

Holiday card 2004

This is my Christmas card 2004.
I used the face features stamp again......... LOL
Am I obsessed or what???
Now I think I must use something else for my 2008 card!!
The wing is from the Angel wings set and the white wording was done with masquepen.
Watercolor painted on watercolor paper.

Ornament by Brandy

Another 10 days to Christmas and I'm already running low of my own Christmassy creations to show here........... so today I show you a beautiful ornament made by Brandy Wickham from Ohio.
Three wooden stars decorated with Cherry Pie stamps.
A special decoration for my tree :-)

Sankta Lucia

Although I'm Italian and I chose to live in warm Florida, I have always been fascinated by the great North.
Today is December 13th, one of the shortest days of winter, and girls in Scandinavia dress up as Sankta Lucia (Saint Lucy) wearing a white dress and a crown of candles.
I wanted to sketch this vision so I used the face stamp again and freely painted around it over crackle painted card-stock.
Far from being a masterpiece....... LOL

Click here to see a video of Swedish girls singing Sankta Lucia.

Winter Spirit

This is one of my first of the few dolls I made so far. She is sculpted out of paperclay and she holds a white dove.
Her dress has silver holly and swirls on the skirt and she is a Winter spirit or snow fairy...

My Xmas 2008 prototypes

My Christmas card for this year is still a prototype and it's already Dec 11th! I know some people make their Xmas cards in July!! Not me!!!! LOL
I hope to have a final version on Dec 25th!

I am thinking of a winter spirit......
Here I played with printed papers and my "Face features" stamp.
I like to use this stamp (and the larger versions too) and then doodle, paint, collage around it. I have done a big number of different ladies by using the same features. A little paint and doodling can turn these features into a totally different character.

Winter ATC

I made this at least 3 years ago. The puzzle form was hand-drawn and then I stamped the little winter scene inside.
It was a prototype image for a rubber stamp I never produced.
I still like the idea though and it's not totally abandoned yet.......

Tree ornament

I think my collection of Christmas cards is already over! It didn't last long......
I have some ornaments though.
This is the one I made in 2006.

I bought a blank wooden photo frame at Michaels and I distressed it with paints and my crackle stamp.
The angel is stamped with the Pensive Woman and a pair of angel wings.

Not yer traditional Christmas card......

This was my card for Xmas 2007.
Another piece in my collection of "abused Mona Lisa" cards! :-)
It started as an ATC and then I added the red background with Photoshop.

December 2003 - published on RubberStampMadness

This card was published in Dec 2003 but it was my Xmas 2002 card. It was originally done on a wood card that I distressed with crackle paint. Then I stamped my scene on on a scrap piece of printing paper and I painted with watercolors.
This was scanned from the magazine because I can't find the original card, but I will change the photo when I get hold of it.

New Millennium card

I called it Millennium Madness and it really looks like it! LOL
I was into a surrealistic-weird-colorful stamping mood at that time! This is probably one of my wackiest cards ever!

Xmas 1999

I've been scavenging through my old cards and here's the one I made for Xmas 99.
The tree in the background was actually computer generated but it was the starting idea for the Merry Christmas tree I actually made later on.

Tomorrow I will show you my Happy 2000 card...... I was so colorful at that time! LOL

Countdown to Christmas Day........

The countdown has started and I am not ready at all......... it feels like I just stored my tree in the attic and it's already time to take it down again!

I'm trying to make a Christmas card but so far I haven't done anything so inspired......... I looked for inspiration into a box of old artwork and I found this card I made for Xmas 1998........ I was still in Italy.

I want to try to post one card every day until Christmas day........ old and new works, from me and others, all using Cherry Pie stamps...
see if I can keep it up!

Cherry Pie etsy store

Just a quick note to say that tonight I have started filling my Cherry Pie etsy store!
I have been procrastinating on it for months........
I still hope to sell more from my website than from etsy or eBay but I do like etsy a lot...... especially for the many cool artists and crafters you can find there!

The Cherry Pie Lady

I either never post or I post too much........... :-D
The past month or so I have been bitten by the doll making bug and I devoted most of my nights to sculpting art dolls out of paperclay. I want to show one here because it's related to this blog since she is my Cherry Pie lady :-)
You can see all the dolls I made so far on my Flickr gallery or see what is available for sale on my etsy store.
The Cherry Pie lady is SOLD.

Haunted houses

When I started this blog I said I was not good at blogging but now I see I'm worse than I thought myself! I haven't posted anything since July despite the fact I wrote a list of things I wanted to say and show here!
I even let Halloween go without posting and it's terrible considering it's my favorite holiday!
This was the second year I organized this cool Haunted house swap with my yahoo group and I want to show you a few houses here. In the next days (or weeks...... or... ehm... maybe months) I plan on showing off some of the nice artwork made by me and my yahoo group using my rubber stamps. I will do my best to keep up with this resolution!
Meanwhile take a look at the haunted houses!
The first one to the left is done by me. I was inspired by the work of Laurie Mika and her polymer clay tile mosaics so I made the roof, window and door out of Paperclay. I stamped and painted each tile. I loooved doing it! A lot of fun! I actually want to do more of this kind of stuff and I'm currently organizing another swap that includes clay mosaic so stay tuned and I will show that next!



More haunted houses....... randomly picked among many........ The first from left in the row is by Deb Patrick from Michigan, the second is by Janie Husband from NC and the third is by Melanie Becker from Germany.

The next is by Brandy Wickham from OH

These are mine again and done for the same swap in 2007 And now an overview of all the cards I got for the Halloween swap 2007

Hello from the Cherry Pie "lady"

I think this is it. I'm surrendering to having a blog. I always said I wouldn't, but I think this will be a good place for some tutorials related to rubber stamping. I'm thinking of publishing some how-to's of stamp making......... and other pics and info about my world and life.
I'm asked almost daily how to mount stamps so I guess that will be my first tutorial.
Meanwhile I'm quite excited that this week I finally released new images that I'm quite proud of.
Here left is the "Abundance" plate. I have designed all these images myself with the exception of the floral ball that's simply edited clip art.
All these images are done with Photoshop by using bits and elements from vintage art (baroque scrolls and flourishes). Each bit has been sorted, cleaned and assembled. It probably took longer than if I designed it by hand!
The Baroque heart uses a combination of vintage scrolls and the profile face is an assemblage of dozens of bits and flowers. I loved doing these......... I think I will do more in this style in the future!

My other plate is a spooky one in Goth style. The heart was the one that really took hours and hours to achieve! First I needed a skull....... so I went up in the attic where I keep my Halloween skeletons...... and I brought one down. I sat it on my office sofa and took a bunch of pictures that I edited with Photoshop until I had the perfect black and white skull image. I designed the heart freehand and then I added the roses, swirls, bats and spatters. Sounds like quick'n'easy but it took forever. I have edited and added to it for 3 or 4 days until I decided it looked the way I wanted it!

The owl on branch was the most voted of 4 Owls on branch I had done! I asked some friends/customers to pick their favourite owl. Not everyone picked this one but it was the most voted. It was not my choice but now I think it's pretty cool :-)

The tombstones are from a photo I took in Savannah, GA. They have this quaint cemetery in the city center and I spent an hour (on New Year's Day 2008) taking pics of the various tombstones and graves. I knew I would make a rubber stamp with some of them and here I did!
This is the original photoAll images from these plates are also sold as singles.

My 3rd release is a plate of Alice in Wonderland. I wanted to do these since......... 15 years at least!
Better late than never........
It's crammed with images and it will be sold as a plate only. No singles.

Guess this is enough for a first post and considering I hate blogging! ;-)