From Dardarbinx to The Paper Manipulator at long last!

It has been a long time coming, but finally I have found a new name for me that I think is perfect and so do every one that I have asked so far.  Its long...but its a name  :)  My first love of art came to me in August 2010.  So I have not been making art all of my like many of my artist-in-laws.  I joined Swap-Bot in February 2011, and I have also dabble a little bit in a few yahoo groups, including ATC_Fun and not mention ATC For All.

I was living in Brampton at the time, caring for a dear friend who was diagnosed with a very serious and fatal case of kidney cancer with the help of my beautiful wife Abby.  It was soon after that I was told about Artist Trading Cards by my sister-in-law Karen, to whom I am very grateful for, because I truly believe that it was my new found love for art that helped me make it through Alan's death, which of course is right up there with Abby's love and support.

While living in Brampton, I had the good fortune of meeting my art teacher/mentor, Natalie Murdock who was on the design team at a scrapbook store in Mississauga, ON called Scrapbook Queens.  I hired her to teach me what to with stamps and card making.  It was wonderful to have 3 one on one classes with her.   She taught me Stamping 101, 102 & 103.  She is now on two design teams, one being One Crazy Stamper.  She is sooooooo talented, I am so honored to get to be her student and friend.  I miss her dearly.

There is one thing that I regret since starting my path as an artist.  And that is that I have not been properly keeping track of all the swaps I've participated in.  I started to, but gave up on it because there have been so many.  And also in that respect I have not always necessarily dated my work either.  Because I have started going through all of my 1000's of ATCs and finding that many of them had not been dated or even titled for that matter.  So I can now see the importance of doing just that...Ah well, not to late to start.

My studio as of late is a huge mess, I've been working at trying to de clutter it and organizing everything as close to alphabetically as possible so that I can find things quickly and easily as I need them.   I've been trying my best to do just that since we have moved to beautiful Northern Ontario, but to no avail!  Perhaps now that I am blogging and taking ownership by telling you all about my "to-do" list then maybe, just maybe it will get done.  Abby cautioned me of this when I first got started because she experienced it with her Mom...but I only half a small amount of stuff, in comparison to many other artists I know and love.

Here is my colossal To-Do list...

1)  Alphabetize all of my ephemera, tools, art things and put away neatly where I can find quickly:

2)  Sort out all of my ATCs by Holiday, and in some cases by artist to display:

These aren't even all of them....I have probably about 4000 ATCs, no idea how many really

3)  Make a huge Halloween Collage:

4)  Make Art:

These Halloween Rolodex's are for a swap in my Facebook group

5)  Put all of my Tim Holtz distress inks in baggies with their circular and triangular foam pads

6)  Finally finish Melody's inspiration deck and get it to her, hopefully before the end of the year as it feels like I've owed it to her for an entire lifetime!

7)  Organize and sort all of the photos and documents in my imac.

8)  Scan all of the 2015 Halloween Broom Ride ATCs to share with you all here before Halloween.

And everything all not necessarily in this order, I have been working on each job a little bit at a time for some change in what I've been doing, so it feels like nothing is getting done.   So little to do and so little time.  I have been hugely distracted by Halloween art which is my absolute favorite time of year for being creative.

I have also been managing my own Facebook group if you are interested in checking it out. 

Your Sister In Art

Dar Bassie-Cripps
aka dardarbinx