Testing 1,2,3 Testing 1,2,3

I was poking around on the world wide web today and I came across another top ten list for sprucing up your blog.  The very first bullet point was "use a light background."  And then she went on to say "I won't look around a dark blog - it hurts my eyes."  And then she backed it with studies.  Hmmm.  I guess I can take a hint.  Or a kick in the pants.  So white.  Boring, but clean.  With a couple of my favorite colors to make ME happy when I visit.

So this is a test post and I really don't have anything new that I can share.  I contemplated sharing something very, very old, but that got ruled out.  Not from embarrassment, but from the sheer pain in the neck-ness of photographing or scanning 12x12 layouts.

However, I did download the Instagram FOR ANDROID app yesterday.  And yes, that's yelling.  Don't even get me started on the whole thing.  I have one word for you: Sneetches.  Ok, that's too vague.  I love the Dr. Suess book The Sneetches - you remember it, right?  There are the Star Belly Sneetches and the Plain Belly Sneetches.  Of course the Star Belly Sneetches are the cool ones! Duh!  And one day a man comes to town with a machine that will put stars on the bellies of the plain belly Sneetches.  And OF COURSE once the Plain Belly Sneetches have access to stars, stars instantly fall out of vogue.  The man re-jiggers his machine and makes it a star-off machine.  And then (of course) all the Sneetches are running through his star-off/star-on machine, throwing all their money at the man until they're broke and exhausted and no one can remember who was cool to start and who wasn't.  And I'll leave it at that...  ;)

So anyway, I loaded Instagram yesterday and suddenly everything needs to be photographed.

Like this cute and rusty Bug.  Which is cute enough already, but the little smiley painted on the window pushes it right over the top. CUTE.

And then we dyed Easter eggs today.  I am 43 years old and I don't think that I have ever ONCE dyed a good looking Easter egg.  I think every good looking egg I've ever seen must have been PhotoShopped.  Even the pictures I saw in 1979.  I don't think dying a good looking egg is even possible.  Aren't Easter eggs supposed to be pastel colored?  And no...the jewel tones are not an effect.

Did you notice the weird spot on that red one? (Ted said it looked like a buckeye. And damned if that's not an accurate assessment).  Well, we had 12 cups that were deep enough for the eggs, but that wasn't enough colors according to Molly.  The little Pyrex condiment dishes really aren't deep enough and that's what happens when the egg isn't fully dunked.

Maggie, the overachiever and artist that she is, looked at that wonky pale spot and said "That would look cool with a silhouette in it."  Um. Ok. I guess?  Well, no need to guess:

And can't everyone have a thought like that then pick up a fine point Sharpie and freehand Victorian woman's silhouette on an egg?  Hell, I couldn't even do the ovals she did around the lady's head.  Oh, and there's a matching Victorian man, too.  You'll just have to take my word on that.

Okay.  That's the end of my mic check.  Let me know if you like it.  If you hate it, pretend you didn't stop by. :P

The Game Day Chili project

So last week I shared the page and card I made using the Jillibean Soup Game Day Chili collection and mentioned that there was one other item left.  Well, once again I'm at work with not enough customers to keep me busy.  Thank goodness these slow periods come only occasionally...otherwise I'd have to spit polish my resume.

By the way, I wonder what my non-scrapping Facebook friends think when these weird, non-scrappy titles show up in their newsfeeds.  Yeah.  Nothing to see here, folks. Look away.

So anyway...

One of the things that I was asked to play with was a Maya Road acrylic ATC stand.  It came with four teeny, tiny little pieces of chipboard.  I thought about the different possibilities, but I have to admit: I tend to like my pictures BIG.  That's probably been one of the biggest challenges I faced when I switched to 8½x11, and these tiny pages weren't going to do.  So I started thinking.  Calendar? Not enough pages.  (Although, you could so easily add extra pages to this format) Luckily, the next thing that popped into my head was a keeper.  Ted plays travel baseball and I do take a lot of pictures, but there's other stuff I want to remember: names and numbers of his teammates, who they played and the final scores, and then Ted's highlights: home runs, good pitching, getting the game ball, that kind of thing.  The format is small, but I created a little pocket for each page and used my Cameo to cut tiny little tabbed pages that I can fill out and tuck in the pocket.  I know I'll need a couple of pages for each pocket, so they're cut and ready to go.

I'm really pleased with the way the project turned out and Ted  seemed to think it was a neat idea.  The Game Day Chili was the perfect line for this - sporty, fun, graphic, and not over-powering.

So here are some pictures:

So this is the cover.  I love the "for the record" title - it's just straight from the Silhouette store.  The Game Day Chili is kraft cardstock based, so I just flipped it over and cut it out using the plain side for easy readability.  I cut out 4 or 5 and stacked them all together to give it height.  Darn that Nichol Magouirk for getting me hooked on this technique.  I truly love it, but of course I'm going through paper like crazy and putting extra wear and tear on my blades and mats, but that's OK! It's worth it.  The L'Oreal of scrap techniques, I tell you!

Again, love the title, but this time it's Kerri Bradford: Studio from The Ol' Ballgame collection.  I love her work - it's so clean and graphic and she really prides herself on giving you a ton of options to play with.    Again, multiple layers for some dimension.  The pocket was cut from the blank side of the GDC (as I like to call it when I get tired from typing Game Day Chili over and over again).  I traced the curve of the chipboard page and cut it out carefully and adhered using Red Line Tape.  That stuff is pretty amazing.  Just make sure you're only sticking where you want something to stick for-ev-er.  Here's a secret: I don't actually cut any better than anyone else does.  The way to have that curve be just right is to take a sanding block to the edges to work out any of the hard edges and make the two sides become one.  I guess I should have mentioned that I adhered that stripe strip before I did the sanding.  But you knew that, right? ;)

Whereas I will unabashed proclaim my love for the other two titles, that will not be happening here.  I guess it's okay looks-wise (I can say this, since I just put it together using fonts on my computer) but this is the title that took about a day and a half and caused me to lose several fists-full of hair. That was the day my Cameo was acting up.  The title is fine, but every time I look at this I know my blood pressure will spike a little bit.

Not much to say here.  35 is Ted's number, so this is the page that I intend to record his hot-shot-ness.  Let's all hope this page doesn't end up blank at the end of the season. :P  This is Ted's first year on the A team and I'm worried that he's gone from big fish/little pond to normal fish/big pond.  That's the mother in me though.  He'll be fine.  It's me I'm worried about.  ;)

One other point of note.  The chipboard that came in the kit was standard grey.  I covered it in black cardstock (again, by tracing, cutting and sanding) and then used a Staz On ink pad to black up the edges.  I don't like the middles not matching.

I think this came out really neat.  It's one of my most favorite things that I've made in a while.  Up there with the owl treat boxes and the bird ornaments.  I shouldn't play favorites, but I do.  ;)

Thanks for stopping by!  I have three lines that I'm working on for April, so I'll have more to share later.  But of course, it'll be a while.  ;)

I finally get to share!

So way back in mid-February, I told you I was picked for the Cord Camera & Scrapbook Studio Design Team.  I also told you that I thought that meant that I'd be posting more often.  Ha ha ha ha.  I'm so funny. :P  No, actually, I probably will be, but I have to wait for my schtuff to be posted on the Scrapbook Studio Blog before I could share it here.  And of course that makes sense.  But boy, I've been chomping at the bit to show you what I made.

I got assigned Jillibean Soup Game Day Chili - which is right up my alley - it's kraft cardstock based, with a sports theme.  It's versatile enough for just about any sport and the colors are slightly muted primaries.  Since Ted's uniforms are all a bright, bright shade of red that are impossible to match, I like that this line doesn't clash with it.

I must admit that I had a little anxiety about whether it was "ok" to pair the kraft color with white and then I had a weird moment of clarity that said "if YOU like it, that's all that matters."  So I used the white with the kraft. I win! :P

I love the star paper - that is so versatile.  In an industry that loves pink and flowers and swirls and glitter, boy-friendly papers are to be cherished.  Could I use this line for girls? Absolutely! But I will always be glad to see new and fresh and fun and funky, especially when it works for boys.

Here's the card I made.  Here's my confession on this one: I do not consider myself a card maker.  Corollary confession: I am TERRIBLE at sending cards.  I want to.  In general, at least. I think about it inopportune times, like when I'm the shower: "I should make a thank you card for so-n-so."  And then by the time I'm dried and dressed the thought is long gone. Part of why I'm not a  card maker is because I'm not a stamper.  (I'm not a stamper because (A) I'm not good at it and (B) I am NOT going any where near that slippery slope.  I'm already broke from buying all these scrapbook supplies!)  At any rate, I'm always a little self-conscious about the cards I create.  Because they aren't stamped I feel like maybe I'm cheating, or they're some how not "real."  Yeah, I know in my head that that's a load of BS, but whatever.   However, for a coach, I like it.  Manly, themed, grungy, and direct.  And man-o-man, I love the dumb splatters across the bottom.  I just want to dribble October Afternoon Inkers on everything!

Alright, I'm actually blogging from work.  (Shhhh!)  I have one other project to share, but I'll have to show you that another day. Stay tuned though, because it was my favorite thing from this line.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Or so I've been told.

I cannot believe that I'm still chugging away on this mini book from our trip to RIT last August.  The last time I posted about this book was October 14th, and even that was the most boring thing ever written about  scrapbooking.  No, seriously, go look for yourself.  At least it's short.  And the funny thing is, it actually relates to what I'm sharing today.

This is embarrassing. I sell cameras for a living. I *know* photography. Grrrr.  The beautiful matte finish of the pictures does not capture well.  Sadly, my lovely pizza shot looks dull and grainy.  Alas, it's just the paper finish.

See that library card? See how it's mounted on the black index file folder tabbed whichamajig?  That was the subject of the most boring post ever.  But you know what? I dig it.  The book is still a work in progress and as such it isn't on the book rings yet.  Once it's all put together it'll be its own little page.  What's shown here is the journaling for the next page.

Here's the other side, (the journaling about lunch) shown with the next page.

That is not my favorite picture of Maggie, but it was a HOT weekend.  We all looked a little wilted. She just documented.  Sorry Maggie. :P  

The weekend we went my camera was off in repair.  I had decided while it was gone that I was going to sell it when it came back and, knowing that, I had ordered the D7000.  I had the highest of hopes that my new camera would arrive in time for our trip.  You  know when it showed up? Literally as we were walking into the registration area. That's when I got a text from my boss saying it had arrived. GAH!  For the trip I had a little Fuji Instax Mini camera.  Maggie had the Fuji I had given her for Christmas and Kerig had his camera.  These are the pictures that Maggie took when she was roaming around the campus on her own on Friday evening.  I was really surprised at how similar a lot of our shots were - the campus is huge and I thought I had gotten the "behind the scenes" tour with my former-RIT student/personal tour guide.  These are the pictures that Maggie took.

And these are the pictures I took. :P  One really neat thing about the Fuji Instax camera is the cute little photos.  One really frustrating thing about the Fuji Instax is that the cute little photos aren't very flexible when trying to cram five on a mini book page.  So I made me a pocket!  Take that, cute little Fuji Instax photos!  Besides, turns out my film got a little heat damaged and all the colors are somewhat muted.  But I like the pocket. Right?

Right?

The first "spread."

And the second.

I am not patting myself on the back.
But that's so dern cute.














I'm really close to being done this project and I'm so happy that I can end it on a happy note.

Thanks for stopping by!

Change paper size is code for "Shape up...OR ELSE."

I've never hidden my love for my Silhouettes, and now my Cameo.  But as with all true love, there occasionally exists some strife, dare I say turmoil.  Oh heck let's call it what it was: sheer, outright, hair-pulling frustration.

A week ago Thursday I was working on a project in which I was cutting a word out multiple times so that they could be stacked one upon the next to create quite a bit of height.  Only problem was it wasn't coming out right.  It seemed that the cut wasn't going all the way through the cardstock.  The word was quite small - about 2 inches long and a half inch high - I wondered if it was just too small? But no, I've done this before with great success.  I slowed down the machine's speed to 1 and turned my blade from 5 to 7. I tried again with the new settings and the paper was shredded. Hmm.  Well, maybe seven was too deep, so I changed the blade to 6.  Same results.  It was towards the end of the day and I had been using it heavily, so I decided to shut everything down and let it rest.  I seem to remember that this kind of end-of-a-hard-work-day the machine gets funky but after some time off it works fine.  I liken it to all the times the computer is being weird and rebooting it solves the problems.

And so I let it rest until Tuesday.  But I have a deadline, so it kind of NEEDS to work.  Sadly, my Cameo really didn't care about my deadline. The same kinds of problems persisted.  The good news is, I had just gotten a back up blade and mat.  Not because I thought I needed them just yet, but because when you need a new one, you NEED a new one and I wanted to have one ready.  It didn't seem that the blade or the mat was the issue, but a brand new blade and mat would take out some variables - maybe, with luck, that's all it would take.  Only, no luck.  I spent literally six hours methodically changing the blade depth, the speed (I don't think that running the machine at 1 will actually cause the paper to shred or not cut through, but I tried it just in case), double cut on and off, I changed the size of my word, I tried white cardstock instead of the black, I uninstalled and re-installed the software three times...to no avail.  I wrote to the customer service email and outlined my problem and they  suggested that perhaps my new blade was defective and I could send it back and they'd send me a new one. The problem with that was, I was swapped the old blade back in and they were both doing the same thing.  And worse yet,  the machine had begun making "errant cuts" - with every "send cut" I did, there would be some random cut, either inside the word or outside, that wasn't part of the design. At the end of six hours I had less hair and less cardstock, but I didn't have a Cameo that was working properly.

I'll be honest: I was exhausted and irritated, frustrated, mad, and because it was a gift, I was also sad.  I reached out to some folks and it was suggested that I call Silhouette America's customer support number.  I couldn't imagine what they'd be able to do over the phone, but it was worth a try.  I wasn't home again during the hours that the customer service people were in until Friday so the call would have to wait a bit.

One thing that I can say about myself is that I can be a little bit of a pit bull if there's a problem I want to solve.  I will bite ahold and not let go until I'm satisfied that I've tried everything.  That said, I decided to sit down with the machine again on Thursday night.  Once again I uninstalled and re-installed the software. I unplugged the Cameo entirely and let it sit while I rebooted my computer. Once everything was up and running again I reset my preferences to what I had previously called "normal" and tried making a cut.  Hmm.  Modified success.  The cut was clean (for the most part - I was back to using the original bade, which now definitely needs to be replaced) and there were no errant cuts, but the entire thing was shifted to the right by one inch.  I suppose I should be happy with that and just accept it.  But truly, that's NOT right.  That's not what my software sent to the machine - or at least, that shouldn't be what the software sent. But I cut what I needed for the project and would call customer service in the morning.

On Friday I made the call. I explained my issue and the rep began the infuriating process of asking inane questions.  I know why they do this, in fact, I have to do it too when someone presents me with a broken camera.  I'm certain I've offended many a camera user by testing their batteries, but it needs to be done. And yet, my patience had long since left the building and I am embarrassed to admit that I wasn't especially pleasant with the woman.  She asked how I was lining up the mat when inserting it into the machine.  I told her it was a solid inch off and that I wasn't loading the mat an inch wrong.  AND, I had been using the machine pretty heavily since I got it for Christmas and I hadn't had this issue before. (snotty!) She asked if I was using 12x12 inch cardstock. I told her sometimes, but not now.  She asked if  I had told the software what size paper I was using.  I told her that I didn't even know how to do that. And -again- snottily pointed out that I had been putting small pieces of paper through with no issues prior to this. I then heard my tone of voice and I was pretty much mortified. This woman was trying to help me.  And it certainly wasn't her fault that the machine was acting up.  And of course she had to start at the beginning - she doesn't know what I've tried.  I apologized for being so defensive (because really, I wasn't blaming her for the issue, I was feeling like I was being called a moron for not knowing how to work the machine) and I asked her to walk me through the process.

Just in case you're interested, this is what she's talking about.  I've circled the icon on top that gets you into the page setting and the big oval is the paper setting size (even though it's not really marked as such). The oval has the presets, but just under that is where you can tell it what odd-ball size you're using.  And as long as my mat is new, I'll sent even inch by inch size scraps in there.  I'm cheap, and I'm not cutting into full size sheets unless I really need to.

Having walked me through that I told her I'd give it a try and call back if it didn't work.  From her response, I think that she was thinking she'd wait with me while I tried it, but honestly, I *knew* this wasn't the issue and I recognized that even thought I'd apologized I was still carrying my snotty attitude and I needed to calm down.

So I got off the phone, set the paper size to 5x7 and sent a design to cut.

And that gosh darn cut was perfectly crisp and EXACTLY where it was supposed to be with no errant cuts or other issues.  And THAT, my friends, is how Silhouette America keeps its machines in check "change paper size" is code for "You'd better shape up  OR ELSE."

I spent the rest of the day trying to stump the machine, to no avail.  Unless *I* did something wrong (like send patterned paper through with the blade set to 5) everything came out perfectly.

(I should note that one of the things that I did to try to stump it was set the paper size back to 12x12 and sent a smaller sheet through.  It worked without a hitch.)

I realize that this is a hideously long post, but believe me I tried to keep it short.  Heck, I didn't even tell you about how I tried to hook up my Silhouette SD (which was in fine working order when I set it aside in favor of the Cameo) and the display was showing what looked like Hebrew characters.  But I will say this: I learned a lesson.  Don't write. Call.  Don't wait. Call.  There's someone there whose entire job is to iron out our frustrations.  But it's my job to not let those frustrations grow into an unmanageable emotional mess.

Oh.  You know what else I didn't mention? That I caved in and bought a sewing machine.  Damn that Karen Grunberg.  ;)

Washi goes practical

"We need volunteers."  Every mother's favorite sentence. ;)

Instead of going through the whole back story I will just say:

Washi tape is the perfect stuff to hold down die cuts for sending through the printer.  Yes, I still used some Dotto to hold it down. But since I was making 35 copies of these I had to run the template through 7 times. And Hello. I'm cheap and didn't want to reapply that much Dotto.  To me, Dotto is sticky gold - I don't mind the investment, but I'm going to be careful how I use it. ;)  And it's not like Washi tape is cheap, but I think it's unlikely I'm going to burn through that roll any time soon.  I think I've only used like 3 inches so far, so I figured using another inch and a half would be okay. Plus, I found out that it's just the right amount of tacky - I could tape down the banner pieces, run it through the printer, easily remove the die cuts and then stick the next set down.  Made the process super easy.

Here's what it looks like after those 5 are removed:

And I have to admit, seeing the Washi tape cut all tiny like that inspires me to want to use it.  I've mostly seen it in larger chunks, and I've tried that but somehow it feels forced on my pages.  I think these tiny snippets look like something I could pull off.  I'll let you know...

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee! (that's my excited noise)

But I'll be honest, I only make that noise on the inside.  But my insides have been squealing "Eeeeeeeeeeee" since Monday afternoon when I got the email saying that I had been chosen to be on Scrapbook Studio's inaugural Design Team.  I think that's so cool and I can hardly wait to get started!

Given this news, I might be around a little more often.  I'm filled with good intentions, so I have high hopes for creating more and sharing more.  And definitely blathering more.  But probably with cleaner language. ;)

And while I'm here I wanted to share the army of owl Valentine treats that Molly and I made for her class:

I showed the empty box prototype a while back and said I was going to frou-frou it up.  I don't think I managed "frou-frou", but I am pleased with the addition of the conversation bubble, which is adhered to a Tootsie Pop.  And heck, to 5th graders, the candy is the critical embellishment. By the way, if you ever want to make these, they're readily available in the Silhouette store, but my advice is cut and assemble and FILL one before committing to the whole project.  I would have gone broke had I gone with the original size box.  It wasn't that much bigger, but somehow filling it took a lot more candy.

Speaking of candy, if you're ever in the Cleveland area, carve out an hour to visit b.a.Sweeties.  It's not pretty by any means, but it sure is fun to walk through the store and see all the candy from our childhood.   Because they sell a lot of candy loose, I was able to buy just what I needed - lots of pre-wrapped pink, purple and red candies.  I put Zotts in there.  Remember those?  They were the hard candies with the fizzy center?  I hope the kids enjoyed those, they're my favorite!

Alrighty. To tell the truth, I really need to get going.  I have an oral presentation tomorrow in my modern geometry class, and I've been procrastinating preparing the PowerPoint.  I will be so happy tomorrow at 10:30 when this whole massive project is done!

Thanks for stopping by! And don't forget to add Cord's Scrapbook Studio Blog to your bookmarks.  It's always been a good read, but I think it just got even more exciting.

And now it's PERMANANT

I think my mojo is backpacking across Europe.  It seems to have been gone for an awfully long time.  Today I decided that I was going to scrap something, ANYTHING, with or without it.  I printed out some pictures.  That only sucked away took about two hours.

Aside: I cannot say enough good things about Inkpress PhotoChrome Luster paper. Fantastic stuff. Professional looking, the same weight and feel as traditional photofinishing paper.  Gorgeous. And as an added bonus, it's less expensive than Epson paper.

Which leads me to: I recently picked up some fancy Epson paper.  It was heavy weight with a lovely luster finish.  And maybe if I weren't a scrapbooker I'd think it was perfect.  Certainly it wouldn't sag and buckle in a frame like lighter weight paper would.  But I am a scrapbooker and it was a barrel-full frustration and it looked like poo when I cut it.  I'm sticking with my Inkpress from here on out.

So anyway, I spent a better part of the day sitting at my scraptable doing a whole lot of nothing.  Ted came in and out several times and when I finally had something  going we had a little exchange:

Ted: "Oh no. You're scrapping Shoreline Singers?"
Me: "Uh. Yeah. What's the matter with that?"
Ted: "Now it'll be permanent."

So there you have it.

Nothing amazing. But like I said, my mojo is on a drinking spree in Dusseldorf, so this was the best I could really expect.  And I'll let you in on a little secret. This is actually Shoreline Singers v2.0.  The first time around I worked from the top down and decided to do the journalling on the bottom after the big picture, the title and the borders were down.  But I'm an adventurous gal. So I wrote it up, did a couple of test prints to make sure everything was lined up correctly and then crammed 3 to 4 layers of cardstock and photopaper back into the printer. Yeah. Not my wisest move.  But in fairness, I've had Epson printers that I could shove all kinds of things into.  Apparently my R1900 is a little more delicate.  And what happened was that it pulled it in a little and then spun its wheels a bit, then laid the print down right at the top across the hounds tooth and the the title. It actually looked kinda cool, and I was able to send it through so that it printed on the bottom.  But *I* knew that it was a mistake. So I redid it.

The fonts are Katfish LET and Impact for the title and AvantGarde BK for the journalling.

Thanks for stopping by.  And if you see my mojo, tell it I'm missing it...

Hello again old friend!

Been a while, huh? I'd say I missed you, but honestly? No time for that! December in retail is rough. December in retail while finishing up my first math class in over 20 years? Even more fun!  But in reality, as busy as it was, it was the best December I've had in eons.

So I shared that bird ornament that I made.  I wanted to show the final product.  Ted is selling Malley's chocolate bars for his Shoreline Singers trip. I have literally cases of these chocolate bars so I figured I'd use the opportunity to unload a few. Or 26. ;)  So here's the what Ted and Molly handed off to their teachers for Christmas:

I don't know what my problem was the night I took the picture (although, the fact that it was like 1 a.m. might explain it), but that is one crappy ass picture!  Ugh. Very uneven exposure.  But it'll have to do, because it's the only thing left of this project. So it's two Malley's bars (Crunch, to be specific, because the  pink labels of the Pretzel bars would have been just wretched), wrapped in a little kraft paper, a wide satin ribbon tied in a simple knot, and the ornament tied to that.

Look at all those birdies!

Riddle me this: Why didn't I make one for myself?? Silly me!

So moving right along!  What's up next?  Two things: Valentines Day and Layout A Day. These two concepts don't really jive together all that well.  While I haven't actually signed up for LOAD yet, if I do I need to kick out any Valentine's goodies sooner rather than later.

Oh! And guess what? The World's Most Wonderful Boyfriend (it's in all caps because it's official) got his lucky girlfriend a BRAND. NEW. CAMEO.  Did you hear the Bob Barker Price is Right announcer voice? If you don't you should reread that last sentence with the proper inflection.  Go ahead. I'll wait.

So yeah. New Cameo.  Woo Hoo!   But I have to admit - sort of feeling a little pressure.  Like "here's this amazing tool! Make AMAZING THINGS! HURRY! NOW!"  Only wow, I think that pressure is sitting on my creative mojo.  It'll come back, but I probably have to stop yelling at it and wait for it to ease back into the room.

In the meantime, I'm kinda jazzed about this:

There's nothing actually creative about this. It's even done in the same color scheme shown in the Silhouette library.  And - shhhh, don't tell the manfriend, but it didn't even require the larger format of the Cameo.   It's not finished yet, I need to add a tag with a Valentine greeting to it, and maybe a handle.  BUT, I think it's adorable. I asked Molly what she thought of it and she liked it, so I'm going to make a ton of them for Valentine's.  I'll stop at b.a.Sweeties  and pick up pink and red and white candies to fill it.  I think it'll be great.  I'm excited about it...  Stay tuned.  This is just the first draft, I'm hoping to tweak it a bit to bring on full on adorable.

Hoping to see you again soon.

"I feel..."

To say that I'm participating in Your Story Matters would be a gross overstatement.  However, the prompts are coming in and they make me want to scrap, to tell my story.  And maybe after the holidays, maybe during semester break I'll add it to the piles of stuff that I want to do.

But the first prompt came in a couple days ago around midnight and I read it before heading to bed.  "I feel..."  And I could barely sleep for thinking about the way "I feel."  I tried to sum up what I feel and I couldn't.  I feel happy. And excited.  And focused.  I feel hopeful, and excited, and blessed. I feel optimistic.  I feel loved, and I am oozing love back at my family.  It's weird, really, for me.  I'm not generally a "happy" person.  I consider myself a realist.  But all this good stuff is real, and there's nothing wrong with appreciating it.  And I am.  I am filled with wonder and amazement at my good fortune.

I started thinking about how to finish the sentence.  And I decided that I am 'over flowing" - over flowing with happiness and hopefulness and direction and love.  So then I thought about what that might look like.  An explosion? A rainbow of colors? Hearts (for love), stars (for the bright future), butterflies (for the change)? Yes.

That's probably not the best picture of me, but I like it.  It's mock irritation at my headset, which mooshes my ears and makes me cranky.  I wear them when I take my online classes.  The headset makes me cranky, but the classes make me happy. I thought it was a good place to start my excitement explosion.

Clear out of nowhere.

So for the past couple of days I've been stewing on Christmas card design, and then today, clear out of nowhere, I decide that I wanted to try my hand at papercrafting a Christmas tree ornament.  Why not take that paper layering technique apply it to a Christmas shape and color scheme and add a whole for a ribbon?

Well, DUH!

And that's what I came up with. ☻

Did I mention that I did True Scrap this past weekend? It was really fantastic - and that really means something coming from me.  I don't spend money easily, and it's hard to 'wow' me with regard to scrapping education.  But the variety of classes, the caliber of the presentations, the amount of inspiration? AMAZING.

I mention this because the card I shared yesterday was fairly me-ish: that color palette, the circles, the "joy" title (that I've used several times before) are all very me.

This bird?  Maybe a little less me and a little more True Scrap inspired.  And that's a-ok.  Otherwise, woo-wee, that was a lot of money to stay in my own little box. ;)

But there was some serious distressing and Glimmer Mist flinging going on and it made me want to get in on the action.  That would be Nic Howard, Erin Bassett, Francine Cloudin and Jen McGuire all crowding my brain with messy goodness.

This back end that's curling up?  That's Nicole Magouirk's influence.  She's been doing this thing lately where instead of adhering things down nice and tidy and flat, she's letting some edges ride up in a little.  Love that.  The back side of the bird's tail has some white paper flakes that I didn't notice until I saw them huge on the photo.  That's been fixed. ;)

Oh.  That's juicy.

So I really dig the way this came out.  When the Ted and Molly came home I asked them if they'd want to give this ornament to their teachers as Christmas gifts and they both gave an enthusiastic yes. So after dinner I cut out pieces parts for 13 more.  Dang those middle schools with different teachers in every subject area. :P

Not sure about the glitter smears.  I'm not in love.  Molly says that it looks weird because it's just in the three spots.  Not sure that's going to make the final cut.  But I have a couple of days to decide since that's the very last step.  If you want to cast a vote one way or the other to shove me off the fence, I will happily listen to your opinions!

As always, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to look.  I love sharing and I hope something here spoke to you.

The prototype

You know you're a crafting nerd when your working on your Christmas cards and while you're settling on what the final design will be you happily refer to it as the prototype.

I have only the faintest idea where this will end up, but I like the beginnings.  For whatever reason, I ♥♥♥ the Dr. Suess color schemes for Christmas - real red with a lime-yish green and even light blues.  I don't know if I associate those colors with watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas but that color scheme makes me happy.

Check it out:

Not exactly the best shot, but you get the inspiration hopefully.

Clearly this isn't "it".  Still just playing around with color choices, placement, dies...and the jury's still out on the baker's twine bow.  I'm not sold on it and while I can see myself stacking 7 layers of the word "Joy", tying that bow on every card might push me over the edge.

I have to shop for paper.  Wish I had come up with this a month ago, before Archivers had that big sale - I would have bought more of that light blue ledger paper.

Also contemplating this combo:

That background paper is from SEI, and while it's new-to-me, I don't know if I'll be able to still get it in any quantity.  Plus, I'm not sold on whether it's "blue" enough.  Maybe I need to break down and find some actual blue holiday themed paper? Crazy talk!

I'm positively giddy that I'm making cards this year.  I haven't made cards in literally ten years.  This year I'm starting early and keeping it realistic.  Eeeeeeee!

The light at the end of the tunnel...

I take two classes every semester, but this semester one class is online and one is on campus.  What's the big difference? The online class is only 8 weeks long, whereas the on-campus class is 16 weeks long.  Lest you think that the 8 week class is easier: no no no.  Let me repeat: NO! They cram 16 week's worth of material into 8 weeks, and that means multiple assignments a week, reading out the wazoo, and writing. God Almighty, I hate writing.  (at least academically)

But: HOORAY! Today was my last day of my online class.  I still have two assignments to turn in, due next Wednesday, but the big stuff is behind me.  And I simply could not be happier about this.

At any rate, tonight I had my headset on and I was watching the power point while sitting at my scrap table and something in my Making Memories desktop carousel caught my eye.  It was the enormous Sharpie marker I bought a while back, used once for its intended purpose and then forgotten about.  In online learning you're watching a power point, and usually it moves at a snail pace.  One of the things that I've found is that I need to have some mindless activity to do, because if my eyes aren't engaged on something mindless, they'll find something mind-full to focus on and take my brain with it.  I mentioned shopping at Hollo's Papercraft in a recent post. In a more recent trip to Hollo's I picked up what I think are dividers for an index card file box. They're super think, and frankly, I'm not fond of the color.  The stack I bought was about 3 and a half inches think and I think $3.99...so yeah, crazy huge quantity of something I'm "eh" about.

Enter the gigantic Sharpie marker:

So yeah.  It's not super black, but it's better than it was before. And I'm suddenly looking at this stack of dividers wondering how many that marker can color before dying.

So what will I do with this? I'm thinking I'll punch holes in them and use them as mini-pages in my RIT mini-book.

And yes, I WILL finish that project.  I've lost a lot of steam because of the forced school break I've been on, but I've invested too much money into this to abandon it.  That said, I am excited to get back to the table.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

I am soooo green.

Look familiar?

(I'm all about recycle/reuse!)

This is actually my third version of this super hero boy.  But you know what?  Why do we need to reinvent the wheel?  Tonight I actually thought to save the Silhouette cuts as one, sized right file so that next time I don't reinvent the wheel I can do it even faster.  If I were really smart I'd just sit down and make 5 of these and file them away.  I think it's a really fun thank you card for guys.  

So maybe you're wondering why I needed to make a guy-friendly thank you card?  Yeah, I figured, but I'm going to write about it anyway. :P  

So today I was VERY excited to go to the eye doctor.  My right eye has been wonky and my near vision has been making me nuts.  I guess my excitement made me leave a little earlier than I needed to.  My eye doctor is in the next town over, and just after I got off the highway my car started to drive funny.  I decided to hobble through the intersection and pull into a gas station.  I parked, got out and heading around the back side of the car knowing already what I'd see: a flat tire.  Only it wasn't standard flat it was a FLAT flat.  I'm not going to lie. I did the girl thing: I called the boy.  Who basically said "You're going to have to change the tire."  Which is kinda funny, since up until he said it, it hadn't occurred to me that I would be doing the dirty work.  Prior to that I was thinking tow trucks and magic fairies. So I get off the phone and start digging through my trunk for my doughnut and my jack.  I set to work and made about every mistake possible, not the least of which was not pushing the jack far enough back.  So I'm cranking and cranking and cranking and basically the jack is just smooshing the fiberglass cosmetic underside of my car instead of actually lifting it up.  Eventually - but not before somehow ripping the skin off my ring finger and bleeding all over the place - I realized my error and started the crank it back down.  

A little aside:  Most of you don't know me on a day to day basis.  Here's a ditty for you: I dress like it's imperative that I'm ready for game of frisbee at any given time.  So here I am, short hair, polo shirt, knee shorts, and skater shoes.  And sitting there trying to change that tire my prevailing thought was "I wish I were wearing a dress."

Just as I had the jack cranked back down I hear a man say "Do you need any help?"  Turns out he and his twin brother were having lunch at the Burger King across the street.  He confessed that they had questioned each other about whether I was a man or a woman.  (Fair enough - they were inside and across five lanes of traffic and - well - it's not like I was wearing a dress.)

So the card is for Phillip (who did most of the work) and his brother Patrick.  Because I wanted to say: 

"Gosh, I just don't have time to scrapbook..."

I don't know about any one else, but that is the one statement that grates my nerves more than any other when it comes to our hobby.  I would respect you more if you said, flat out "Really? Cutting and pasting stuff?  How fifth grade."  I guess because I chalk that statement up to the fact that everyone is allowed their opinion (and maybe, sadly, because I kind of agree.  But screw it.  Fifth grade was FUN.)  But saying that you don't have time for it sort of implies that I must be rolling in free time. I'm not.  We all chose how to "spend" our time, we "budget" it carefully the less we have.  We understand what a commodity time is.  If you wanted to go to the beach for a week and money was tight, you'd start spending less in other areas - if you save $20 a week by clipping coupons, you can put $20 towards your vacation fund.  Time is the same way - you carve out little niches of time from other activities.  Maybe you get up earlier.  Check. I'm doing that.  Maybe you watch less t.v.  Yup, doing that, too.  Maybe you try to use every "free" moment wisely? YES.  Becoming a master at that.

Today I took an hour of time that I probably would have spent dragging out a homework assignment and spent that hour scrapbooking.  Did I skimp on my homework? No.  I just decided to NOT check Facebook or email incessantly.

I hate to be all preachy about the time thing.  While I was doing the page I had this nagging voice in the back of my head saying "You don't have time to doing this!"  But it occurred to me that I did. I earned that time.  I deserved that time. Hell, I needed that time.

And fortunately, a hour working on a mini book goes a long way.

Two things:
1. Holy cow. Still in love with my new lens!
2. Not happy with the way the pictures printed out for this page. (The ones actually on the page) I don't know why, they were all bright and vibrant, but some reason the bottom two kept coming out super dingy.  I don't like it, but I'm moving on.

I dig the multiple layers of butterflies.  I've been using pop dots on previous pages, but it feels kinda flimsy, and on the smaller punches it's hard to get them positioned perfectly.  Not certain, however, about the twine and the banner pieces.  But it's all glued down, so we're moving on.  Nothing to see here, people. Keep it moving.

I have this running joke that there's always at least one typo/dropped word per anything I write.  I privately refer to it as my "Where's Waldo?"  As in, every page has one, see if you can find it. This time is no different. I missed half a word - "even" should read "evening". Whoops. Oh well.  Moving on.

So hey.  Here's a ditty for you.  That notebook paper is from Basic Grey.  If you do your journalling in Word you can go into "paragraph" and change the "Line spacing" to "Exactly" at "17 pt" and the text will be spaced perfectly to sit on the lines.

I'm tempted to assume that you know how to do the rest, but just in case:
Once you type up your journalling, you print it on regular printer paper.  Apply a little repositional   adhesive to the top line of text.  Hold the paper up to a light, position the lined paper so that the words "rest" on the lines and adhere the papers together.  Put the paper back into the printer in the right orientation so that when you hit "print" again (and you will), the text will print in the exact same spot...only this time, it'll go on the patterned paper that's now adhered to your original text.  Voila: you've now printed your journalling on lined paper and the text is nice and lined up.  :)  And of course you already know that you can use this same technique to print on tags, journalling spots, heck, you could even print on ribbon if you were so inclined.

Thanks for stopping by.  I appreciate that you all are humoring me through this very long process.

Now, if you'll do me a favor: Journaling? Or journalling?  I'm thinking two Ls to keep the "a" short.  I wish they'd just give in and make it a word already!  Anyway, please let me know which way you think...I'm starting to go a little nuts on this one!

Happy Birthday Manfriend!

I am not really a card maker.  Hell, I'm not really a card giver.  (Sad to say, but it's true.)  However, Kerig seems to think that they're a sign of his specialness.  So I humor him with one every so often.

Without further ado:

 

And a peek inside:

Sadly, this took me about 2 hours.  No lie.  How is that?  So I'm wondering: Does this happen to anyone else? I'm not saying I'm a speeding scrapbooker, but when I spend 2 hours on a scrapbooker on a page at least I feel like I've done something. This?  If I had know I was going to do this I could have whipped it together in 10 minutes rather than fretting over it for so long.  

But he said it was sweet.  And he actually peeked into the envelope to see if it was handmade or not, and that made me happy.

Happy Birthday, Kerig. 

The Circle Journal: The final chapter

I did it.  I bought Nikon's brand-spankin'-new 40mm micro-Nikkor lens.

Isn't she beautiful?
A: SHE IS!










So with my index finger itching to play, the question became: What can I shoot?
A: My circle journal page from EONS ago.

Remember the Circle Journal project? We started passing around our books almost exactly two years ago.  I had the presence of mind to take pictures of my book, showing the cover, the sign in page and the welcome page.  But when it came time to make my first page on the theme I forgot to take a picture before passing it on.  So out it went and it didn't come back to me for a solid year and a half.  And I still forgot to take a picture of it.

Today I rectified that.

Yeah.  I guess I kinda got carried away there.  Who cares.  I love the way the colors pop and the way the lens made taking these pictures so much fun instead of so much frustration.  Very pleased with my purchase. :)

Squeezing it in.

I joked with Maggie tonight that it was going to take 6 years to finish this minibook.  Lordy, I hope that was just a joke.  I'm not going to whine about life getting in the way, but I am going to whine about my printer getting in the way.  I busted my patootie yesterday thinking that if I got all kinds of stuff done yesterday I could sneak in maybe 2 hours of scrapping during the day and another 3 hours at night.  And that sounds like oodles of time, but it's really nothing when you're as slow a scrapper as I am.  But I figured I could print (actually reprint) some photos, but I really had issues.  My laptop monitor desperately needs to be calibrated.  Everything I print comes out super dark.  I decided to switch to my desktop and try it from there.  What a nightmare.  First of all, I've got PhotoShop Elements 6 on that machine and PSE9 on the laptop.  It's funny how quickly you assimilate to later versions of software.  I really had to think about how to do it the old way.  Then when it came time to actually send it to print I found I had I hadn't installed the print drivers for my new(er) printer on my old(er) computer.  If I weren't so lazy I could find the CD, but that seemed like a lot of work since I have no clue where that CD might be, but I suspect in the printer box...down in the basement...in a weird closet that requires moving a sofa to get into.  So I decided to download the driver. THREE. HOURS. LATER. I was able to start printing...except at that point I had to get back to real life.

So yeah.  That's a glimpse into how "scrapping" went today. Bleh.  The unfun, chore-y side of scrapbooking.

I think that tomorrow is the big day.  The day when I plunk down cold hard cash for the 40mm.  Hopefully that'll help me stop bitching about the photo process. :P  Or maybe not.  I have pictures of the whole page, but I don't love them, so I'm just going to share two details:

Old meets new.  New BoBunny metal butterfly.  Very, very old little weird waxy clear balls.  They're not beads, they're not glass, they're not perfectly round.  They're weird, and aside from telling you what they're not, I really can't describe them.  And they could be interpreted as butterfly poo, but I'm thinking more of the trail of motion.  Work with me here.

Hmmm.  I need to master making the messy little roses from the Die-namic die I bought from SimonSaysStamp.  Mine aren't nearly as cute as the samples they show!  That's ok, it's gonna be crushed in 2 weeks anyway.  I love the teal and orange combo.

So yeah.  Got one page of the minibook done today - and by page I mean the left side. Doesn't seem like much, but I'm happy with it.  I'm sneaking it where I can.  And that makes me happy, too.

Progress

So today was a monumental day in these parts.  Turns out things got ironed out which made approaching my scrap table doable.  And after a day of wrestling with school stuff I really needed to have a chance to play.

So here's what I came up with today:



It's funny how things happen in scrapbooking.  I only had the one photo that I wanted to use on this page. Later pages will have tons of photos and collages of photos, but for this one, I just wanted to highlight Maggie.  I also wanted to lay the basic groundwork on the journaling, which meant I needed a bigger space.  Boy, everything felt awkward, and I had already cut and mentally committed to the grunge argyle strip.  ("Mentally committed to"?  I'm keeping that!)  No matter where I placed my journaling block (or the rectangle of paper used to represent my journaling block - does anyone else do that?) it was awkward.  At first my block was horizontal, which meant that it had to be placed high or low on the page, or else it was going to completely cover the argyle strip.  Then I remembered that on my last trip to Hollo's I picked up these glassine envelops. I can't for the life of me remember if I had some purpose in mind for them, so if I can't remember then I think they're fair game.  I loved that adding them and slipping the journalin card into the pocket so seamlessly solved my problems.  The flow works, I'm not covering my argyle strip.  It's functional AND cool.  And I *think* I have enough envelops to get through the book, although at this point I don't feel like I have to use them on every page.

Some detail shots.  I am really frustrated by these.  I pulled out my point and shoot to take these shots only to find my battery was exhausted.  Well poop.  The one really nice thing about a point and shoot camera is built in macro capability.  But that's okay, I can deal - it's not like I don't have a shiny new D7000 to use!  So I pull that out and then kind of make faces at my camera bag.  Do I use my 105mm macro?  It has close focusing capabilities, but it's slow to focus, kinda hard to hand hold, and the working distance is about 5 miles.  At one point in time, I L♥VED that lens.  But that was on my film camera.  It's just not the same with digital.  Here's a secret: in the very near future, I am going to splurge and buy this 40mm Micro-Nikkor lens.  Hopefully it'll bring the joy back to macro photography.  The detail shots above aren't macro, just tightly cropped parts of much bigger pictures.  I suppose it doesn't really matter to others, but it kinda bugs me.  

What else am I frustrated with? Getting adhesive on those teeny-tiny butterflies!  Trying to figure out what ribbon-y type stuff to put in the metal word tag!  The way the green star looks - I should have stopped before dumping a third later of glitter on it.  

What do I like so far?  That I haven't used plain cardstock at all yet (Oh, except for the layers under the titles - but that doesn't count.) I like the way the page looks with the clear title pages on top (the way it will be when it's all done.)  I like the envelops and the vertical journaling - I think that's going to work out well.  I like that I'm using flowers and butterflies, and that it feels "authentic" - I feel like a poser using that word, but in the past, trying to use them felt forced.  But in this case they feel more natural.  I think the difference is that this time they really mean something to me - beauty and changes that are taking place.

So that's where I am today.  I probably won't have a chance to play again until next week. But it's nice to know it's there where I need it.