Looking outside.

I'm having a hard time lately. January has been one long, unwelcome emoticoaster ride. And I want off.  I've had some highs, but mostly I've had some low-low lows.

But here's the one thing that you can count on: when you look outside yourself and do something nice for someone else, it boosts you.  There's no denying - making someone else smile makes you smile.  Scheming to make someone smile puts a spring in your step for days.

Maggie is off at school. Valentine's Day is coming, and it seems the proper thing to do is to send off a little package full of love.  As luck would have it, Maggie sent me a text last week saying "Um, can you send me the spare car key?" Perfect! Now I have a deadline and an excuse.  I'd already begun gathering the supplies, but it's no fun saying "I'm sending you a surprise package, so check your  mailbox."  (Problem with kids these days is that they don't get snail mail, so there's no reason to check their mailboxes.)  So yay! "I'm sending the key, but also a pair of socks and gloves that you left here" - perfect upgrade from envelope-with-key to an actual package.

I made a mobile out of cardstock.  There's no good picture of it, because it was flipping impossible.  But, here's a little show and tell, maybe it'll make sense.

This is the ring that everything hangs from.  It's just two concentric circles with holes in it for the string to tie into.   If you look closely one of those circles is an oval.  Here's why.  I cut out six of these circles and used spray adhesive to stack them together.  When you do this, paper becomes very stiff and stable - perfect for bearing a little weight.  The oval is so that when I stack them all together I can line it up properly and get it exact.

From there I cut loads and loads of hearts and keys and "I♥u"s and "love" words from red, black, white and pink. The keys, i♥u and love were all at the bottoms of the mobile.  I cut them a bunch of times each and stacked them with spray adhesive so make them good and strong.  I tied the string around them and then layered hearts up the strings in randomly and tied the other end of the string onto the mobile's ring.  From there, I added some string to the top for hanging.  To be honest, that was the only hard part - I'm not certain I tied it perfectly straight, so it hangs a wee bit wonky, but it's okay.

So there's the best shot I could get, complete with the cheesy late 80's wallpaper that's in my scraproom.  Don't hate.  ;)

The string is from a massive thing of baker's twine I got from Crate and Barrel years ago.  It's going to last me a hundred years. Bonus: it cost $8.99.  Random craft score there!

It's become a fun tradition for the kids to find a little Valentine treat on the morning of the 14th.  I absolutely adore the fun Valentine's things at Target.  So I usually pick up some tumblers or bowls to fill with candy.  Maggie won't be here this year, so her cup had to be mummified in plastic wrap to hold everything in place.  Down at the bottom there's a big Hershey's Kiss, then it's layered with holiday M&Ms, Hershey's hearts, kisses and conversation hearts, topped with more kisses.  And a big box of Red Hots and a bag of Twizzlers Pull'n'Peels, just for good measure.  I sincerely hope this candy lasts for a long time, otherwise I'll have to send her new jeans to celebrate St. Patty's Day.





All I know is this: as crappy as my week was, making that mobile and packing up these treats and standing in line at the post office made me HAPPY.  And getting a "YOU ROCK" text today along with a picture of the mobile hanging in her dorm - perfect bliss.

'Tis the season!

(To rack your brains for fun/appropriate/affordable teacher gifts)

It's that time of year to express our thanks to the teachers that put up with educate our rambunctious darling children.  I kid, I kid with the crossed out words - I actually think my kids are pretty swell.  However, I've chaperoned enough field trips to know that those kids exist.  And if my kid were that kid my end-of-the-year teacher gift would be a Sam's Club sized bottle of Advil.

Fortunately, having well behaved kids allows me to get a little more creative with my gift giving:

I know a lot of people poo-poo practical gifts.  I am not one of them.  I would rather give you a really nice pizza cutter that gets used once a week and saves you frustration than give you a ceramic tchotchke that you have to dust.

  Molly recently brought home a note from school saying that the kids had pretty much consumed all their consumables.  I.e., they were all out of pencils and crayons and glue sticks, and hey, wouldn't it be nice if you sent some more in, cuz hey, it is their education that we're talking about here.

That got me to thinking about how much teachers need to share with kids.  And how, I imagine, it's less "sharing" than "giving."

So my gift isn't fun.  It's not a Starbucks gift card.  It's not premium chocolate.  It's not a bottle of OPI nail polish with a clever note attached saying "Hey, you really nailed it this year!"  (hmmmm)  But it's practical.  And it will get used.  And it's pretty derned cute.









I mean seriously.  Check them out:

I guess maybe it's the math-nerd in me, but these black Dixon Ticonderoga pencils are fabulous.  They write well, sure, but they're so sleek.  I hear I look 10 pounds slimmer when I write with them.  ;)

At any rate, this is just a juice can wrapped in Lily Bee Design paper, with a chunky eyelet border cut from (more) Lily Bee Design paper, using the Cameo. (I didn't really need to mention that, did I?)  The tops of the pencils are wrapped in yet more LBD paper, but they're only a little bigger than an inch long.  I thing the 6x6 pad of paper would be perfect for getting a nice variety.  Because I know better than to trust adhesive on a curved surface like that, the colorful baker's twine from WeRMemoryKeepers is doing double duty - looking cute AND holding the paper in place/down.  Oh wait! It's doing triple duty! It's also holding the little tags down.  They were mass cut on the Cameo and have V stickers from the LBD alpha letter sticker sheet.  I'm not going to lie: I'm glad the teacher getting this is Ms. Vidmar and not Ms. Smith, Ms. Thompson, or Ms. Martin.  I don't mind giving up all my Vs, but for any of those other names we might have to exploring a stamping options. ;)

And in the interest of full disclosure, the picture shown above isn't complete.  The label wouldn't stay put. I tried wrapping it in twine for a could of days - I hoped to let the adhesive 'set', and maybe make the paper less resistant to the curve, but it just didn't work.  No biggie though.  I used my Crop-o-Dile to make some small holes at the widest part of the label and added some small brads.  Now I feel confident that the label is there to stay.

I'm really pleased with the way this came together.  It wasn't a speedy project - it probably took an hour and a half to wrap the pencils, but in the end I think it was worth it.  It's cute and practical and I know it'll get used.

I'm not making them for all the teachers though.  So I better start hunting down some new ideas.  Got any thoughts to help a sister out? ;)

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.

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.

Boy's Birthdays

Ted springs on me that he's going to a birthday party on Sunday.  Not "Hey mom, I got invited to a party.  Can I go?"  but rather "I'm going to a party on Sunday afternoon."  He cleared with his dad and arranged his own ride, so it's not like I'm upset, but as The Mom, I spiral into what-to-buy-yet-another-12-year-old-who-has-everything mode.  I ask Ted for input, and he says "I don't know...they have everything...how about a gift card to WalMart?"  Um. How about not.  I don't mean to sound snotty, but working in a small shop whose biggest competor is (sadly) WalMart and knowing that WalMart's stated business objective is to undercut the local business....like I said....Um. No.

Now, because Target has had the good sense to keep their animosity of local small businesses to themselves, I'm all for a Target gift card.  So off I go to pick one up.  But of course, I enter the store...and get SUCKED into the dollar spot.  And worse, into the $2.50 spot. :P  Black handled bucket?  For $2.50?  I'll take it!!  I'll fill it with Twinkies!  I'll put a skull sticker on it!  I'll be the most hated mother on Bama (this kid plays on Ted's football team)!  Ok. Pause.  Rethink.  But I'm still taking the bucket! 

Aside: what is it about scrapbookers that make us so stubborn about just putting a gift card in a greeting card and handing it over?  I feel like everytime I give a gift card I'm challenged to engineer some presentation device...


Today is no different.

In an attempt to not bring on the hate from Tyler's mother, the bucket is filled with Rice Krispie Treats (c'mon! At least they're better than Twinkies!), Trident Gum, Target fruit snacks and a bag of Goldfish snacks.  When I got home I asked Ted if he was okay with my doing the monster and even let him pick which monster.  And I asked him "Are you sure this is ok?" about 6 times, and he enthusiastically said "I'd love to get this!  I'd take it downstairs and play video games with it all day." Um. Yeah.  Feeling the hate. (In my defense, at least it doesn't make noise or come apart to 200 tiny pieces that hurt when stepped on)

And then there's the gift card holder.  Cute, no?  I love the skinny monster, and I'm glad I finally had an excuse to use the talk bubble....kinda cute.  The googly eyes? Yeah. I dig 'em.

And I want to take a minute to talk about flash.

Poor, maligned flash.  Everyone hates him.  Especially everyone in the scrapbook world.  Heavy hitters like Karen Russell, Erin Terrell Clarkson, Maggie Holmes, Erin Cobb, Tara Whitney...etc, etc, etc...  they ALL say FLASH IS BAD.  Most even go so far as to say they don't even own a flash.  Seriously? 

And I am NOT saying that I am a better photographer or know more than the aforementioned heavy hitters.  They're ALL amazing shooters, and I wish I had half the talent any one of them has. 

But I just want to stick up for the poor, maligned flash.  He's not all bad.  He's just misunderstood.  You can't just use the one on your camera and expect it to do a good job.   Because aside from using it outside on a sunny day to fill in shadows, the on-camera flash just can't do a great job.  Why is it even there then?  Well, near as I can tell, it ads enough light to boost shutter speeds in order to avoid blurry shots.  Hopefully we can all agree that blurry shots are decidedly worse than shots with flash.   And really, if you're shooting with a point and shoot camera, your only option is flash on or flash off.  (Mostly...there are a couple of excpetions, but I'm not going there right now)

But if you're using an SLR you have another option.  A dedicated flash that slides into your hot shoe solves a myriad of problems: No red eye.  No harsh shadows.  No blurry pictures.  No whacked out color shifts.  The joy of the dedicated flash is that 9 times out of 10, the flash head can be aimed at the ceiling, and in so doing, the light bounces off the large white plane of the ceiling where it gets diffused, and rains back down on the subject.  It wraps around the subject - so the harsh shadows are eliminated.  The light is softer, which is really pleasing.  You can still set your camera to a very low f-stop so if you want a shallow depth of feild, you don't have give that up.   And it's not like you have be some tech-no whiz.  You put it on, aim it at the ceiling and fire.  The camera pretty much takes care of the rest.  Yeah, if you turn the camera sideways to get a portrait shot, you do have to have a flash that both swivels and bounces, but most flashes do that anyway.  (Let's say 7 out of 10 flashes can both swivel and bounce) As an added point, bouncing the flash keeps you from having that harsh shadow that just plain yucky, but it also prevents the flash glare that happens on shiney, reflective surfaces.  For instance, shooting the metal bucket with the flash aimed right at it would have  giant white spot, totally devoid of detail.  Not. Good.  Bring on the bounce.

At any rate, the shots above were taken at 10 o'clock at night.  No way could I have taken those without flash.  Even if I had boosted my ISO to 3200 and turned on the room lights, it still would have been iffy.  And I'd have to have made a custom white balance reading - there's no way that the three light sources in my kitchen would have come across cleanly in any of the pre-set white balance settings.  The joy of flash is that the camera knows EXACTLY what the flash is doing, and knows exactly how to deal with the white balance when you're using it (unless, you, the user, set the white balance to something funky - but under Auto or Flash, the light will be pure and whites will be white).   

Blah blah blah.  Too much lecturing.  Maybe I should do some before and after/good and bad shots to really illustrate why flash is so damn functional.  Next time the heavy hitter's voices ring in your head that FLASH IS BAD, say gently back NO. HE'S JUST MISUNDERSTOOD.

And that's what I'm working on.  I may finish sometime this month...

(also taken with flash.  :)  Just sayin...)

Playing Catch Up

And yeah, it's been a while since my last post, but that's not what I'm talking about.


I work retail, which means mandatory 6 day work weeks during the month of December. My new job didn't have extended holiday hours, and for that I'm eternally grateful, but open to close 6 days, laundry, grocery shopping, basketball practices (?? who's dumb idea was that?!) and squeezing in some actual Christmas shopping of my own means not having time for anything that doesn't HAVE to get done. So when everyone else is crafting up a storm, baking and mailing off cards…I'm running on Red Bull and adrenaline and looking forward to things being calmer in the new year.


So then Valentine's Day rolls around and all that residual I-wish-I-were-crafting-and-baking stuff that was left from Christmas time comes bubbling to the surface. So I may have gone a smidge over board.


First I got the idea to do a word search to attach to the kids Valentine treats. It was a fun idea and would have been super easy had I remembered that I had Excel on my computer. But I didn't and created the puzzle in PhotoShop. PhotoShop is a powerful tool, but it's too powerful for some applications. Imagine driving an 18 wheeler to the grocery store. Lots of room for the groceries, but a little hard to park. It took about 4 hours to do the puzzle, but it was worth it just to see how excited Ted and Molly were to give out their treats. Oh, and God love the Silhouette for it's ability to kick out 45 shapes in a couple of minutes. Scalloped circles, the little black tab, the cute little heart – all done in about an hour. Assembling these – another story. Brought all the pieces parts to work on between customers. It was an insanely slow day, but after 9 hours, I still wasn't finished.

Each word search and the word list was "sewn" loosely to the Fun Dip. I think it turned out super cute and very fun. I still get the biggest kick that I put the word "cooties" in there. I funny.


So Friday morning rolled around and off went all my hard work, but I had the day off and still the urge to play. I decided to make Snickerdoodles – time consuming, but well within my skill set and almost always well received. Ran to the grocery store for the cream of tartar and the flour only to come home to realize that we were also out of sugar. Decided that instead of going back to Giant Eagle I'd head to Target. Maybe they'd have some fun Valentine's Day stuff marked down. Found Arcrylic tumblers marked down 25%, very cute, but not really suitable for presenting cookies in. I poked around a bit and found a naked cookie jar that whispered "etch me….etch me…"


So, 5 hours later, cookies were baked and the jar was etched:



It never shows up all that exciting in photos, but I think glass etching is so fun and easy. It takes a whopping 15 minutes, and most of that is just spent waiting. Once I put the cookies in the jar it looked a little naked. Plus, I had more time to kill and was still itching to play. Used one Silhouette design that had three hearts, cut it out once in red and once in black and layered together. So easy. The little gift cardholder is just a tag with a pocket made by wrapping a piece of vellum around the bottom. I might over-use this design, but it's handy and fun. I really dig the little border on there. This is the first time I've used that and I positively can't wait to use it again. The rub on is from Creative Imaginations. Those rub on books are so expensive, but you get a TON of designs, so they last forever. At any rate, I was pleased at how it turned out. Definitely fun and festive!



This is what I ended up doing with the plastic tumblers from Target. The shot on the right is just a detail of the tags. ScrapWorks made a clear acrylic mini album in the shape of postage stamps. Super cute, but at 2x3 they're really too small to do much with. Turns out there were perfect to make name tags for the treat cups.



I'm not wild about this card as a whole. I made the adorable little banner pieces on Friday night, and by the time I got around to making them into a card my get up and go had pretty much got up and left. There was definitely untapped potential with those banners – they're only an inch wide! So cute. Card over all? Eh.



And lastly, I decided to take some cookies for my two coworkers. Initially I threw them into a Ziploc bag, but I couldn't do it. Instead I wrapped them in kitchen parchment paper and tied them with ribbon – I love when Archiver's has the Bazzill ribbon in their Hot Buys! 15 yards for $1.99? Heck yeah! Pulled out the package of ScrapWorks acrylic mini-albums and made some quick tags, again using red and black vinyl from QuicKutz. "DNA" is just my bosses initials, and "heart breaker" is an actual design from the Silhouette online store. Again, quick, easy, and fun.

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas...

I know. I know. I don't like it either. But I work retail, and in the retail world, Christmas starts early. As in, I put up the Christmas tree on Halloween. And on November 1st Musak got set to the holiday channel, where it will stay until December 26th. Uh...Woot?

But it's got me thinking Christmas. Not shopping, necessarily (I'm in denial about that), but the other stuff. What makes me happy, what I look forward to, even what I miss.

So here's a totally random list of where my head has been today.

1. Marshmellow World
This is not one of those Christmas songs that I've loved forever. In fact, it didn't appear on my radar until about five years ago, and to be frank, I hated it. And I cannot tell you how or why, but it grew on me. It's goofy, and it has nothing to do with Christmas. But it's catchy. Then one day I looked for the video on youtube, and suddenly it shot up to the number 2 spot on my Christmas music favs. They're just having so much fun, and I can't hear the song now without it putting a smile on my face.

2. Since I mentioned that Marshmellow World shot up to the number 2 spot, I feel compelled to mention that The Vince Guaraldi Trio's Linus and Lucy occupies the top spot. I have other songs that I like for their religious sentiment, but for capturing the season, for making me just plain happy when I hear it, Linus and Lucy is it. It takes me back to a simpler time, when the word "SPECIAL" would rotate across the screen in technicolor to announce a show that was, indeed, special. To a time when taking a bath and putting on one's pajamas seemed the perfectly appropriate way to celebrate something so important.



3. Cookies. I realize that lately I have begun to define myself by what I am not. As in, "I'm not a chocolate person." Or, "I'm not one much for bacon." I'm trying to change this, because it's sounds negative. I'm working on that. I can tell you, however, with much certainty: I AM a cookie person. Especially the homemade variety. Especially the homemade variety that are a little off the beaten path. I haven't had a Springerle in probably a dozen years, but what I wouldn't give... My dad was German and my mom was Irish. She made concessions, and this was one of the things that she learned to make. My brothers and sister didn't really like them, and I think my dad would eat one or two. But me? That was cookie tin I was reaching for. (Not that I wouldn't eat the other cookies. Did I mention that I am a cookie person?)




4. Lights. Camera.
Action.
I love photography, and I particularly love creating little happy still lifes. I have to admit that I go for great long stretches without indulging in this love, but come Christmas, everything seems to have photographic potential. This picture is on the old side, and it was shot on film - I know, crazy, right? It looks so much better in real life. I remember getting this set of pictures back and I think my heart skipped a beat. I love the bokeh on this, and how the lights star out. I've worn glasses since I was four, and one of my favorite things was to turn off all the room lights, turn on the tree lights, take off my glasses and stare at the tree. The way the lights look here is what they looked like to me. It has some magical essence to me...

5. Visions of sugarplums...
Only not sugarplums at all. More like treats from Red Envelope, or maybe some handmade treasure from Etsy? And on second thought, I don't know what real sugarplums are, but I'd put QuicKutz's version to good use...

On that note, it's time to settle in for my long winter's nap.