love u.

Have you noticed? Today is Valentine's Day.  It's everywhere.  Love and hearts and pink and red and flowers and chocolate and all things romance.

I'm not with m'honey today.  He's sort of busy today. :)  And that's a good thing.  But I did mail him a card - which is CRAZY, because I am horrible about actually putting things in the mail. But I digress.

It's simple.  It's guy friendly. It's graphic. 

I love the scripty love word.  Love.

And the inside? I like that.  I made it - which isn't rocket science or anything.  But I'm not super creative, so the idea of putting those words with the arrow and welding together feels like whoa, I'm a design genius. :P  Not really, but I like to pretend.

And now, I have to dash.  It's Ian's (my oldest) birthday, and dinner is just about ready.  Thanks for stopping by.  Check back in the next day or two for the ugly sketch layout.

Laters!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The L Word

Love, folks, not lesbians. But I had to get the pop culture reference in for consistency's sake.

So I started this blog with the idea that it would be a way share my "creative pursuits", it would give me a forum for sharing the Silhouette love, maybe talk about the process a little. But my big mistake was thinking that I could start this in November. Even with the best of intentions, "creative pursuits" - much less writing about them - just aren't happening in December if you happen to work in retail.

So here I am, a month since my last very off-topic post, and it's time to whip this thing into shape.

Watch, I'll probably say that a month from now, too.

But even though I was busy, it wasn't like I didn't at least try to be creative. Granted, it only happened once, and it didn't get very far, but still: I'm giving myself credit for trying.

And more than that, I'm giving myself credit for finishing something, even if it's not what I started. See that picture up top? That started out as a Ho Ho Ho banner. One rare day off I decided that I could spend an afternoon and make a cute little banner. 97 interruptions later, I had the base cut and assembled. That's when I lost steam for the day and figured I'd finished some other day. Turns out that was the last day in December with any "me" time in it at all. So the pretty red, black and white banner bases sat on my scrap table, making me wish for time to myself, and thinking at the very least I'd have a jump on next year's holiday decorations. Needless to say, Christmas came and went, and the banner never got any more done.

As my first day off without obligations out the wazoo approached, I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what I might work on once I had some time. I had the sudden realization that Valentine's Day was coming, and wouldn't my pretty red, black and white banner bases look darling dressed up with pink and purple and glitter and bling and ribbon and buttons? Why yes, yes they would!

I love those drop-back-and-punt moments. This isn't what I planned for, but I still feel like I accomplished something pretty cool.

I wish I had a really great picture of the entire banner, but I don't. What I have is snippets of the final product, and maybe that's just enough to jump start an idea for someone else...