Sisters, Ink.
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Have you all read the scrapbooking series of books by Rebeca Seitz? They are fabulous! My friend Thea got me hooked on them and I’ve read them all now except the most recent, but that’s only because I’m on a waiting list at the library. I like them because they’re not your typical “romance novel” (they involve scrapbookers, of course!). There’s a little romance and a little real life stuff too, which makes them interesting. I usually start one and then can’t put it down until I finish it.
Here they are:
Anyway, Rebeca has set up this cool website you can join just like the one in the book called Sisters, Ink. You can go there and become a member and find other scrapbookers that live near you to see if you can make new friends and find people you can scrapbook with. I think this is a great idea because I am the only person I know where I live who scrapbooks and there are no local scrapbook stores in my immediate area, so who knows…there could be a scrapbooker who lives 6 blocks away from me and I might not know it! And I know that some of my most meaningful friendships are the ones I’ve made online with other scrapbookers and one of my closest friends is one who lives 3.5 hours away who I met online in one of my scrapbooker groups.
I’ve volunteered to help Rebeca spread the word and try to get new members to sign up. There is a forum over there and a gallery where you can upload your projects too. I think she’s planning some fun stuff like contests. You can check it out for yourself here.
Filed under Scrapbooking | Comment (0)Practical Scrappers.
Yay! I was chosen for the new design team at Practical Scrappers. There’s a new theme every week with each day showcasing a different design team member’s projects. Mine will be on Tuesdays and I’m the 8.5×11 layout girl! Woo hoo!
There’s also a forum where you can chat and post your own projects, so all you scrapbookers and cardmakers go on over and join, why doncha? My new term starts next week and I can’t wait to get started!
Halloween photos.
My daughter knows at the end of Halloween what she wants her costume to be for the next year already. No, I’m not kidding. So last year she had decided she wanted to be a “cheerless” cheerleader. All dark and goth-ish. Really? REALLY? Not that I have anything against goth-like, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one to judge, never have been, and if you want to dress/look dark and depressing you go for it! But my little girl is 9 years old. I mean, I don’t expect her to still like The Little Mermaid but geesh…..let’s not go for the rebellious dark stuff until you’re in your teenage years, okay?
But, I’m all about letting my kid spread her wings and make her own decisions, even at 9 years old, if it’s not really going to hurt her or anyone else, so I bought the costume and let her wear it. We talked beforehand about how I wouldn’t really want her to sport this look in “real life” and about what sort of image it portrays of people/kids who actually do sport this look in real life, how they’re stereotyped as being “bad” kids who do bad stuff they shouldn’t be doing, etc. I’m not saying that IS the case, but let’s face it; society does that and that’s the reality. Anyway, it wasn’t like a totally DEEP conversation, just a quick little talk about it since we had the opportunity due to the costume.
Personally I thought the stitches on the face were a nice touch!
You’ll see in the above photo her treat bag, which is one of those recycled bags some people take to the grocery store. I say “some” people because although I have half a dozen of them I have NEVER remembered to take them with me to get groceries. I’ll tell you what, my kid is nothing if not environmentally conscious. Have I mentioned on here I’m not allowed to buy paper plates any longer because they’re MADE FROM TREES? Not kidding.
I snapped this last photo while we were out trick or treating with my daughter’s best friend, her mom and their dog (who mom dresses up every year). This year she was Daisy the Clown.
Is she cute or what?
Last year she was the cutest I’ve ever seen her. She was a geenie! With the cutest hat with a little tulle veil on it and everything……until she ripped it off of her head, chewed it up, and then peed on it in the middle of the living room floor. It’s been a year ago and I’m still laughing about that one!
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (0)Scrapbook News & Review September 2009
You can find one of my scrapbook pages and one of my altered projects (a lunch box) in the new double issue for September of Scrapbook News and Review online. There’s some pretty awesome talent in this issue. Go check it out here.
Filed under Scrapbooking | Comments (2)Creative Mini Albums…
Yay! I’m featured today on the Creative Mini Albums blog. They show a cute little 6-page accordian album I made for my husband a while back. My daughter drew on the cover and she got to pick all the photos for it from her younger days. Go check me out here.
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7-8-9-10-11-12.
So yesterday Elizabeth Kartchner posted a challenge on her blog to document in a photo what you were doing at the moment of July 8, 2009 at 10:11:12. Get it? 7-8-9-10-11-12. I thought it was a pretty cool thing and there’s a prize involved, so I’m all over that!
Funny thing is, last night at that time I was preparing to go to bed and my daughter and I were lying there having our usual nightly chat in the dark and I grabbed the camera and said we had to take a photo. And hilarity ensued. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. It was dark, so I couldn’t see where the hell I was focusing with the camera. And I was holding the camera up above us in the air with 2 hands, and that’s not really one of my best capabilities, and every time I’d try to take the photo the flash would BLIND US because it was dark. The first photo made me laugh SO hard because Summer’s eyeballs look so SCARY. Oh, I cracked up. (and why do mine look so bloodshot? I swear I wasn’t drinking beforehand) And then it kind of went downhill from there! So I ended up with a bunch of photos and we laughed so hard I’m not sure how they came out un-blurry. And I already have in my mind the makings of a scrapbook page with all these goofy funny photos of us. So thank you Elizabeth for the memory of a fun little few minutes with my daughter!
see what I mean about the eyeballs?
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(below photo was where Summer said “I’m going to not look directly at the camera and maybe it won’t blind me.”
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(see the bit of cat in the lower right corner above? The cat came in to see what all the laughing was about.)
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(above photo was when Summer said “I’m going to try to look down so the flash doesn’t blind me.”)
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This next one is probably the best one of the whole bunch.
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But I think the last one is my favorite.
I can’t wait to put these in my scrapbook.
Bo Bunny Birthday Layout.
When I first saw this BoBunny birthday paper I LOVED it and knew I had to have it for a layout of my daughter’s birthday party. Since the paper is 12×12 and I only do 8.5×11 pages, I just cut off the top and bottom portions and used the part of the paper that I really loved in the center of my layout. The strips of paper are actually strips I cut from the unused portions and I flipped the paper over and used the other side. Those sparkly letters are from Creative Imaginations and are seriously one of my fave things to use right now. (click on the photo to see it larger)
Blog Award.
Remember that cute altered book I told you about (and tried to show you?) a week or so ago from the blog Frogs N Butterflies? Well, while I was writing that (and she didn’t know it) she sent me a nice little blog award. Thanks Cheri! Oh, and I have to follow some rules.
1. The winner may put the logo onto their blog.
2. Put a link to the person who sent you the award.
3. Nominate 10 blogs.
4. Put links to their blogs.
5. Leave a message for the nominees.
And now I’m supposed to give it to 10 blogs I read that make me smile. I read some really awesome blogs, so go check them out.
1. Cathy Zielske. If you don’t know who she is, you’re obviously NOT a scrapbooker. Aside from being an awesome scrapbooker, she’s funny. I love funny people. I love people who make me laugh. And I love her blog because she makes me laugh every time I read it. http://cathyzielske.typepad.com/my_weblog/
2. Abby Key. I’ve never met her in person, but I love her dearly and consider her a good friend. She sees things that others don’t see. And she points them out to you. And she reminds me to look for things also. Love her. http://abbykey.blogspot.com/
3. Klo Oxford. She is so awesome and I dearly love her. She is funny as hell, and she’s a Pazzles machine genius. The woman can design anything! And the best part is that she’s so generous she shares files and does videos and shows you how to use your Pazzles too and answers questions for people and does it all out of the goodness of her heart. That makes me smile. http://www.scrappingklo.blogspot.com/
4. Jill Brush. She’s always making me smile for some reason. Her blog is full of funny stories she tell about disasters that have happened to her and she shows lots of paper projects she makes that are so pretty and she’s usually giving them away to someone else because she’s so nice! http://www.my-so-called-scrappy-life.blogspot.com/
5. Stacy Julian. Haven’t met her yet but it’s on my list of “things to do before I die.” She’s a great scrapbooker and teacher, but it’s her philosophy that I love. She makes me smile a lot when I read her blog because she makes me remember that life is wonderful and I have lots of things to be grateful for and that I SHOULD be smiling because life is good. http://stacysbigpicture.typepad.com/
6. Tara Whitney, photographer extraordinaire. Her photos are always so stunning and awesome, that you can’t help but smile. http://tarawhitney.com/justbeblogged/
7. Melody Ross. She’s the founder of Chatterbox a scrapbooking manfacturer company). I think she’s a phenomenal woman for what she’s been through and how she’s handled it and still encourages others to smile when reading her blog. When I want to remind myself that “it’s gonna be okay,” I go to her blog. http://melodyross.typepad.com/my_weblog/
8. Heather Armstrong, a.k.a. Dooce. She’s bold and in your face and (sometimes) offensive, but MAN she makes me laugh. As I said before, I like funny people. She takes hilarious photos of their dog, Chuck. They can sit anything on that dog’s nose or head and he will sit still as a stone while they take a photo. Food, dog treats, etc. It’s amazing! http://www.dooce.com/
9. Karen Russell. She makes me smile because she takes fabulous photos. Someday I’d like to be able to afford her photography class! She’s also a scrapbooking designer for many years, but it’s her photos that I love to see on her blog. http://karenrussell.typepad.com/my_lifejust_not_on_the_ro/page/2/
10. Ali Edwards. I’m always amazed by her creativity, but now she has a brand new baby girl at home. Baby girl photos make me smile. http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com/
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Best Friends and My Scrapbooking Philosophy.
You’ll be seeing this photo on a layout soon because I absolutely love it. I took it 2 weeks ago and got it developed the other day (I always develop my photos right away). The lighting is not great because it was dusk, but I actually like that about the photo. My process in scrapbooking begins with my photo and the story I want to tell about it. And I will think about it and ponder for a few weeks, perhaps sketch something out, write my journaling, etc. ahead of time before I ever pull out the first sheet of paper. And in doing that with this photo it made me think about Stacy Julian. One of the reasons why I love Stacy is because when I first started scrapbooking I would have put this in a photo box somewhere and felt that I couldn’t use it until I had gotten to that point chronologically in my scrapbooking progress. However, the problem with that is that it would have taken me 15-20 years to get to the point in time where this photo came up chronologically! But I discovered Stacy Julian and Simple Scrapbooks and she changed me. And I don’t say that lightly. She actually (with her philosophy) changed the way I scrapbook, changed the way I think about scrapbooking. I stopped feeling like I had to scrap year by year in order. Thank God (and Stacy) because that was a heavy burden to carry around. Now I don’t worry about making my pages in chronological order. I scrapbook whatever photos I feel like, because I CAN dammit! haha
I am so grateful for that change because I love this photo, I love what it says and I love what it means. And if I were still scrapbooking my “old” way, I would have stuck it in the box and not looked at it again for years. And by then I would have forgotten why I love the photo, I would have forgotten how it makes me feel when I look at it, how happy I am that my daughter has a best friend to spend her childhood with her, how much I miss my best friend even now right this minute, 17 years after she passed away.
Okay, so this post actually started out with this photo that I wanted to share because I love it and look what happened. I went off road and just kept talking about something else. See what happened because of this photo? That wouldn’t have happened 15 years from now because I wouldn’t remember so many things about the photo. So perhaps tonight I will make a scrapbook layout with this photo. And then tomorrow? I might do a page using photos from the last date I left off when I used to scrapbook “in order”, which is way back in 2003, 6 years ago! And I don’t care. So there!
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Shop and Crop at Creek Bank Creations!
I’m driving to Muncie, Illinois tonight to attend a 2-day crop at Creek Bank Creations. I really like the owner, Julie, and am looking forward to taking her class tonight. I have a studio in my home, so I’m not the “going out to a crop” kind of girl. I actually went to another one she held in February and forgot to take half the things I needed. It’s hard for me to decide what to take with me since I am so used to just having ALL my stuff right here at my fingertips. I never know what I will use until I go looking through my cabinets and drawers and something catches my eye. You can’t really plan for that, so it’s frustrating for me to figure out what to take. Last time I forgot all of my PHOTOS. Can you believe that? BUT this time I am making a list! haha Of course, I’m sure to still forget something, right? Cause that’s my life! haha
Tomorrow morning I’ll be going back and taking a class from Marcie Morgan. I met her at the last crop and her pages were beautiful, so I’m interested in seeing what I can learn from her. I’m thinking of teaching a class myself for Creek Bank at the fall crop this year and I want to see how other people teach so I can get some pointers and adapt to my way of doing things and come up with something. We’ll see how it goes.
If you haven’t been to Creek Bank Creations, you should consider it. The store is housed in the old elementary school, and it is the cutest thing EVER. I really love Julie’s style of decorating and using “found” things. The store is darling! It’s always stocked with new stuff, too, and they make lots of products themselves that are awesome. You can shop at their online store too. I’ve got to get busy planning what to pack. Hopefully I can get lots of projects done over the next 2 days and then will have lots of things to show you here on Sunday! I have several “in the works” things that just need a bit of finishing up and they’ll be done. I love it when that happens because I feel so productive. Never mind that they were actually all started 6 months ago…..that’s beside the point, right?
Filed under Scrapbooking | Comment (1)
