Wall art?

Could it be? A scrapbooking project on this blog? After all this time?

Well it isn't really a scrapbooking project but it uses scrapbooking supplies. A while ago I thought it would be nice to give Vivi something to look at while she was on the changing table. We have some balls hanging from the ceiling but she doesn't seem to care much about them. So I got the idea to put a piece of patterned paper on the wall right next to the changing pad. She loved it. She would stare at it while getting her diaper changed. So Greg thought we should expand the idea.
We got out all my patterned paper and picked out pieces we thought were visually interesting and we hung them on the wall with double stick tape. It is kind of busy but we have grown to really like it and Vivi loves looking at it. I like to point out colors and shapes while I give her butt a chance to dry out before a fresh diaper goes on. This is a super cheap and easy way to give a baby something to stimulate their vision that isn't permanent.

Happy New Year! 2008

Happy New Year! I hope you all celebrated in some way last night. We spent New Years about the same as last year is turns out. We spent New Years Eve with friends playing games and watching the ball drop on TV and today we packed up the rest of the Christmas decor and cleaned the house. It feels a little empty in here but it is good to have everything neat and tidy again. Greg and I sat down and looked over our 2007 goals and came up with some 2008 goals to focus on this year. Some of the main ones include getting back to eating home cooked dinners again (we have been enjoying the local restaurants a little too much), reassessing our finances now that we are settled into our new apartment and paying more rent, and I want to get back into the saddle with my scrapbooking again. In 2007 I had hoped to scrapbook 52 layouts again but in the end only did 15. That is pretty pathetic! This blog used to be a scrapbooking blog and I hope to at least discuss scrapbooking a bit more again in 2008 as well as other types crafts.

I return to work again tomorrow but the rest of this week is going to be really busy. Greg and I are heading out on vacation again real soon for a cross country skiing trip. So I have just 3 days to get caught up from the last trip and to prepare for the next trip. Don't know if I will get to blog much. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The Winning Photo

Almost all of my Christmas cards are out in the mail so I guess it is time to show the photo we ended up using this year for our Christmas cards. Remember that it was taken in the cemetery!We are having our first snow storm of the winter right now. They expect 2-4 inches of snow. Have a great day!

Christmas Cards Part 1

Sorry for not posting yesterday. Greg gave me his stupid cold so I have been feeling pretty lousy for a couple days. I did manage to make about 80 Christmas cards last weekend. My card design this year was very simple and was copied directly from the Dec issue of CK (a BH card of course). I made 3 batches of cards:This one was sent out to my BSF group. I shot a photo of my bible and our lesson (instead of a photo of Greg and I). I got this idea from Jeanine Hemminger who gave me a similar type photo many years ago when she was in my BSF group.This next card when out to our communion team. I shot this photo of the Lord's Supper on stage one Sunday last summer after we set it up. We are having our team over next Saturday for a party and will be giving out most of the cards then.

I haven't sent out all our friends and family cards yet but will show that one to you soon. All cards featured a photo, a scrap of Christmas paper, and some paint stamping.

Outtakes

We had a really nice and productive weekend. Well, I did. Greg was sick with a cold so he was productive at napping, sneezing, whining and making me wait on him. Just kidding, he got a lot done too in between the afore mentioned activities!

On Saturday I dragged him out for our annual Christmas photo shoot. This year we made a wonderful compromise. I got my photo shoot and he got to do it in a location he likes... The Cemetery! Hear that Tiff! We don't have a yard anymore, there aren't any nice parks around us, and we waited too long to go far off on location so we headed to our local cemetery. It happens to be a really big one with lots of really old crypts, monuments, and great architecture. Of course I can't share the winning Christmas photo with you just yet but I can share some of the shots that didn't make it onto our Christmas cards this year!
This is a classic Greg shot. Every pose he suggested had us surrounded by headstones. Not really very festive! We didn't use any of those.This shot and the first one were pretty typical. Find a big crypt or mausoleum and shoot by the front door. This one had great oxidized doors and was huge (see last photo) but the light was way too bright by this time and in this shot I didn't get into position fast enough before the camera fired. The first photo may have worked but I would have had to crop out those headstones on the right that sneaked into view.I loved the vines on this really old stone crypt wall but thought this photo was a little gloomy. Not our best expressions either.Greg loved this old iron cross in one of the doorways so we snapped a shot. Would be a good easter photo maybe.One of the really large structures we shot around. There were lots more potential places to take photos but there were many people visiting graves that day and one large funeral going on and we didn't want to offend anyone so we stayed away from those areas. Cemeteries really are nice places to visit. They are quiet, interesting to look at, and often have park areas and water features to enjoy.

After the photo shoot my buddy Peh came over and I edited my photos and we worked on Christmas cards together while watching Pride and Prejudice. It was so much fun to sit up in my studio and chat and work. More about my cards later.

Scrapbook Update!

No, you didn't misread it. I actually have a scrapbook update to share with you today. I managed to complete a couple layouts over the weekend. My scrapbook area isn't really user friendly yet and I learned that my lighting is really bad in the office but I didn't want that to keep me from working through my pile of photos! These are 2 more layouts about my ski trip a couple winters back.

This first layout is about the cottage we rented during our trip (called a Tupa in Finnish). I used my trusty photo corners, letter stickers, paint, brads and a flower. I hadn't expected to paint on the layout but when I went to add my title the letter stickers just disappeared into the busy background paper. I painted a strip of color to help them stand out and then painted around the edge.Next is a layout about the cute reindeer that live on the grounds of the resort. It is a very simple and clean layout using paper, rub-on letters, letter stickers, and brads. Quick and easy!

These layouts bring my total for the year to 15. Um, that isn't very many compared to last year but there is still plenty of time to work on that number. I do need to work on my craft club demo pretty soon so I had better switch gears to card making. Thanks for looking!

Card Making

I couldn't sleep last night so I tip toed away to my office/studio to pass some time. Can I just stop and say how nice it is to be able to close a couple doors and not have to worry about disturbing Greg with light or sound? Not possible in the Bronx since we had no real bedroom wall.

Anyway, the studio is still a mess and I am still searching for the perfect new containers for my shelving system but in the meantime I decided to make a few cards. I purchased a card making kit from Lisa Bearnson during the move and had put together a few already (it was her kit of the month in July). I pulled the box off the shelf and assembled a few more. Not really very creative since the cards are pre-designed but still got my juices flowing and was a great project for late night crafting. Here are the cards that I have finished so far. Keep in mind they are all in triplicate.

I have to say this kit was not as good as the Becky Higgins/Lisa Bearnson kit from a few years back. This one has too much "chipboard" which is the new snazzy way of saying all the pieces are cardboard. But the designs are cute. I just wish it was a little more mixed media.

Scrapbook Update

Well I finally finished the theme album for my co-worker Karen who recently moved to Maine. The album has 40 single pages (20 double page layouts) so here is just a sampling to give you an idea of the design.

The title page. The whole album featured Urban Chic paper by Basic Grey, brads and paper flowers. The majority of the pages look like this. A main photo with catchy title and then a photo collage on that theme opposite. This one is about Campus life and shows photos from the building, lab and park.There were 3 layouts like this that feature people. Faces from her 6 years in the lab. We have a lot of people come through this place each year. Post-docs, techs, and lots of students.

Then in between the collage pages I would stick these layouts that feature individual people and their well wishes/sentiments for Karen.Some layouts featured parties or events. This one shows our trip to New Orleans. A bunch of us girls from work went. Other layouts show lab clean-up days, happy hours, baby showers, bachellorette parties and birthday parties. We have a lot of fun in this lab!Near the end of the album I made this layout. I raided her desk one day while she was out and pasted in a few of the items she had stuck up in her work space. The last page is this one where I listed lots of random memories of work. Just little blurbs to jog her memory and make her laugh.

Overall it was a really easy album to make. I did all the photo collages in Adobe Elements and had them printed out 8x8 at scrapbookpictures.com then just slid them in. The last shot is my planning day where I laid all the blank pages out and planned the order of everything. Now I just need to get it in the mail to Maine!

Scrapbook Update

My June Kit arrived from Jenni Bowlin Studios. Unfortunately I haven't even touched the May kit. I haven't been doing any scrapbooking in a while. I barely managed to crank out a Father's Day Card for my dad and the scrapbook for my co-worker is still sitting here 95% done.

Here is the kit. Pastel purples and greens. The things I am most excited to use are the damask flower sticker from Heidi Swap and the Heidi Swap Ghost Flowers (I've never used her ghosts before so I will have to do some research and figure out how). I read that Heidi Swap is going to start her own monthly kit club so I may have to join that one instead since I love all her stuff.

As far as weekend plans I don't know if I will get any scrapping done. I am going to Renegade on Saturday and then may be meeting with our broker to look at apartments all afternoon. Maybe on Sunday I will try and get one small project done. Sometimes just a minor accomplishment is all it takes to get the juices flowing again and get me revved up to scrap during the week. I need to move my scrap table to the living room so I can watch all my new favorite shows while I scrap. Hell's Kitchen, So you think you can dance, and Last comic standing to name a few. Why are summer reality shows so much better than what's on during the rest of the year?

Misc Musings

I have been working from home the last couple days which means it is hard for me to post pictures with my slow dial-up connection. We were planning to get high speed but then decided we wanted to move this summer so it seems silly to go to all the trouble now.

I recieved a scrapbook kit in the mail last week. You may remember I was in this club for several months. I re-enrolled to give it another chance and got this kit for May. I am not super excited about it. It features all Jenni Bowlins own products. Which is cool but it seem that in the past I got way more stuff (and more interesting variety) than this kit. Plus it seems like less volumn and since she is making 100% profit with this stuff I hoped she would at least keep the amount the same if not more. Perhaps I won't be a member much longer.

Featurs: paper, cardstock, mini paper, journalling cards, rubber stamp, ribbon, sequins, felt flowers, rub on alphabet, and more journalling stickers. I really wish I did more hand journalling. I may need to think of some other way to use all these journalling cards.

Another think I got in the mail last week is this:

My new Blackberry. I am still figuring out this baby but it has been very nice getting my email without having to get on line which as I mentioned previously is a bit of a pain! My last phone was the total strip down Nokia with no bells no whistles, no color, no nothing (Greg got the fancy phone last time). This phone is much more high tech and fun. Now if you email me I can reply at all hours of day or night!

Well today I am home taking the day off and working on a last minutes scrapbook project. I was up all last night working on my photo order and today I am going to get the layouts started. I only hope I can finish it on time! More on that later!

Scrapbook Update

Here is layout number 2 from our ski trip. Pretty much the same elements as the other layout. some flowers, brads, and paper. Sorry the picture is kind of blurry. I have been really busy at work this week. We had a big symposium last week that I was in charge of organizing and I put off all my regular work to make it happen. Now I am playing catch-up. It is 8pm and I am still at work.

I do have more blog entries planned so stay tuned.

Weekend Crafts

This weekend I didn't have a lot of time for scrapbooking. Partly because I got distracted with the above project. The necklace on the left I bought at H&M but it broke so I was restringing it on Saturday and then remembered that I had a whole bunch of black beads I bought way back in college. I had been regretting that I didn't buy a black bead necklace at H&M when I picked up the white one so I decided to make the necklace on the right. It is certainly nothing fancy but it was easy to make while watching one of my new DVDs.
I did manage to finish this anniversary layout. I had done most of the work the weekend before so I just needed to add some journalling. I also started another ski layout but didn't complete it. Sometimes a little crafting here and there is all there is time for but at least it is a baby step in the right direction. This layout features Crate Paper, Heidi Swap clock faces, brads, flowers, and a really old definitions stickers. When Definitions Stickers first came out I ordered the whole line and have never used even 1! I have had them over 3 years I think. I am such a sucker!

Scrapbook Update

Here is the layout I was working on when the chair broke. It is the first in a serious of layouts about our winter vacation in 2005-2006 to a ski resort. This is sort of an intro page and a pocket page to stash all the cute brochures and stuff from the trip. Next will be a ski layout, a layout about our cabin, and a layout about the reindeer we met that live there. It is pretty simple and uses some Chatterbox paper I had been hoarding (I am using chatterbox all the way through these trip pages), some brads, and some round tags. I am also going to use the detail where the paper is split and folded back on all the trip pages to unify them. Pretty simple page. The trickiest part was printing the journalling right on the page. My 12x12 printer is notorious for barfing ink all over the place (something to do with the time Greg dropped it on the ground!) so it is nerve racking to run a piece of cardstock through when you don't know if it will come out nicely or covered in extra ink. This one worked out great with only one smudge!

Scrapbook Update

The rain has stopped. I think it is over and I hope that as the storm moves on it brings some real spring weather in behind it.

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to go to Michael's with Peh and Alice and pick up some craft stuff. One thing I found was a box of printed notecards for making cards. So I took the opportunity to whip up these bad boys using the printed cards and some rub-on expressions and lots of embellishments I had laying around. Fun, quick and easy!

The real reason I went to Michaels was to pick up some foam sheets. You know that ones for kids craft projects. I took the foam sheets and cut them into 1 inch strips (the sheets were 12x17 and my strips are 1x12) and punched holes in them and made them into album spacers. These spacers can cost $2 a pair at the scrapbook store. I probably made 40 for under $2. Plus I bought black foam to go with my black albums. I would highly recommend this if you have large stuffed albums and need some spacers to fill up the binding area. My albums came with 4 cardboard spacers for free but I think the foam are much nicer. I also made a huge amount of 8" ones for my mini books too. You can buy extender posts at the hardware store for a lot less than at the scrapbook store too in case you didn't know.

Scrapbook Update #2

Many years ago I my family had a dog named Mitzi. When she died in 1999 I made a memory book of her for my sister. I also made one for myself but never finished it. Most the photos had been glued to pages but I never did any journalling. Well I recently decided to re-do the album during my album changeover project (making them all black). I wanted to re-make the Mitzi album in my favorite 8x8 size using a line of dog products by KI Memories that was adorable. I offered to make one for Rachel too for her new dog Misha but she said she already had a dog album. I was able to finish the whole thing over the weekend. It is only 10 layouts which made it pretty quick. Plus the coordinated products made it easy. I didn't have many photos of Mitzi but I had lots of memories to record.

Scrapbook Update

I had a really hard time getting online over the weekend and over the last part of last week. I have been really chugging along at work with no time to post lately and when I try at home the wireless is not available.

Anyway, this weekend because of the Easter Holiday I had no BSF meeting which meant that Saturday (and part of Sunday) was scrapbook day. I managed to finish a couple layouts below and one medium sized project which I will show tomorrow.

This first layout is from Valentine's day 05. There are lots of fun embellishments on this page. Foam letters, chipboard hearts, a flower brad, leather flowers, and some giant brads I recently picked up.

Next is a layout about craft club highlighting the project we made and everyone working. I used my own handwriting on this layout and for once didn't hate it. Some little ribbons and a bunch of flowers. The background paper was a mocha color even though it looks grey in this photo.

Both of these layouts went pretty quick because of my sketches I did in advance but in both there were some mis-calculations that I had to overcome. On the valentine's layout I had miss added the photo sizes and had to swap some stuff around to fill the space. The craft club layout was supposed to have a photo of me on the left but then I realized I didn't have a photo of me so I had to improvise with a photo of the project. I am still loving the sketches and preplanning I did.

Scrapbook Update

It is such a beautiful day out today. Too bad I am stuck inside at my desk.

I completed 3 more layouts last weekend. The first is this layout of my trip to the Martha Steward show. I copied a BH layout but used the Martha logo colors. Pretty simple really. Just cardstock, eyelets, ribbon, and some velvet letter stickers. Just what I like, clean lines and very graphic layout.

The next layout highlights my 30th birthday. It is a bit busier and uses an entire package of velvet rub-on flowers, some snaps, and lots of rhinestones. i also incorportated my birthday button and some ticket stubs.

Lastly is this layout of Greg's parents visit. This one has chipboard letters, and some paper flowers with brad centers. The funny thing about this one is that when I glued the photos down to the patterned paper I really hated the way it was looking. But once I had added all the embellishments I was actually VERY pleased with the way it turned out. Simple but cute. My favorite of the 3.


All of these layouts were ones I sketched in advance and ordered the photos pre-sized. So far this is working really well. It isn't making me ultra fast since I still have to pick papers, colors, and embellishments and I am slow at that, but it does give me a nice jump start.

Scrapbook Update

On Sunday I managed to do a couple layouts. I am not really happy with either of them but I figure that it has been a while since I worked on anything so I just need to get my mojo back.
This first one is from a trip to the Hampton's we took last year. I LOVE the color palate but felt that it fell short with the embellishments. There are shell buttons, shell sequins and a starfish charm as well as the big metal letters for the title. I also used some of my old favorite photo corners! The colored ones are hard to find these days so it is a good thing I have a punch to make my own.
This next layout I really hate. I like the photo placement, the 29s, and the big {} but I am not loving the rest. But my motto now is JUST DO IT so instead of ripping it all apart and starting over I just ran with it and figured I would do better next time. This was for Greg's 29th Birthday.

They're Heerrrreeee!

My photos showed up on Friday! I love this service. The quality was outstanding and how cute are all the different sizes! Laying all the photos out on the table got me really excited to start scrapbooking them. But first I had to organize them with the sketches I made earlier. I only found 1 photo I forgot to order.