Business Time

Sorry about the music in the sidebar...can't resist. I was on a roll with iTunes last night :) looking for favorites. You can always turn it off...and remember...two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven :P



Two Fridays in a row without cropping make me a little crabby. I STILL have my Gleek LO sitting on my desk, waiting for one more photo (of Lowell Everson, our Mr.Shu, circa 1984) and a bit of journaling (you know, we had a Journey song in our repetoire...Open Arms...I still sing the harmony for that when it comes on the radio...)



Lots of digi anniversaries...Jessica Sprague just celebrated 3 years and had quite the blog hop (33 blogs...the majority of them were quickpages, made with the 7 designer kits which were also available on the hop, and now in the shop...heh, that rhymed). I have yet to play with those gifties.



Shabby Pickle Designs has a store-wide sale going on this weekend for their 2nd anniversary. I decided to organize my digi supplies by storefront, since most of the galleries associated with digi stores want at least 50% their product on whatever you post. It didn't keep me from mixing with a template from SPD and a kit from OScraps (Kitty Design's Busy Road...might be retired by now...)

Still love Johnna's actions...this one is Whisper. Sweet.

Until next time...(you'll want to turn off that iPod over there if you haven't already...) ;)

Scrapjacked challenge

I have two LOs sitting near my sewing machine, waiting for that magic touch (including my gleek LO), but in the meantime (read: ultimate laziness when it comes to sewing, but not digi scrapping!) I've played with this challenge.



Finally bought all the Kitschy Digitals on mywish list at JS; the sewing kit was up for One Dollar Wednesday this week, so I added it to my cart along with Granny's Attic and the Vintage Cameras kit (not used here, but still...sigh) I've been crushing on. Fonts used are Cursif and Chicago House Style (one of my current favorites, if you're paying attention), with American Typewriter for the journaling. I wanted to roughen up the look of this...like the paint on DT Beth Perry's take, so I used brushes (by Anna Aspnes, at Designer Digitals: Magic Flares Number 1 and Edges & Punches). The spiral notebook is from Scrap Artist.



It's been a strange week for me; last weekend was Tess's dance recital and, at the same time, my niece's graduation party (we ended up late to that. obviously). Late Friday night, after cropping, I checked email quickly and had a message that a former co-worker (and really good friend, at the time) had passed away after a year-long struggle with colon cancer. Visitation was the same time as both other family events, so I could not attend. Wish I could have...



I hadn't even known Connie was sick -- I last visited my old office about 6 years ago. In 1998, she took my folder of wedding info when I called off my first wedding and told me gently that she would take care of contacting vendors and canceling everything for me.

She created new lyrics to Randy and the Rainbow's (in)famous song, Denise, which went something like this (keep in mind, Connie was accounts receivable where I worked, and hated dealing with petty cash...she sang this whenever I came to her with reciepts:) "Denise Denise/you are a pain to me/Denise Denise/you drive me up a tree/Denise Denise/why do you bother me?" :D



I had a Partylite party in my home once, and Connie cracked all of us up with Reason #3 to Light a Candle (it involved the bathroom...trust me, it was SUPER funny at the time...it was one of those contagious giggle fests that only a group of women can get up to).



When she brought an old photo album into the office with pictures of herself from the early 1970s, we teased her about being a hippie, and she "confessed" that her hippie name had been Rainbow...so when her daughter gave birth to Connie's first grandchild (about 7 years ago), I wrote a congratulatory note to "Grandma Rainbow."



Connie was only 59 when she died last week.

Getting crazy with the cheese whiz...

Seriously. Digital products are probably the best. thing. ever. for getting pictures scrapped. Wish I'd had PSE a little sooner. Still, gotta love the hubs for giving it up for me last Mother's Day (2009...finally). I've been working away on challenges and with new kits since Ben was down for the count yesterday (now he's MUCH better, and playing with a neighborhood girl...at her house! --yes, I warned the mom about his fevers yesterday) :P

First up: I had to play with all my Oscraps goodies right. away. AWESOME textures for photos (blending modes...NOW I get it!).


I used Photology 2 from Emily Powers on the larger photo of me...one called "utopia"...then I didn't have to clone out a recent acne outbreak (getting old sucks as bad as being an adolescent! LOL...) I used a challenge template from Merkeley Designs, and added the photo of clouds to it. Papers and the photo mask (on the cloud photo) are all from The Sunday Edition by Paislee Press, with a couple bits from Busy Road by Kitty Designs.



Next up: hunting through some "vintage" (circa 1994, so...not THAT vintage) photos looking for the one of my mom with long hair playing guitar (circa 1973, so, vintage to some of the whippersnappers out there...more on this photo in a sec!), I found this photo of my dad at work that I love. It's the only photo I have of him at work, since he was a line foreman for Ford, and they generally frowned upon photos being taken inside the factory.


Again with Kitty Design's Busy Road kit + Add-On (only a dollar each at Oscraps...RUN!)...I was thinking of Ben when I bought it (my car hound) but when I found this photo of my dad, I knew I wanted to "man it up" (ha) with some of the fun car & road elements in this collection.



Finally, this morning I wanted to work on the template challenge at Digital Scrapbook Artisan Guild. I'm not a template fan, but I'd seen some done without the distracting horizontal paper strip and decided to put my own twist on it.



It seems I've gone from using a lot of browns on my digi LOs to using a lot of blues...change is good. About this LO: I've seen this photo before in our family albums, but never realized it was my MOM playing guitar (which she did on every camping trip we ever took) because I have no memory of her with long hair! She looks so much like my sister, it's spooky. They both have Botticelli's Venus hair...gorgeous, thick, blonde and curly, while I got stuck with the standard white girl stringy mess. Jealous? Hells yeah.

The template is from DSAG, but I used an Oscraps kit by BioGraffiti, one called, oddly enough, Happy Camper. This is the photo I was looking for (it was still in the old family album) when I found the picture of my dad at work. I added two other classic camping photos: my sister & I (gotta love those knee socks with shorts! aaackk! so Brady Bunch...) standing by the Otsego Lake State Park sign (we went there every July for 2 weeks, during Ford shut down), and one of my dad in our old aluminum rowboat. I have very fond memories of quiet afternoons (my dad is the strong silent type) staring at the reflections of lake water, pondering life and waiting for that tug at the end of my fishing line.

Definitely getting old...my memories are getting all gooey and sentimental!

Weekend work

Ben has been sleeping all morning after throwing up last night (and last night only, thank goodness!), so I've been sitting in the living room waiting to hear something from his room..but only had blissful silence as he slept.

I took the time this morning to shop the deals at Oscraps...there are plenty of them this week. I keep finding new digi sites and then moving on to the Next Big Thing, but Oscraps has such a huge variety of designers that I think I'll be sticking around there for a while.

I also joined the Digital Scrapbook Artisan Guild -- sounds fancy-schmancy, doesn't it? -- $15 for 3 months of access & a monthly online magazine. Apparently they had some spammer issues, so made it a pay-to-play site, but they allow you to upload LOs with supplies from *any* site, which, as you may well know by now, I've been looking for.

I did two paper LOs this weekend -- on Friday, mostly. E was in a tennis tournament this weekend, so I had to chop up my usual crop time. I took Ben with me in the early afternoon (we were cropping at Kelly's), left to meet Tess's bus, then came back after E was done (late) with his tourney (9p-midnight...12:30a, actually...sorry, Kelly!)

The first LO was inspired by another that I could not, for the LIFE of me, find again. But big circle-themed LOs have been everywhere lately, so I just picked up on the trend. I challenged myself to use the Pink Paislee Artisian Tape that came with an SC kit, and it was easy to make a frame with it.

This next LO is a bit of a mess. The original, by DT member Nicole H, is quite a bit "cleaner;" my photos are too busy but I did reach another goal: to get all the ephemera from our trip to Build A Bear on the LO. Tess loves it, that's what really matters ;)

Off to use the supplies I bought at Oscraps this a.m....oh, and my new SC kit came yesterday...I was going to stay up late to play with it, but then had a sick kid to deal with. Maybe while he watches Thomas the Tank Engine ;)

A leetle behind...

Yeah. Just a little. I am catching up on some promises. This is my first one (due May 15th. so sorry, Amy. hope you haven't sent these off yet)...a 4"x6" ATC swap, the last one I signed up for over at SIStv.



It's for a "Girly" theme...and this quote about Ginger Rogers is one of my favorites. I gesso'd (is that a word?! LOL) 4x6 index cards, let them dry, then stamped a flapper image with embossing ink, sprinkled irridescent powder over her, and hit it with a heat gun. Then I brushed magenta paint (mixed with acrylic glazing medium...the paint was lumpy) over the whole card, waited a moment, then took a baby wipe to smear off the heavier ink...and it turned this lovely neon pink color (as did my fingers).



The teal accents just seemed to bring it all together with the vintage photo, reminding me of the Art Deco hotels along South Beach in Miami. Very appropriate, and a happy mistake.

Not so happy was the result of splattering some Maya Road mist...I had no control over the splatters, then tipped the ENTIRE bottle over as I tried to clean up...making an even worse mess...luckily only one card (now mine, clearly) got ruined in the disaster.



On to Marit's class projects...I am waiting for the gesso to dry. Used my "new" (rummage- "saled") spiral-bound watercolor paper journal, originally marked at $22.00 but picked up for 50 cents (!!) recently. I opened the journal to a random page near the back (starting at the front of a journal is intimidating) and started schmearing...fun.



My last commitment is to a circle journal, also a SIStv swap, born out of last year's Sisiversary with the hopes we'd be finished by *this* year's event; alas, it was not to be. Add a flaker and some slow mailers (ahem...that would be me again, *blush*) and I'm left with one more page to make & send directly to our hostess, whose original CJ was lost along with the flaker.



Why do I do swaps again? Oh, yeah. For the fun of it.

New shoes...

...and an old, OLD pair. Just got a new pair of "keds" (they aren't really keds, but that's what I think of them as...so keds they are!) and had to document them alongside the pair I wore through hs and college...yes, I've saved them all these years, because my friend (and Kappa Delta sister) Kate Genter drew some of her fabulous artwork all over them! How could I give them up?!

And how fun, TAAFOMFT is having a "scrap your favorite shoes" 1st Anniversary contest with...wait for it...over 25 prize packages for those who enter. Serendipity!

The one thing that has kept me from buying a new pair for over 20 years, is that pregnancy has really changed my feet (among...ahem...many other body parts. heh). My old pair were a size 9 U.S., the new ones? Size 10 (yikes. mostly for the width...these new ones make a great flopping sound because they are actually a smidge big...and that's how I like them!) Then, there were Crocs...but I haven't been able to find the dark purple pair I'd like this summer. More serendipity...because what is more appropriate for summer wear than a nice crisp new pair of white shoes?