Oh, and One More Thing...

I forgot to mention:

TOMORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY!!
(yes, I know those 32 year-old, soon to be 33 year-old, toes need a new pedicure, that's on my list of good-to-myselfness for tomorrow!)

Paint and Thread...

That's pretty much all I used to embellish this layout. Oh, and some wood-grain butterflies and oh-so sparkly alphas!




I made this for last weeks Project Catwalk challenge...it was to go SIMPLE, and create a layout using minimal supplies. Not my usual style, but I love how it came out. This week's challenge is to use texture in an innovative way, the deadline is tonight, and the wheels are a-turning!

Creative Type Prompt Numero Uno

"Create a concert poster(or even a movie inspired poster layout) inspired introduction of yourself! Of course with type being the main focus, create your own type, make it pop off of your piece, make the type the focus. Use big letters and small letters, silly letters, bold letter, etc. Use colors, or go simple, add different elements, collage, sew, paint, add pictures, etc. Pretend you are designing a poster to introduce who you are! It can be in the form of a layout, an ATC, a page drawn in your art journal, anything. You own the creative license on how you go about this, rock out to some music in the background, pretend you are a rock star and have fun with it."

Only one week to go!!

Here's a layout...

...that I don't love:

It's hard to get a good picture, because of the reflection on the transparencies. I don't know what has been up lately, but my mojo has been kinda sucking big balls. That little love card turns on the brad to reveal a journaling spot, which I reserved for D to write about his trips with the Bear to the Beach. He hasn't done it yet, though :P I used paint to adhere the circle transparency, and staples on the frame. Maybe it's because I am not in love with the pic (though it *is* a cool one--see the Boston skyline in the background), or because I have already done a lo using photos from this very day, but I just had a hard time getting inspired.

Now that I have finished Bear's Year One Scrapbook, I find myself at somewhat of a loss as far as what to scrap. I haven't gotten pictures printed in forever, either, and the ones I have been printing myself come out kinda dark. I have two huge batches of pictures to work from, Bear's 1st birthday party and our family reunion trip to the lake in July, but I haven't been inspired to start either one. I think I have gotten over-saturated with technique lately, and that sort of freezes me up creatively. It's like I get too focused on trying to make it look a certain way, and lose touch with the playful part of creating, more product centered vs process, when it should be the other way around. And it totally doesn't help that I am a perfectionist, and so I am really impatient with the learning curve of trying out these new things. Something I have been working on is reconciling the image that is in my head with the one that ends up on paper. I mean, it is so rare that they actually match, I sort have given up on trying. Or just going with what is in front of me, seeing where that takes me, as opposed to having a specific end-point in mind and getting frustrated when I can't achieve it.

I will post my submission for the first prompt over at The Creative Type later today, and it's a good example of just going with what was in front of me. I used the concert posters for inspo, but I didn't pick 'one' that I tried to emulate--I knew that would squelch my creativity. So what I came up with is pretty funky, but I had fun making it, and it makes me smile.

So stay tuned...

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Oooh, isn't it pretty? The soon-to-be released Urban-Prep kit from Scrap in Style TV is coming August 25th! Available For PreOrder Until 8.24, Spend $50 and Get A $10 Gift Card! Buy it here. Tell them Sukeydookiedoo sent you :)

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (I think that's supposed to help me win ;)

Toot toot

I am VERY excited to be a part of The Creative Type design team--a new challenge blog "dedicated to the long lost art of Type. . . taking the focus off all the embellishments and patterned papers and trying to experiment more with different styles of writing, journaling, creating art and uniquness through letters."

The first prompt is a totally rad one, taking inspiration from concert posters like these to create a layout that says something about YOU!

Stay tuned for my take on the challenge :)

memory lane

This post at my bff's blog inspired me to take a dusty box of letters off the closet shelf, to search for her letters to me from back when we were in college. What a trip!



I'm so glad I saved them! It's so cool to reconnect with her former self, and in a way, through her words, who I was at the time. The letters are all over 10 years old, and focus a lot on BOYS, classes, and friendships. A couple of boys in particular reappear in her letters, it's funny to remember how consumed we'd become... It was also interesting to read how unhappy we both were our 1st semester away at college. I remember it being a tough transition for me, and I'd be curious to see what I had to say about it in my letters.

One of the best things about re-reading Leah's letters are her little doodles and poems. I can see hints of the direction her art has taken now, even from these long-ago, quick and random sketches:











Check out Leah's blog, Creative Every Day, for lots of inspiration and advice about nurturing your creative side! She has a TON of bloggers who are participating in an awesome challenge to bring more creativity into their lives.
Have a good week!

summer weekends...

are so yummy. Yesterday, yoga in the morning with my bff and a cookout at my aunt's that started with a huge thunderstorm but ended up sunny and beautiful. Today I got to sleep in and home-cooked brunch (all thanks to d!), then a field trip with d, the baby and the dog to Wollaston beach, where it was just gorgeous out! After a long walk, a dip and some ice cream, it feels good to be home and sleepy and sun drenched. Tonight: sushi and champagne! D brought a bottle home on Friday to celebrate the end of 'a year of feeding Chloe'--he's so sweet to recognize ending nursing as an occasion!

Here's my denim wall hanging I made for the challenge at SiS...I have to admit, I was feeling pretty smug that I had kicked serious butt on this one. I mean, I worked really hard on it and I really like how it came out...then I saw everyone else's. Man, people are SO creative! There are some really amazing creations, the majority of them done in just 24 hours!! I just love it...it's so inspiring. So winning this week may not be in the bag for me (don't tell anyone, but deep down I am really competitive), but I'm still pretty proud of how it came out:

Thanks for stopping by!

40 years...

I had an awesome time making this week's Project Catwalk challenge, but I can't post it yet. Let me just say that I did a lot of hand sewing on it, and I love the effect! In the meantime, I will share a layout I did for some bonus points for PC. I love this picture of my parents on their wedding day...I can't get over how young they look--like kids. Which is not a way I am used to seeing my parents, obvsiously. Except, they really are young, just 20 years old! Amazing, to think they are still together (they celebrated their 40th anniversary this year) after such a bumpy beginning. Go John and Paulette!!

So, the challenge was to use only the materials and tools from this list:
(I used everything)
chipboard
some type of tape (the black book binder's tape)
paint
stapler
a piece of mail you received today (what I stitched on and the flower)
something that is currently in your pantry (I used a cap from a tube of frosting to "stamp" my background)
scissors
needle and thread
photo

It forces you to get really creative, being limited to those things...with no paint brush, I had to figure out an improvised stamp. With no adhesive, the stapler and tape played a bigger role than usual. Although, my mom would not approve of the staples on the pictures, she thinks they look 'messy' LOL!

She's a Winner

Back in March I brought Chloe to Fox25 news for a "Baby Derby." I wasn't really sure what to expect, but it sounded fun and I figured Chloe would get a kick out of the other babies, so we went for it. Watch the video to see what happened.

I finally got around the making a little album with the pictures. It's my first clear acrylic experiment, it was fun to do, but a little tricky. The pictures aren't that great, an assistant at the studio was taking them, but still fun to scrap.

















You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

This made me smile...

I'm very flattered that the cool girls over at Scrapjacked picked my Beach Bum layout (see two posts below this one) as one of their favorites! The badass MK just pointed it out to me a few minutes ago, so glad she did, otherwise I may have missed it!!

Here's some irony.

The mini-album I mentioned in my last post, the one for the challenge at SiS, is a tongue-in-cheek "tribute" to my dog Sukey. Not that she doesn't deserve a tribute, but I joked as I showed it to DH that it almost sounds as if she's dead...and she's very much alive and sort of a PITA! With all the thunderstorms we've been having lately, she's been a nuisance and totally underfoot, and it's not like she's this heroic dog or something. Take a look at the pics, and you'll see what I mean (click image for a larger pic):

We had a list of patriotic words that we had to use in our mini-album, and so I chose ones that I thought sort of humorously went with the photos I had on hand, to sort of poke fun at her scaredy-cat dog-ness and the highfalutin word list at the same time. Anyways, this weekend has been horrible for her! Something is up with her hips--she doesn't want to go for walks, and can barely get down the stairs. She is obviously in pain, and there were SO many thunderstorms, and to top it off, gunshots across the lake for a sailboat race (also on her top ten list of sounds she's rather go to the vet and get the kennel cough vaccine shot up her nose than hear). And here I am joking about a tribute!! Poor Sukey...she knows I love her dearly and most certainly am NOT wishing her dead! But I can't help but feel a little guilty, especially when I see all the heart-felt entries at SiS.

Oy vey.

Ok, so I'm new around here and there are some things I can't figure out. Like how to make your pictures go to the bottom of your post, rather than automatically to the top. I don't really know html, so I'm sorta lost... Yesterday I worked on a super cute mini album for a challenge over at Scrap In Style TV. I can't post pictures of it until Saturday, so I will share another layout I made earlier in the week. This one was for Scrapjacked, one of my fave challenge blogs!

I don't know what the crap is up with the slideshow over there ----> I thought it would be my stuff from flickr, but it's obviously not. If anyone wants to tell me how to make it work, your assistance is much appreciated.

So I made the banner on Scrapblog, as suggested by ever-so-clever Shaina, but it (I?) was having lots of issues, so I got impatient and declared it done even though it is less than perfect.

I am crabby today...getting ready to go away from the weekend, and not really feeling like packing. I think the real reason I feel low is that Baby Bear decided to give up nursing this week! I definitely feel lucky that she nursed as long as she did (just over 13 months) and that I didn't have to go through some long, arduous process of weaning, but I guess I'm a little sad that it is the end of an era. Plus I think my hormones are all out of whack. Fun.

"Would you jump off a building if all your friends were doing it??"

This was my parents' inevitable response anytime I wanted to do something everyone else was doing, from getting my ears pierced to going skiing for the weekend.

"Uh...Yeah." That was pretty much the extent of my retort. Hell yeah, if ALL my friends are jumping off a building, they obviously know something I don't! My sense of logic rarely swayed their opinion.

And here I am. Like, 20 years down the road, jumping off the building. And it's all your faults, friends. I am on the blogwagon, and there's no knowing what I'll do!