Joe. gimme.

the challenge this week on Think Monday - Think ATC is coffee. almost too easy.

i say almost because, as some of you may know, i have an awesome coffee stamp (i used it on a 4x4 a while back, and i love it!). now, if you recall my post from the other day, my scrappin space is, well, messy. i can see desk, and the highest pile consists of a pen, some cards, a package of eyelets and a basket (listed from bottom to top). anyway, i searched high and low for that coffee stamp, but alas, it is nowhere to be found. and i just saw it the other day! arg!

so, if you noted my FB status tonight, it said "heather is going to make an atc tonight." then it changed to "heather is going to read tonight." then it changed back to "heather made an ATC after all tonight." and here it is!

not the stamp, mind you. no, that's gone. i'll find it... eventually. but while i was flipping around between blogs and listening to music, i was inspired to do the ATC anyway, and completely differently than i had originally intended. here's the final product. i like it. a lot.

the TMTA theme this week is coffee. and i was inspired. so here is my creation.

and while you're looking, please don't notice the fact that the mug is, in fact, paper-pieced. i stand by my post from the other night. i almost lost the handle at one point. and inking the edges is ridiculous. yes, i stand by my "i don't do paper-piecing" rant. but at least i've given it a whirl. i like the whimsy the mug lends to this ATC, but still, this will be the last paper piecing you see from this girl for a long time... like, forever.

but you noticed that the mug is BG infuse, didn't you? i know you did. i'll get you all hooked on BG, just gimme time (if you're not already addicted, that is, because really, how could you not be?). ;)

Why I Don't Do Paper-Piecing (this is for Deb, who created the lovelies below)

ok, for my readers who don't know exactly what paper-piecing is, here's a fine example, done by my friend deb. if you can't tell from the picture, each individual colour is a different piece of paper, cut out by hand, and glued together. i'm not joking. now, don't get me wrong, i think the finished product is lovely, and deb did a great job. but seriously... that's just not my style. so, having been inspired tonight, here are my reasons why i don't do paper-piecing:

1. seriously... the time required to just do a simple lighthouse is unbelievable. i've got better things to do with my time. like blog about all reasons i don't do paper-pieced lighthouses.
2. what colour is Goofy's hat?! who cares?! (this actually came out of a real conversation tonight, if you can believe it. but, staci came to the rescue, and looked it up online. it's green.)
3. seriously! who really cares what colour Goofy's hat is?!
4. i don't know what colour each Disney character's nose is.
5. so, my friend wanted to do a scarecrow. bought the kit and everything. but there was no template in the kit. and now there's no scarecrow. :(
6. "it could be one piece for the shoes, or 12 pieces. it all depends." that's an actual quote. i'm not kidding.
7. so very many small pieces to cut out.
8. so very many small pieces to lose.
9. so very many small pieces to re-cut.
10. so very many small pieces that get found after gluing down the second piece.

i give you... Blue!

the challenge this week on... um... something... My Time to Craft is blue. you're allowed white as well, but the main colour must be blue. so, here's my skinny. mostly blue. but i won't be posting this to the challenge blog, since i also used black and therefore broke the rules, but i still like the way this little creation turned out. well, enjoy! :)

Tag You're It!

so, the challenge this week on Tag You're It is a sketch challenge, and as one who loves sketches, i am very pleased by this challenge.

so, for this challenge, i used my BG Romani paper, which i lllllllllooooooooovvvvvveeeeee! also, that metal circle thing is Basic Grey. oh, the fun i'm having with BG lately (i'm trying to make up for dissing them in my last post). and of course, Prima flowers. yup, i used some of my stash (which, apparently, is abundant).

ok, so staci thinks that she should be the subject of this post. i'll grant her that. she provided the location and wine and "chips ahoy for fat chicks" that i enjoyed while working on this project. so thank-you, staci, for the good times, and thank-you, deb, for reminding me why i don't do paper piecing. (i'll post about that later.)

anyhoo, here's my tag. hope you like it. :)

Faithbooking 2: Sacredness

this week's faithbooking class is about Sacredness, or Faith Defined. what is faith to me? what does it give me, when do i need it, where do i find it? i included a poem on the first page, though what you put there is up to you. perhaps a picture of your meditation space, church, holy book, yourself in prayer, maybe even a prayer that you've written out. the journaling on page 2 is how you define faith, whatever it means for you.

i realize that this is a very personal topic that we're scrapping here. i'm not saying you need to come to the class with your journaling already written or even planned. i'm just giving you the medium on which to preserve what you believe at this point in your journey. there is no right or wrong answer for this, and no one (least of all me!) is going to judge your beliefs.

i also realize that this layout may be somewhat challenging for some people, not only because of the subject, but the layout itself is challenging. all that space! (pam made me add the picture in the bottom right corner on page 2 - the original version has more space there.) for me, the whole layout is a definition of my faith and sacredness. i find my faith in the space between. between you and me, me and Him, moment to moment. my faith restores my personal space, balances my space, helps me find peace in my space, generally makes my space more live-able. faith is the white-space in my life that draws my focus to what really matters, puts everything back into perspective, and lets me breathe again. that's why there's so much space on this layout.

i urge you to give this layout a try. i really enjoyed making it. it's simple, with some fun techniques (painting, tearing, doodling, stamping), but i think the impact of the design is striking. it's simplicity is what makes it work.

i hope you enjoy this layout as much as i enjoyed creating it. hope to see you wednesday night! :)

ps - i'll post better pictures when i get them. we forgot to scan the layout before hanging it in the store. :(

on the first page is the poem Zero Circle, by Rumi.

my journaling on the second page reads:
faith is what you find at the end of your rope, when you're lost, confused and weak. it picks you up and carries you when you just can't do it on your own.
sometimes i'm too stubborn to admit that, and then i'm screwed. i need help sometimes, i admit. faith is a helping hand.
when i'm quiet and still, even - especially - in the chaos of my life... that is when i find my faith.
and my strength.

annie, don't read this post. you'll cry. especially if you see the pictures. don't look. seriously. consider yourself warned.

my desk and so forth. at least, this is where i remember last seeing my desk at some point. i assume it's still in there... somewhere.
look! my desk barfed paper and prima flowers all over the dining room table! i'm not kidding, this is like some terrible antibiotic-resistant sickness that has invaded my scrappin space. not cool, people, not cool. pretty. and expensive. but not cool.

this week, i realized something. i need to get better. my disorganization is out of hand. allow me to illustrate with a couple stories.

so, who doesn't know of my weakness for chipboard? i mean, really. i love it almost as much as pretty paper, beautiful journals and free pens. well, the other week, my dealer/enabler/good friend/LSS owner brought in a HUGE order of new stuff. included in the shipment was some Making Memories chipboard alphabets. love them!!! and they were a good price!!! how can a girl resist? especially when she has no willpower to start with?! truly, chipboard is like crack for me some days. lol you laugh, because it's true for you, too, admit it.

well, last week was a rough week for me, for any number of reasons. so, on thursday afternoon, i headed out for some much-wanted retail therapy, so off i trekked to CNP. and purchased some MM chipboard monograms. i was so excited, because i love these letters, i've been coveting them for ages now, and now they're mine, all mine!! so i came home and went to put them away, in their little spot on the shelf on my desk. right next to their friends. that's right, folks, i had already purchased this exact set of MM chipboard, and TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THEM!!!! not that i'm complaining, and they will get used, but seriously!! oh, wait, that's not all!

the other day, i was digging around on my desk (well, moving large piles while trying desperately to prevent anything from falling to the floor, if i'm going to be perfectly honest here. i'm not even exaggerating. it was a full-body effort. my mom helped). i was looking for my large notebook. yup, not something little. a big thing. but that's not what this story is about. so moving on... i was moving stuff, and i found, beneath it all, tucked under a box and some stamps and some paper and a book and some dimensional medium, was a purple bag of Prima flowers. i thought to myself, "oh, i forgot i had these! how lovely! now i don't have to drool over the ones at the store! yay!" and i went to put them on the shelf on my desk. and as i did so, i realized that i was about to put them... you guessed it... right beside another bag of Prima flowers. oh, but wait, the story's not done yet! i saw this second bag of flowers, and thought to myself, "hold on, i don't remember taking them out of the pouch i took to the midnight crop the other week. where's that pouch?" and there it was, under a book i just bought and a card from some friends and some more stamps. and in that pouch were some stamps, a black chalk ink (also one of several - but it's ok, because it's pretty much the only colour ink i'm using lately), a couple metal embies, and yup, you guessed it, another bag of Prima flowers! so, the (current) total of bags is 3. i think that's it. don't worry, they'll get used... by me. these are not up for grabs. are you kidding me? that's almost $30 worth of flowers right there! dear me, can you imagine if i have more in there somewhere?! i don't think i'd be surprised at this point, but i'm really hoping i won't find any more.

and yet, i still have one more tale: i was sorting through my patterned paper this evening. i need desperately to purge, and i'm trying to be brutal. i'm giving a friend a TON of 12x12 SU cardstock that i simply don't use. i can't even say it's eye candy, since i've forgotten it's there. for 12x12 i use the stuff pam sells at the store, and whenever i use SU cardstock, it's the 8.5x11, and even that is mostly neutrals. so what am i going to do with all this cardstock?! so, i'm giving it to a friend who will enjoy it... and use it. but that's not the story here. the story is this: i'm going through my papers, keeping only a fraction of my stash. well, you know i love BG. except for one line: that horrid birthday one. yuck! i mean, what were they thinking?! leave birthday stuff to Around The Block, they do "spunky" better. BG should stick to elegant, vintage, cute frogs, and all things coffee-, bipolar- and mythologically-inspired ("eva," "stella ruby," "colour me silly," "infusion," "euphora," "ambrosia.") i just don't like that birthday line. what's it called? cupcake or something dumb like that. yeah. don't like it. truly, yuck. a gross disappointment.

now, i know by now you must be picking up on how much i do not like that line of BG. so you can feel my surprise when i found in my stash a sheet of the confetti/sprinkle paper from that line. how hypomanic was i when i bought that?! but wait, it gets worse! behind that sheet, was the number paper from that line (i think that pattern was called "invitation" or something like that). whatever. they go in the pizza box to be donated or something. well, i keep going through the stash, and a dozen or so pages down, i find another sheet of Invitation! wha-?! so, it, too, went into the "purge" box. that's right, folks, i'd barely started purging and had already come across 3 sheets of paper i have always hated. and two of them are the same paper! well, that's awful, i know you're thinking. i thought that, too. until, about 10 minutes later (yes, that's how big the stack of paper was, that it took me that long to go through part of the pile), in the same pile of paper, i found... ANOTHER SHEET OF INVITATION!!!!!!!!! you have got to be kidding me! i hate that paper! and i have 3 sheets of it! i'm not even joking here!!!!

i think pam and deb were onto something this evening. deb suggested a binder that pam keep at the store, and every time i go to purchase something, we look it up in the binder. that way, we'll know what i'm buying, when i'm buying ("how often" is also implied here), and the phase of the moon. ok, not the phase of the moon. although, that would be an interesting thing to study. and when i find my giant notebook, maybe i'll get on that, tracking scrapping purchases and cross-referencing them to the phase of the moon. hmm... nah, i'll just stick to impulsively purchasing large amounts of the same things over and over, whether i like them or not.

yeah, i need help. although, after working some more tonight, i can now see desktop in several places. and it's white! who knew! lol

if you don't hear from me in the next few days, please come over and look for me. i'm likely trapped under a pile of ugly patterned paper (all the same design) and prima flowers and chipboard. ;)

Faithbooking layout - Guideposts.

ok, i've finally gotten around to posting the layout for the first Faithbooking class at Cut N Paste. the first class was about scrapbooking those texts/verses/quotations that speak to your soul and help you along your journey.

the kit and instructions are available at Cut N Paste for $15. i'll post the next class's layout as soon as possible. thanks! :)

ps - the fun little technique on this layout, which you'll find in the corners. here's how to do it:

1. doodle lightly in pencil.
2. randomly punch holes along the doodles, using a variety of sizes of hand-held punches (Silent Setters also work nicely, especially if you want to go more than a couple inches from the edges).
3. erase the lines.
4. adhere a co-ordinating paper to the back of the layout. this will show through and give a nice contrast.
5. enjoy listening to all your friends asking "how'd you do that?" and making it seem infinitely more complicated than it really is. ;)

i clicked, i drooled, i scraplifted.

all i needed was an uninterrupted day, an inspirational blog, and a phone call from annie. ;)

i'm admitting it here, folks, sometimes, my layouts don't work out. and lately, this seems to be especially true when i use a sketch (i know, it gives me sadness, too). so, you should know, the reason it took so long to get the layout completed for the second Faithbooking class is because i did a layout already... and hated it! so i resolved to do it better. at first i thought i could salvage the original one, and improve it. but alas, that idea, yeah, not so good. so, i decided to just start over.

and the result is hanging up at CNP. it's called Faith. totally pared down and simplified, and i really like it. once i get a picture of it, i'll post it here. and i'm going to post the details about the class itself later tonight, or sometime tomorrow. in the meantime, pop over the CNP and check out the layouts for the Faithbooking courses (and sign up for the next class, or pick up the kit for the first class). talk to you later! ;)

tag challenge - dream

the challenge this week on Tag You're It! is "Dream." i created this little lovely (ok, not so little... she's approx 6.5x3.5) tonight, having been inspired to paint.

for the painted background... i mixed together eggplant and silver and swept it upwards on the tag. then i combined black and silver and dry-brushed the bottom left corner and up and around the top. the metal words along the right side are: bon voyage, create, cry, play, dance, dream.

this will likely be a gift for someone who is helping me immensely along my journey right now, and her favourite colour seems to be purple (i can't remember the last time i didn't see her wearing purple).

anyway, there you have it. my first challenge in quite some time, but i think i like it. :) but, it's getting late now, so i have to go link to the challenge site, and then go to bed. nighty-night! :)

ok, you have to check this out

just click on the link, and look at this layout. and drool. it's ok. no one can see you. but i promise you, you will salivate like pavlov's dog!

http://inspirationalcraftblogs.blogspot.com/2008/09/heavenly-ice-cream.html

ding!

and here it is...

the piece i was working toward this afternoon. that's right, folks, it's painted! i'm really digging this piece. oh, i could really get hooked on 4x4!! and paint! especially if i'm painting 4x4s! this, my friends, is happiness. painted minis. love 'em! :) expect to see more of these in the future.

playing this afternoon

it's Mufu's birthday today, so blithe wanted to go to the art gallery in town. there is an exhibit there right now, on till october 26 by Aidan Urqhart (sp?). there are giant boot pieces, which are cool, but my favourite pieces were the minis. little 3x3 delights, mixed media, lotsa fun! well, i was inspired.

i'm going to start incorporating brighter colours into my work now, i think. and get a little quirkier sometimes, too. i love this little bird, i think she's adorable. (for those who have heard the rumours... this is the stamp i licked to make sure i got it. stop laughing. if you know me, you shouldn't be surprised. lol)

this little 4x4, which is really just a first attempt at something cooler (i wanted to make sure i liked the idea before i put in all that work into it (it involves paint and some other mixed media lovelies). so, here's the first attempt. i think i like it.

yeah, i'm really digging this piece. i'm especially pleased by the visual triangles: check out the coral, the turquoise, and the flowers. and you know, i didn't even notice any of them until it was all done. how fun is that?! :)

i'm really inspired by 4x4 right now. it's so much fun! give it a whirl, you'll fall in love! and if you need any inspiration, pop over to the St Thomas Elgin Public Art Centre and check out Aidan Urqhart's work. here's the link to STEPAC: http://www.stepac.ca/ (i'll put it on the sidebar, too, so it won't get lost in post-land).

purging. but in a socially-conscious way...

and now, i'm not tossing all my pretty paper into the recycling bin (instead of the garbage). why would you even think that?! have you not met me?! lol

i read of a women's shelter near my parents' church. i offered them oodles o' paper, as well as free classes on cardmaking and basic scrapbooking. i'll let you know if/when i hear back.

if they don't want it, and staci doesn't want it (lol), i'm saving it for the Yard Sale at CNP. might as well get some store credit for it all... esp since it mostly came from there in the first place. (have i mentioned here that pam's my dealer? and one of my dearest friends? and that i didn't know her from a hill of beans before she opened her store? yeah. lol)

and... because i SO love to purge, i did get rid of quite a bit of stuff the other day. one of my friends, the one who makes annie b look like a disorganized slob, popped by for a moment. she left with my big black box o' paper. not just the box. it was full of paper. and hanging folders to organize it all. she almost cried when she saw it. lol slowly but surely, i'm making progress... are you proud, annie? ;)

purging. a little. more to come, but at least it's a start...

i have a book. honestly, i don't remember the last time i opened it. probably shortly after i got it. the spine is broken in at one spot, but otherwise it's in perfect condition.

Scrapbooking Made Easy. it's a Simple Scrapbooks book.

if you want it, let me know. the usual ways: comment here, email (i'll put my addresses on the sidebar), Facebook.

there you go. someone, please take it. even if you just know of someone who might like it, please take it and pass it along. i'm putting it out to the cosmos.

if it's still in my house in a week, it's going to BFM, just so you know. thanks! :)