Blockage!!!! Ugh!!!!!

ok, so, an hour ago, i was feeling so creative, and sat down to work on one of my newest projects. and, i might add, one of my favourite projects. an altered journal. LOVE IT!!!!! well, i did at the time...

and now...

it is my NEMESIS!!!!!!!!

that's right, folks, i'm blocked. i got nothing. i put one of my most anticipated elements on: black eyelets with black wire wrapped around the edge of the cover. LOVE IT!!! but now what?

i'm sitting here staring at it, going, "it looks cool so far, but it needs more. but what?!" and i don't know. i mean literally, i have no ideas here.

i'll admit, i briefly toyed with the idea of prima flowers, a pretty contrast to the harsh/industrial feel of the metal accents. but it just wasn't working for me. i have a stamp that would look absolutely stunning, but where to put it? i have bling of various descriptions, but that's not right for this piece. fibers? they're lovely, but i don't think they're right, either.

my one thought was to do the whole edge with eyelets and wire. that might look cool. and hey... now that i'm thinking about it... it WOULD look really cool... and i could do something funky with the stamp, and then use some wire and maybe a transparency to anchor it... and then a word or quotation at the bottom or something...

oh, the ideas are flowing now!!!!! yay!!!! thanks for your help!!! ;)


UPDATE: GAH!!! doing the whole edge with eyelets and wire... yeah, can't work. the measurements are wrong, and it will leave either too much space at the bottom, or too little. which sucks, because that would have been freaking cool! :(

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. :)

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. ;)

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).