Ali's Blog

Have you checked out Ali Edward's blog? She is doing an absolutely amazing thing raising money for Autism Awareness. I'm completely blown away by how much money she has raised and how many people have donated. Please check it out if you get a chance. Thanks!

Mini album

This is the cover of the mini album that I made this week:


It's a book about one of my college roommate's visit to Boston for St. Patrick's Day. We had not seen each other in a year and a half. Between St. Patrick's Day, and a balance of beer and basketball, we had an awesome time.

The idea of the album is from Shimelle. It's a project she did on Fiskar's TV. It is just so adorable. Each page is a 4 x 6 photo on Bazzill cardstock, a strip of Basic Grey paper, a 7 Gypsies word sticker, a Heidi Swapp flower, a strip of ric rac or ribbon attached with staples, and a Brad from Joann's. On the cover I used Lil Davis chipboard letters, CTMH stamps (first time I got to play with them), Versamark ink, and brads that I believe come from K & Co, though I'm not 100% sure. I worked on this a little bit at a time for a couple of days. I couldn't believe how quickly it came together. Thank you Shimelle and Fiskars!

Whoop-eee!

Congratulations Georgetown!!!! Keep it up boys!

Product Review 2

Now that Kansas had to go and lose yesterday (I had them winning the whole thing) and it's not quite time for the Georgetown game yet, I figure it's time for another product review. It actually is not a product, but rather a class. I love taking online scrapbook classes, especially mini album ones. I think there are three major reasons for this: 1. I love the feeling of accomplishing something 2. I do not have a LSS where I can take classes 3. I like to learn new techniques and play once in awhile. With these three goals in mind, I took the Rolodex of Inspiration class by Kolette Hall from Creating Keepsakes online last night.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class. At first, I thought it would be a fun little project, but that it would not amount to much. I like quotes, but I do not actively search them out. I ordered this course almost a month ago, but did not have a chance to actually take it until last night. In the meantime, I collected quotes, some from the bonus material Kolette sent, and the rest from blogs, magazines, and the quote a day I get on my google homepage. I cannot believe how many quotes I accumulated!

I'm good at accumulating things, so that in itself is not a sign of success. But how cute the whole thing turned out is. Below is my cover. A little hint- cut the holes at the bottom first so that you don't accidentally cover them with an embellishment.


Kolette's directions were easy to follow and her assembly line approach helped me to finish the whole thing in no time. I did not find all of her themes (friendship, identity, boy, girl, family, love, joy, holidays, birthday, and seasons ) particularly useful, so I changed some of them. My topics were: friendship, identity, celebrations, joy, children, family, wisdom, inspiration, and love. Here are some of my cards. I used the Basic Grey Romani line. It's just so yummy and fun!



To sum up, if you want a fun little project that will look cute on your desk and also be useful to you when designing pages, definitely take this class. The directions are easy to follow and there is plenty of room for you to make it your own.

Norway

Yes, the thing that is most frequently in my train of thought today is Norway. Well, that and my broken desk, but that is another story. My contemplation of Norway is not quite as strange as it may seem. We work with a Norwegian company at work. Hardly a work day goes by that I am not talking with someone from Norway. Well, there was the one day they were all out on a boat and I couldn't get in touch with any of them... Does anyone know if sailing is a traditional way to celebrate in Norway? Has anyone been there before? I'm sure it is quite beautiful. If only I could think of a reason for a business trip out there.

Getting back on track, now that we've established that it is not unusual for me to be thinking about Norway, why a blog post about it? Yesterday I was reading an article on http://www.bbc.co.uk about the EU. The most shocking thing about it was that Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein are not members of the EU. I had no idea! I assumed because Norway used the euro that they were part of the European Union. I guess there is some sort of economic agreement, but not a full political arrangement. You learn something every day!

By the way, another interesting thing I learned about in the article is that one of the major reasons that Iceland is not part of the EU is because of fishing laws. What an interesting sticking point in the negotiations. Want more information on the EU and non-member countries? Here's an interesting article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_European_Union

TICKETS!!

I can't believe I forgot until right now. My Red Sox/Yankees tickets arrived today :D

Go SOX!

Monogram

I made this monogram for a challenge on a scrapbook site. It so much fun to just play. I cut the monogram out of chipboard and painted it white. Then I used the Lil Davis glitter glaze everyone has been talking about. I love how it came out, except that I wish there was more color. You can't tell from the scan, but my glitter is blue. The directions said to layer it over their colored paint. I'll have to give that a shot and see how it comes out. Next I added some American Crafts flowers (someone will be getting more in a swap soon ;) ) sewn with a clear Foofala button in the middle. I don't know what brand the ribbon is, but it came from the immensely talented Rebecca Sower. I bought something from her Etsy shop, and even the wrapping (this ribbon and some pretty paper) was amazing. Last are my initials made from some Lil Davis rub-ons. This is going to be the cover for my CK All About Me album. I followed the directions a couple of months ago...Ok, fine, sometime in 2006. When I get a chance I want to go through and customize it. I figure a cute cover is the first step.

March Madness

This is the one time of year that I really love basketball. Not that I don't like basketball usually, it's just that I like football, and of course baseball, better. However, I love the whole NCAA March Madness thing. It's really the only thing that we talk about at work. There have been all sorts of articles about how much productivity has decreased nationwide because of it. As an anecdotal evidence, traffic at one of our websites went down 90% right when the first game started. We're just all obsessed.

I WAS in first place in our office pool tonight until Duke had to go and lose. Now, I know they weren't seeded very high, but I expected them to win one game. I thought that if someone just told them "Hey, I know it's a rebuilding year, but you're DUKE and you have COACH K" they would go "oh yea, right" and win at least one game.

And Marquette, I'm disappointed in you too.

Go Georgetown!!!

Product Review 1

I thought that it would be fun to do a weekly (roughly) product review. It will allow me to use some of my stash and do something creative, and maybe someone out there will even find it useful. So without further ado, here is my first review:

American Crafts Felt Flowers and Punctuation

The first project that I created was this card. I thought of it as a birthday card, but I suppose it could be for any type of celebration. I used a Fiskars' texture plate to make the pp (Provo Craft) a little more interesting. I have not hand sewn anything for awhile, but the card seemed boring without it. The stamp is by K & Co.

I also did a 12 x 12 layout. It was so beautiful outside today that I had to go take a walk and capture some late winter pictures. I cannot take credit for the design- it is by Amanda Probst. Chatterbox pp, Bazzill cs, Marvy Uchida pen. I also used American Craft thickers letters because they matched. They're one of my new favorite lettering tools.

There are things that I really love about the felt flowers and punctuation. They add great texture, come in cute colors, and spice up any page. You get a lot of different pieces in the container, so it is well worth the money. However, I haven't found a good way to adhere them besides brads and staples. Liquid adhesive shows through, and glue dots and my roller adhesive only stick to them sometimes. The major thing that I don't like about the American Crafts felt sis that each container doesn't contain all the shapes in all sizes and colors. I was looking for the largest flower in one color, but found that it was only available in two other colors. The advantage of the packaging is the variety, yet it seems like there was never the piece I was looking for. My suggestion to the manufacturer: make even numbers of each shape and size and each color. Then I would buy the whole line!

March Madness Week 1

This is my layout for March Madness week 1.*

It's based on a sketch challenge. I'm still not quite sure if I like it. I think it's a little cramped-I'm not used to putting so many things on a layout.

One thing I really like about it is that it's my first process layout. Usually I just sit down, maybe with an idea in my head, and create a layout. I didn't feel like scrapping this week, but I knew that I wanted to get this layout done tonight. So Tuesday, I told myself that I had to pick a theme, Wednesday I would pick the papers, and Thursday I would do the layout. I figured breaking it down would make it seem like less work. Tuesday I decided to do the layout on my roommate Beth's birthday a couple of weeks ago. Wednesday I chose this cute paper from SEI. Then I saw the 7Gypsies tag and the ribbon. Next came the Scenic Route chipboard letters, which were followed by the American Crafts felt flowers. Just when I thought I'd picked out all the embellies, I remembered that I had brackets to match the flowers. I could not resist starting to put the layout together. This morning I woke up and knew that I had to put ric rac at the bottom of the tag. When I got home tonight, I added the pictures and a few more embellies.

Overall, I'm thrilled with the process, I'm just not so sure about the result. I'm so happy that I used my stash. I've never done a layout with a mini picture before. I think I'm going to do it again- I love the look. I'm also happy that I reached (at least once) the point in my scrapping abilities where I just "know" when something needs to be added. To channel Ali Edwards, that's so cool.

*For those of you who don't know, I hate the idea that someone would put my picture on the Internet without my permission. Therefore, I try to extend the same courtesy to others, so I block out the faces of people in my layouts. If you want to see the layout without the blurred faces, just leave me a comment or email me.

Now This Just Isn't Fair!

Dizzy yesterday, head pounding today. Now really, this just plain isn't fair! (As though life has to be fair) Ok, my head is not actually pounding YET, but my vision is completely blurred, which is always the first step to a migraine. I only feel like this at home. Maybe my apt is making me sick. Hmmm. I'm so sick of complaining and being in pain. I want to feel better and get my life back together NOW.

On a happy note, the people at the post office were super sweet to me today. I was trying to find one of those large (10x10x8) Priority mail boxes to send a bunch of stuff to my brother, but they did not have any. It was the second post office I went to that were out of them. Why the run on boxes that size? Besides the box problem, the stuff I wanted to send was fairly heavy, and I was worried it was going to cost a fortune to mail. The person working at the post office found a box behind the counter for me (for free) and weighed everything before I packaged it up so I would know how much it would cost. She even gave me an ordering form so that I could get the boxes I want delivered to my apt. She was so helpful and friendly that it's making me smile even now.

Hello

Hi to any sneaky people who might be reading this :)

I'd wanted to write more, but I'm really dizzy, so I better go rest (after I check the aforementioned board for a little March Madness).