End of Winter Distraction

I've been working my way through the end of winter and the overwhelming local, national, and international news with...

1 - A little knitting. 

A ruby red and pink swirl hat for a baby I want to finally meet soon.And a couple mitered squares for a blanket my knitting group is working on. I found this yarn on sale and used a gift certificate I got for Christmas. The colors are my favorites, all in one! Luckily I have a couple more skeins to hoard or use up soon. I can't decide which.2 - A little scrapbooking.All the bits and pieces for this page came from an awesome craft supply swap I attended at the Blue House in Ann Arbor. It's a really cool art and crafts space that I discovered after connecting online to a local crafter in the aftermath of this annoying post on Etsy's blog in January. (I read this post on my phone while I was driving along the main drag through downtown, in the passenger's seat, thinking about how much I love it here. I love you Etsy but I don't love Detroit bashing by rubberneckers who don't check their facts. They're at the top of my pet peeves list. I think my comment went something like "last gasp my ass".) Anyhow, I turned a negative into a positive, and hope to make it back to the Blue House sometime this year to take a class. It takes a lot of energy to drive outside of 8 Mile these days, but I'll make it back to Ann Arbor eventually for a little craft escape.I've also been getting ready to jump into a Project Life album and have been gathering supplies for a photo mounting project. More on that soon.3 - A little break here and there. I even squeezed in a couple beach walks when I went to Florida for work. I added 'try kite surfing' to that bucket list on that trip! Walks. Naps. Spending time with family and friends. Space to reflect and process thoughts. Time to shop for and cook some good food. All are necessary for sanity in these troubling times. I am praying for peace and renewal as we approach spring.P.S. Jen is auctioning a Noro hand knitted scarf for Red Cross Japan relief fund. Great idea. Check it out.

Waiting for the Wedding Album

A friend requested that I make her a photo album for her wedding photos. I was honored to be asked, but also nervous to take on such an important task. I love making small scrapbooks and photo journals but have never taken a class in bookbinding, nor tried my hand at making an album worthy to hold wedding photos for a lifetime. She had plans to print some photos into a book, but wanted some photos to be displayed in a handmade album because it would be more meaningful.

Mirroring the slow food movement, this was my slow craft project for the year. I spent at least 3 months collecting supplies, reading about techniques, and thinking through design aspects. What colors should I use? What size should the page sizes be? What binding technique should I choose? How do I make it special and personalized? Do I have the skill to pull this off? I learned a lot in the process of slowing down and letting this project unfold creatively at its own pace. It tested my patience at times, but it was worth it.

You may recognize the tree on the front cover.

Even before this project was presented to me, I felt the urge to dig deeper creatively. To push myself to do work that required more time and skill. There's definitely a time for crafting quickly, and certainly there are times when life only allows for quick projects. But there's also a lot to be said for digging deeper and creating something of quality that is worthy of investing extra time in so that it has a chance of lasting

I intend for 2011 to be the year of quality over quantity. To process over producing. To find deeper wells of creativity in me. I'm not sure where the urge will take me, but I'm looking forward to the journey.

p.s. If you decide to try your hand at bookbinding, I really recommend using linen thread, not cotton or polyester, and investing in an awl (not just using a paper piercer meant for scrapbooking). It'll save you some time and heartache. There's always PaperSource for supplies, but locally owned and operated Hollander's is a great choice too. The cardstock I used was Opal Stardust 105lb from Bluedot Paper Shop, which has a beautiful sheen and a really sturdy thickness too. Youtube is a good source of tutorials on Japanese stab binding, and of course browsing online through flickr and etsy for inspiration is a great idea too.

Last Minute Christmas Card

Like every year, I had big plans for crafting Christmas cards. I even bought the cards, and had a concept but didn't pull it together in time. Instead, Matt and I put a last minute digi card together using Photoshop and Picasa. First, I made a photo collage in Picasa, size 5x7. Then I downloaded this free Christmas card from Becky Higgins.

In Photoshop, I made a 12x12 page, so this can do double duty as a digital scrapbook page. My first! Then I wrote some short month-by-month journaling, inspired by Angie Lucas. Next Matt helped me out with adding some color and the snowflakes with the brush tool. Flatten, and done.

It still bums me out a little to not send something through the mail, but whatevs. It went out by email in the nick of time. I am going to get this printed and slide it into a scrapbook too.

This year was such a whirlwind that I really appreciated looking back and reflecting on where we'd been and what we'd done. My one little word this year was "move". And move we did. At the end of the year, it's kind of like, what did we do besides move? But it turns out, we did some stuff.

Someone asked me in jest the other week if I live charmed life or something and I happily owned up to it. Yes, my life is totally charmed. It's because I have a lot of good support. I don't take the credit. There are so many people who share so much with me, and all I can go is try and try and try to repay the favor.

I am so grateful for this beautiful mess of a life we lead. Even for the crazy, mixed up times we manage to get through. Wishing you many beautiful moments during the week ahead.

I'm participating in a swap over at The Dares, and the other week a lovely green envelope arrived from Alaska filled with TTV and Polaroid transparencies, stickers, and cards made from Tina's amazing photos. I'm a big fan. You'll love her photographs and layouts. The other pages will be posted over at The Dares website in the next week or two, so check that out. Totally an honor to participate.

The first page that came to me was a little meditation on why I think people bother to scrapbook. Bits of love, pressed down in photos, colors and words that send a message to the future that you were here and you paid attention to the details. I've said it before...I feel like I'm creating a visual love letter every time I scrapbook about my friends or family.

I wanted to keep using her photographs so I kept going with a second page. A little poem about my day spilled onto the page.

I do miss art journaling and have been thinking about it more lately. Somewhere in our move, my art journal disappeared, probably into a box that's still in the basement waiting to be unpacked. Now that the skies are grey and we're forced indoors more than I'd wish, it's time to find it again. These pages will surely make their way in. 

Have you art journaled or scrapbooked lately? Or done something else creative with photographs, colors or words. Leave me a link in the comments if you have. I'd love to see what you've been up to.

An Autumn Week in the Life

In the spring I participated in the Week in the Life project. You can see a few of my pages here and here. I knew then that I wanted my mini book for 2010 to include a week in the spring when we were in Boston and a week in the fall when I expected we would be elsewhere. When October rolled around, I luckily remembered my plan but had to really remind myself to pick a week to document before the year was up. Two weeks ago ended up being the week. 


My life is so full right now and moving at an incredible pace. It was harder to find space in the day for the camera, especially during the weekdays when I sit behind a desk during the good light hours. But somehow I managed to take at least a few photos each day. Now, as I look back through them, I'm struck by the incredible amount of activity I managed to fit into those non-office hours.

Internally, I never feel like I fit enough in. It's this thing I have. Call it ambition. Or an appetite for living. Or just plain foolishness. I don't know. One of my occasional mantras is a line from the Indigo Girls song Get Out The Map... "Why do we hurdle ourselves through every inch of time and space? I must say around some corner I can sense a resting place." It pops into my head from time to time, especially when I'm hurdling too much.

The photographic evidence suggests I fit in plenty, even when I feel like I've been napping a lot more than usual. With family and friends nearby to fill up my spare time, I've been recognizing the very fullness of my life lately. I've also been recognizing that I need stretches to sit or to lay down and nap. For this reason, knitting has re-entered my routine because I can sit and accomplish something on the couch.

I'm sure I'm not the only one hurdling myself through time and space. Here's just a slice of what kept me busy one week this fall.

Saturday:: An afternoon of napping followed by an epic 4-mile walk to get hockey tickets for an evening's game. And another walk to take the train to the game.

Sunday:: Visiting Matt's family for their Sunday routine. The evening back home included trick or treaters and prepping the bathroom for a coat of paint that was applied around 10pm (just squeezing in that one last activity before the weekend was over).

Monday:: A quick dinner of pierogies while cleaning up for a few visiting neighborhood knitters.

Tuesday:: A birthday dinner and a concert with and for my mom, who also has also fallen for one of my favorite bands. There was also a little side conversation at the concert with a friend from way back and his wife.

Wednesday-Friday:: The rest of the weekdays disappeared into a swirl of migraine, taking it a bit more slowly, dog walking, chasing fat squirrels up trees, and adding another layer of lime green paint to the bathroom. Monday night I framed and hung that photo that my grandpa took. Thursday night I went for a run, of sorts, since I'm trying to prep for a 5k in December, again with friends from way back.

Saturday:: Matt drove me to the airport and saw me off for a week away. I slept for 2/3rds of the flight, and then woke to manage an hour of work and a little knitting before landing. I packed four different knitting projects, as if I could somehow invent the time to finish three projects and start a new one. I did finish one and came close on a second.

I spent the next few days blissfully reuniting with my newly two year old niece.

She goes goes goes too. Her approach to life is pretty much to jump when she wants to jump (and when her adults let her). The second she's done jumping, she runs, or swings, or reads a book, or dresses up, or talks to her family, or plays with her friends, or listens to music, or paints with watercolor, or savors a popsicle.

Two year olds are great at hurdling themselves through time and space, followed by a nice long nap. Maybe it's just a stage I never outgrew.

I guess I must be having fun

Dare 168 - I started this layout a couple weeks ago. Finished tonight. Matt, key in hand, was opening our front door for the first time. That's the bright blue we painted a wall in the living room, inspired by Eames. I botched the lyrics on this, but that's because I botch lyrics all the time. But either way, this ran through my head on repeat for weeks.

I played around with some india ink I picked up at an estate sale down the sidewalk. The owners were moving and had many unopened art supplies in the basement, to my delight.

Dare 170 - Photo taken last Thursday after a very busy week. I started the layout tonight. Finished it tonight. Very simple feels good. I added some journaling on the back of the layout because as I've been looking at old pictures lately, I wish people would have written more on the backs of the photos.




It's starting to come back. The creative craftiness. I started a hat this week. I added some new fall journals to ye ole' etsy shop. I may have a couple more projects up my sleeve. We will see.

the nerd I am

A few things... First, a couple pages of my Week in the Life Album are on Ali Edward's blog today. I totally blushed when she responded to my email and said she would include my album in the examples she is sharing. Then I ran into the other room and told Matt what a nerd I am!

If you're visiting from Ali's website, hi there!

For further proof that I'm a bit of a nerd, last night I decided to open a Twitter account. For my etsy shop, primarily. I keep reading that having a Twitter feed it might help me keep in touch with customers, so if you're a Twitter person and want shop updates and a few random thoughts, feel free to follow me there. It's also off the side here. To further prove that I'm a nerd, I made a typo in my first 'tweet'. Or is it 'tweep'? I'm a little confused by Twitter in general, but I have a feeling I'm going to like it more than I'll admit.

Speaking of my etsy shop, I was looking at it the other day wondering why the views and "hearts" for one of my tweet albums were 3 times higher than all the other items. I did a little digging. Turns out that back in February it was featured with other Twitter-related etsy items on a random celebrity blog. Of course, I can't find the blog link now. But it was really funny to see something I made sandwiched between posts about celebrity gossip.

After that happened, I realized, "Why am I not using one of these myself to keep track of all the funny things Matt says?". Seriously.

A duck face is when you purse out your lips and try to look cool. Yeah, girls do love that. Especially celebrities.

A Week in the Life complete!

I ended up doing something completely different with my Week in the Life project than I said I was going to do. I ended up organizing the photos and journaling by day. I didn't do journaling as I went along. And I couldn't find the baseball card dividers that I know I bought so I went a different route. Maybe I gave them away in my recent supply purge? Hmmm..

Anyway, it was easier to make photo collages in Picasa. I've been doing that a lot this year. And then I decided that I didn't want to use up printer ink to print full 8.5x11 pages, and I was too impatient to send it out for printing, so I printed the collages at 5x7 and put together a mini-album that is 7x7. I love this because now I can repeat this process in the fall, in the same album.

I incorporated the washi tape I got in the mail the week I did this project. Total trend right now. The album has other pages from Sunday, Thurs, Fri, and Saturday which I'm not showing because they are either less interesting (hello, migraine on Friday) or because they have work/school related people in them.

Every evening this week I've gathered a small stack of supplies for this album and headed out into the living room to chip away at it while Matt has been watching hockey finals. It's been quite enjoyable to have a small project to unwind with. I look forward to doing this again!

on a creative roll

Last night was so fun. Matt's been sick (not fun) but we sat in our little office, and he looked up new music online and I made this little travel journal kit. I actually made four of them, and I decided to give one away here. Even if you're not a travel journaler/art journaler/scrapbooker, it's so fun! You should give it a try. Or maybe you know a crafty mom who would love one for Mother's Day. Leave a comment telling me the last place you flew, and I'll pick a winner on Tuesday, May 4th at 9pm EST.

I love this travel journal so much that I'm keeping one for myself and am taking it with me to New Orleans in June. It has a lot of my favorite papers in it. Once I fill it up, I'll post some pages here. There are two listed in my etsy shop too. Remember, half the sales price goes to Partners in Health for Haiti relief.





Some extras that come with the journal.



I've been an art journaling machine all week. I love it so much. I feel really energized about creating. I think I found a new passion! The Red Velvet Art flickr stream is so inspiring right now! I'm learning a lot about my style. Like yellow? It's showing up in a ton of my pages and I didn't even realize it was a favorite color. Who knew?



today felt...



dream list...



3 wishes...



Have a good week!

Ethnographer of my own life

A week in the life. 41 photos total that I'm keeping. No journaling. Yet. I tried to get fancy with the journaling cards in Photoshop and ended up not getting them printed out. It was a hang on to your seat kind of a week. Completely flying from one thing to the next. Work work work. No time even to make proper meals or vacuum the floor. By Friday I was out of commission with a migraine. The weekend was better though. Some downtime. Some recovery. Friends. Walks with the dog.

In the midst of the busyness I got to do some pretty cool stuff. Walk with my dog in the woods, hang out with friends at the ocean, get a package of washi tape straight from Japan, sit outside in the South End and work for a couple hours over lunch at my favorite spot, smell the blossoming trees, help a friend move, and make egg sandwiches with my husband for a late dinner.

Would have I liked more photos? Journaling? Maybe, but it is what it is. 85% more photos than I would have taken otherwise.

I'd like to do this again in the fall. Look for similarities and differences in the routine.

I did an even shorter week in the life project a few years back. Five days. Just one layout. And you know, that's actually enough. Sure, more detail would be nice but I look at that layout and it takes me right back to that time and the routine I was in then.
There is something worthwhile about studying your own life. Most importantly because life is going to change.