Shaking things UP

Ooh, I love the way both of these pictures make me feel, happy! Maybe its the YELLOW. It gives me some SH!NE. Although I need to find a way to SELL more cards, (inventory UP, sales down) I am still having so much fun creating and making these tiny master pieces of art!

Sunset of of Sea Pines Harbour Town, Hilton Head Island South Carolina

I think I will be able to Zindorf ( the name of a great teacher who taught me how to brayer ink and create beautiful landscape cards) a few pictures I took while on vacation. Also I think too, referring back to the article Be Bad, Be Happy by Gay Norton Edelman...When life is stressing you out, breaking through some boundaries can help you snap out of it.

"Getting out of your groove actually lays down new neural pathways in your brain, which creates freshness, newness, optimism and hopefulness." "But the brain needs novelty."

Getting My Groove Back

I'll probably be repeating myself until I get back into my groove!! Hopefully, not too far back into the groove that it becomes a rut.... but I really like cards with monochromatic color : tints, tones, shades... of a single hue. And, I am liking multiples as well. The card layout above would be considered simple... 5 hearts punched out, a line doodle with a nice sentiment. You could do it in any color scheme... or with snowflakes, butterflies, flowers.... the possibilities are endless!!

While on vacation I read an article that really hit home a bit. It's from Be Bad, Be Happy by Gay Norton Edelman:

"Getting out of your groove actually lays down new neural pathways in your brain, which creates freshness, newness, optimism and hopefulness".

The above picture is from our afternoon visit on July 24, 2011 to the Hilton Head Island shores of the Atlantic Ocean. It is such a wonderful perspective of the umbrellas all perfectly lined up in a row. Perfect for CASE-ing on a card, don't you think?

"On any given day we are evaluating whether we'll go with the flow or make waves."

In the Sand

Our mark in the sand

Last night walking the beach along the Atlantic Ocean on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

Rockin Robin(son)

Sitting under a beautiful lighthouse, just chillin' and rockin. I'm with the guy who makes my heart beat!

Sea Pines

We are enjoying our vacation time at the Sea Pines Resort. Here is a sunset view from our patio last night! Gorgeous!

Power Out

This morning about 4:30 am we lost power. It was crazy windy and lots of lightning and thunder and rain coming down hard at the side.

Wham, bang .. poof .... two more tree branches down. It fell on the kitchen roof (it extends out from the rest of the house) narrowly missing windows.... but yikes, the branch is split... but not yet completely broken off!

Out of power! Through text reports from Bubba and his friends, not too far away lightning struck and closed streets to the north of us!! We didn't get our power back until 11:45am. We left the house early for an ortho appointment, when another storm of blinding rain came through, we noticed there were 8 ComEd trucks with guys on the cherry pickers between our street and the one behind us.... we have Com ED power lines running through our back 40.... we had a little over 2" of rain.

The tree man is coming next week.... we are in for more adventures... stay tuned!
Weird weather with the heat dome, and the extreme storms and dryness!

Peggy Sue

That's my Boy!

Happy 18th Birthday Bubba!!!

Bubba made it... to 18!! Happy Birthday son!

Tags: Jumping around and working on all kinds of things here in my cre8tive lab. Above, are a few tags that I learned (Vimeo on the computer) some new techniques.... or new ways to create color and old looks, rubbing ink on with baby wet wipes. The tags can be added to a greeting card, or used as a sentiment card for a gift. Do a 'where's the tag' ... look for it on future projects.

I'm taking care of my procrastination issues:

Just you wait and see!

Pinterest

Soft & Subtle

This is the matching card to go with the mini scrapbook!

Well, it's a good thing... I've had plenty of time for creating this summer. Hot Hot days in the high 90's makes the nice air conditioned house a great place to be.

I find it interesting about airconditioning... in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle) they have only had 76 hours of 75 degree or hotter.... they don't need airconditioning there. I knew someone who built a home over 10 years ago and they didn't add airconditioning.... yes, they had all the duct work and piping... just didn't want to spend the money on a unit, 'cuz they didn't think they'd need it. And last night I was watching a re-run of King of Queens, and they were talking if they had gone to Vermont instead of Florida, they wouldn't be needing airconditioning....

Love my airconditioning is all I'm saying!!! Instead of making 'just' cre8tive greetings.... these mini scrap books have been fun and a challenge. I follow Laura's tutorials on her Ustream channel at Follow the Paper Trail. Although she sells her kits and patterns, I like the company when she chatters away and follow along creating my own stuff, similar, yet different.

Look inside, here are the pages of the mini scrap book, places for journaling and places to add mini pictures and pockets for souvenirs and scraps from the events.

Love adding the embellishments. Although, this is another reason I tune in... I have a lot of 'stuff'= embellies, but not always sure how and when to use them. With the mini scrap books you can embellish away with anything... because the book is thicker than a card, who cares how much more you add to it!! I always have a problem with some of the new card designs out there with big puffy flowers, huge ribbons, folded paper oragami... who could send that through the mail without paying extra postage... and I hate paying extra postage!!!

Have you sent some FuN MaiL lately????

My mind is Blank!

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home! I just want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares!

Oh, I know some of y'all care... I just found these art quotes on Pinterest.

I enjoy making the doodles and embellishing the cards. Requests are slow, (lazy days of a hot, hot HOT summer) so I don't know what kind of cards to make... so I'm leaving things blank. This card will be ready to send out at the right moment, just add sentiment!

I Find SH!NE everywhere

It's okay to laugh at our little friend!I suppose if you look for anything 'hard' enough you can find it, in some way, form or manner.

What's even better... finding 'it' when you don't even have to look very hard.

Cute bar: SHORT'S Burger & Shine

(moonshine)

I challenged myself to find SH!NE when we went on our parent orientation last week at the University of Iowa.

Not only are there 10 principles to SH!NE at the House of SH!NE , but it is fun finding how many ways the world uses SH!NE in advertising, mottos, labeling, titles, names.... things and people who SH!NE have something intriguing about them.

Shine: Hotel Bathroom Products

I like to say: Spread Happiness IN Everything. It's just amazing when you look for certain things, how they show themselves to us.

Iowa City

Stream of conscious thinking as I sat around this water fountain. This view is from 6 stories up, but eventually I went down there and sat on a park bench.

Fun to be in a small downtown city, watching 4 water spouts jump out of the pavement, loop 6 feet in the air and plop back down into the ground.

Kids came running to the fountain, and people all around would smile at the laughter and joy in the children's faces of all sizes touching the water.

Some people were reading, eating ice cream cones, gelato and some sitting watching on the park bench.

A guy was playing bass at an outside cafe.

Parents with all sizes of children were wondering around the plaza. Some were at a playground and some were signing their children up for college.

Tank tops with sweaters, long sleeve shirts with iron creases, flip flops, crocks, tennis shoes.

Shuffle, skip, saunter, stop.... turn around.

It's Temporary

Sniff, sniff..... parent and student orientation... brb

Lickety Split

Know what's weird? Day by day nothing seems to change... but pretty soon everything's different.
Calvin & Hobbes

That's how I'm feeling lately.... just like both of these cards.... all the images are the same....yet different.... working on the color challenges for my on line class and then CASe-ing lots of cute cards. Impact statement.... multiples. Used oval punches and corner rounders and word punches. More details if you want them. :0)

People's blogs are different. Oh yes! it's a good thing...but before in the olden days I liked when they talked about their family, or their adventures, or their cards, or their crafts... now all of a sudden (yeah, right) I'm being bombarded by advertisers in the right column, advertising in the left column, links to blog hops and other places I NEED to go to. It's almost getting hard to read the good stuff... the words in between the spaces.

People down the street in the next block are all using generators. We only had about a 10 minute outage yesterday. The final branch that cracked in the wind splintered off the tree this morning. Jeff should be getting home from Italy today... I'll let him help me figure out what to do with 4- 8" round branches that are 30 feet long! So happy this is all that our drama is about!

Make Your Own Paper

The photo does not do this card justice, dang! A few weeks back I made some 'home'/ hand made paper pulp. Either it doesn't photo well, or it just looks crappy... that's what I'm saying. It's a process to make paper.

I combined and recycled: left over white scrap pieces of paper, tissue paper, a napkin, pages from an old book and what ever might have been left in my garbage can that day.

Tore everything into teeny tiny pieces, then soaked them in the blender for half the morning. Whirled them around on a high whipping motion and tossed the batch into a tub of warm water in the sink. With the paper making screen and frames I was able to scoop up four sheets of paper approx. 4" x 8".

I put dried petals from a flower in one sheet and fiber thread and a shiny thread in another.

Using water color pencils, I color in the black ink outline of the doodled hydrangea and then I came back over the drawing with a very lightly dampened brush to blend the color in, leaving dark on the inside to create the shadow and light as I go to the outer edge.

PS: The storms yesterday did some major damage, over 825,000 homes in the Chicago area were left without power. We were lucky. Tried to call homeowners insurance to find out what I could do about cutting a few trees down...stay tuned

A little Windy

This is our back, backyard this morning. I find it amazing!!! Two things.... we had winds from 50-70 mph this morning at 7:20am and this is what happened in our back yard. Two very tall trees lost 4 major branches from the severe wind!!!!

The other thing amazing to me is, is less than two hours later I can be outside with a digital camera, taking pictures, uploading them and sharing them.... possibly with DH who is in Milan Italy. Not that he can do anything about this... but almost instantly we have photos. I can't get over it.... the major wind and rain... and having pictures, instantly. I'm sure it can only go faster with more technology... the iphone connected to the interet even faster!

Took Sissy to school for v-ball camp just after the storms went through... along tree lined streets.... lots of debris and lots of branches, every where... we needed the rain.... but mother nature had her notion on doing some pruning and landscaping too!!

What ya cookin?

Oh my goodness grillin' fun!


I got a request to make (one) invite for a special occasion, a unique breakfast bbq on a Weber grill. It was exciting to figure out what to do... a cooks apron, a recipe card, grilling tools and then this... you can PUNCH anything. A cute 'old fashioned' Weber grill with smoke coming out, how simply terrific! The inside is basic invite wording...
Ahhh, grilling the perfect way to enjoy friends, food and fun!

Paint Bucket Mini

Tiny cuteness... it's amazing what you can learn on the Internet. I would never have known that Home Depot created these interestingly cute gift card holders until I went to a favorite blog Ustream video, and she was showing how to make a tiny, tiny scrap book that fits inside the paint bucket. A male scrapbook, which is rare.

The other cool part was using paint chips to create the pages. They are approximately 2-1/2" by 3". I just used materials on hand to create the closure or the ball chain. Added a washer and pop can pull tab. Another interesting thing I could have used was a paint stir stick as front and back covers. This would be a great gift completed for Father's Day... add tiny pictures and there are spaces for adding journaling fun family events!

The tiny plastic gift card holder was not FREE, that cost $2.99 and they had other gift holders like a grill, a tool box and a carpenters level. This just goes to show that crafters can create something out of anything.... card makers have been using FREE paint chips for years as background papers and for matching color combination contests. Maybe another time I will highlight a toilet paper tube mini scrap book.... awesomely cute. Re-cycle ... re Use.

What color are you?

I am liking something about this color combination! These pieces and parts and scraps and what not are left overs from last weeks color spotlight in the summer card class I'm taking on-line. Can we be drawn to color? (hee hee, that's kind of a funny coming from a doodler!)

And the answer to the question, is yes, color selections are chosen to fit our moods at the time of creativeness. Color equals emotion and there are certain colors that make us feel better and a create a balance in our lives. Color is the backbone of every great design and it's a matter of finding certain colors to represent your design niche. We can express ourselves with color... think of those who wear black or grey all the time (is it the goth look, or are they wearing black because it's easy to wear, the go to non color). Then on the other hand have you seen bubble creative people wearing bright reds and purples and your drawn to their personality? Bright colors for dancers on stage reflect light.

Just like a bumble bee drawn to a bright yellow daffodil, color evokes emotion!

A good place to start in being creative is to find a color combination that fit the mood for the time.