Mojo like Lightening!!

One brilliant FLASH and then it's gone!

I've noticed that April seems to be a slow mojo month for me.  I usually do some travelling in April, and then with the rainy season I'd rather curl up under a blanket with a good book!  I did notice that I'd finished a project that I'd forgotten to blog about, which is surprising because I was pretty stinkin proud of it!  A girlfriend of mine has a two year old that recently celebrated a birthday, and I knew she loved to color.  Now every girl has to have her accessories, right?  So this is what I came up with:

Isn't it cute?  I took a look at a few of them online, and got out my handy dandy little ruler and designed my own!  There is a layer of muslin/duck cloth in between the pink and blue pieces to give it a little more stability.  I wanted to make sure this would stand up to a two year old!  I measured each pocket to hold two washable crayons, and used a taylor's pencil to mark on the felt where the seams should go. 

As you can see, I have yet to master the art of sewing on seam binding, but I don't think she's gonna complain!  Here's a vew of the back when it's unrolled, I love the little detail the brown thread gives to the roll!

She sure seemed to like it, and Mom liked that the crayons were washable!  Now she can tuck this into the diaper bag when they are headed out somewhere and the Birthday Girl will have something to keep her hands busy!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Back with a BANG, baby!

So there's nothing better to break a long scrapping hiatus than an extremely large, almost overwhelming, and completely last minute project!!  The Bling Fairy dropped off some photos (ahem) yesterday afternoon for a Mini Book I offered to do on their new home.  She wanted something to bring with on a trip they're taking to visit family.  When's the trip, you ask?  TOMORROW!!

Those who know me well know that I do best when faced with an immediate deadline.  The plan had been to pick up the photos on Saturday morning on my way to a Scrappy Shopping excursion, this way I could get a feel for paper colors and such.  Thanks to a game of Hide-and-go-Seek with a rogue printer cable, I ended up doing my shopping without the pictures in hand.  Surprisingly, this made me a lot more careful about my paper choices.  I perused several new collections from my favorite design companies, and went with a Double Deck from Cosmo Cricket.  It's the Girl Friday/Everafter paper stack, and I chose it not only because I thought the reds and grays would go well with the house pictures, but I also saw myself actually using every. single. sheet. of paper in this stack.  Most of the paper stacks I've purchased in the past are ones that I've only liked a third (or less) of the designs.  Two of the designs in this pack I've actually purchased as single sheets of paper, AND I've already cut into them!

I started out with 14 sheets of 4x6 chipboard from a package I got on clearance last summer.  The photos are all trimmed to 4x5 for simplicity, while keeping the feel of the book uniform throughout.  Here is the front of the book with a photo of their sweet pooch:

I used my Labels 1 dies from Spellbinders, and used a stamp from Autumn Leaves to make journaling tags to go between the chipboard pages.  There is a journaling spot on each side of the tag so she can write a little bit about the before and after pictures.

Here you can see the detail of the punched strips I added to the "binding edge" of each page.  I chose five designs from the paper stack for the front and back covers and the border strips.  This kept the overall book very simple and cohesive, but still added a bit of a design element.  I punched a strip of patterned paper, and backed it with a punched strip of gray that coordinated.  The gray helps to deliniate between the patterned paper and the photo.

A sweet mulberry flower from Recollections (thank you Clearance aisle!) added to the photo on the front and voila!  Not too bad for a few evening's work!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Purge (almost) Complete!

This is the load of stuff I brought down to the Rummage Sale over the weekend.  *sigh* I tell you what, it sure feels good to have so much breathing room in my office!  Now I just have to corral the last little bits and bring that down after work one day this week, and I'll be good to go!

Cheers!

Time for a Reboot!

Ya know how frustrating it is when your computer completely dies and you're left with re-installing your entire operating system as the only possible sure-fire fix?  It's frustrating because it will be a big time sink to get everything reloaded, but at the same time it's quite liberating!  It's a great chance to get rid of all the extra programs and junk that you either never used or you wasted a lot of time on.  You know the ones, the silly little game that you really don't enjoy but somehow felt like you HAD to finish it??  And now that you have to start from scratch, you realize you really don't want to invest that time and energy into it after all?  Then you also have the different programs you "made do" with. They weren't really meeting your needs, and you KNOW there's something better on the market, but you didn't want to take the time to install and learn the new program.  Well, reformatting is the PERFECT opportunity to make these changes!

Over the past few weeks I've come to realize that *I* need to go through a mass reformatting.  Doing all of this purging and sorting in my craft room has made me think hard about what I REALLY want to be spending my time on.  There are a lot of areas in my life that I am putting too much effort into, and really not getting much out of.  At the same time there are other areas that have fallen by the wayside, turning me into the kind of person I do NOT want to be.  Thanks to a few personal revelations lately, my priorities have shifted into a much more positive track, and I definately need to embrace that going forward!  Don't worry, Dear Readers, this doesn't mean I'm going to stop crafting or quit my job or shave my head!!  This is just an awesome opportunity to really focus on what I love, and pour my energies fully into that!  See ya next week!

Cheers!

Here comes the Sun!

Well, here's proof that there IS some benefit to getting up rediculously early!  This gorgeous sight greeted me as I went in for a coffee refill this morning:

Have a Fabulous Weekend everyone!

Cheers!

THIS is why I use my "sippy cup"

People laugh at me because I normally use a cup with a lid.  Wouldn't you after you saw this?

Apparently she had just woken up from a nap on my desk, and the water dish was just too far away for her.  Sheesh!

Cheers

Hooray for Rummage Sales!!

The closest Scrappy Store to me has a Rummage Sale every year, when you can bring in the stuff you no longer use and the store sells it for you for in-store credit!  Schweet rewards with very little work!  I like it!

Of course, this means that I have spent several hours going through every. single. nook. and. cranny.  I have looked realistically at EVERYTHING I have in my stash, and thought about if I really would use it.  It's depressing how much I've purchased just because it was on sale!  Here is my To-Go pile so far:

Now all I have to do is package things up, put price tags on it all, and put it in a box to drop off at the store!  Here's hoping I don't fall back in love with stuff and try to re-integrate it all back into my stash! 

Cheers!