Scenic ROUTE Cardage

Scenic Route Class today...this is one of the cards we made.

It's a very simple process...just use the 7 Gypsies self-inking stamp to create the squares on a variety of papers. Cut the squares out and attach to the card in a random fashion.

Finished card is 6x6.

Happy Weekend.

Class Tomorrow

My Scenic Route Class at Scrap'n Memories is tomorrow--Saturday, October 27. Here's a peek:

In class we will complete three cards, a composition book and a mini-calendar all using the Scenic Route Ashville line.

If you have a little time in the afternoon, I think there are 2 seats left.

ADS that inspire and 2 Cards.

I have these two advertisements hanging on my desk. I am enthralled with this color scheme at the moment. The Liz ad makes me want to redecorate my bedroom--I already have the chocolate walls, but the linens are lacking. Look at the texture pattern on the duvet cover. And the sheets. I'm cutting leaves out of a Scenic Route paper that look very similar. :)

The Larson-Juhl ad makes me want to be artistic. See the frames. I am so doing this. :)
_________________________________

In other news, I'm totally on a card roll. See! The birthday card is another of the items from that Karen Foster "I Love Bugs" sticker sheet.

From Scott Roley

Christ is not just an answer.

Christ is no mere answer to the questions. He is everything. He is thorough. He is throughout. He is God’s consummate provision for everything personal and for everything universal. All of the brokeness that could come from the fall, is found redeemed in this One that is holy.

--Scott Roley {Oct 21, 2007}

Yakety YAK YAK YAK

I've acquired several new sets of clear stamps lately and last night I finally got them into CD cases. Being organized always feels so good. :)

Did you know that acrylic stamps are not actually acrylic stamps? The stamps are made of photopolymer. It's the blocks that are acrylic. Kinda like altering isn't really altering...

I have a quick card project on the Scrap'n Memories blog.

• Did you read the Sweet Pickles Books as a child? I found one of them--Yakety Yak Yak Yak--at The Salvation Army for 39 cents last week and boy, did it take me back. I know some adults who could stand a good reading of this book. :) Especially in the age of cell-phone stupidity.

Pumpkins

The Pumpkin Farm excursion with friends was quite grand. And very sunny!

Life under the Sun...flower.

Blogger is acting snarky so click here to see my picture of today's beauty. I'll load more tomorrow or whenever the misbehavin' blog software stops being grenchy.

Last re-run on the card

Last one...promise. It's night time so I had to scan. Balloons painted with crystal glitter paint. The "I love you" charm is actually on the inside of the card--there's a hole punched thru the front so it can be seen.

I'm stopping now.

Moving on to the big daisy.

But a tidbit of advice...when all else fails paint it with glitter!

The Card Again

Here's my upgraded version of the card from last week's make and take.

{I adore those label stickers by Lil Davis. Wish I had more. I should probably make some of these myself...it wouldn't be hard.}

Supplies:

• Quickutz Revolution balloon die
• Quickutz Nesting Squares die
• Black pen and black ink
• Label stickers from Lil Davis
• ruler and corner rounder
• Daisy Bucket Stamp
• ribbon
• cardstock

I have in my hot little hands the new *Sugar coated Adhesive Chipboard Alpha* from Doodlebug Designs in the famous beetle black...oh man. Glittery black letters just in time for pumpkin decorating!!

In other news, I'm sharing a tip for frugal scrapbooking. Do with it as you will. :)

Instead of spending $3 on a package of band-name pop-dots, make your own. A sheet of fun foam at a craft store will run you less than 50 cents. Apply tape adhesive to both sides as needed. *POOF* Pop dots in any size you want. For almost nothing.

Alternatively, one could also use layers of leftover chipboard.

Later.

Attention Target Shoppers

Volcanic Mommy rant ahead.
Dont say you weren't warned.

Attention Target Shoppers--yeah, I'm talking to you, lady in the green jacket, near the music. Would you please kindly remove your glaring eyes from my child. Your lack of information is showing and it's not pretty.

You think you know. But you don't.

Yes. I do know what you are thinking. It's written plainly in your glare and I've seen it before. Judgement. Lack of understanding. Condemnation. Sometimes pity, though I don't know why.

Yes. He's 5' tall, weighs 90 pounds and is 11 years old. He looks like a pretty normal young man on the outside, especially to someone who hasn't spoken to him in a conversation or seen him run full-tilt. Or picked him up off the floor after an emotional meltdown. Yes, I realize that it must look odd for his mother to have his foot hoisted onto her bent knee, tying his shoes. But to stare...and glare. Geesh.

I admit you probably don't see it every day...but in the scheme of things is it really such a shocking sight that you feel compelled to stare? And exhibit signs of attitude?

Don't think I didn't notice. I only pray he didn't.

What you don't know is that it's the fourth time today I have stopped to tie his shoes. It took 45 minutes for us to find two actual socks that he could get onto his feet and remain tolerant of until shoes could cover them. He's conviced that sockage is the motherly equivalent of modern day torture devices.

No, it's not something I really understand, but so what.

What you don't know is that I've seen that look before. No, not on your specific face but on plenty others. I recognize it a little too easily now and the pain of it lives right on the top of that part of me that grew in when I became his mother. No. It doesn't get easier. Each disdainful glare shoots a laser guided missile right into my stomach.

Yes, to the uninformed eye, he looks like he should be tying his own boots and wiping his own mouth with a napkin and getting his own zipper zipped and at times, controlling the drool on his lips and enunciating with a great deal more clarity...and a hundred other things I coud list. But the fact of the matter is--he can't.

He can't tie his own boots. His fingers don't work in conjunction with his brain to complete a multi-step process like shoe tying. They just don't. I know. I have tried to teach him. More times than anyone should.

What you don't know is that this child's body is broken, but not in an obvious way. Part of his brain is undeveloped and unusable. It appears on MRIs as a dark spot. Not a mass...just darkness. No electricity. It has not changed since birth and barring something miraculous, it is not going to suddenly come on like a light. It's the likely cause of seizures that bring chaos and havoc on his little life and his not-so-little body and a slew of other challenges--not the least of which is enduring staring, glaring, uninformed people.

Live with that for a minute and then glare at me for helping my son.

Make and Take Happiness

Today was Scrap'n Memories Anniversary Celebration and each of the teachers conducted a make-and-take for the customers. And boy, were there customers! It was so much fun to see the store covered up with people! My contribution was a hands-on with the Quickutz Revolution making this card:

The frame is made with the Nesting Squares die set and the balloons with a 4x4 die. Ink up the balloons with a touch of black ink on the edges for extra definition. Add string, pop dots, a sweet Daisy Bucket Clearly Petite stamp and round the corners for a quick card.

Stay tuned for the amped up version using ribbon and a few additional variations. Make and Takes are supposed to be simple and quick--a jumping off point--a demonstration of a tool or product. I always get so jazzed by the different ideas that people share while doing these little projects.

As an extra special treat I even got to meet Hollye of Hollye's Hobby blog. (Waving!)

Hope you are have a creative weekend!

HYBRID

So you may have noticed that there's a new(ish) term floating around the scrap community--"hybrid scrapbooking". This term refers to the marriage of traditional paper scrapbooking with computer-driven or digital scrapbooking elements.

It's something many people have been doing even without realizing. Photo manipulation (cropping and correcting), computer journaling, printing titles, making your own background paper (see my LO)--all "hybrid scrapbooking". Who knew?

The journaling for this layout is on the back of the page and is kinda personal so I'm not sharing it, but let me tell you, this child takes his "school" very seriously and it's been a sweet thing for me to watch him do take to the school model.

The little tags and brackets at the bottom are from a sticker sheet by Doodlebug Designs. (Love cardstock stickers).

There's a scrumptious Aussie blog showing off some hot Scenic Route right here. Get an eyefull.

I'm laying low for a bit. Stuff to do. Things to mourn. Hurts to get over. Tasks to accomplish. Boys to love. Fall to relish.

Can I just preach for a moment...don't underestimate the power of kind words. But in the same vein, even kind words mean nothing if they are insincere. Everyone likes to say "Didn't your moma teach you if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"...but really, sometimes you need to say things that aren't necessarily *nice*. I know it's not a very southern way to think, but life is not about nice. My mom also taught me to be honest. Be real, but be kind. You can do both if your heart is in the right place.

And that's the news from Lake Woe-is-me... hope you are swell.

DUDE

a--drugs. pre-dentist and post-dentist...dude. I could so get used to the hazy life. if ya know...it wasn't um like...illegal and deadly. it was nice to sleep good.

a1--I am so grateful for a husband who knows the meaning of loving in the "in sickness" part of "in sickness and in health. He is so good at caring.

b--if you haven't visited Tina Cockburn's blog, today is the day. Don't miss her a-maz-ing fruity-licious photos today. I'm tellin' ya...ya just don't want to miss this.

c--scrapbook stores in this town (general vacinity) are droppin' like flies these days. Just this week, one closing was announced and I heard that another is for sale. I hate it for them. It's so important to support your LSS if you want them to stay around.

On that note, Scrapn' Memories is celebrating their first birthday this Saturday. If you stop by between 10 and 2, you'll be treated to a wonderful array of make-and-takes by all the Scrap'n Memories teachers (including myself) and other fun birthday things! I hope to see you there!

d--I'm starting a new blog. Check it out here.

e--I'm purging. Scrapbook stuff that is. If you would like "the box of unknown stuff", email me atscrappinsarah at msn dot com . It may be stuff you like. May not. It's a risk. It's just all sorts of stuff. Scrap and paper crafting stuff. I'm not taking the time to try and sell you on the contents. If you generally see yourself as a trash-to-treasure person, you'll like this. If your too high-falutin' for a garage sale, you'll probably want to pass on this. Anyway, the deal is, when you get the box, you take out what you like, add some stuff you no longer need and then post to your own blog to find the box a new home...and it goes on and on. Don't be a booger and keep the box. That's rude. I'll have to send you all sorts of junk mail if you are a booger. :)

f--There's a new baseball movie coming out this weekend..."Final Season". I'm stoked.

That's all for today.

A BLOG FUNNY

Click on the comic above to see it. It made me laugh.

Have you ever ripped a photo?

So you know that I have an intense love for tearing paper, right?

Including photo paper.

Torn photos...what a criminal act.

:)

Say a prayer for me on Monday, if you can--I'm going to the dentist. Before discovering sedation dentistry, I was tormented by the dentist. Now, it's downgraded to a just a necessary evil. With sedation, I take a pill the night before and two pills the morning of and sleep like a baby. No running back and forth for multiple appointments, no hairy anxiety, no pain. Come home and sleep it off for about twelve hours. I remember nothing. It's the only way to go, if you ask me.

Joal's home. (Those are two very sweet words.) He went to Dallas this week to record a training DVD for his company. I've been ribbing him about being a movie star...ahhh, yes, a man of many talents I am married to. LOL!

Happy World Card Making Day!

What's your favorite kind of chocolate?

PS I can't figure out what is making my blog posts be so sporadically spaced. I'm working on it.

THOUGHTS ABOUT the FUTURE of SCRAPBOOKING

I fell in love with these little felt pumpkins a while back at the craft store. The boys and I made magnets out of some of them but I snagged a few for card-making. (The finished size of the folded card above is 5.5" x 8.5", so you can tell, they are a good size. The striped paper is Scenic Route's newest...Ashville. De-lish.

I was surprised by how well I liked the pale blue background. Pale blue isn't usually what I think of when I see pumpkins...until now. :)

In other news, Noell Hymen of the Paperclipping blog posted some thoughts about acid-free scrapbooking yesterday. This, in particular, jumped out at me:

We take more pictures than any generation before us.
We document more events, feelings, thoughts, and stories than ever before.
If some of the pages don’t withstand the years because of periodic acidic
items, our children and grandchildren will still inherit many more
well-preserved photos than what we’ll get (or got) from our parents.

For most people, I think she's right on the money. The birth of consumer-friendly (easy and affordable for even novice photographers) digital cameras and home-printing systems has changed the face of personal and family photography, especially in the last ten years and nowhere is this more true than among scrapbookers. Since going digital in 2006, I have taken more than ten thousand images. (Luckily, I've only printed a small fraction of those.) The freedom to snap off twenty shots in hopes of getting one good one--one that is worthy of scrapbooking--is amazing and creatively liberating, in a way that I never suspected it would be. There is no "film commitment" to worry about and deleting excess is as easy as 2 clicks.

Becasue of this ability to be selective with what I save and what I print, I have more photos to choose from, and by extension, more photos to scrapbook and store. In the pre-digital days, I would be lucky to get 2-5 great shots per roll of film and to find them, I had to have the entire roll printed. Now, I only print what I love and plan to scrapbook. Where I was previously getting only 2-5 scrap-worthy photos per roll...now 100% of what I print is scrap-worthy. Think of the $$ saved!

However, how does this apply to the future of scrapbooking? I agree with Noell that my children will likely inherit far more photos and scrapbooks than anyone in my family ever has, for a variety of reasons. But what if they don't want them? What if, despite my attempts at brainwashing, my sons don't care about "Mom's hobby" and what it yields? What if there are so many volumes of scrapbooks documenting their childhoods and lives, that they find it overwhelming and inconvenient to have the scrapbooks and albums? How would I feel if I were in their shoes?

It seems pretty easy for me to rack up a single scrapbook of every one to two years of our lives. The average lifespan of a woman in America is a nice round 73 years. If I end up on the same pace, I will leave behind at least 36.5 albums! Do I really want to burden my sons with that many volumes...

Stay tuned.

THE GREATS

Who do you think of when some mentions " the great American authors"?

Twain

Faulkner

Frost

Whitman

Hemmingway

Steinbeck

Sandburg

Cather

Dickinson

Emerson

Wealty

Hawthorne

Sinclair

Well, those have their merits, but for my money, the Miriam brothers, (Noah) Webster and (Peter) Roget are "the greats", although technically Roget is British. I would certainly be inept without them. I have had these two books--the dictionary and the thesaurus--since high school. Yes, they are yellowed and showing signs of extreme wear (notice the missing covers) but I love them. I keep them handy, on the bookshelf behind my seat and I use them both several times a day.

I use spell-check but I love the feel of flipping thru an actual dictionary and searching for the proper spelling of a word. Sometimes it's a hunt. Sometimes I confirm my own suspicions. I especially love going to a library where there's a huge, unabridged dictionary. I used to get a kick out of telling Julian "the library has a dictionary that weighs more than you do", although that's no longer true so I had to stop. Apparently, the dictionary is growing at a slower pace than one son. :)

I

would like to do a dictionary scrapbook someday, with specialized definitions as the journaling.

So, now you know.

2Peas PROMPT

The 2Peas promt of the day is:
When making a layout, do you always need a title?

In short, yes. To me the title is vital because it draws the reader into the page. To me, a good title makes you want to read the rest of the page.

I like bold titles. I can't think of any layouts I've done without some kind of title.

So now you know.

CARD FOR PINK CROP

Scrapbook stores across the country are scrapping pink this weekend to raise money and awareness for breast cancer.

My favorite local scrap store participated and I volunteered to do a Quickutz make & take for the croppers last night. This was a secondary version of the card we made. The only difference in this and the actual card we made was the QK font--I made the sample for the store, prepared the kits and then completely forgot to make one for myself--so when I got home I had to improvise with the fonts I have. The store's card used Zoe, which I really liked. My version uses the Blossom Mini.

And, I added ribbon. Of course.

The flourish on the lower part of the card is a Revolution die--one of the 4x4 dies.

In other news, I have Scenic Route paper from the Ashville Collection in my hot little hands and yes, it delightful. Can't wait to use it!

The boys and I are making felt pumpkin magnets to day and they are all amped to get crafting.

Happy Saturday!

IF I HAD $385K

So if I had $385,000 this is what I would do with it.

So now you know.