Stampin' Up! Workshop: Craft Fest 2012

I know it's been a really long time since I last blogged...I am trying to get better at it though. :)

 

For my birthday this year, I took the plunge and decided to become a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator!  Below are some pictures from my first workshop, which was held last weekend. I had a blast, and hope that everyone that came did as well! I forgot to get pictures of everyone's ornaments - hopefully my workshop guests will take some pictures of them so I can share - they turned out really cute!

Thanks for visiting!

December Daily

It's that time of year again! Time to start picking out what to use on your December Daily. Ali posted her mini today, and has lots more info on her blog about the Daily if you are interested in learning more about the project. Here is a link to today's post. There are also links in her post today to past years for even more information.

Tonight, I am planning on finishing up last years album (I love the album, but have a really hard time completing it in December). I always write down what is going on and any important details I want to remember as the month goes on, so that I don't have to worry about trying to remember it all. I like taking my time with it, and finishing it up always gets me in the mood to begin the new one!

Hope you will join me this year in making a December Daily! I hope to be back later with a more crafty and picturesque post! :)

What’s your creative style?

I took a quiz today, that I found on my friend Steph's blog. I think it's quite true about me! Feel free to go to her blog to get the link to the quiz and take it for yourself! I would love to hear what your Creative Style is! :) Have a great Wednesday!

Creativity is a release
For you, creativity is first and foremost a form of expression: it creates a special link between the internal and external worlds. It allows you to get a grasp of your powerful emotions, by moulding them into a physical form. In fact, the most important thing for you is to be able to release your emotions. You need to be able to touch them or look at them in concrete form, and to do that you have to find a way to make them come alive. This is how your desires and anxieties take shape. Keeping things bottled up creates a tension that can only be resolved once you have expressed how you feel. This means you have to be strong enough not to let yourself get swept away by chaotic impulses; if you turn your creative urges on everyday life — making a picnic, singing to the baby, choosing what to wear — you can express yourself while staying rooted in reality. Creativity is principally cathartic. It relieves a deep need, an almost primal, archaic impulse. For you, being creative is about having the power to give form to something you feel, to those deep personal issues that are often raw and disorganised. For these reasons you are usually attracted to art that demands physicality, that allows you to express what’s inside, and that unites spontaneity, strength, freedom, power and movement.

An update, and a giveaway!

I know it has been FOREVER swince I have updated my blog, which is one reason that I really struggled with starting a blog to begin with. I am planning on posting {nearly} everyday with my December Daily (or as I call it Family and Friends 2009) album, so I can stay on top of it this year.

The reason for this post however, is to tell you about a Kit giveway from my favorite club Studio Calico. The giveway is on the Craft Gossip blog, and is for the SC November kit! You can get all the info here.

Thanks for checking in today, and stay tuned! More to come later this month! :)

So it's been awhile...

A very long while. I always knew that I wouldn't be very good about keeping up to date on my blog posts and I was right. Oh well!

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July yesterday! We had lots of fun with fireworks last night. We had a friend over, and the neighbor and his dog joined us. Candy (the dog) was SO EXCITED to be buy the fireworks. She would bark and run around in circles when you set one off, and then come look at you begging for more with her tail going a mile a minute! It was too cute!

Well, I really don't have much else to say and I have a lot of photo's to sift through from the last few weeks but as soon as I can I will be back this week with some photo's of my niece and nephew, some camping photo's, and some from our fireworks the last few nights! Have a happy Sunday!

So this is spring?

Well, I guess in Minnesno{w}ta it is! This is what we woke up to today. The only good thing about it is it shouldn't really last too long. It also didn't cover the sidewalks, so that makes it a bit easier to handle!

Last night Mike, Pat {his mom} and I went to see his nephew - Curtis and his band {Start Of Something New} perform at Club 3 Degrees in Minneapolis. They were there for a wildcard round in which they needed the most people to show up in order to advance to the finals. They did it! They had 118 people show up to see them! Click on the picture below to visit their Facebook page to listen to their music and read more about them!

So last week I went scrapbooking with my buddy Nicole. I got a few pages done, including the one that I have been working on here and there for a few weeks now. I am so excited to finally have it done! It was for a DT challenge over at SC. The challenge was to scraplift any layout from DT member Nik. Seeing as she is the reason that I started over at SC, I knew I had to do this challenge! Her work is so very inspiring to me. The layout I chose to scraplift is this one. I love her use of paint and punches and stitching! Now I must admit, I have no idea how to use a sewing machine, so I faked it on this layout. I simply used my EK Piercing Bugs to make the holes, and then a black pen to be my "thread" in between the holes! All product is from SC kits (Garment District {March 09} and Center Stage {December 08}).

My siblings and I decided to make a calendar for my parents for Christmas last year using family photo's for the top each month. My sister and I managed to get my parents to look through their photo albums with us in search of my mom's favorite photo of my dad from when they were younger. {Though they had no idea that was why we wanted to look through the albums.} While we were going through them, I would randomly take a photo or 2 here and there that I wanted to make a copy of {mainly so it wouldn't look odd when I grabbed mom's fav...} and in doing so I found these really cute photo's of my brother and I.

My brother has no idea that I made copies of them, and he probably has no recollection of them even existing! I made extra copies of the photo's to give to him, and then scrapped this using the September 08 {Iconic} kit from SC. Can you tell that we grew up posing for the camera?

This last layout that I worked on last week is one that I decided to do after realizing that I had been shunning the roll of mom because I didn't have any kids yet. I kept thinking to myself - why should I have to do this that and the other? Why doesn't Mike have to help me? It's not like we have kids! I'll do it no problem when we do have kids though. That's when I realized that the "mom roll" that I had been so against taking on is really not a mom roll. I just always though of it as one because it's all the things that my mom did as I was growing up. Maybe it was a desperate attempt to avoid growing up? I guess I'll never know for sure, but the day that I started thinking about it I wrote my journaling down in my journal book.

The flowers I back stitched following the holes that I made using a Bazzill Basics Paper stitching stencil. {I got mine on clearance from OTC} The floss I just picked up from Michaels. Everything else is from the March 09 {Garment District} kit from - you guessed it - SC.

Well, that is everything that I have to share for today. I hope that you all have a wonderful week, and that you will be able to spend some time with your loved ones next weekend! Take care!

A simple lazy Saturday...

Today has been one of those days to hang out and get to projects that have been put off for awhile. For me, that means I am messy scrapping. Something I only do so often, but I have decided to go all out with it. I have been stamping with glue and adding glitter, applying gesso to chipboard shapes, and then using maya mist on those same said shapes. I will share photo's when it's complete.

Last week we had our St Patty's Day Party ~ we had a lot of fun! I will be sharing some photo's soon...just have to do a little editing! :)

Today's project is actually one that I did awhile ago, but am just getting around to sharing. This is a layout that I did of our first house through the seasons. The reason that I am sharing this with you is Missy on the SC website asked us what the craziest thing is that you have done for art/photography/a layout. For me, that was to take a photo in each season from about the same place of our house (better yet, our tree in the front yard) so I could put them on a layout. The plan is to have this somewhere in our house when we try to sell it.

So, what is the craziest thing you have done for art? I would love to know! I am hoping to post again this weekend, but you never know what will happen. We have a birthday party for Mike's brother and sister-in-law tomorrow afternoon which should be fun. Well, I hope everyone has a beautiful weekend!