Life In Color

oobleck

water + cornstarch

= fun.

The next big adventure

So last weekend we took Tuesday to the pumpkin patch. We met up with a couple of friends:

Karen's lovely funny girls... and Karen, of course.

This is as close as I got to all three toddlers together... FAIL! :)

Tuesday picked this pumpkin. Whenever we walk up to the house she does this little crouch down move and takes both pointer fingers out and says, "hiiiiiiii." to it. Oh my, so cute!

Then I decided to give her part of a apple cider donut because, I don't know, I'm crazy?

We just brought the little point and shoot, but Bj also brought his little video recorder thing. And so soon the whole world will see our adventure, in The Patch:

I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of these previews. Bj is addicted!

Tuesday Today

A late lunch. After an early nap. That was due to extremely early waking.

Finding the beauty in the little moments of a long tiring mama day (and night).

Artistic. Each in our own way

Tuesday and I have been being artistic lately. I need to get even more crafty, but that will require a holiday gift list. Right now we are just creating for who ever :)

I found some sweet paper at an estate sale last summer so Tuesday is doing some fine artwork:

I am completely enamored with it and want to keep it all! I love that she wants to use every color/medium I put out for her. For these works I taped the paper (with drafting tape) right to the table so it wouldn't shift around.

For my step-mom for letting me borrow her Cricut.

For me because I love this photo. I think I've figured out layout picture taking:

Depends on the natural light of course. Hung with a loop of drafting tape.

Cut with the Silhouette.

Cut with punches.

The weather has really turned... I feel a lot more crafting coming on! A quilt is sitting on my couch right now to be finished off by hand (the binding). Are you feeling the cool weather crafting bug coming on?

From the guild

This last Thursday Sciarrino and I headed to another meeting of our wonderful Portland Modern Quilt Guild. I love it so much. Wonderful people and a much needed break. I almost didn't go as Bj had a late phone meeting (meaning Tuesday would be too loud to have hanging out in his office) but my mom, step dad and step brother took Tuesday on a little adventure of her own and I was able to go! I whipped up this little pin cushion for our swap of the month:

and the back:

I was on the fence about it, afraid it was too simple. But the person who got it loved it, and I loved the one I got:

I wonder how you sew this block? It would be cool to do this as a big pillow. The bottom of it has crushed walnut shells so I can also use it as a weight, genius!

More goodies. The floss was from the speaker and the little needle book was tucked in with my pin cusion. I've never had one of these so it was much needed.

This adorable print wasn't from the guild exactly. I bought it off Christina's etsy shop. I'm planning on making Tuesday something from it because she is owl crazy right now.

Today I had the pleasure of sewing with a few dear friends and I was excited to learn that two of them now have blogs!

Kristen's blog was a real surprise. And she even had an entry about me. I'm looking forward to reading more about her crafty endeavors... you may remember one of our sewing days at her beautiful house. And following her business, making cute bike accessories.

And now the one you've all been waiting for.... SCIARRINO! Yes, my friend who I call by her last name (pronounced sha-reno) finally jumped on the bloggy band wagon (gosh that only took five years!). It's called Bear and it's right here.

I linked both on my sidebar. So my blog list is up to date and I changed the links on my loves list and book list. I still need to tackle the dailies, I'm so behind on that. I did add a few fun pictures and I'll try to catch up on the rest soon.

Simple scrapbooking

Sarah and I had another fun craft day together last weekend. I was going for super simple on my layouts, since we usually talk more than we scrap. :)

The name was cut with the Silhoutte, it's only in two pieces. I found that welding (over lapping the letters) is really easy to do, and it makes it so easy to stick the cut outs down. That little heart was crocheted by Sarah's mom, she also made me this:

So sweet. I may have to give crochet another shot...

Title is from the Silhoutte again (why yes, I will be a walking ad for one now). I love that you can pick any font to cut. I'm trying not to get all addictive in the font downloading arena. But if you're rocking an Apple computer don't forget to utilize your font book to organize them. You can see all the characters before you use the font, it's great!

Yes, I used my Silhoutte (and a download from their store), but I also used one of my oldest scrpbooking products. Any guesses? It's from 1994 yo. Think about that...

Gold embossing powder. That I bought at the fair! I'll be honest and say this might be the first time I used it. It was part of a set and I'm not the biggest gold fan.

I present the world's longest title! I wanted to utilize this hexagon punch Sarah was borrowing from a coworker.

I love this punch. See I still have room in my heart for a punch or two (or a couple dozen).

This next one is pretty simple, and I wouldn't normally share this type, but man oh man I love these pictures.

I swear you can almost hear the laughing!

I love scrapbooking "out of order" I scrapbook Library of Memories style, so I was cleaning out my 2006 binder and wanted to get some of these memories recorded before I tossed/filed/archived the remaining photos. I still might have a few layouts to do from that year.

How do you scrapbook? The only thing I'm not crazy about with this system are little details that sometimes get forgetten. I go back to the blog often, but I think I need to keep a tiny notebook or something with me. If you don't scrapbook a photo for a few years what do you do?

My freaky fall garden

This is a crazy weird fall. Lots of sun (say what?!?!). It's caused my yard to be beautiful and amazing.

I can't believe how much of it is still green! The leaves are going to be dropping very late this year. 

My little munchkin and I still find lots to nibble on. My poor confused tomatoes, look at them flowering! Don't worry mom I cut them all back yesterday so hopefully I'll get a few more to ripen up.

Speaking of flowering so many things are continuing to bloom! I am so glad. Not sure if it's my diligent pruning or the weird weather, but I love all the blossoms. 

Things are filling out in the rock wall.

Climbing roses are starting to climb. But I need to do a little research on how to care for my precious roses going into winter. The hazelnut shells are to try and keep cats out of my yard.

My front yard roses, still afflicted by their fungus, but the blooms are pretty. I planted 100 tulip bulbs in front of that little fence last weekend. I still have a 100 crocus bulbs to plant, maybe today?

Love this little patch in front of our picture window.

I thought we lost this clematis and cut it down to nothing in the strong heat of summer (for those few days :). But look it came back and it even has blossoms.

Another happy flower picture. I think my plants are in for a shock though, rain is coming tomorrow and I don't think it's going to stop for a good long time. What does your garden look like right now?

*I tried to post this earlier this week but was having trouble uploading photos, sorry I've been so silent! I've been up to lots, hopefully will update a few more times in the next couple days.

The first cuts

 

Oh Best scrapbooking (and lots more) tool ever! I'm going to give you a little review, based on my whole three days of ownership :)

I am in love with my new Silhouette SD! I took it to my in-laws this weekend and played around with the software (which is brand new and works with a Mac!) on the way up. I did what I never do and read the manual (it's in the software, not a hard copy, at least not the full thing). On the drive I figured out how to group objects, scale things and generally have fun. It reminds me of photoshop, with all the commands. So if you are familiar with that I would say this would be a breeze to use. The software actually does not "come with" the machine. A disc was included, but it was the older software, and I had already downloaded the new software free of charge from their site. If you are thinking about getting this machine I highly recommend you download the software and play with it. With in the software you can read the manual and see the online store (where you can buy shapes to cut (or print/cut, among other things).

I had no problem making up a simple text welded object like this. It's just a whole bunch of o's combined (idea from an awesome Kelly Purkey layout). In addition to the great built in manual there is a wonderful supportive Yahoo Group that you can join. I still have a lot of things to figure out, but so far so good. If you are using this to just cut fonts or shapes downloaded from the store don't worry about using difficult software, that part is easy. Fonts are simple, and it will cut any True Type Font (including the Wingding type that have fun shapes). The only time you really need to spend some time studying is if you want to create shapes yourself. There is a feature called auto trace that is going to be released next month (it's already on the old software, but I can't download that because it's PC only). From what I understand this allows you to pull a JPEG or other image into the software and then traces around it for you.

Somethings I have NOT tried: the print and cut feature. I don't see myself using this much, though there are some cute designs. Basically you print your design and little registration marks are printed with it. An optical eye in the machine reads those and cuts based on those and your design parameters. I have not tried downloading digital die cuts from other sites, like 2peas. I know you can, but I'm not sure about the file extensions. I will try this, just haven't yet. I have both vinyl and tee-shirt transfers on order, plus the heavy duty blade housing (I ordered this before I got my machine, but I have had no trouble cutting cardstock with the included blade set up). I haven't tried to make anything too fancy. Really I see myself using this a lot for text and titles. I'll show you.

These letters were cut from scrapbooking paper and then I fed them through a Xyron (this one), which made them into stickers.

From my vintage Ki Stash :) The other thing I cut for this layout are the circles:

I pulled apart a design I downloaded from the store and just used little bits of glue to hold it down.

The mat that you put the paper on to go through the machine is sticky, so you can just pull of the things you want.

Ok now for the things I don't like part. I think the software has a few kinks that are getting worked out. They seem to be working them out fast. I check for updates daily and I think I've already updated twice. The new software has a proprietary file extension. This might not bug you, but it basically means that you can't back up the files yourself (at least not the things you buy on the online Silhouette store). They are stored with your user profile and if you have a computer crash you can re-download them—but there is a limit. I HATE this. I want to use Bj's laptop sometimes and my computer sometimes, and I haven't figured out how to do that without using two of my three chances for downloads. I don't think their cutting mats are all that great. But I have a couple of Cricut mats that, from what I hear, are easy to cut down to size for the Silhouette. The Silhouette only cuts 8.5" wide, but up to 39" long (yes really!). I actually don't find this to be a problem, I mention it for those of you who might want to do full 12x12 background images. Personally I like the smaller size of the machine. It is 16" wide, 5.5" deep, 4.5" tall and only 4.5 pounds—the slice is not much smaller, the Cricut I was using is much bigger.

Now the best part. I will not ever buy a cartridge for this thing! That is huge. After using my stepmom's machine (a Cricut) I had some major dislikes and the cartridges were among them. There are cute designs and fonts but I can see myself buying cartridge after cartridge for one design or two. The designs from the Silhouette Store do cost money (generally 99 cents—and you can get them free from some places online) but you can get a subscription plan so that they work out to be as little as 14 cents. The designs cut much crisper on the Silhouette. I cut the same font from the Cricut (using third party software that is about $70 you can also cut things from your computer, but not designs from the Silhouette store) and the Silhouette and I should do a side by side. The edges of the letters are a lot crisper and the circles more round on the Silhouette (the Cricut had wobbly edges on some designs). Overall the whole machine is much less money than the Cricut. I got it on sale on Overstock.com with free shipping (bonus, sign up for their mailing list and get an additional 10% off). So I only spent $175 on it (haha only, still a spendy tool, I know).

I think this is one of the wordiest entries in a while, any questions?

Sketching

I'm loving this new app Bj got for his iPad. I think it's called sketchbook pro. I really miss sketching. It's something I did all the time in art classes in college. These are for my current obsession, scrapbooking. But I'm sure I'll be experimenting with digital paintings soon.

I hope this isn't too annoying

I am having serious trouble standing over my layouts and taking pictures of them straight on. Since my lovely daughter has been crazy beans lately and I haven't a chance to re-take these shots, here are some not so great pictures of my layouts. Gosh I bet that really makes you want to read on :) I do need to figure out a better way though, ideas?

This was a quick one, not sure about the numbers, so bold. But I have this sheet of thickers that got used up in the worst way and now I have the most random things left on it. Maybe I should just let it go!

I do love these little Basic Grey stickers, so perfect for a subtitle or even journaling.

Trying to use more numbers :)

Most of these layouts are from a marathon weekend a while ago, but I just got around to sewing on them, because they needed a little bit more.

Did anyone else save their maternity labels from Old Navy? I loved them!

So I had to stitch to go with the tag. I love using up things like this I've had sitting to scrap, feels so good.

Another thing I've had around: the giant B that is a paper sample Sciarrino gave me. In the bottom right corner you can see me trying to stretch my favorite Heidi Swapp letters. I'm going to save that sheet until there is one brilliant plastic letter left.

Love this stamp plus embossing powder, I just can't get a picture to do it justice, the texture is great.

Having fun with my step-mom's Cricut. I found this feature called "real dial size" that makes all the letters the same height and liked the look. I also used some more memorabilia; the tally sheet of the day. One of those crazy days that nothing gets done but it seems like you are doing something every second!

And I finally caved an ordered a Silhoutte. If you (Nora) are thinking about one I got it off of Overstock for $175 with free shipping. Sign up for the newsletter and you'll get a 10% off your first purchase coupon. I'm super excited, I even ordered this fancy special metal blade housing thing so I can cut thicker things with it (something I was worried about a bit). I promise this blog won't turn into all die cuts all the time. It is knitting season after all. My second hat is already on the needles!

So tell me, are the pictures a bit annoying? Can you link me your favorite way to take layout pictures?