2013 Accomplishments Page and Video

Yesterday, I talked about how beneficial I find looking back at the year and listing out many of the things I did. These can be big things or little ones.  Did you make your list?  Did you find yourself with a lot more accomplishments than you expected?

Here are a few more of the accomplishments that made my list:

• Completed my last window treatment jobs  (I closed my 16 year business)
• Worked through Internet and phone problems and switching of providers including investigating tablets and hot spot services
• Continued to take Mother to eye doctor appointments

To capture this list, I created the page above with a hidden pocket for the list.

Since I'd started doing mixed media in 2013, I chose that style for the page.  I used a Christy Tomlinson mask and heavy gel for the background design and then added lots of mist.

A little trim (one of my favorite things) dressed up one of my favorite papers for the bottom of the page.

Here's the process video at YouTube


What about making your own page to commemorate all you did in 2013 or do a page on one or two things you really want to make note of.  This is a very personal page so shop your stash for your favorite products and work in whatever style that suits you.  Put your list in a hidden pocket for your eyes only or display your journaling - whatever suits you.

If you make a page or share your list on your blog, leave us a link in the comments.  I'd love to see what you've done.

So now that we have wrapped up 2013, we'll start looking at 2014.  Tomorrow we will tackle New Year's resolutions.  And I promise we'll find ways to make resolutions that stick.

A week of endings and beginnings

A new year is right around the corner.  This is one of my favorite times of year.  It’s like a fresh start.  I can make plans for things I want to do in the coming year.  I also find it really rewarding to look at what I did in the current year.

Over the next few days, I’ll have a daily blog post to help me and hopefully you, too, look at 2013 and ahead to 2014.   

We are going to kick things off with one of my favorite activities of the new year – looking back.

Do you sometimes think you haven’t gotten a lot done?   You’ve been spinning your wheels?  Doing routine things?  Where did the year go???  I've got an activity that is sure to change your view. 

You’ll be surprised at all you have done in a year!  Truly.  Grab some paper or open a new Word document and start jotting down the things you have accomplished in the last year.  When you have everything listed you can think of, here are more ways to jog your memory:

Look at your scrapbook pages, art journal pages, or a regular journal.  What activities and events did you scrap about this year?  How were these accomplishments for you?

Do you do objectives for your job?  If so, what did you do this past year?  What did you do that went beyond the stated objectives?

What were the major accomplishments of other members of your household?  How do you contribute to those?  This is a biggie and we don’t often think of this first.  Yet, we contribute to other’s success! 

Review your calendar.  The appointments you had may remind you of things you did or sometimes things you had to deal with like doctor’s appointments for an illness.  Dealing with a medical condition in a positive way is definitely an accomplishment.

Use this list of prompts to further jog your memory:

·       

• personal health and well-being – lose weight?  give up or decrease a bad health habit? start a good habit this past year?
• career changes or planning -   taking classes?  change jobs?  apply for jobs.  Whether you got the job or not, you went through a process.  If you got an interview you accomplished more than many in line for the same position.  make new contacts?  participate in networking activities?
• vacation – planning, paying for, packing for and recovering from a trip is often a major task especially if you have more people to please with your choices than just you.
• marriage and parenting - how did you help your spouse or children succeed in the last year?
• family needs – do you care for anyone outside your household such as parents, aunts, uncles, friends?  do you take any of those people to doctor’s appointments, prepare meals or provide emotional support?
• adopt a pet and acclimate it to your household?
• volunteer work – what did you do to help others beyond your job and family needs?
• religious activities - become more active in your church? change religious affiliations?
• your hobby – what did you create this year? did you learn a new skill?
• technology – get a new computer or tablet?  (that can take hours of time to select and to setup) Learn something new?
• home improvement – what did you do to improve your home this year? Did you move, remodel, repaint a room, shop for and buy new furnishings?

Some years, this accomplishments list is my salvation.  It can seem like I didn’t get anything done.  Yet when I go through this process I realize just how much I accomplished.

Even before I did my list, I had positive feelings about 2013.  It was a good year, yet after making my list I realized I'd done even more than I thought!  

Here are just a few of the things that made my list.  Some are a big deal, some took very little time yet they still left me with a feeling of accomplishment:

• Cleaned basement throwing away a truck load (literally) of stuff.
• Continued our date days about 2 times per month including gardens in Charlotte, shopping and dining out locally, touring BMW plant in SC, local art museum...
• Created my first on-line class which involved writing the PDF’s, creating 11 layouts/sketches, filming and editing 10 videos, determining a publishing platform.
• Walked regularly with Lenny; do calf stretches after walk

I hope you will make your list of accomplishments.  This isn't just a feel good exercise, thought that is very important.  It can also help you see what ares you want to work on for 2014.

Tomorrow I'll share the scrapbook page I did with my list.  Not to worry, the list can be kept as private as you like.

Do you do a process like this to wrap up the year?  

See you back here tomorrow!

Over 20 years ago...

I found these photos of my stepdaughter's first visit here after I had started dating their dad over 20 years ago.  I was his first serious relationship after their mother.  We were all very polite to one another, BUT I think poor Lenny got an ear full when he had each of us alone.  So I suppose you could say it wasn't all hearts and flowers.

Fortunately, things improved each summer.  And now the girls are grown and I'm more grown up, too. Jaime is even a step mother now too. I was only in my late 20's that summer.  I'd love to look that young again but with today's wisdom.  I'd love to go back and know the right things to say to teenage girls.  Oh, well, there is no genie in a magic bottle granting me wishes so I guess I settle for the wisdom that comes with age and experience.  :-)

The journaling has a hidden pocket behind the 4 photos.  Two are cropped down as supporting photos.

The flowers are made with Claudine Hellmuth sticky back canvas.  I've been wanting to try that for some time now.  You can add all the paint and mist you want to canvas and it handles it better than paper so it is nice medium to work with.  I was able to cut the images on the Cricut.  Simple shapes cut fine.  I wouldn't use a very old blade though.  Dull blades won't cut fabric very well even when they still have a little life left in them for paper.

The papers are Fern and Forrest from Little Yellow Bicycle.  The flower centers are current embellishments from Stampin' Up! in their 2013-2015 In Colors.

Watch at YouTube:


Sketch:

This is my last video with sketch for 2013.  I plan to have many more in 2014.  I will have one other video for the year on New Year's Eve.  Be sure and check back starting on Monday for a week long series on all things New Year!

Christmas Events Layout with video and sketch

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday week!  We are trying to wrap up some things for the year.  I've been baking and have plans to have some friends over for dinner later in the week.

We've also been out and about this holiday season.  We went looking for ways to enjoy the local holiday sights and sounds so we didn't have to travel very far.  It was my husband's idea to check out our local high school chorus. They put on a production of Scrooge that was very ambitious and well done.  There were over 50 regular cast members plus about another 50 extras. The costuming alone of all those teenagers would have driven me over the edge.  My hats off to the director, staff and volunteers who put this together.  One funny thing was the smoke they used each time the ghost of Christmas Past, Present, Future came calling.  At one point they got so carried away with smoke the whole front of the theatre was coughing. We were on the side.  (No one was hurt and we couldn't help but chuckle at the enthusiasm of of the stage hands.)

We also attended a family event, a local men's choral concert, and I went looking at gingerbread houses with some friends.

For the page, I used tags to hold the photos and hid the journaling underneath.

The die cuts are from last year's (or maybe the year before?) holiday collection from Crate Paper and I used a mix of lettering for the long title.

Here's the video at YouTube:


And the sketch:

My friend Dani Gaudet sent me this wonderful card filled with flair she said I could remove and use for projects.  I used Christmas 2013 on this page.  It was perfect!

So thanks, Dani!  Thanks to all of you for stopping by!  I hope you have a very happy holiday.

Fast and fun layouts with Noell Hyman - Last chance discount

I love this page I made today using scraps and the techniques from Noel Hyman's Design Your Story with Bits and Pieces class from True Scrap 5.  It went fast - well, fast for me as I take a long time to make decisions about my pages.  It's perfect for someone like me who likes to save their scraps.

Christmas Day is the last chance to purchase True Scrap classes at $10 each.
Click here to view more details

Now about the page and the story behind it.   Thanksgiving did not go as planned.  We didn't really have big plans, just going out to dinner as a family.  However, on Tuesday both our phone and Internet went down and were out well into the week after Thanksgiving.  On Wednesday night my dad called on my cell phone.  He literally said, "Your mother's fallen and she can't get up."  Those are dreaded words.  So my husband and I rushed over to help.  She had caught her foot on an end table and fell.  She was bleeding and her arm was hurting badly.  The trip to the emergency room revealed that she had broken her wrist.

Fortunately, the orthopedist office was open on the day after Thanksgiving and we got to see the best arm/wrist specialist.  He did surgery the next week and she is doing great.  It's amazing how little pain she has had with this.  Daddy has had some challenges, too, so we've been busy.  Everyone is doing better and we are thankful.

So, with Mother fairly bruised and in a cast, we didn't go out to dinner or cook on Thanksgiving but got take out instead.

For the page, I used scraps from Crate Paper's the Pier and some old October Afternoon I just can't let go of.  Noell's class shows you how to work with all those bits and pieces to do a quick fun page.  She does 4 pages in the class and they all look completely different.

There are several other classes including one on stencils, Nichol Magourik's stamping class, photography, some fun things with 3x4 cards, and more.  After Christmas, the price goes up so they are a good value at $10 each.

Click here to view more details

Thanks for stopping by!  We're hoping Christmas around here is less eventful than Thanksgiving.

My Favorite page and near Mis-ting disaster

This is my favorite page of 2013!  Why?  Well, it features two of my favorite people - my husband and my mother.  The photos were taken on an outing for my husband's birthday in June.  Blue and green are my favorite colors.  I used one of my favorite techniques on the wood veneer butterflies and it has trim!  I haven't been using trim that much lately and I've missed it.

I also like how the misting came out though there was a near disaster.  In the video below I show misting over the mask but what I didn't show were the blue droplets.  I forgot about them until I'd already moved my misting box back to the floor and away from the camera so I just thought I'd drop on a little blue mist. Well, I turned the bottle over on my carpet!  It looked like a smurf threw up on my floor. In my panic to start cleaning it up, I turned it over again - another blue glob of ink!  I'm happy to report that a ton of paper towels and a little Resolve and it is all gone from the carpet.  You can't tell it was ever there.  Mists are water soluble and that can be annoying for mixed media but it is really great for getting up spills :-)

The page features 6 photos.  You'll find the sketch below.

The trim was bought at a stamping store.  It is velour and so soft to the touch.

The butterflies are painted, inked, stamped and coated heavily with Glossy Accents.

Here's the process video on YouTube:


And the sketch:

So I'm really low on October Afternoon blue mist but otherwise, it's a favorite page for the year.  I haven't decided if I'm going to do a favorite page post this year. I do know I'm going to do several special posts about objectives, resolutions and all those kind of things we tend to think about when the new year rolls round.  Will have more on that later...

Hero Arts Ornament Card

I made this card last year for National Cardmaking Day contest.  I never heard anything so I guess I didn't win.  Oh, well.   Finally remembered I had this and had never blogged it.

The ornament stamp and the background stamp are from Hero Arts.  I stamped the center separately on gray cardstock and embossed with silver.

Thanks for stopping by!  Don't forget the True Scrap 5 a la carte classes are $9.95 through Christmas.

Click here to view more details

I'll have a process video up later in the week of my very favorite layout of 2013!

Making any size gift bag

Do ideas come to you at the oddest times?  I was taking a shower the other morning and thinking about things I needed to do that day.  One of the things was to deliver some baked goods to a neighbor who lent us their Internet connection when we were having so many problems.  I wondered what I would put the items in and starting mentally creating a gift bag.

This led to the bag in the photo.  I did no research on this so I don't know what methods there are for making one but I thought this worked well.  Here are the measurements and how you can plug in your own numbers for any size you want as long as you have paper large enough.  I used some brown kraft wrapping paper which I believe came from one of those wrapping paper stores at an outlet mall.

I wanted a bag that was 6"x4" on the bottom and 6" high.

To calculate cut length:
Take the height of the bag - 6" in this case
Add 3" for the bottom
And add 4" for the top.
So 13"

The 4" on the top will allow you a double 2" turn which makes it plenty sturdy when putting in your handle.  (Now I'm just holding a cheese ball, cookies and crackers.  If you had something heavy you probably would need grommets or perhaps not even trying to lift it with the ties.)

The 3" for the bottom is calculated as 1/2 of the depth of the bag (4" divided by 2) + 1 inch for an overlap.  So take however deep your bag is to be, divide that in half and add an inch.

To calculate the cut width of the paper:
Add the two side measurements together and double them.  So in my case 6"+4" X 2 so 20 inches.
Then add one inch for gluing everything together.  That gives me 21"

The video goes through these measurements and the construction.  It is in real time.  I only cut out a bit of the handle tying to save time so it took about 10 minutes to create including some stamping.

Video at YouTube:


I like doing my own as I can make it any size and decorate as a like.  This was for a man so the kraft paper worked well.  I snagged the ribbon from my donate bag and clipped on a card I'd already made which was very appropriate for the subject.  I hardly ever use wrapping paper anymore so this will give me a way to use some of it up.

Thanks for stopping by!

Photography for Project Life/Project 365

Well, I'm behind again on PL layouts.  Here are a couple of things captured in photos that are going on around here...

Went with some friends to see the awesome Gingerbread creations at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC.

Lenny is running a cat taxi service to cart Jasper from the front porch to the sunroom on rainy days.  Although it may look the other way round, the cat has Lenny wrapped around his little paw.

I had the good sense, for once, to take the holiday decorations out of the attic the weekend before Thanksgiving when it was still warm and not bitterly cold in the attic.  Now, I just need to remember to photograph the finished decorations.

I do plan to complete my PL for 2013.  I don't think I'll commit to it again next year.  I did this in 2010 and repeating every few years is enough for us.  Things don't change that often. However, I do want to continue to take a lot of photos as they feed my other scrapbook pages and serve as catalog of our activities for the year.

So I'm planning to attend this month's FREE Scrapinar called

“Oh, Shoot! Creating a Successful Daily Photography Project”
with Katrina Kennedy and Lain Ehmann

on December 30.  I can always use photography help.  Busy with holiday plans?  Sign up anyway and watch the replay available for a few days after the 30th.

Click here to view more details

Thanks for stopping by today!

When the mice are away... (page, sketch and video)

When the mice are away at the dream pinball destination, the cat will be shopping at a super scrapbooking store.  I shared my haul from two scrapbooking stores in Detroit a couple of months ago. Here is a page I did about this little part of our vacation.

Since I seldom get to shop in a brick and mortar scrapbooking store, I wanted to commemorate it with a brick background.  It was a great way to use 6x6 paper pads.  Except for my dress, there weren't a lot of specific colors to pull out so I just used happy bright colors.  These flowers from BasicGrey have been in my stash forever.

I didn't have any blue enamel dots.  The video below shares how I improvised.

On the trip, I picked up some Maya Road chipboard frames and used one to frame a small photo of the lobby of the shop.

For more on the project, check out the video at YouTube or here:


Here is the sketch for the 3 photo page:

It was such fun to shop where there was tons of new product and great customer service.  If I lived near Scrappy Chic my budget would be in real trouble- like it isn't already :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

True Scrap 5 Individual Classes available!

Back in October when True Scrap 5 was held, I could not attend that weekend.  So I'm delighted to be able to take some classes individually!  The only trouble is I can't decide which ones to take.  They all look so good.

Here are the classes:

• Project Miscellany with Stephanie Ackerman
• Playing with Photos with Tracy Banks
• The Music of Your Life with Monica Bradford
• Creating Two-Page Layouts with Jennifer Gallacher
• Memory-Keeping with Stamps, Dies and Punches with Bev Grey
• Using Instagram Photos for Canvas Art with Stephenie Hamen
• Design Your Story with Bits and Pieces with Noell Hyman
• The Art of the Everyday: As Seen Through Your Camera Lens with Katrina Kennedy
• Pick a Card, Any Card: Using 3×4 and 4×6 Cards on Your Pages with Layle Koncar
• Memory Minutes: Documenting Your Stories in Bite-Sized Chunks with Tammy Tutterow
• Stamp It Up a Notch with Nichol Magouirk
• From Pixels to Paper and Back with Traci Reed and Lain Ehmann
• Ribbons and Bows with Windy Robinson
• Four Stencils, Four Ways with Doris Sander
• The Simple Things: A Creative Journal with Heidi Swapp

The cost is $9.95 per class through December 25. After that, they go to $12.95 each.
Follow this link for the descriptions

Click here to view more details

I took 2 classes from last year's event and really enjoyed them.  Right now I'm obsessed with stencils and I always love Nichol Magourik's classes.  Oh and that journaling class with Heidi Swapp looks like such fun!  So I've got some deciding to do.

Thanks for stopping by today!  I'll have a card with a new stamp set and another layout video up later in the week.

Henry Ford Museum - 2 Pager with Sketch

We are back on-line. Yippee!!! One of the first things I did yesterday was to upload a video.  This one is a double pager - a 12x12 Page along with a pocket page to fit in all the photos.

The layout is about our trip to the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit.  What an extensive collection!  My husband walked through memory lane giving me a tour of some of the farm equipment he remembered from his childhood.  We then explored the museum separately.  I came upon an old diner and sampled the dessert -  I really tried to find my husband to share, truly I did :-)  We loved the round aluminum house which I'll do on its own layout as it was so unique.  I also took a lot of photos of a '60's Holiday Inn motel room.  That may seem very strange but it was exactly the type of place we stayed on vacation so often and I wanted them for my childhood album.

For the page, I used the Persimmon collection from BasciGrey and some die cuts off the Cricut.  The pocket page is on the left as I plan to use the back side for some other layouts from this trip that will preceed our trip to the museum.  This let me use the 2" x 12" strip for the title.

The diamond border strip is trimmed from pattern paper.

"Take it Forward" is cut from the museum ticket.

The museum staff is very welcoming and happy to take your photo in a vintage Ford.  Here's the process video on YouTube:



And the sketches:

Thanks for watching today!

Altered Boxes

I wanted to do something mixed media for gifts but I know that not everyone has room for a canvas in their home or enjoys that style.  So I decided to do some altered photo boxes.  That way if the recipient likes it, she can display or if she doesn't, it's still good for storage.

These are for my last two customers of my window treatment business.  I guess I wouldn't really need to do customer appreciation gifts since I'm going out of business but I still appreciate these ladies.  Since I've done their entire houses over the years, I know their colors and things they like.  One of my ladies loves, loves birds.  Any fabric with birds was always considered - though not always chosen - for her home.  Another client likes purple, black and gold.  So these are my boxes using techniques from Christi Tomlinson's Behind the Art class.

For this one, I did the entire box though I kept the bottom really simple with just a stencil, stamp and a color wash of Mod Podge and a little ink.

For this one, I used a stencil and modeling paste for the raised design.  The large "K" was painted and then misted.  The mist won't hold up to more coats of Mod Podge as it is water soluble so it was the last coat.

Thanks for stopping by today!

90th Birthday

Starting with my parent’s 55^th anniversary in October, we begin a year of big birthdays and anniversaries in our family.  My dad’s oldest sister turned 90 a few days ago.  She’s such a joy to be around.  Her body has often betrayed her but her mind remains just as sharp as ever.  She celebrated with a small family party.  This was her card.

I used some book paper from a Latin textbook and added various distress paints and My Mind’s Eye doily stamps.  The flower is a combo of petals from various silk flowers I buy at Hobby Lobby and dissemble and reassemble in the sizes I need for projects. 

Thanks for stopping by!  We still don’t have Internet or phone so I’m not sure when the next video will be.  I’ve got two process ones ready to upload just as soon as we get back up at home.  I must think about a hundred times a day “oh, I’ll check that on-line” only to realize I can’t.  Argh!  Also I haven’t had an opportunity to visit so many of your blogs.  I’ll have a lot of catching up to do.  Fingers crossed the problems will be resolved soon.

Looking for Leaves - Process video and Sketch

(Sorry for the delay in posting this week.  Our Internet has and is down through the holidays :-(.  I'm missing all the sales!)

In the NC Mountains, traffic can get heavy in the fall as parades of "Leaf Lookers" want to take in the scenery.  This fall pretty leaves were hard to come by.  I don't know if it was our extremely wet summer or that it has barely rained since the first of September.  Many of the trees just turned brown and the leaves fell off.  There were a few pretties to look at and we went searching for them one October day.

The 5 photo layout has 3 - 3x5" photos and 2 smaller ones.  The chipboard trees are from Maya Road.  I love painting and stamping chipboard.

The background paper is stenciled with a Claudine Hellmuth stencil and some distress inks.  Here's the video at YouTube:


and the sketch:

Thanks for stopping by!