• Blog

    T Tuesday: two months of updates

    April 8, 2024 - By 

    Wowsers, it’s been a while. I have no real excuse for not posting. Let’s just say that I haven’t been good at doing anything from start to finish. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel as if it should be documented. I have so many projects going in various stages. Some of them aren’t even a project per say…just an idea I had to dive into at the moment. My mind is a whirl of ideas during the day but often, by the time I get home from work and do the household things, I’m out of steam to be creative. 

    This past weekend I was continuing my slow process of sorting through my supplies. I pulled out two bins of jewelry supplies. I really want to get things more organized so I don’t waste time looking for something when my time is limited.  I wish I had a brain for organizing…I just don’t. I’m also very frugal (cheap) and don’t want to buy a bunch of new bins in which to organize plus I’m not even sure what I would want or need since my brain doesn’t work that way.

    Other things I’ve been working on in no particular order are the seemingly never ending sorting, purging and attempting to organize my vast craft supply. This includes paper sorting, old cards, harvesting images, label making for future projects. 

    Making journal cards, tags and pockets for journals

    More journals and covers

    Seed starting…even though I’m really late this year.

    But Spring is playing tricks this year. Marvin was not very happy about the snow that day.

    I do have some life updates as well. I am happy to say that I am in complete remission from Lymphoma. I just had scans this past week and will have them again in 6 months. From there the scans will go out to a year.  What a relief!

    J’s roommate decided to adopt a cat but the cat seems to have claimed J.

    Meet Marshall. Mini-me and I went over to their house to met him in person last weekend. He’s a tiny little cat with a very loud voice.

    Speaking of Mini-me…she had 4 pieces of art in the senior show this spring. She got a purchase award for on of her monoprints.

    The university bought it to become part of the permanent collection. Isn’t that cool!!! She also just got word that she’ll be receiving an academic award from the art history dept at graduation. Yes that girl is graduating college next month.

    Last month I had the opportunity to go to Orchestra Hall with our 6th graders. It was a really fun performance.

    Mr. G and I went on a weekend trip to Wisconsin last month as well. We visited his Aunt and Uncle. We always have fun hanging out with them. I did a bit of thrifting while there.

    I found this fun batch of weaving swatches and instructions at an antique shop.

    As well as this pink ruby ring. Excuse the dry hands…I wash them constantly at school…kids are gross. LOL

    Speaking of school…I couldn’t get through my day without my giant water bottle.

    It also serves as my ticket to T stands for Tuesday this week. Yay I remembered for once.

    T stands for Tuesday
  • 3D printing - Blog - Creativity

    My style notebook

    February 12, 2024 - By 

    I am a prolific list maker and idea jotter. I am constantly grabbing a sheet of notebook paper to quickly write my ideas. It gets a bit chaotic with some many pages of half crossed lists laying about. I started thinking that if I could have a smallish notebook with me that I could keep everything in one place.

    This idea, like so many others, has been rattling around in my head for a while. Lately I was inspired by an image of a stack of small pamphlet stitched notebooks on Pinterest. That in combination with a Readers Digest Condensed book cover I had in my stash and thinking of the function of a travelers notebook I put the three together to create my own version to better suit my needs.

    As I said before, I constantly have papers to jot ideas or work things out visually. Such as this drawing on how I wanted the elastics to work in the spine. Originally I was going to have 3 signatures to my book but after drawing it out I realized that I’d need 4 to have the elastics at the same end of the book.

    I used my new book cradle to assist in the binding process. 

    Mr. G 3D printed and assembled this very sturdy tool for my bookmaking. In the past I’d used an old phonebook for this process with very mixed results.

    This book cradle makes it a breeze to accurately make holes in the spine with an awl. The results are perfect.

    I added a but of reinforcement to the spine of my gutted Readers Digest Condensed book.

    Then used eyelets to reinforce the holes for the elastic cording.

    A bit of lace covered the unsightly bits quite nicely. All that was left was assembly.  And the glamor shots.

    Anyone remember Glamor Shots at the mall circa 1990s? Oh yeah… I have some cringe worthy photos from that place. Faux fur stole and white gloves…geesh. Sorry…ADHD squirrel moment!

    The glamor shots…

  • Blog

    January Journal embellishments

    January 16, 2024 - By 

    Since the cold weather finally found Minnesota, I’ve been doing a bit of lap crafting. It’s too cold in my basement craft space to spend any length of time. I had yesterday off for Martin Luther King Jr day so I spent a bit of afternoon time by the fireplace re-watching a series. Re-watching something lets me craft while still getting a bit of entertainment value simultaneously.

    I’ve definitely been more inspired by junk journaling lately. I watched a YouTube video the other day that talked about using those 6×6 paper pads for an easy and practical embellishment. A full page pocket.

    They were super simple yet slightly boring on their own. I decided to add clusters to them to jazz things up a bit.

    As you can see they are kind of like chips…can’t have just one.

    Here I grabbed an ATC to show the pocket part. When the pocket get glued to the journal page it will be adhered only on three sides creating another pocket behind.

    After embellishing the pockets with clusters I decided that my stash of clusters needed a bit more interest. I grabbed a container of paper flowers and set to work.

    I had so much fun working with this limited palette of flowers.

    As you can see I went a bit crazy, but I used up the whole container of flowers from my stash. I’ve been think a lot about all the stuff I have for crafting and how meaningless it is to have around if I’m not using it. I made a pledge to myself to use things. Even if I don’t have a specific plan at the moment. Moving forward with creating. Not everything has to a a plan. I’m being BRAVE and using the stuff. Creating without an end goal in mind per say.

    While I crafted, my buddy Marvin kept me company. He’s sweet like that.

    This is a poor picture taken as the sun was setting but look at the blossoms! This plant has never bloomed for me. I’m so pleased that it finally did!

    Over the long weekend I had plans to have Bloody Mary’s with the neighbors but they came down with a cold. I wasn’t too sad since it was so frigid outside. I didn’t relish the idea of walking across the street. Instead we all had our own and shared a photo in our group chat. 🙂 I suppose we could have done a zoom call but that really would have been overkill.

    It was back to reality for me today. The end of semester is Friday so suddenly all the kiddos want to get some work done! Imagine that! Keeps me busy and makes the day go by really fast.

    Linking up with Elizabeth and friends for T Tuesday where we share a beverage and whatever else comes to mind.

    T stands for Tuesday