random reflections

Super Moon

Since the full moon tonight was supposed to be the largest in the last 20 years, Tracy and I decided to go out and see what we could do to capture a photo. It was freezing (just a little over 32°) so we weren't willing to stay out too long. I had some notes from my friend Barbara about good settings to try. Another time I would use the remote, but I didn't have the camera set for it and it was so dark in the field near our community garden that I just stuck with the tripod. It would also be nice to have a longer lens, but that's not happening! Nonetheless I'm pretty happy with this shot, and most of all, I'm glad I saw it. As we drove over the moon appeared HUGE and bright yellow, but quickly diminished in size.

Two Cards for Friday

I thought I'd post a couple of cards today that went "live" on the Scrap-Mart blog this month.

I just love the Grand Nestability dies for making shaped cards, and so far Labels Eleven is my favorite. I also love this Unity Stamp Set "A Girl and her Adventures" which I've owned for awhile but never used. The cardstock is American Craft and the patterned papers are all from My Mind's Eye.

Another Labels Eleven shaped card that I made with one of the new Heartfelt Creations stamps. Heartfelt Creations sent the Scrap-Mart Design Team a wonderful collection of images and dies to work with. You'll be seeing more of them here soon. The pink patterned paper is from the new American Craft line "Hello Sunshine." Papertrey's Sweet Blush ribbon matched it perfectly. I added a little rose from a set I bought on sale at Michaels recently. Although it's almost impossible to see, the hummingbird was coated with Smooch Illuminate which gives his feathers the glow our hummingbirds at the feeder seem to have.

Here's a peek at the inside of the card:

The message is also from a Heartfelt Creations set " Classic Messages," another one I'll use frequently. The flower is a smaller image from the "Angel Trumpet Flowers" set.

 

Happy Birthday & Happy St. Patrick's Day

Today's is Tracy's birthday. Not a day goes by that I'm not grateful to be married to such a kind and generous man. But he's gone above and beyond this last week as a super-duper caregiver, so here are extra special birthday wishes!

His birthday card is a lift from Kara, at KandR Designs. I love her clean and simple approach to cards, and I definitely like hers a lot better than mine! But I liked the sentiment and I wanted a St. Patrick's Day style card. The two greens are much closer in color than they appear on the card. I used stamps from Papertrey Ink (Button Boutique and Luck of the Irish) and American Craft thickers. The inside (which I didn't photograph) combines three stamps that tell him how lucky I am to be his wife, and to wish him a happy birthday.

(It was a much better day as I finally was up and about for awhile today. It was gorgeous here, in the 60s, so we drove up to the lake to have lunch at Don's Originals. It sure was great to get out of the bedroom, but I was pretty tired by the time we got home.)

Project 64: Plum

This week's color at Project 64 was plum, actually a color I like quite a lot.

Fortunately, I looked around and found some things that matched the crayon (and its scribble) before I went off for surgery. Today I managed to get shots of most of them. The first one is a newbie.

A good friend who brought dinner over the other night, also brought a lovely arrangement of flowers for my dinner tray. Tracy said, "I think we ought to save these in case they match one of the crayon colors." Good thing he was thinking about it, because one of them is a pretty good match for plum.

So is my iPhone cover.

And my favorite reusable grocery bag from my favorite grocery store.  And here's my shot for the week:

This is one of my favorite necklaces. I wear it on several different chains and have two pairs of earrings that go with it as well. I grabbed the lid from one of my vintage Mason jars for the photograph. Check out the other entries. I love looking through all the other photographs to see what folks have found and to "collect" ideas for composition.

 

Sweet Shot Tuesday

Last Thursday I went in for some needed surgery. I knew that there would be a few difficult days afterwards, but I really expected to be back on my feet and moving around by now. The truth is that I am relatively pain-free as long as I stay put, but as soon as I try to get up and move around, it’s still pretty painful. Fortunately, I have a super caregiver so there’s been little need to do much. I am truly thankful for a laptop and a huge pile of magazines and books. We don’t have a television in our bedroom, and it’s been six days now since I’ve seen any TV. Except for the news, I don’t really miss it. I am a huge fan of college basketball, however, so I’m hoping to make it to the living room for the beginning of March Madness.

I’ve spent a lot of time perusing blogs and getting lots of inspiration for cards and scrapbook pages. I hope it doesn’t leave me by the time I get back to my studio. I’m also hoping that tomorrow I’ll be able to take photos for last week’s Project 64 (plum).  Here’s my shot for Sweet Shot Tuesday this week. It’s one I took when I was at the George Eastman House to take photos for Picture Inspiration. As I was leaving I noticed all the winter anconites blooming through the snow.

They were the first sign of spring. Since then our daffodils have pushed up through the soil, and most of the snow has finally melted. Today it was sunny and 50°. I'm so ready for spring!

Online Classes: Take 2

This week's prompt for Picture Inspiration was to Find Some Rhythm. Tracy shared part of a definition for rhythm with us:  "a harmonious sequence or pattern of masses alternating with voids, of light alternating with shade, of alternating colors, etc." The words "haromonious" and "pattern" made me think of the staircase in the George Eastman House. My brother-in-law gave me a year's membership for Christmas so I can go as often as I like this year without any admission fees. It's quite the lovely gift. I've been three times since mid-February. As it turns out I found two shots, one inside and one outside, that seemed to fit the prompt.

I love the patterns of the columns, arbor, and all the shadows. I took a few other photos there I'll save for another time. One of the things I'm enjoying a lot with this class is working my way through the gallery of photographs posted by members of the class. Talk about inspiration!

Participating in Finding Your Way has proven to be pretty motivating for scrapbooking. I finished three more layouts for the house album. It's already getting frustrating, however, because I can't find photos I thought I had! For instance, I have photos of how our first house looked when we moved in, but almost none of how it looked by the time we sold it seven years later. We had a beautiful kitchen put in that house, and I can't find any photos of it. I'm sure there are negatives of the photos, but I have several boxes of those and no easy way to examine them. Oh well, I'm trying to embrace imperfection, and just get on with it.

I'm definitely not a fan of my handwriting, but Karen G. is right, it does speed up the process considerably. Now that I've started it in this album, I'll maintain it. The journaling is hard to read so here's what it says: It was cheap and in a nice part of the city. Those facts combined with the fact that I had just been laid off due to decreasing enrollments meant we took on a huge renovation porject when we bought the house on Werner Park. These photos give a flavor of what we inherited. The previous owners wanted to turn the house into a double but couldn't get a zoning variance. They went ahead anyway and cut doors through walls, cut off the plumbing to the upstairs bathroom as well as other poor decisions. I took us years to get through the whole house with needed repairs and remodeling.

I'm continuing to enjoy the Silhouette 101 class. It's nearly over, and I've learned everything I hoped to. This week I learned out to use the print and cut feature. I printed some cute tickets on my printer and then ran them through the Silhouette which cut them perfectly. You'll see them in a project soon, I'm sure.

I'll be away from the computer for the next few days, but will catch up with your blogs early next week. Have a great weekend.

 

Make-It Monday 5

I got to this week's Papertrey Ink challenge a bit earlier this week. The challenge was to do some distressing on the project. It's not something I do often. In fact, I have a distressing tool which I used for the first time today! I must say it worked very well, although the distressing around all the edges of the patterned papers doesn't show up particularly well here.  I also took the opportunity to use one of my new stamp sets: Mat Stack #2 Collection. It's filled with very elegant designs for the mat stack and a good addition to my stamp collection.

Quite some time ago, I dyed a lot of seam binding with a variety of mists. I chose the colors for the card based on a piece of the ribbon. I used another piece of the My Mind's Eye paper from the Mabel collection and one from Basic Grey's Basic Kraft collection.

 

Clean and Simple

I love the sketches at Clean & Simple, but haven’t had a lot of time to play along for a while. This week’s sketch is a busy cardmaker’s dream. One piece of cardstock, one sheet of patterned paper from a 6 X 6 paper pad (I used both sides of it), a piece of ribbon, two buttons, one Fillable Frame stamp, and two sentiments (one inside and one out). It was finished in about 10 minutes. I love this color combination, too.

Cardstock: Dark Chocolate (PTI), Patterned Paper: "Mabel" Stella & Rose (My Mind's Eye); Die: Fillable Frame #8 (PTI); Stamps: Fillable Frames #8 & #5; Buttons: LaDiDah (KI Memories)

 

 

Project 64: White

This week's prompt at Project 64 was white, so I didn't need to carry a crayon around with me.

Initially I thought I would take photos of my white pitcher collection, but in the end didn't use them at all. Here's what I found.

Aside from the leaves this meets Brooke's additional challenge of white on white which I use frequently. I bought this cyclamen for a friend, but took advantage of it before I gave it away. Here are a couple of close-up shots.

Finally I was inspired to set up a little still life.

I was happy with this, but added one of Kim Klassen's textures, Gray Day Slate, with a blending mode of Hard Light at 80%, and this turned out to be my favorite for the week.

I'll be submitting this for Sweet Shot Tuesday as well.

 

Make-It Monday 4

This is my second post today. Scroll down for a post on Exploring with Your Camera.

This week's challenge was to use some fun foam and create your own stamp with a die cut. I had to go buy a piece of fun foam as it's not something I've ever used. I decided to buy white, thinking I might eventually color it with mist or paint. But I knew right away that for this challenge, I'd use the white for clouds. Several years ago, I bought two sheets of paper by Autumn Leaves called "Wellies and Umbrellas, and I've always wanted to use the images on a card. With the introduction of "Healing Touch Sentiments" (PTI) a couple of months ago, I had the perfect sentiment for the card.

I'm really pleased with the card, and was amused to have Matt come into the studio and tell me he thought it was one of my best cards. He spent quite a bit of time examining it and asking about the challenge. I used the fun foam to stamp the clouds with Fresh Snow ink (PTI), hand cut the wellies and umbrella, and added the foam clouds. The sentiment is stamped with Pearlescent Rust by Brilliance. They've recently become my favorite inks although I've owned most of them for years.