random reflections

SNAP: Early Morning Walk

Debbie and I usually meet at 7:30 in the morning at Schoen Place in Pittsford to begin our walk to Bushnell's Basin. It's about a 5 3/4 mile walk. Now that autumn has arrived, the sun's just coming up as we meet. The light last week was really lovely, so I thought a few photos (all taken at the beginning of our walk) would make a good SNAP collection. 

I got the idea for the SNAP collection as I was sitting in my car waiting for Debbie to arrive. I looked across the parking lot and saw the sun coming up, and couldn't resist walking over to take a photo. The rest were taken right at the edge of the canal on the sidewalk near the shops and restaurants. The last one appears to be later than the others, but it's just a difference in light looking down the canal from the other direction. As soon as you leave the village, the path is no longer paved. Not much other than the amount of daylight to tell us that fall has arrived. It's just beginning to cool down, but we've still had a lot of very warm days.

Linking up with Helena and the other SNAP collectors!

Memorandum Monday

Waving to Sian and MM fans this beautiful Monday in Chicago. We often make a visit to Sarah and Adam in the fall, but this year we came a month earlier than usual so we would be here for a very special event-- Sarah's installation service as Associate Pastor for the Winnetka Congregational Church. Although she's worked there for nearly two years, she has been in an "acting associate" role, and it has been mutually agreed that it should be made official, and as the Head Pastor said, "settled."

I don't have many photos, although I hope to get some from the church eventually. Two of these were taken by Adam, and none of them show the beautiful stole the church gave her yesterday, hand-embroidered with branches of a tree. The cover of the bulletin for the service was also a tree (a symbol Sarah uses often,) and the choir sang, "The Tree of Life" by John Rutter as one of the anthems.

I've attended many installation services over the years, and must say this was one of the most personal I've ever attended, probably because the congregation and staff know her so well. (You can see a bit of the lovely stole in this photo taken during the service.)

After the ceremony there was a luncheon on the lawn---great sandwiches and delicious chocolate cake.

At least one person started with dessert!

It was a day to celebrate---and something new for Memorandum Monday!

 

 

Papertrey Ink September 2016 Blog Hop Challenge

As soon as I saw Nicole's inspiration piece for the PTI September Blog Hop, I knew I wanted to play along.

Kraft, black, white, green, and twine---what's not to like about that? So, I set aside some time to play. I hoped to come up with one card for the hop, but ended up making three. Only one can be linked to the hop, but I'm sharing all of them here.

The card on the left is the one I started out to create. When I was waiting for the white to dry on the pinecones, I came up with two other cards using tags as the focal point.

I trimmed off the top edge of the kraft card, and layered a piece of True Black on the inside of the card. The wreath and sentiment are from "Rustic Wreath," and the pinecones came from Avery Elle's "Winter Wreath." Much to my surprise I could not find a pinecone in any of my PTI sets. A bow was tied to the wreath with Rustic Jute Button Twine (PTI.) 

I used White Enamel Accents to add some "snow" to the pinecones, and used some clear foam tape to add some dimension to the wreath.

I used Tag Sale #9 to cut two tags, one each from kraft and True Black cardstock to mimic the tags in the inspiration piece. The branch is from last year's "Spruce and Sprigs" stamped with Pinefeather ink. Once tied together with twine, I added the tags to the Select White cardstock and rounded one corner. The sentiment is from "Rustic Wreath."

This card is essentially the same. I added a second pine bough cut from vellum to place behind the one stamped with Pinefeather, and used two AMuse black pearls instead of the pinecone. I'm posting this before church, but won't be able to link it up with the blog hop until afterwards. I'll be anxious to see all the other creations based on this inspiration. Glad, too, to have a few Christmas cards created!

FUSION Birthday Bash Challenge

Although my goal of participating in a challenge every week has been only partially successful, the Fusion Challenge is one of my favorites. They offer up a sketch as well as an inspiration piece, and I combined aspects of both for this week's challenge.

I took the circular design for the focal point, and used some of Maile Belle's Ombre Stripes paper from the inspiration piece as well as a few of the colors. I think there's enough elements from both the sketch and the inspiration piece to fit the challenge.

All the elements of the focal point are from Papertrey Ink's "Scene It: Celebration" stamps and dies. I die cut the circle element three--once in Summer Sunrise, once in Summer Sunrise Patterned paper, and once in Hawaiian Shores and off set them. Celebrate was die cut with Tropical Teal paper.

I love the layered look of the three die cuts, and appreciate how Papertrey Ink develops cardstocks that complement one another.

SNAP: The Birthday Party

Skylar turns five today, and there'll be a dinner tonight with just family. On Saturday she hosted a birthday party for her friends and classmates (and their parents and younger siblings). It was a wonderful event, and everyone, including the birthday girl, had a great time. Coming up with a SNAP collection for Helena's meme was easy this week!

Skylar greeting friends at the front door, the birthday girl getting her face painted, Ella and her dad with Ella's balloon "dolly," and blowing out the candles on the cake.

Of course, there had to be a special birthday card, and the September Simon Says Kit was just perfect for it. It arrived with scratch-off stickers, bright patterned papers from Doodlebug, and the perfect birthday balloons and sentiments in the "It's No Secret" stamp set.

I totally forgot to take a photo before I added the scratch-off stickers, but under one it says "Love You" and under the other "You Rock." I colored the balloons with Copic markers and added glitter to each one with a Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen. 

The colorful sequins are also from a previous Simon Says Card Kit. Hope your week is going well; mine is going by much too quickly!

 

5 in 5 and Memorandum Monday

I'm waving to Sian and her friends today. It was an incredibly busy weekend here filled with all kinds of new experiences. Tracy's high school class celebrated their 50th High School Reunion this weekend, and he was the chairperson of the event. He and the committee have been planning this event for the last several years, and I actually know more people in his graduating class than I would in my own. (Granted I only attended my that high school for two years.) There was a Friday night gathering at a local bar, a Saturday night dinner, and a Sunday picnic. In addition, we hosted breakfast for seven Saturday morning--friends who had arrived from Florida, England, New Mexico, and Illinois. I took almost no photos of the events since there were several people taking lots of photos. But here's a snapshot from the Saturday night dinner of the planning committee.

I learned lots about his classmates over the course of the weekend, but nothing of great interest to share here.

Squeezed into Saturday was Skylar's fifth birthday party, and as always, Betsy planned a wonderful event with face painting, and balloon animals. I did take LOTS of photos there. Here are five in five minutes during the breaking of the pinata for Sandi's September 5 in 5 meme:

 

You can see the amazing face (and arm) painting in this one. The woman who did these was a wonderful artist.

There will be more birthday photos come Wednesday for SNAP! For now, I'm off to get my homework done for class, and wrap up some odds and ends that need to be finished this week.

 

 

SNAP: Wildlife on the Trails

This week's SNAP collection is a series of photos snapped while I was walking. Three were taken on the Erie Canal Trail, and the last one was taken from the pedestrian bridge over the Genesee River on my way to class last week. So technically, it's not a trail.

I was amazed at how long the deer in the upper right photo stood looking at me while I snapped away on my iPhone. The photo on the bottom left was a really lovely scene, and it was another time when I wished I had had my big camera with me. Evidently the new iPhone 7 will have a much improved zoom capability, but I'm not planning on upgrading my phone anytime soon. The day I saw the blue heron, there was also an egret and a "line" of ducks perched on a log. The egret was too far away to photograph, and none of the duck photos was as sharp as I would have wished. Another problem with the iPhone when you're trying to take a photo from a pretty good distance away.

Linking up with Helena and the other avid SNAPPERS.

Project Life: April 2016

I decided I was going to finish pages in whatever order was easiest, so you'll be seeing my catch-up pages here out of order for sure. The April pages covered our trip to New Orleans and didn't need too much work to complete.

I added the photo of the horse and carriage to the calendar card since that just epitomizes New Orleans for me. I love the Paislee Press template for six photos which was perfect for the shots of the street performers. The bottom left photo is of most of the family at the Jackson Brewery and is another Paislee Press template. The rest are Tracy Larsen's. I made the journaling card from our guide for the Garden District tour's business card and a couple of Jolee stickers.

The reason for our trip was our niece's wedding. I didn't take my big camera to the wedding, so there aren't many good photos. The first three are from the amazing rehearsal dinner at Randy's parents' home. The wedding photos were taken at the reception, a gorgeous restaurant set into the trees along a river. I included one of many little items from the wedding on one of the journaling cards.

I've got so many projects going right now, it's hard to figure out what to do next! I'm taking a class that meets three days a week at the University of Rochester which requires quite a bit of reading, working on the Project Life catch-up, trying to get a few cards made, trying to maintain my workout schedule, and am enrolled in Liz Steel's newest Sketching Now class. My volunteer commitments don't start for another week, so I'm trying to make good use of my time now. I'm hoping blogging won't go by the wayside. 

SNAP: Stairs at the RISD Museum

On our way home from Nantucket, we spent a day in Providence, Rhode Island. It had been nearly 40 years since we'd last been there, and we knew a lot had changed. We had a wonderful day, shopping on Hope Street, browsing on Thayer Street (the Brown University College Town), and spent two hours at the lovely Rhode Island School of Design Museum. It has a large permanent collection spanning from antiquity to contemporary art, and we enjoyed it all. As we walked from gallery to gallery, I was taken with the variety of staircases, and took photos of many of them with a SNAP collection in mind.

Here are a couple more shots from Providence.

They've done a beautiful job of restoring the waterfront.  I'd love to return some day to see the Waterfire display. Sadly, it wasn't scheduled for the Saturday evening we were there.

Here you can see the braziers along each side of the river which are lit during Waterfire.

This is the view of downtown Providence from Prospect Terrace Park.

Providence is the capital of Rhode Island, and although I had another closer photo of the capital building, I preferred this view. 

Linking up with Helena and other SNAP enthusiasts.

CASology: Stitch

It's a very rare occurrence, but I didn't make a single card in August. The cards I posted were all made in July before we left on our vacation. So when I sat down on Thursday to made a couple September birthday cards, it had been awhile. Luckily, I won a $25 gift certificate to Papertrey Ink during their Stamp-a-Faire event, so I had ordered the new Mini Market Kit: Color Pop Autumn which arrived just before we left. 

When I was making the first of the birthday cards, I felt it needed just something extra, so I tried a technique I saw recently on Jennifer McGuire's blog using die cuts as embossing plates. It worked beautifully and I was very happy with the results. The card itself, however, is too busy for the CASology challenge which focuses on very clean and simple, so I made a second card for the challenge with the same technique, but no patterned paper. 

Here's the first card:

And a closer view, since the light was better when the card was laying flat.

Everything for the card except the gingham patterned paper (My Favorite Things) came from the Color Pop Autumn kit. I added a few rainstones at the end as well. I love the preprinted die cuts which come with these kits which make for some quick and easy cards.

Here's the card for the challenge. Everything in this card came from the kit.

The stitched edge is embossed with Simon Says Stitched Rectangle dies which I used twice on the first card---to cut the patterned paper and then emboss the edge of the card.

And finally, the other birthday card I needed. For this one, I cased Betsy Veldman's card when she used one of the patterned papers from the kit and just stamped the outline images.

No stitched embossing on this one, although in retrospect I think it could have used it. 

It's a holiday weekend here, and we have a few plans, but mostly a lot of free time and a long list of projects to work on. Hope your weekend is going well.