random.on purpose.

Something Else to Think About...

It's been awhile since I mentioned my firm belief that everything is The Same Subject - meaning, basically, that EVERYTHING intertwines with and is connected to EVERYTHING ELSE, so what applies to one area pretty much applies numerous and sundry other places, as well.  I've also noticed - frequently - that once you pay attention to a particular thing, it pops up everywhere.  Coincidence?  No - what we focus on expands, and we attract it by our attention...

After I posted my "For Sure" musings, I received comments and emails that validated several of the things I think about.  As I was going about my usual Sunday routine yesterday, I read an interview with Hugh Jackman that included a passage that caught my attention:

"He takes his religion very seriously and would prefer I go to church," Jackman says of his father. "We've had discussions about our separate beliefs.  I just find the evangelical church too, well, restrictive.  But the School of Practical Philosphy is non-confrontational.  We believe there are many forms of Scripture.  What is true is true and will never change, whether it's in the Bible or in Shakespeare.  It's about oneness.  Its basic philosophy is that if the Buddha and Krishna and Jesus were all at a dinner table together, they wouldn't be arguing.  There is an essential truth.  And we are limitless."

AMEN!!!  I un-joined the church I was raised in quite a while ago and, while I'm incredibly grateful for the foundation it gave me, I no longer feel guilty about not going - or even not believing various aspects of the dogma.  Much of it is still viable and resonates in my daily life, but some does not.  I keep what resonates and let the rest go...  I, like Mr. Jackman, believe that there are many forms of Scripture, and not all of them are written.  I expounded a bit of this philosophy in this post, and continue to learn and grow from many sources.  Information received in one venue/genre/your label here can be extrapolated and applied in many areas!

Okay, now I can get on with my day without these things buzzing around in my head!  Hope yours is magnificent!  Ta!

Organizing on the Prairie (Urban, that is...)

First things first:  If you downloaded a calendar from my post yesterday, DELETE IT FROM EXISTENCE!!!  I tweaked the templates to fix a typo (January 2010 was misspelled "Janauary"), and now they're formatted so you can stack and cut all four pages at once (see instructions in yesterday's edited post).  This will make your projects MUCH faster and easier to execute!

Why did I need a calendar, you might ask?  Well, Sherry's having a birthday tomorrow (Happy B-day again, GF!), and we got together yesterday to celebrate in true papercrafting-geek style!  She has developed some food allergy complication-type issues, so going out for lunch was not in the cards, and we've been trying to get together for-freakin'-ever to play with some of our stamping/crafting stuff, so she said for me just to come over and do that.  I asked if she wanted me to come up with the "project du jour" and she was stoked to not have to think of something, so we made these:

 

It's a coaster box/desk organizer thingy, made with coasters and Basic Grey Urban Prairie papers...  This side has the calendar (no duh, right?).  The other three sides are:

 

A dry-erase side (transparency cut same size as coaster and attached over the top of the paper - I tried it and it really works!)

 

A cork board side...  I have some thumbtacks around here somewhere that I'm going to add bling to to use here, but I haven't located them yet - may have to buy more...

 

A Post-It and flag side...  Where are the flags, you're most likely wondering?  Yeah, still at the office supply store - I'll buy them when I get my new thumbtacks, I guess.  They'll go next to the little bee...

Want to make one of your own?  Splitcoast Stampers has complete instructions here.  I made a couple of changes.  The first one is that I followed Sherry's thought of punching holes in the bottom coaster and looping the ribbon through them, instead of gluing the bottom on:

  

and I made a divider for the inside.  To make the divider, cut 1/4" off the top of two coasters (cover both sides with dp first), then slit one halfway up from the bottom, and the other halfway down from the top, then slide them together and slide the whole unit inside the coaster box.  I don't have anything holding them in place, they sort of just stay there on their own.  And that's the whole story!

Sherry says I should post the card I gave her here, even though I posted it already looooong, long ago!  She mentioned when I first made it that she wanted it, but I never got around to giving it to her until yesterday (great friend, huh?!)  Anyway - here it is (again):

 

Okay - I'm out, kiddos!   Have a great weekend, and see you next week!

For Sure...

I'm in a bit of an introspective mood today...  It started more like the doldrums, but then I came across this, and had a shift in my thinking and mood.  Now I'm pondering - again - what really matters and what I can do to be more mindful and aware on a daily basis, or even minute-by-minute.  I'd hate to think that it would take something cataclysmic to move me out of ennui and apathy into awareness and action.

Like many others, my intentions are good and I have an intellectual "knowing", but haven't taken that other step into internalizing and acting on what I know.  My excuse is always TIME - there's just not enough of it to go around in my current paradigm!  And yet...I know that this is my perception, and not even an accurate one...  A more honest reason is PRIORITY, and my lack of follow-through on the plan to prioritize I alerted you to a while back.

Regardless, I am now thinking - again - of  "What I Know For Sure":

• EVERYTHING happens for a reason - EVERYTHING!  I can, with almost complete confidence, say that the reason is to teach you something - usually lessons in love.  Ask, "How does this teach me love?", and you can generally see the lesson.  Sometimes the lesson is as simple as "I don't value that behavior"...
• You will get the same lesson in a variety of ways until you LEARN IT!  Don't like how your life is currently going?  Figure out what you're supposed to be learning, and move on!
• You can control NOTHING beyond the three-square-foot area that is your "personal space" - not your spouse, your children, your boss, your circumstances, NOTHING - but within that space you have ABSOLUTE POWER!  You - and you alone - are in charge of the thoughts and emotions that move you into or out of the circumstance, the mood, the job, the relationship, etc.  It is the actions you take based on those thoughts and emotions that determine your life - YOU get to write your story!
• Continuing that thought: you have to be proactive in your life.  A turning point in my personal journey came after I heard this line from the Rush song Free Will: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."  It was then that I realized that I had allowed circumstances and others around me to decide for me, with close to disastrous results.
• You have to SAY.  It is complete insanity and completely unfair for you (or me) to expect anyone to meet an expectation they don't know you have!  Find loving ways to communicate your needs (and wants) to those who matter.
• The Universe (or God or Spirit or higher power or whatever label you're comfortable with) is just as willing to assist you and meet your expectations as you are willing to express them.  Again, you have to SAY.  The caveat - no frivolity or wavering here - mean what you say and what you expect and back it up with your actions.

There are other things running as an undercurrent in my head that I also know for sure, but these are the ones close enough to the surface to be able to articulate well enough to tap them out here...  If any of this is helpful to you, then I'm glad, but - like I've said before - this blog is mostly for me to keep track of and improve my own life, so these are the things I needed to hear again today - glad I told myself!  If you've read this far, then take a minute or two (or an hour or two) to ponder what you know "for sure".  I'm certainly glad Oprah challenged me to do so (not personally, but in a general readership kind of way - still valuable...)!  Have a fantastic evening, and thanks for stopping by!

Aloha!

So, we have another domino effect today, but a GOOD thing, for a change!  It's Sunday, which means "featured stamper" day on Splitcoast, and today's FS is Jaymerz.  As I was looking through her gallery to select a card to CASE, and the one I wanted to do was this one because I loved the layout and color combo.  Frou Frou - another SCSer - sent me some images she stamped for me from the Tickled Pink set (flamingos - love 'em!), and I've been wanting to use them and thought this card would work, but then I looked at the swiss dot embossing on the orange panel, and thought "I wish I had a hibiscus embossing folder - the swiss dots just don't do it for me with flamingos..."  Then I remembered about this tutorial that Mel posted on her blog showing how to make your own texture plates, and so that's what I spent the day doing!  First off, here's the card:

 

I obviously didn't CASE the one I thought I was going to...I CASEd this one instead.  Changes include color and theme, orientation, added layers, and I moved the circle off to the side, included the sentiment on it, and changed it to an oval.  I watercolored the images with smooshed inkpads and water.  The shadow is a Prismacolor 10% cool gray marker.  On to the fun stuff!

I'm not going to write this as a tutorial, since it was Mel's brilliance and she's written a fab tutorial already, so refer to hers (link above) for full instructions.  I'm just going to show you a couple of the things I did that may be helpful.  First off, I trimmed down two pieces of a cereal box to 5 1/2" x 6 1/2" - one to use as the base of my texture plate, and one to use as a shim with it.  I made them this size because they filled most of the Cuttlebug plate this way:

  

and if I want to do a 5 1/2" square, say, instead of just a standard A2, then I'll have that capability.  Mel suggested using a light-colored or waterproof ink (like StazOn) to stamp your images to cut out, but I just used Versamark, so there's ZERO chance of color transference or bleeding.  If it's hard for you to see where to cut, then use something that works for you.  I used the smallest hibiscus stamp from Close to My Heart's Hang Ten stamp set and stamped it repeatedly all over more of the cereal box pieces.  It's easier to do the inside cuts first, before even cutting the images apart from one another - more to hang onto to move the cardboard around as you cut (I used a glass mat and a craft knife):

 

After I got them all cut out, I arranged them how I liked them on my base piece, then glued them on with Royal Coat decoupage medium.  Following Mel's lead, I also sealed the entire thing with Royal Coat after everything was stuck down.

 

Here's a closeup of the embossed panel:

 

And a pic of the whole piece attached to the card base:

 

Pretty darn cool, eh?  The embossing isn't quite as defined as I'd really, really like, but I think it's because I didn't mist it lightly with water before running it through the Cuttlebug.  That would be due to the fact that I have yet to locate my mister (Mr?) since the reorg...  Still, all in all, I'm content with it as is!

Okay, beddy-bye time for this girl!  Thanks for stopping by, sweet dreams, and I hope your week starts off fabulously!

Stamps: Stampin'Up! Tickled Pink, sentiment from Studio G; Ink: SU! Tangerine Tango, Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose, So Saffron, Creamy Caramel, Yo Yo Yellow, Certainly Celery, Versafine Onyx Black; Paper: SU! Tangerine Tango, white, black, watercolor; Accessories: Cuttlebug w/DIY texture plate, oval and corner punches

Tutorial: Punchy Bunnies

It's been awhile since I did a tutorial, and it's also been awhile since I've played with my punches - heck, it's been awhile since I posted anything fun!  So, without further ado, I bring you tutorials for THREE punchy bunnies:

The first one was inspired by the shapes of a bunny I saw on a card online.  It was a stamp, not a punched bunny, but I took note of the shapes and how they were arranged, and came up with this:

 

To make it, you will need:

 

• White cardstock punched as follows: 1- 2" round circle, 3 - wide ovals (EK Success, purchased through Stampin'Up! - the pic only shows 2, the third one was AWOL when I took the pic), 4 large ovals (Fiskars large oval squeeze punch)
• Pink patterned paper punched into 4 - medium ovals (Fiskars medium oval squeeze punch)
• 1 small pink heart brad
• 2 black mini brads
• 1 smallish bow

If you don't have the same punches I used, you can obviously use what you have on hand, including Coluzzles or whatever - just sort of pay attention to the sizes in proportion to each other, and you'll be fine!  Start by sponging ink around the edges of all of your white pieces:

 

Next, take two of the large ovals and adhere them to the side and slightly behind the circle (sorry the pic is blurry - forgot to hit the macro button...):

 

Adhere the pink ovals to the other two large ovals with regular adhesive, and to two of the wide ovals with dimensionals as shown below:

 

On the remaining wide oval, poke a hole in the center (vertically), but slightly to the left of center (horizontally), then two more holes to the sides, with the one on the left being slightly closer to the center hole:

 

Insert heart brad into center hole, and black mini brads into other two holes to create eyes and nose, then draw a mouth and eyebrows, if desired (it's cute without them, too...)

 

Pinch a little dimension into the base of the ear pieces (large ovals w/pink centers adhered w/regular adhesive), and put a dimensional into the pinch:

 

Adhere to the back of the head:

 

Turn head over and put a narrow strip of dimensional foam on very edge of "chin":

 

Then adhere to top of body section:

 

Adhere feet with dimensionals, overlapping toes a bit:

 

Add the bow, and you're done!

If that was more ambitious than you're in the mood for, here's an easy one that I discovered on Cindy Motherway's blog:

   

I changed it up just a bit, but I can't really take credit for the idea, because it's obvious where I got it!  For this one you just need a scalloped circle, two ovals and a pom pom:

 

I inked up the edges again, and also pounced a little ink where the tail was going to be, so it'd have a little dimension, too:

 

The just adhere the ears behind the scalloped circle and stick the pom pom on with a glue dot!

The last one is just a rabbit's head, and is something of a "Wild Hare":

 

For this one, I just punched a heart with my Fiskars squeeze punch, and two of the large ovals, inked them up, added a brad nose, doodled some eyes, eyebrows and ear outlines, then added a bit of pink chalk to the inside of the ears.  Voila!

Since it took me all morning to make the bunnies and tap out the tutorials, I don't have time to make any cards to show you these guys "in action", but I'd love it if you'd link pics of ways that you might happen to use them!  Gotta go make a dollar or two now!  Have a fab day and thanks for stopping by!