Invented: Trash Co-op

Today is trash-a-palooza here in the hood. It's that rare, eclipse-like event where trash day, recycle day and "white trash day" (bulk collection) occur on the same day. AND Labor Day, so we are all home to observe the shenanigans!

Since I get a lot of Stampin' Up! boxes, I am always sad that recycle day is only every other week instead of every week. Ours is always stuffed full of cardboard, which I hate having in the house. Bugs love cardboard. I break the boxes down the instant I get them and take them out to the recycle bin. But it fills up fast. Too fast.

The other day I was longingly eyeing my neighbor's recycle bin, and I'm not gonna lie, I thought about sneaking over there and offloading some boxes.

It occurred to me that we could easily form a trash co-op. I'm a power recycler, but we don't generate a lot of trash, and they pick up our trash every week. So I could offer space in my trash bin, and maybe one of my neighbors could offer me space in their recycle bin. You could have an app that pinged everyone on Sunday night, telling them who had space in which bin. We could all run outside and start distributing our trash and recycling in the most efficient method possible.

I think it's genius. Please let me know when your ten year old has developed the app and then give me part of the proceeds. Thanks. This is a binding contract.

So since 2010, we've been doing an annual event at Splitcoaststampers called Hope You Can Cling To. It was an amazing event, which generated about 4,000 cards a year for patients undergoing cancer treatment at MD Anderson. The community did fantastic work and we loved turning October a pale pink every year in honor of the event.

This year, we are doing something that's anchored in that event, but is more focused on the best crafting season of the year - the "fallidays", which you can read about below. Our contact at MD Anderson has retired and they have enough cards to carry them into the next century, so it was time for a change, which we are very, very excited about.

So I made a card in honor of the anchor, using some Rainbow Tape to create a weathered wood background. I love, love, love that copper is in in a big way this season, because I really love it with blue. Particularly navy.

Links to supplies:

InLinkz.com

To achieve this look, I first adhered the 1/4" crepe tape to the cardstock, leaving a gap between the "boards". Then I covered the entire panel with warm white acrylic paint. When that was dry, I rubbed Marina Mist ink in the gaps for that weathered, seaside look. I finished the card with an anchor image from the Guy Greetings stamp set, some Night of Navy twine, and a die cut sentiment with the Sunshine Wishes thinlets and copper foil sheets. Fun, right?

Okay, now a little more about the Falliday event! This will kick off on October 9th.

 We are going to have TEN holiday crafting tutorials, four days of tips and card drives, prizes, and a little surprise you'll have to wait and see. Be sure and follow the instructions in the story about this event to get updates!

I hope you're enjoying your long holiday weekend. Let me know when my app is ready.

Loveyameanitbye.

The Case of The Neglected Embossing Folder

A friend of mine showed me a card in the holiday catalog the other day (page 21 if you're interested) and I realized that I had never taken that Boughs & Berries embossing folder out of the package.

So my mission yesterday was to get that sucker out and use it - it's really pretty. Not sure what I was thinking.

I've used nearly everything else in that catalog and this poor little folder was neglected.

Looking up at me like the little sheep below - saying "why are you holding HIM?"

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Isn't that pretty? Think of all the things I could have made with it so far!

I made this card on Periscope yesterday - starting by rubbing Blue Ice Inka Gold over the raised areas made with the Boughs & Berried embossing folder, and then watercoloring the little tag I made with the Curvy Corner Trio Punch and Island Indigo, Daffodil Delight and Night of Navy reinkers.

The Periscope cuts off because my phone rang, but you can see the bulk of it here.



This card is for two challenges - the Tag, You're It! Hope You Can Cling To challenge, and I'm also hosting the Mix-Ability Challenge today.

I got the idea for today's challenge from a member at Splitcoast - Linda - who has this great chart she uses if her mojo stalls.

I modified hers slightly to make it mixed media, but it's a really cool idea. Here's the matrix for today's challenge.

So I picked Watercolor, acrylic, blue, yellow, animals and dry embossing!

Fun, eh?

I love out of the box ideas like that for starting a card design.

If you want to read something fun, check out this thread - which is about advice you'd give yourself if you were just starting to papercraft. There's a LOT of wisdom in here.

Happy Friday peeps!

Loveyameanitbye.

Feline Chaos At The Door To Narnia

I'm sure life with dogs is interesting and whatnot, but I'm fairly certain that it is not as exciting and terrifying as life with cats can be.

Yesterday - I was sitting in my office, working, and my husband was getting ready to get some gloves out of our linen closet so that he could go paint a shelving system he's building for our laundry room.

(By the way, this type of shelf is fascinating - if you like this sort of thing - go look up French cleats sometime.)

Right outside my door is a cat lounging station - a four slot black Expedit on legs that I bought from my friend Lani. On top, there's a little black cat mattress that my sister made. Not a mattress for a black cat, even though it IS for a black cat, but a little black mattress for a cat. You know what I mean.

Since this unit is almost four feet tall, Maddie loves ruling the world from up there and can be found on it frequently.

However, because of the proximity to the linen closet, it is also the center of one of her many terrorist operations. Every time you open that door she shoots onto your back at about 60 miles per hour, with a claw assist. When Maddie hits you, even though she only weighs 6 pounds, it's with the force of a cannonball, and you frequently have no warning, so you have to have your wits about you. It's as if she knows that her petite weight must be made up for in velocity - sort of like a ballistics expert. Hmm - that's another indication of why we should fear them. Splotchy makes a little trilling warning sound right before he jumps onto your shoulder - like the sound the raptors make in Jurassic Park - and he also doesn't hit you with the same velocity - so it's much less alarming and painful. Please refer to my article on feline echolocation for more information on Splotchy's technique.

Well before getting the gloves, he apparently also set a cup of water on the cat lounging station, which was the trigger for an event which would plunge our house into complete chaos for two hours.

I drew it out on a Post-It note for you.

So all I hear is the door opening, and then a HUGE crash, some cuss words, another crash, hissing and the sound of cat claws slipping and sliding on the tile as they try to get away.

Out of the corner of my eye, because my chair faces the door of my office, I see two huge fluffy tails shooting out of eyeshot.

I yell WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED?

He tells me he set the water down on the cat lounging station, and when he went to open the closet door (we are positive they think it's the door to Narnia), both cats snuck up on him - Splotchy to the left of the open door. Maddie makes her move - trying a compound jump - first to the cat lounging station and then onto his shoulder, but in mid-air, she sees the cup of water - too late. She slams into the water, scaring the living pee out of herself, and the cup flies through the air, raining down its contents on the completely innocent and now confused and terrified Splotchy - who hisses and tries to get away, completely soaking wet. Maddie, who is not very good at understanding the consequences of her actions, is also terrified and confused, and so she freaks out and runs away, with a serious case of the big tail.

Every time we try to approach either of them to calm them down, they completely lose their little furry minds and hide - EVEN THOUGH WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! THIS WAS A COMPLETE CAT-GENERATED SITUATION.

This lasts for two hours, with poor wet Splotchy shooting underneath furniture every time he hears a sound or sees anything move, and Maddie acting all indignant that the floor is wet.

Never a dull moment, I swear.

I made this card for Dina's Hope You Can Cling To challenge which is a GORGEOUS orange inspiration board from Pinterest.

The tree is from Among the Branches, and I inked it up and then wiped some of the ink off in places, to give the illusion of leaves in front of the branches. The rest is Brusho.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Yes, good things are going to happen.

But if you have cats, some really surprising and terrifying and hilarious things are going to happen.

When you least expect them.

Loveyameanitbye.

PS - did I mention Ronda Wade is a guest presenter at my retreat? Because she is. You'd better sign up now. :)

Why Trends Come Back - Mystery Solved

When I was headed into fifth grade, we went clothes shopping before school started.

This was really something we only did for school and it was a big splurge - very different from the way people shop now. I haven't changed much - I hate shopping - so I go maybe once a year and if I find anything I like I buy 8 of it just so I don't have to go back.

We planned how many of each type of thing we were going to get, and we didn't get much, and we didn't shop anywhere expensive.

I remember how the prospect of new clothes for school was exciting for about 5 minutes before the ennui of trying things on endlessly and hating them all set in. And when you're that age, you have all that anxiety about showing up in the wrong thing or being teased endlessly about wearing some less than ideal brand - in Bryan, TX in that decade, there were definitely brands that made you an outcast. For boys - it was wearing Toughskins jeans - the Sears version of the infinitely cooler Wranglers. Personally, I think kids clothing shouldn't even have branding visible on it - it's nothing but trouble. But I digress.

One item that we bought that year has burned the whole trip into my memory - I even remember precisely a shirt we bought from that trip - a bright plaid shirt with little gold threads in it. But forget the shirt.

The item I whined and cried about and had to have was a blue coat.

Mind you - a child in Bryan, TX doesn't have much use for a coat. However, stores in Texas have buyers in New York, and so each fall to this day, we see sweaters and coats and scarves and a million other impractical things we'll push past in the vain hope of finding something we won't die of a heatstroke in in December. Like shorts. And flip flops. And bug spray.

But this coat was spectacular.

It was a soft, almost periwinkle blue suede, with that fluffy lining that is now in Uggs. It had huge, fluffy lined pockets, and the cuffs were the fluffy lining too. It was basically like wearing a large, blue, stuffed animal.

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And my mom got it for me.

I loved that coat so much. I was so excited the first day I actually got to wear it at school and I was petrified I'd leave it somewhere.

I don't know why that blue coat crossed my mind today - maybe because I'm listening to the Longmire Mysteries on audiobook - (I highly recommend them if you like the series they are based on) - and Longmire was enjoying the last day without a coat before the snow started, and my mind turned to coats.

I realized when the coat crossed my mind why exactly it is that trends - even horrid trends like stirrup pants and mall bangs - come back around every so often.

It's because some woman who loved her crazy blue suede coat when she was 12, gets older, stops caring what people think about what she wears (one of the real benefits of getting older), and she says - I'm going to get a coat just like the one I had in fifth grade, dang it.

She finds one, or has it made, everyone her age wants one too, and BOOM - we are back in that decade.

(Thanks a lot to whoever missed their stirrup pants, you psycho!)

Glad to have that mystery solved! :)

Today's card is another Brusho leaf - I only did one 9 x 12 sheet of these practicing for my retreat, but I have gotten so many cards out of that sheet. Each one is so different and fun.

This card was actually for Teresa's Hope You Can Cling To Challenge earlier in the month to make a freestyle collage card.

Teresa has SUCH a beautiful, airy style on her cards, and collage is something she excels at.

It is hard for me because I'm kind of a minimalist, so I worked on this card for a long, long time before I liked it. All the supplies are listed below.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

I love the little (probably unintentional) pops of yellow in with the pink.

Don't forget that $5000+ of crafty prizes await you if you enter the challenges before November 7th!

And don't forget that my mini retreat before OnStage Live in Dallas is just a week away - we have a few seats left so don't delay - I will close registration soon!

Loveyameanitbye.

The Evil Acorn and a Lot of Mid-Brain Shenanigans

You can say we are evolved beings, capable of higher thought, and the most advanced life form in the galaxy.

But the fact of the matter is, when there's a full moon - everyone becomes a complete lunatic.

Luckily I have two little beasts living with me that tip me off a few days before the full moon that society is about to break down.

I notice little psychotic breaks in the cats - bouts of crazy brain, some fighting and I look up at the sky and say to myself -

People go completely off the rails on the internet and off for a few days, and then, thankfully, recover. For slightly less than a month.

The best thing to do is to not respond to anything during this period in which humans come down with crazy brain. They can't help themselves, and we should leave it all to the professionals, God help them. Take a moment to appreciate the nurses, police, baristas, firefighters and Community Managers who are on the front lines of each full moon battle.

I can't say for sure that that was my inspiration for my card for today's challenge, except that I can.

I had tried for DAYS to make anything halfway decent, and failed, and then the mid-brain full moon induced crazies I observed lit an inspirational fire, and I completely perverted the adorable Acorny Thank You set and twisted it to my dark purposes. Muahahahahah!!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

My apologies to the designer of this cute and innocent stamp set. #sorrynotsorry

The team challenge for today was to choose any technique from our tutorial section at Splitcoast, so I did the bokeh technique in the background with two different alphabet sets, just very lightly though so it didn't interfere with my stamping.

I had forgotten about that fun sentiment from Mingle All the Way.

Anyway - I'll go back into hiding now and wish you the best in your own battle against Full Moon Crazy Brain, or FMCB. The struggle is real, y'all.

Loveyameanitbye.

Why Water Is the Devil's Work

Okay - pre-post disclaimer:

If you are even slightly inclined to think or comment "we need the rain" or "I love rain" or "I sleep so great when it rains" - you need to stop reading this post right now - go fix yourself a beet salad with green bell peppers and Velveeta and read something by Henry James, because we will never come to agreement on this or anything else, and I still want us to be able to be friends. In spite of the fact that you like beets and green bell peppers and Velveeta and Henry James and rain.

Go on.

Okay - for those of you who remain - I have to tell you the revelation I had after I woke up in a dire panic at 4 AM to the sound of rain on Friday.

Well I actually didn't have the revelation at 4 AM.  All I had at 4 AM was anxiety and the sound of water hitting various objects in the back yard, a nervous cat, and my mental to do list.

I had the revelation at about 8 during my walk in the woods, after being awake for four hours unnecessarily.

I realized why water induces complete panic in me and all other normal people. (Here's the part where my parents start calling me to tell me I'm crazy. HANG ON I AM TYPING A BLOG POST.)

Let's go back to the cave days, when all our little amygdala reactions made sense and we weren't all numbed by yoga music, Angry Birds, Kardashians and the Kindle.

Let's say the cave version of me is sleeping in the cave and am suddenly awakened by water sounds. This can mean one of the following things is happening.

• The cave is flooding. We live in a cave for God's sake. It's on the ground. If it fills up with water it's Poseidon adventure, but with larger foreheads and probably lots of rodents. 
• Someone (I live with cave people, after all) is peeing in an unauthorized area. This is every woman's worst nightmare. You know I'm right. Every woman on earth is in a state of high alert, asleep or awake, for a peeing sound.
• It's raining. My favorite Saber Toothed Tiger one shoulder throw is out on the grapevine, getting wet, and ensuring that I'll smell like a long dead goat for the rest of the year's social occasions.
• Let's say I live in a barren desert cave community - the sound of water at night can only mean that the tiny amount of water that my dear husband Thag walked miles to bring us is spilling onto the sand and we're all going to die. 
• We live near the ocean and suddenly a giant tsunami is consuming our world, and because we are cave people we didn't notice earlier in the day the ocean disappearing from view and all the animals fleeing for their lives. Now we are starting to be clued in, as the water starts to cover up our cave address pole, or whatever cave people had outside their caves.

The modern manifestation of these worries for me is this crazy terror that that the roof is just going to turn into cheesecloth, or all the pipes will burst. Rain is just terrible. And it's completely not my fault. It's just my cave self-preservation genes.

This is why you should walk every day. It really helps you solve mysteries in your everyday life and relax you after you've been terrorized at night by rain. Seriously!

I also saw deer prints - running deer prints - for nearly a mile. That was a much longer trot for me than the deer - his/her stride was about 10x mine. I think the rain was chasing him :).

I do really love - rain aside - being outside. Which I can't do when it rains. Yet another reason to support the normalcy of pluviophobia.

One thing I can do when it rains is stamp, though.

Kim's challenge for Hope You Can Cling To (we are giving away more than $5000 in crafty prizes, btw - are you playing? Still tons of time!) was to have use a transportation theme - representing all the requirements a cancer patient has to go to and from treatment, and what an important role these trips play. She's so creative.

I decided to do something that's been in my head for a while, born out of something I used in my latest online class featuring the Hearth & Home Thinlits. I combined my fave galaxy background I featured here with the Sleigh Ride Edgelits, with an extended cut from the window die. Then I created the Police Box header and flyer in Photoshop, glued them to my die cut, and then coated the whole thing with gloss medium.

I tried the windows in vellum and they just didn't look right, so I cut teeny pieces of Pacific Point cardstock to make the dividers and put them on Whisper White. I randomly sponged on Night of Navy on the Police Box to make it look a bit distressed. The sentiment is from my favorite Project Life Set - Let's Get Away.

Let's Get Away - from rain. This weekend at my class - half the class couldn't make it because of flash flooding - and then halfway through class, my venue started filling with water!

It's always an adventure here, that's for sure.

Speaking of adventures - I have a new online class ready for you - holiday themed of course! You can read about that here, and catch up on any other classes you missed. 

AND - don't forget my mini-retreat in Dallas in November - we are close to capacity for this event! Reserve your seat today! The event runs from 10-3 on Friday before OnStage.

Loveyameanitunlessyouarerainbye.

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I also have a new online class for you!

This one is featuring the Hearth & Home Framelits, Happy Scenes stamp set, as well as

Pencils - The Devil's Work

I think you know I hate pencils. Not colored pencils - I love colored pencils.

But regular graphite pencils give me the heebies! I hated using them when I had to do math - I hated the way they felt on the paper, the fact that they never really erased all the way, and that they would smear when your hand touched the paper. I much preferred pens - alllllll the pens!! So I never wrote anything by choice with a pencil in school, only when forced to by some dictatorial teacher.

However, in art, graphite most definitely has a place, even if it gives me a little PTSD.

Especially with tortillons, they blend so nicely and make soft, nice shadows. So, for that reason, they are allowed to stay in my house!

This card is for Lee's Hope You Can Cling To challenge called Pinkalicious - this is a word challenge and I LOVE word challenges. We had to make a card with things that are words we could form out of the word Pinkalicious. So here's what's in my card:

spunk
pink
ink
piano (I listened to @_mrgrand_ on Periscope while I made this card.)
uncap (I had to uncap my Brusho)
panic (I couldn't find my sequins)
pluck (I had to pluck my sequins out of the container with my QuickStik tool)
plan
ulna (you can't make a card without your ulna, you know)
pin (I stuck it into my glue to clear the clog)

BOOM. Word challenge accepted!

I used Lighthearted Leaves (I can't stop using this set and dies) and Brusho in an emboss resist. I actually don't know how I got this pink - there isn't really a pink in the Brusho set, so it was kind of a happy accident. I've kept every scrap from that session and I put a scrap on the inside of this short-front card, as well as die cutting a piece for the hello with the Greetings Thinlits.The pencil I used was a Faber-Castell 2B Jumbo drawing pencil, and I used a Lowe-Cornell tortillon. The drawing pencils have super soft leads.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

I made a super quick little video on this for you. Such an easy and fun way to add a little interest.

Even if it requires a devil pencil.

Don't forget to register for our Understand Blue Mini Retreat in Dallas the day before On Stage Live. You do NOT have to be attending OnStage to attend this mini retreat - so anyone who will be in the Dallas area that day is welcome! Space is limited, and registration will close soon, so don't miss your chance!



Loveyameanitbye.

The Enabler Gets PUNKED!

Sometime early in the year, when I was remodeling my studio, I started converting all my photopolymer stamps to the envelope storage system, which has saved me a ton of space. You can read about it here. So someone told me that I could use Duralar to stick my cling stamps to inside these pockets. So, like a good little shopper, I bought tons of Duralar to get started.

But I bought the wrong kind.

I bought the opaque kind, which NOTHING sticks to. So now I had a ton of Duralar and no use for it. So for the past few weeks I've been obsessed with finding fun techniques for it.

Just to keep it real - a LOT of Duralar has gone in the trash.

But I did find two really fun things to do with it recently. One we are trying at my retreat.

The other was pretty simple - play with Adirondack alcohol inks on it.

Each color has a mind of its own and does unique things.

The side with the inks on it is somewhat sticky and textured where the inks got on top of each other. But when you flip it over and put it against white cardstock it looks pretty cool. So that's what I did.

This is for today's Challenge Chicks challenge by Kelli. It's a 3-2-1 challenge - we had to use three layers, two embellishments and one sentiment - no images. It's also for an upcoming Hope You Can Cling To Challenge that I can't reveal yet.

And speaking of unrevealed, the sentiment is also something that will be revealed on November 1, and it's something I really think will change the world.

How's THAT for a tease?

Loveyameanitbye.