I'm Not Drinking Toilet Water

I'm not.

I don't care how bad things get. And as you know, I'm all for global warming because I'm always freezing, so if you ask me to drink toilet water to keep the planet cold, you're barking up the wrong plunger.

"Oh," you're thinking, "Kydia's crazy. No one would wash their hands with toilet water, or God forbid, drink it! She's been into the catnip again."

If only that were true. People are selling sinks that go on the back of your toilet. They suck toilet water (insert major SHUNNING here if you're one of those people that thinks it's clean just because it's in the tank - IT'S TOUCHING THE PART THAT IS THE BUSINESS END YOU NUTBALLS! HOW DO YOU THINK IT FLUSHES WITHOUT TOUCHING THAT PART??) out of the tank and make it come out a faucet for you to use like regular water! What kind of DIY channel in hell did THIS idea come from??

I'll wait a minute while you barf in your trashcan.

Look at the SOAP holder!! What the (#*$& is the point of THAT??

Gack.

The world is clearly coming to a swift and hideous end if this was one of the best innovations of 2008.

Anyway, after taking a Silkwood shower with rubbing alcohol after I read that, I made this card.

The background is watercolor paper, which I colored with non-sewage water and a Cool Caribbean re-inker. Then I stamped the Bird on a Branch branch in black and added little pink buds with a pink souffle pen. I stamped the greeting from It's Your Birthday in black and mounted it on Pirouette Pink and then Cool Caribbean.

Happy Caturday!!!

I celebrated it with a three hour nap with the beasts. What did you do?



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A Caturday to Remember…

Wanna hear about my experiment yesterday? I call it the One Hour Experiment. I had a million things to do yesterday, and I'm such a procrastinator. I just wanted to cross some things off my insanely large list.

My trip to Starbucks was the best trip to Starbucks ever. The trip back was even better. One should never conduct an experiment without a fabulous excursion to the coffeeshop they love so much, IMHO.

So after that, here's what I did. I wrote down everything I had to do and I gave each task exactly one hour of my full attention - I actually set a timer at the beginning of every hour to make sure I didn't cheat. On a sunny, purrfect Caturday, with two little furry temptations draped across my desk,I launched the experiment. I spent an hour on my fundraiser, finishing my 20 documents I had to create in Illustrator, uploaded them to Kinkos for printing, with 18 minutes to spare. No glances at Google Reader or email. Next - for a fun break, Google Reader. I had more than 1000 unread items again. Finished that with four minutes to spare. I used all the spare minutes to do laundry and whatever else I wanted. Hour three - cleaning. No problem - 25 minutes to spare, which I filled with daydreaming, Twitter, email, videos. Hour four - organized the contents of my new bookcase in my stamp room. Hour five - lunch - made chicken salad with onions, walnuts and Mt. Olive banana peppers. Hour six - put away everything from the $7 stamp sale and stamp camp. Hour seven - returned emails and finished some last touches on the charity stamps for A Place to Bark (you will love them). Hour eight - STAMPED! That was all I felt like doing in my experiment, so I took kitteh pictures and relaxed till my massage. Not so much a massage - a torture session to get my knots out. My skin hurts today. But I can move.

I never would have gotten all that done if I'd done it freeform. I would have spent much more than an hour on Google Reader, chased butterflies, etc. An hour isn't that long if you have something you're putting off or don't like to do, and it's plenty of time for something fun. You should try it if you're behind. The only way it works is if you do not allow distractions. You just do the one thing for the hour, and if you finish early, do whatever you want with the leftovers.

Now speaking of distractions, it's GORGEOUS outside here. Just perfect days the last few days. I love spring. I love quotes about spring. I can't wait for a walk today after I get a few more things out of the way. So yesterday in my stamping hour I stamped a little spring card, with a greeting I printed first onto my white cardstock. I color matched the red to my moonlight pen I used for my little redwings. Actually, I dont' know if these are redwings, I just know they have red wings. To me, that makes them redwings. They were supposed to be robins, but I accidentally colored their wings. :) Anyway, I stamped the tree from Branch Out in black and then the little birdies in Sahara Sand. The Gelly Roll Moonlight pens are nice and opaque for my little splash of red. I made little leaf buds (click for larger view) with my green Gelly Roll metallic. Since I organized my pens I'm on a bit of a pen kick. I mean look at this - don't you want to use every pen in here???

Anyway, after that I outlined each birdie with my super skinny Micron pen.

The DSP is from Basic Grey, and the grey strip is SU! Basic Grey.

Here's what the kittehs did to help. First, Maddie made me get everything out of the way. "Here - move all that stuff."Thanks - much better. Now I can look out the windowz.

When she's in the sun you can see that she has mahogany striped fur on her body and her head is all black. She's totally multicultural. Why does she haz so many markerz?

You know what would make dis nap better?

A fuzzy friend.

My fuzzy friend can clean my neck.

And tell me stories and talk about lots of things till I sleep.

Night night kitteh.CU on Sundeh. :)

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Play (A Splotchy Tutorial)

There was an article in our local paper about a book called "Play."

I'm pretty sure you know why I really felt like I needed to read it!!! The author has made play his career (why didn't I think of that??) and is actually the founder of a heavenly organization called The National Institute for Play. I know it sounds like I made that up on Caturday all high on cupcakes or something, but I swear it's true.

He studies the importance of play in humans and other animals and has made some amazing statements in just the few pages I've read so far. Here's one.

"When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality. Is it any wonder that often the times we feel most alive, those that make up our best memories, are moments of play? That is something that struck me as I was reading obituaries of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, stories I began collecting because they were such poignant and gripping portraits. Soon I realized that what people most remembered about those who died were play moments or play activities. The March 31, 2002, edition of the New York Times, to take one example, has obituaries with these headlines: "a Spitball-Shooting Executive," "A Frank Zappa Fan," "The Lawn King: A Practical Joker with a Heart," "A Lover of Laughter." What dominated the profiles beneath the headlines were remembrances of play states with loved ones, which were like joyful threads running through their lives, weaving memories and binding them together emotionally."

I decided to think about that on my walk today and see how I could possibly squeeze more play in. I have been doing too much stuff lately and I need more unstructured play time. So while I was seriously pondering play on my very serious walk, I saw two things that made me smile. The first was this hilarious group portrait someone did in wet concrete on the sidewalk in a new subdivision. I love this!!!!!!!! Their play became mine today! Then, when I turned onto my street, there was a moving truck, with some movers putting things in – like a group of little kids bikes. When the second bike went up into the truck, one of the movers honked its horn – like a little Groucho Marx honk. It was hilarious, and group of six hardworking movers busted out laughing. Just a little play.

Just give it a little thought. I made a card about it to help you ponder. It's the UpsyDaisy set and the Contempo Alphabet, as well as the fabby new Urban Oasis DSP, Basic Grey and Summer Sun.

First, I inked up the stamp in Summer Sun and stamped off twice before stamping it. Then I inked it up, stamped it off once, moved a bit to the left, and stamped it again. Then I stamped it full strength, again moving a bit to the left.

Then I added shadows with my Micron .01 black pen. You have GOT to get one of these. I have them in several sizes - .03, .05 etc. but the .01 is my favorite because I like teeny precise lines. To give you an idea of how big the line is - it's about HALF the width of the fine tip of a Stampin' Up! marker. That is a fine line my friend. And makes all the difference on an image like this, where a heavier line would really interfere with the color. Click the link in the first sentence if you want to read about the pens and their archival properties if you are a scrapbooker.

Splotchy felt like he needed to do a little tutorial on play, so here is is, playing with the new mouse he got from his friend Cooper Harris, who is one of my many cat readers. The mouse makes real life mouse squeaks and Splotch went crazy when I opened the package.

You have to click the picture to see it move :)

You could learn a little something about play from the beasties. Have a great Friday. Hope you get to play. :)

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My Heart

But first, my back. I spent today buying, lifting, taking home, dragging in, building, taking apart, building again, things to help me organize the stamp room a little better. Kneeling on my slate all day. Ouch. Then, one cheap piece with a drawer doesn't even work! GRR. But I got a lot of stuff organized, and when a bookcase arrives (check out Staples.com - I got a 48" tall bookcase for 30 bucks! What the heck?) Tuesday I'll be really organized and even have a little lounging spot for the kittehs. I don't think my desk has ever looked like this. I threw out the big vertical organizer thingy and now I just have some gifts I treasure, my spinny thing, my lamps and space! Love it!So anyway, there's this Blue October Song - it's very sad - about a guy who tells an old girlfriend who is about to get married to someone else.. "I want to give you something I've been wanting to give to you for years - my heart." It was stuck in my head the whole time I was making this card, which, believe it or not, started out as a card about a fish. So there you have it.

Here's the song if you wanna have a listen while you peruse the art. BTW - if you're reading this through an email or reader subscription, you may have to click over to the blog to see the link to the song.


Maybe this is what his heart looks like. Or maybe that is mine, since it's a nice cobalty blue and yellow. Maybe his is a little different.
Here's how you make a Blue October heart. Start with a Sticklers gold outline sticker. You've probably looked at these in the store and thought - I'm never sticking a gold sticker on ANYTHING. Ahhh, but maybe that's cuz you haven't seen them all decorated like cloisonne at the Sakura booth at CHA. But I digress. Stick your sticker on cardstock.
Then, use a combo of Sakura glaze and souffle pens to fill in the open areas. It really starts to look like cloisonne. The rest of the card is simple. The card base is SU! textured Basic Grey. Then YoYo Yellow, then Urban Oasis DSP, then the new printed window sheets from the upcoming Occasions Mini. Here's a peek at them. I'll give you a sec to catch your breath!! :) Of course the print on them is white, not black.
You always need to use a little trick to hide your adhesive when you're working with window sheets. Since I knew I was going to add my heart, I stuck a mini glue dot under where the heart would go and attached the window sheet there. Then I attached the heart with dimensionals. I added some of the fuzzy new ribbon originals and a white rubon (now retired).
I bet if he gave her a shiny blue & yellow heart she'd have run away with him. :)

Have a great Monday.

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The Stimulus Package Continued!

Yes, that's right. I am now in control of the economy. And there are going to be some changes.

Among them:

1) We are getting rid of pennies. They are stupid.
2) We will be able to have a single pay card instead of 8 million credit cards. When we get gift cards, the balance just goes onto our little pay card dealy bopper and we can spend it wherever the HAIL we want.
3) No more taxes. Every government agency will have to do fundraising to get their stuff done. We all "fundraise" for ourselves every day when we go to work. Wow - work. What a concept. Get off your butts, DC - I'm not paying for you anymore. You wanna sell cookies? Fine. They better be good. And if you do an infomercial with that Sham Wow freak, I'm warning you...

A three point plan oughta get it done. Less is more.

Well, unless you're talking about FUN PENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In that case, more is definitely more!

Remember I told you about the Sakura Glaze Pens at CHA? These people make an insanely fun variety of pens, many of which I'm sure you're familiar with.

I'm addicted to pens. When I post what I got at Costco the other day you're probably all going to do a PENtervention. I will hide and struggle and be wily and eventually get away to play with my pens, JSYK.

Anyway, I got to play with their BLUE shades pens tonight, and even though it's way past my bedtime I'm gonna post it!! Well, and I'm GONNA STIMULATE YOUR PERSONAL STAMPING ECONOMY WITH A GIVEAWAY!!

Sorry - I got excited.

Here's what I did.

First, I wanted to send a card to Martha's chow breeder. I won't link to the story because it's too sad, but some of you may know. She needs a card, anyway. So I made this one.

I don't even have a dog, and I LOVED this dog set (Stampin! Up! - Man's Best Friend) the second I saw it. It's just so retro and fun.

I stamped the little dog in Baja Breeze, stamped off once. I just wanted a faint outline to work with. That line on the dog is a little fuzz from my Stampin' Scrub. Doesn't matter with the pens!
Next, I filled in the dog with the metallic Gelly Roll pen. After that dried, I added little spots with the glitter one from the set. Finally, I outlined the dog with the Micron pen (blue).

I made the nose and eyes shiny and raised with a glaze pen.
How fun is that? Totally makes the stamp look different. Don't be skrd to do something to the stamped images, ladies & gents!

Then I added a strip of my beloved new Basic Grey paper from the Marrakech Collection and some Pacific Point Blue Ribbon. The greeting is from Trendy Trees.

So you ready for your own personal Not So Troubled Stamping Asset Relief Program?

Well here it is. You will win a set of the BLUE shades Sakura pens - one metallic, one glitter, one gorgeous medium blue if you answer one question....
Answer any of the following - one answer per person - and I'll pick three of you to send these lovely pens too!

1) What is the name of my favorite restaurant in Salt Lake (if you have been there with me, you are ineligible!!)
2) What is my sign? (You know, like - "hey baby, what's your sign?")
3) What is your favorite craft product ever? This can be a family of products (like colored pencils, watercolors) or it can be a specific product - Glaze Pens, Gesso, the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig. BUT - you must state why it's your fave.

I will pick one winner in each category! The deadline is Sunday, at high noon Central time!

Can't wait to see what you say! Really can't wait to send you your Stimulus Package!!!

:) TGIF

Tomorrow is CATURDAY!!




Yes, Caturday. I love Caturdays.

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