Tag Archives: creative practice

Wherein we have moved sewing operations…

Posted in Writing by

In the time honored tradition of Sewists the world over…I have taken over the dining room. I’m sure many of you can sympathize. The move was initially born out of the purchase of an oversized scanner for my photo organizing business …which meant that the task of digitizing images could not co-exist with a hobby that produces lint, lots of lint.

Add to this the pandemic necessity of making several hundred masks and my compact sewing space upstairs was no longer up to the task. It is nice to be in the main part of the house within shouting distance of the hubs who is WFH in the living room and really nice light during the day. There is also far more room to spread out.

This past season has not seen a great deal of sewing happening but there has been pattern prep and toiles constructed and looking forward to more sewing now that the weather has turned here in New England.

But first…the mending pile…

Hoping to share more soon! What are your fall crafty plans?

Some January projects…

Posted in Creative Practice, Documenting Life, Memory Keeping, Project Gal- Memorykeeping by

Well, we’ve made it 1/12th of the way through the year…doesn’t it sound like a lot when you put it that way?!  The month has been pretty busy as usual and I’ve been at work on several projects over here.

On and off for the last several years, I’ve set an intention for the year through choosing a word as kind of a touchstone of sorts.  I have never been one for resolutions, recognizing many of them never make it past mid-month but a word has been something I could get behind… My words have been:  Prosper, Brave,  Passion (twice) and Complete, and this year

Forward

A few of the years I have participated in Ali Edwards workshop called One Little Word. Ali didn’t come up with the idea of a guiding word but she has developed a year long workshop with monthly prompts to help remind you of your word and to Make It Visible. You can learn more about her take on the project here on her site. I’ve signed on the the fun this year as it’s going to be a big year around here and I’m excited to see what the next season moving FORWARD is going to look like. I am also participating in a year long workshop called Fit which is an offering from Cathy Zielske who keeps it very very real, you can read more about that here. Seriously, sometimes I feel like Cathy and I could be best buds…we have sooooo much in common right now. I am formulating a number of goals around what Fit means, and I find the community around this workshop very helpful and inspiring.

Of course there is documenting off all this involved and this year I’m combining both efforts into one 6×8 album that I am going to just dip in and out of during the month as I work on various prompts and ideas. I’ve finished up my work for January (go me!) so I thought I’d share a very crummy video overview of my book so far… definitely can put learn better videography skills on the list ha ha…just keeping it real!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyzmGrMKJgQ&feature=youtu.be

So for some reason, I can’t embed a video here but if you click on the link above, it will take you to the You Tube Channel where I posted my video… WordPress changed up some things so it’s all about learning the new editor! Thanks for stopping by and let me know what you’re working on!

A few photos into a book…

Posted in Craft, Creative Practice, Documenting Life, Family Fun, Memory Keeping by

Well…so this is how  – let’s send Dad a few photos from the girls prom –   turns into… let’s do a whole project…involving other people…just a few days before father’s day!    But it’s done done done.   Is it fancy?  Nope but will he like it?  Yes.  And that is the whole point.

I lucked out and found a Heidi Swapp storyline album on sale at JoAnn’s so I snapped it up as the base for the album.  My sister Tina sent me some photos and I included a few snaps from my sister Nora that I grabbed from a few places online… mixed them all up with my organized and tagged photos from Lightroom (not to be confused with the photos that are still waiting to be organized and tagged) and voila!  A book for Dad.  So excited to get this in the mail to him today but wanted to share a recap for my sisters and friends online.   Here is my not so fabulous completely amateur finished album video!

Home Made Goodness

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Every Day Life, Food, Layouts, Scrapbooking by

In an effort to ATTEMPT to spend my time creating more and consuming less (GoT excepted)… tonight I sat down and instead of scrolling FB endlessly…I made a scrapbook layout (!) gasp.  I know, I know.  We have actually been super busy in a good way this summer so lots going on but not a lot of sharing. In an effort to remedy that, may I present…

yep, Christmas baking layouts in August!  I had bought the cutest baking kit from Pink Reptile Designs and a template kit from Scrapping with Liz at The Lilypad (one of my fave digi-scrapping shops) and tonight was the night to use it.

Last night I spent my evening catching up with my 2016 photos in Lightroom, and I’m thrilled to say that I believe that 2016 is all done, edited, rated and tagged.  That is why I could find these photos about baking…from my “baking” keyword.  I have a lot of memory keeping to work on.  I have realized that I’ve been catching myself thinking 2 more first-days-of-school until the girls go to college, 2 more back-to-school shoppings until the girls go to college … you get the idea.   One layout to make a dent in the memory keeping list!

Once school starts and we are on a more normal schedule, maybe more posting  (?!)  best of intentions…. enjoy!

Week in the Life 2017 (and where did the first quarter of 2017 go???)

Posted in Documenting Life, Memory Keeping, Week in the Life by

I am not exactly sure where the first three months of this year got off to but they were certainly not spent with me writing on my blog !   Snow, moving Dad into a new apartment which entailed multiple trips to ROC, Snow, some cold, basketball, homework, Paris travel album project finished (!),  Hawaii travel album finished except for 2 sets of journal cards my family needs to fill out (!),  sleet, basketball,  all of my Modern HST Sampler blocks DONE!, pussyhat knitted, Women’s March attended, beer sampled, snow, bird feeders finally filled and hung, family, family, family (in the best most everyday way possible) gift quilt project started and top finished, meatballs made, shopped with teenagers, memory keeping projects worked on, business changing conference attended, new friends made, dog walked, sticks collected, moss wreath made (!)

OK, now you are caught up!

My next memory keeping project coming up is “Week in the Life” .  WITL is a memory keeping project conceived by Ali Edwards, you can read more about it on her website here.  It is an in-depth documentation of one ordinary week in our life.  I first participated in 2011, then in 2012 and 2013.   I organized my files in preparation for this year and realized that it looks like I did 2014 but never printed it out (?) I worked pretty much all digitally in 8.5×11 format for 2011-2014.  2015 I took a stab at but didn’t get far.  2016 I purchased Ali’s kit in the 6×8 format, but never really did anything with it…or so I thought !

Witl 1

LOL I decided to use my 2016 kit (I think there are still some available here) to document 2017…and when I pulled it out to get set up, look what I found… all the stuff and writing from 2016… well, all this will just get slotted in to the Project Life spread for that week because I’m only on March 2016 I think and this was from May.  Lemons=Lemonade.

This year, I am starting my documenting on Sunday, the 16th which is Easter.  It will be fun to document as we are hosting dinner and a lot of family will be here.  This will be the first year that I use physical product i/o digital so for me, setting up in advance and having a plan works much much better!  Here is my plan for this year….

Witl 4.jpg Yes, it’s super high tech..chicken scratch sketched on a piece of scrap paper!  Each day will have 2-6×8 slots for either a large photo, a good amount of writing or a cute 6×8 fill-in insert that I purchased last year in digital form.  4-4×6 slots, one of which will hold the “day” card (or maybe not, might move things around who knows?!)  2-3×8 slots, I have digital templates that I can make up and print out for these, or maybe just pretty paper or ???   7-3×4 slots, at least one of these will be a journal card, the rest depending on what’s going on, we’ll see.     I have set up my album with all the page protectors and cards in place and ready to go (with the full realization that I will most probably be moving things around…

In preparation, I also went in organized all of my digital elements.  I made a folder for WITL 2017 on my desktop and the a sub-folder for all of my digital items.   I copied all of the digital templates, artwork and files I may use into this file with a note to DELETE when done as I have the master copies in a WITL Master File.  I also made up a folder for each day to help organize the photos and what I’m going to print out.

Witl 2.jpg

I gathered up all of the kit elements, printed out the daily sheets (available on Ali’s blog), and found a pad of Studio Calico “printshop” paper that goes perfectly with the color scheme, just in case I need background paper for something I don’t want to have to go hunting.  I will most probably not use all of the items in the kit… I can see using the stamp set (need to find my “good” black ink), rubber word embellishments and the word stickers and a few of the round chipboard circles definitely.   Anything I don’t use will go into my soon to be re-arranged stash.

Witl 3.jpg

So here we are ready to go!  Baking tins too beat up to bake in make awesome project bins.  I’m really looking forward to this project this year after a few yeas off.  I was going through my past WITL spreads and the girls seemed so little! And we were in a different  house!  And the cats were still with us!  So much fun to look at all those memories now!  I hope you’ll join us next week!