Back to School!
Oh man, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. We’ve had a busy couple of weeks and have made some progress on our house project. Tomorrow I hope to paint my studio! WAHOOOO! Brent dug out some of my crafting stuff from the guest room and we started putting the family room back together. Hopefully on Sunday (a break from construction) I will have a few minutes to sit down and create something. I have a neat tutorial that I am working on to share with you sometime next week, too! In the meantime…… “It’s the MOST wonderful time of the year!” It’s back to school time, yay! My friends’ kids are all back in school this week, which means many of my friends will have a little more time to do fun stuff without chasing little ones all day… It also means a big change in routines for many families. We were talking about this a few weeks ago on the Sweet N Sassy Stampers Yahoo group. Here is my contribution: “My little girl ‘homeschools’… year round 🙂 She’s up by 6:30 & jets to the potty before dad leaves for work. She’s back in bed by 6:35 until I haul outta bed between 7:30 and 8:00. We have PE for about 20 mins or so playing tug of war with her rope and chase around the house until I run out of steam and eat breakfast around 8:45 or 9:00. She lays around and watches cars (Driver’s Ed) until about 12 when it’s potty break, treat, and then naptime. We have PE again after lunch when she chases the neighborhood kids around before they jump in the pool and then she’s back under a shade tree for her 2nd nap or sometimes she goes on a Nature Walk and checks out the birds and the wasps in the garden, occasionally trampling the flowers and I remind her of “Leave No Trace”. After her Nature Walk, it’s back to another nap which is followed by a repeat session of Driver’s Ed on the back of the couch as she watches for Dad to return home. As soon as Dad walks in the door, she’s all over him for an Anatomy lesson as she paws him to death because she’s so excited to see him. Anatomy is followed by a lesson in Discipline and Proper Greeting Etiquette. The rest of the day is filled with play, more naps, treats, and hanging out. She’s off to bed by 9:00-9:30 without any complaints…. Did I mention my girl is a border collie? 🙂 “ What are some of your “back to school tradtions” and what is your day like?Leave me a note and this Monday Tuesday I might just draw a name for something funfrom my stash* for you to play with while the kids are in class! *I found that I have something “Fiskalicious” in my stash that is a duplicate of something I already have… I must have forgotten that I picked it up a while back and I’ve long since tossed the receipt… I think you’ll like it!
Photo Blocks x Six (in lieu of Thoughts for Thursday this week)
It’s been a super long day (as usual). I worked today and then came home and went swimming…. not in MY pool (cuz it’s still filtering and sanitizing) but the brand spankin’ new Payson City Pool! It’s an AWESOME pool complex with a lap pool, kiddie – zero entry pool with kiddie slides and games, spill buckets, water fountains, 2 speed slides, a lazy river, bubble couch and vortex pool (whirlpool). We’ve been anxiously awaiting the completion of this pool and tonight it was open for a trial run with city employees and their families. Since Brent is on the city council, that makes him an “employee” and I got to go and brought Trish and the Mini C’s as my guests. It was so much fun and we were so exhausted after just 2.5 hours. SO much fun! SO anyway, I did promise a tutorial today for something fun and SIMPLE… so here ya go! The youngest Mini C turned FIVE a couple of weeks ago… Last year I gave Mini C #3 a set of these blocks with Sadie pics on it and Mini C #4 was all sorts of “all over them”. Since MC#3’s bday, MC#4 has been telling mom, “Gosh, I sure hope Erin gives me some blocks for my birthday”, “I like those blocks, I hope Erin makes me some blocks” LOL! Sooooooo, one day MC#4 came to spend an afternoon with me and Sadie while mom and dad attended a funeral and I quickly snapped some photos of MC#4 and Sadie playing in the yard. We had a blast! (I’m using photos of my original block set as I did not take photos of MC#4’s set before it was wrapped and taken to the party.) Here’s a couple of pics of the original set of photo blocks that stays at “Aunt Erin’s” house. (These are pretty hammered because they get played with quite a bit.) These are SUPER easy to make and you can make them even while all your crafting stuff is hidden away in your former guest room. You just have to beg your sweet husband (see photo #1) to crawl up and over everything to fetch your CM photo cutter and your Xyron 500 and hope that the Mod Podge is where it’s supposed to be in the closet. 🙂 Here we go: 1.) Locate CM Cutter, Xyron 500, and SIX of your favorite photos and pray you have some clear space on a counter or table. (Or if you’re like me, you push your keyboard aside and do it on the tiny dresser top that is a temporary home to your monitor and printer.) 2.) Don’t forget your 2″ square wooden blocks. A friend of mine bought these online in major bulk for a Super Saturday project we did last year. I don’t remember where, but I am sure you can find these at various craft stores, too. Or, if your dh is handy, you can beg him to do the tedious job of cutting down 2×4’s to 2×2 blocks. Good luck. 😛 3.) Cut each 4×6″ photo into 2×2″ squares. I found that the guillotine style paper cutters like CM’s works the best for precision cuts. 4.) Place each photo piece on the Xryon platform thingy and line up and run through the machine, several pieces at a time, be careful not to overlap the photo pieces as they go through the machine. Notice I figured that tidbit out after the fact??? 5.) Ok these instructions are taking longer to type than it took to make the dang set of photo blocks. LOL. Let’s see if I can speed this up and wrap up this post so I can go shower and wash the stinky sunscreen off me and hit the sack! So once your pics are all glued up, you simply peel n stick to each block. You will probably end up trimming a few of the photo pieces because the wooden blocks are not always perfectly 2″. No big deal, just simply pull out your craft knife and slice away on a cutting mat. 6.) Make sure that your photo actually works and that there is only ONE piece of each photo on each block. (Don’t ask me how I know this. LOL!) Sometimes it also helps to stack them by photo while gluing them onto the blocks or move your blocks to a separate pile after you glue one piece of each photo to each block. I found this out the hard way and ended up peeling off several pieces because I had two pieces from the same photo on one block. Not fun and you usually end up reprinting photos. Aren’t you glad I made the mistakes first so you don’t have to? LOL! 7.) Your final steps are to Mod Podge (a couple of coats, dry between coats) with a small foam brush over the photos and edges of the blocks to seal the photos. You may also want to paint or spray a varnish over the Mod Podge to seal it all in. I usually let my blocks dry really well if I am going to varnish them. As long as you don’t have itty bitties chewing and slobbering on the photo blocks you should be fine to just coat them with Mod Podge. Voila! You have a fun photo block puzzle for all to enjoy! (MC#4 and Sadie hanging out in the photo to the right.)
Inky Smiles Update
Hi Friends! I have been AWOL for a while now and I am sooo sorry! We’ve been super busy with the house, Brent’s city council duties, my church responsibilities, our regular day jobs (extra days for me this week), and various other projects around here and I haven’t had time nor the energy to blog or create. Yesterday I cleaned out my laundry room and started some big bags of clothing for our local Women’s Shelter, Goodwill, and such, AND I finally spent some time here in my makeshift office (aka the one of the rooms of our “store” where I store the Bind It All stuff – still working on the website) so that I could stand to be here at the computer for more than 5 minutes… So, today while one of the “Mini C’s” (see photo to left) is earning money for a new bike by de-fruiting my way overzealous “flowering” plum tree and I wait for my laundry to finish I shall blog… Over the past two weeks:1.) We’ve played around with trim options and built a TON of InkStaks in the past couple of weeks. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for your purchases! 2.) We are beginning to put the walls back together in the basement. Brent has been sanding the seams where the new sheet rock will meet the old sheet rock so that we get some nice seamless seams and he has put the sheet rock back up in the under the stairs closet. So now we can get going on tiling under the stairs and then putting all my Christmas stuff back in there. (The whole closet is devoted to Christmas!) 3.) This weekend (after the big BBQ & Fireworks party) we’re going to be cleaning the walls in the family room so that we can touch up the paint and put the carpet & baseboards back down. YAH BABY! This means that we can start putting the furniture back into the family room and I can unbury the majority of my crafting supplies! I CAN’T WAIT!!!!! 4.) I’ve painted some test colors (6710 Melange Green & 6711 Parakeet) on 2 walls of my studio…. one is too dark and one is too light, I think I am going to have to mix the two and see what I can come up with. Updated 7/6/08 5.) After much thought and research, we have decided that while the house is entirely torn up we will be replacing ALL of the floors (except the unaffected flooring in the basement). We’re doing all the work on the repairs (no contracting out) and the insurance money should stretch pretty far this way. We’ve chosen a beautiful hardwood floor for the first floor and my studio and a couple of porcelain tiles (here & here – I think we’re leaning towards the darker one) or the upstairs bathrooms and kitchen. THis is going to make for one heck of a busy month! The wood flooring is on back order until the 1st of August so that buys us some time to get the tile done before we do the wood (and also not scratch the wood while installing the tile). 6.) We finished building and planting our garden boxes on our back hill. We were set back a couple weeks with the whole flood mess. Currently I have 5 strawberriy plants, 17 tomato plants (we’ll be canning this fall), a slew o’ carrots, 4 green & 4 mixed red & yellow bell peppers, 1 “Jose Jalepeno” plant (thanks Jeff Dunham), 4 cucumber plants, 1 watermelon plant, and a small herb garden all coming along nicely. I will be giving away a lot of treats this fall when everything comes on! LOL! Next spring or this fall we will work on putting landscaping fabric and gravel between all of the garden boxes. I am even consideringplanting some grapes along the backside of the hill… mmmmmm. Next year we will finish the hillside down by the pool and add more trees to the yard. It was supposed to be this year…. but that was before the Great Flood Project. 7.) We ended up having to purchase a new pool because once we’d patched up last year’s holes and partially filled the old pool we discovered NEW holes…. not just one or two… more like 6 or 7.. UGH! SO, we hit Sam’s Club on Saturday and purchased a new above ground pool. WOOT! It’s now 3/4 full with lovely green irrigation water and we’re getting ready to hyper-clorinate (aka SHOCK) it and begin the filtering and cleaning process. Within 24 hours of shocking it, it will be crystal clear and clean and ready for swimmers. HOT DIGGITY!!! This is our weather forcast…. we’re going to be thankful for the pool. 8.) My favorite news so far …. After two years of saving and researching, praying about and thinking about it….. I finally purchased a new sewing machine and retired my clunky old Singer!!!! The store I purchased from had an AMAZING salesman who spent 45 minutes with me going over the machine and showing me what it can do and was not at all pushy, unlike a different store that I visited. Anyway… Nuttall’s BEAT the price of the other store by $150 AND gave me a trade in on my old machine, so when all was said and done, I was about $300 UNDER what I had saved for the machine. YAYHOOOOO!!!!!!! I start a sewing class TONIGHT! (In fact, it’s every Tues in July from 6-9 pm.) I already know how to sew and have made oodles of home decor and clothing projects, but this will be great to have a “real class” and get to know my new machine. I am stoked to get started on the curtains for my studio! 9.) Saturday night we had a fire on Molly’s Nipple (mountain behind our home) and I stayed up taking some photos with my
Digital Organization & Enabler Alert
So while we are on the topic of organization, I thought I might share how I organize my digital stash (digital scrapbooking supplies AND digital photos AND digital layouts, etc). Last year several girls in my Photoshop class recommended the program ACDSee to me for helping me organize my digital stash. At first I was a bit overwhelmed, but then I found some cool online sources for help and now I love using ACDSee to organize my loot. Basically you can tag each of your items with whatever attributes you would like to use for your version of sorting/organization. Once you’re all tagged, you can select the attributes that you want from a list you create and ACDSee will pull up what you’re looking for. You can tag by designer, by kit name, by color, by texture, by pattern, by theme, whatever helps YOU keep track of what you’ve got. You can put as few or as many tags on an item that you want. Then, when you’re ready to search, you can also select as many tags (attributes) as you want and start pulling up and viewing items. IT’s AWESOME!!! I tag everything first and then sort out into their new “storage categories”. Here’s a super quick & simplified breakdown of how I organize my digi scrapbooking supplies: When I first download new kits and items, they (the zipped folders) go to a folder on my desk top called “Zipped Digi Scrap”. I save the zipped files in here until I get a chance to unzip and sort them into their appropriate files. ** On the left side of the screen shots you see a list of files. These are the actual folders on my computer where the files are physically stored. This is where I would drag and drop to physically sort and organize the files. ** On the right side of the screen shots are the lists of categories of tags/labels. This is where you drag and drop for tagging purposes only. When I unzip the files, I save them in an “New Digi Scrap to Sort” folder. I know this might seem like overkill, but it works for me and I don’t always have gobs of time to unzip and tag and finish sorting at the same time. Sometimes I “buy and fly”… Anyway… When sorting them and tagging them, I open up ACDSee and begin the sort process. (Something I learned the hard way: If you don’t sort & tag within the ACDSee program, your tagging system will not work. Always make changes IN the ACDSee program.) I first label the whole folder by Designer and then the Kit name and then go through each element of the kit and start tagging. Once you have set up your tags/labels, it’s a relatively quick process. Here’s an example of where I have downloaded a Jessica Sprague kit and began sorting. The first thing I did was to create a folder under Designers>Jessica Sprague for the kit “Home Away From Home”. Then I highlight everything in the kit and drag it over to the Home Away From Home tag under Jessica Sprague. This tagged EVERYTHING in that kit as Jessica Sprague – Home Away from Home Kit. Now, after I have sorted things (not tagged, actual sorting) into their appropriate files I can go back into ACDSee and select the Jessica Sprague – Home Away from Home tag and it will pull up everything in that kit in the view window, and then I can drag and drop what I want to use into Photoshop. After the main kit tagging, I go back and open up each and every item in the kit, papers, embellishments, word art, etc and tag them appropriately. In this example I have tagged a striped paper from the Home Away from Home Kit. When I select the paper file, I drag it to the “Stripes” tag under Patterned Paper, under Papers. The cool thing is that it applies all the tags “Papers, Patterned Papers, Stripes” to the file all at once, with one drag. YAY! I do this for all the elements in the kit and then go and sort the items into my actual folders categories which reflect the same names as my tagging categories. This part is super fast because I can pull up all items tagged Paper, Staples, Brads, whatever and just drag and drop into their new folder home. This is super simplified, but I hope it helps someone. You can get some great tutorials and more detailed help from a site called Digi Scrap Info. They have some amazing ACDSee tutorials. 🙂 You can also read more info on it from Jessica Sprague by clicking here to go to the article on her blog. Happy Organizing! We have a super busy week this week! A ton of InkStaks to build and ship out, a big church ladies event (Enrichment) in my backyard on Wed night (Dutch Oven cooking… mmm) and I have to start sorting things in the house so that we can get ready to start working on replacing flooring. I found some awesome hardwood flooring for an AMAZING price online! It should be here in about 10 days! WOO HOO! So now that I have told you all about this,here’s some FABULOUS news!! ENABLER ALERT – BIG SALE BIG SALE BIG SALE!!! Receive 40% off ACDSee 10 Photo Manager! Take advantage of the Summer Fun Sale! Offer Expires 08/26/08 6/24/08 UPDATE: I’ve gotten several emails on what my “tag structure” looks like. The easiest way other than typing it all out is to give you the screen shots. Thank goodness for that function! I’ve also been asked what the difference between the PSE Organizer and ACDSee is. I can’t really tell you other than I played with PSE Organizer for a couple of days and did not like it. I went back to using my Windows file system to sort and organize… and then
Multi Fold {Flip, Flap, Fold} Card Tutorial
As promised, here’s the tutorial for the Multi Fold Card I posted with the Sketch Challenge…. Adore Stacked Flower Card(aka Flip, Flap, Fold Card)by Erin Grotegut 2008web: www.inkysmiles.blogspot.com {Click on any photo to view larger} Materials Needed:• 2 pieces of coordinating patterned paper (I used My Mind’s Eye- Adore)• Coordinating solid cardstock (1 dark and a couple of lights)• Nesting circle dies (I used Quickutz) and a die cut machine (I used Cuttlebug)• Glitter, glitter glue or other sparkly embellishments• 1 Photo clip with brad, 4 regular brads, 1 Jumbo Brad, 11” grosgrain ribbon• Adhesive tape, craft glue• Crop O DileInstructions:1. Cut your CS #1 4.25 x 8”2. Score at 2.75” from the LEFT. 3. Cut CS #2 8.5 x 3”4. Score at 4.25” (middle) 5. Adhere CS #2 to CS #1 as shown.6. Flip the whole thing over and lay face down. 7. Cut patterned paper #1 to 3 x 4.25”8. Cut patterned paper #2 to 2.75 x 4.25”9. Adhere to card as shown to the left. 10. Flip back over and fold as shown to right. 11. Cut solid dark CS to 3 3/16 x2 7/8”12. Cut solid light CS to 2 3/16×2 15/16”13. Mount light CS on dark CS as shown to left. 14. Create a small sentiment as shown: 15. Adhere parts as shown below. Adhere the ribbon only to the front of the card. The ribbon will wrap around the back of the card and will tie at the end. 16. Layer your nesting dies upside down on red cardstock for flower.(You can save time by arranging them as shown and running them through your diecut machine at the same time. Run through your machine and then pop out of the dies.) 17. Lightly sand the scalloped edges of the circles. 18. Use cropodile to attach large brad to smallest flower.19. Stack up and arrange flowers. Adhere with foam adhesive for dimension. 20. Glam it up with glitter, etc, put a sentiment on the inside, and, “VOILA!” , you’re finished. I used Martha Stewart glitter glue on the brad and then sprinkled Sugar Coating glitter by Doodlebug Designs on the glue. I used Stickles to doodle around the flower petals. Be sure to let dry thoroughly.
Sketch Challenge {009} plus artwork!
Here’s Sketch Challenge {009} for you! Use some patterned paper, a horizontal element or two, TWO stamps only (sentiment and something else) and some dimensional pop dots or something to give dimension to your art, oh and don’t forget… add something sparkly! Feel free to post a link to your art here on the blog! We’d all love to see what you come up with! IMPORTANT TIP for Posting URL’s: Blogger tends to cut off long URL’s. Here’s a nice way to make a comment friendly URL to paste into your comment – It’s great for using in emails and such, too. 1.) Go to wherever you’ve posted your project and copy the URL (http:…..)2.) Open up a browser and go to http://www.tinyurl.com and paste the URL to your art in their converter. 3.) TinyURL will spit out a nice short n tidy URL that you can paste into your comment. 4.) If you want to view the projects… copy and paste the tiny url from the comment into a new browser just like you would any url…. voila! you have art! Here’s my take on the sketch! It’s a multi fold card…. I’ll upload the tutorial sometime in the next few days or so. 🙂
EWE… a Pop Up Tutorial
That’s Ewe as in Ewe, not “ewwwww”… LOL! 😛 Here’s my most recent contribution as guest designer for Sweet n Sassy Stamps…. This is a fun pop up card that I made using Sweet n’ Sassy’s “Adoption Day” & “Funny Farm” stamp sets. I love these little sheep! If I had some “puffy stuff” to paint on them, they’d be even more darling! Every family has an “oddball” in their family or has welcomed a new person such as an “in law” to their family, or just has someone they appreciate in their family. I thought I’d try being punny with some foam Thickers from American Crafts and the darling sheep from SnS. Materials list:Adoption Day *& Funny Farm Stamps –Sweet ‘n Sassy StampsPatterned paper & Foam Thickers- American CraftsWhite & Chocolate brown CS, Ink, Pewter Photo Hanger, & Twill Ribbon – CTMHWatercolor pencils – SU & CTMHBlender Pen – CTMHStickles – RangerCircle Nesting Dies – QuickutzATG Gun & Martha Stewart Glitter Glue (for ribbon) I’ve also never done a pop out card before and thought I would try my hand at that, too. After several sheets of cardstock “oops’ ” I finally got it right. LOL! (Hint: If you’re new to pop out cards, practice cutting out the pop up part on scrap paper until you get it how you want it.) Pictured here is template for cutting the pop out part of the card & a side view. For my card, I popped out patterned cardstock that I cut 1/4″ smaller than the white cardstock base. (Click on the photos for a larger view.)
BONUS – A “Faux Chipboard” RAK!!!
Well, it’s 8:30 pm and I still feel like crud…. It’s been a while since I’ve done a RAK here… so let’s spice things up a bit. I have an extra little {duplicate} book that I made while making the tutorial. I will leave it without photos and send it to a lucky winner! Leave me a comment on this post with a funny {clean, G-rated} joke and I will draw a random name {on Friday} to win the prize!
“Faux Chipboard” Mini Accordian Album {With Tutorial} Warning Dial Up Users… Gobs of Photos!
Hey friends! I woke up sick as a dog this morning and just feel like lying around sleeping all day, but I wanted to share this fun project with you. I survived my birthday on Sunday… woo hooo .. 34 years young! The cute pink mat you see under the project was one of my bday presents from my sweetheart! (I’ll share the other later in the week when I get the pics off my camera.) I am a guest designer over at Sweet n Sassy Stamps this month and this is “Faux Chipboard” Mini Accordian album is one of my projects! It was super fun to do and super, super easy! This Sweet n’ Sassy Adoption set does not limit itself to just adoption! It’s perfect to use for FAMILY projects as well. This project is a mini “faux chipboard” album that I made to show off my sister’s twins, Sidney & Isaac. My sister had a difficult time achieving and keeping a pregnancy, so when these two came along, it was a dream come true times two! If you’re hankering for a chipboard feel album but don’t have any chipboard on hand, here’s an easy way to get the feel and weight of chipboard with regular cardstock! For this project you will need: (I tried to make this simple… use what you have and order the stamps!) *4 strips of 4×8 cardstock *Misc coordinating patterned paper or cardstock (I used My Mind’s Eye “Adore”) *Miscellaneous brads, photohangers, & embellishments (I used CTMH metals, *Doodlebug Designs Glitter) *12″ of coordinating ribbon *Bazzill Basics Paper Flower *Bonefolder, Paper Piercer, Craft Knife, Trimmer, Adhesive*Two or more photos in B&W or Sepia For the glittery center of the flower, I used a plain old button and covered it with Liquid Glass (CTMH) and then generously sprinkled Doodlebug Glitter all over the button and set it out to dry so that it would be ready to stick on when I was finished with the album. You may want to do the glitter part outside away from your “nice space” because you may end up COVERED in glitter 🙂 I left a blank piece of patterned cardstock on the back of the book for a little private journaling. I’ve printed the instructions on the photos for easy following. If you have any questions, please email me at inkysmiles@gmail.com and I will be glad to help you with this project. Now, read the tutorial and then get off the computer and start CREATING 🙂
Pounced Stenciled Pearls Tutorial – Last Leaf Card
UPDATED: February 17th, 2008 We interrupt this post for an important message: I’m gonna be PUBLISHED…. well.. at least this TECHNIQUE will be! I submitted the idea to Pat Huntoon, owner and publisher of the Technique Junkies Newsletter, and she wants to use it. The catch is, I had to take this tutorial down permanently. Soooooo, if you want the instructions for this tutorial, head on over to TechniqueJunkies.com and pick up a subscription to this FABULOUS newsletter! I guarantee you will love it. There’s something in it for everyone, no matter what your stamping style is!Inky Smiles! Erin