Trends in my own work

I made a few cards last night just for fun [actually I needed a stash of baby girl cards for new family additions and pregnant friends]. I had a plan for what kind of cards I would make, but I did not have a plan for what tools or products I would use. As I looked back at my blog posts today, and thought about those cards, I noticed that a few trends seem to be emerging in my work.

Exhibit A: The scallop edge punch
There is something about this punch. I want to use it on every project but I feel like it really only "goes" on a few. I have decided to start making those few projects so that I can use the punch more often!


Exhibit B: Inking the edges
I never never ever do this unless I am instructed to do so in a class. I can count on one hand the number of times I have inked the edges on a project.
1) Archiver's class - whoever designs the projects for these classes loves to ink the edges (another way to sell more product, duh!)
2) Ali Edwards' Week in the Life layout from her Yesterday and Today class - I didn't want to ink the edges, but I signed up for Ali's class to try new things, so I inked the edges.
3) This card that I made last night.

This is the noteworthy example, because I actually inked the edges out of my own free will. And I didn't even feel bad when the green showed up too much on the left side. Randomness and unpredictability are inevitable consequences of inking the edges. Hence, why I have avoided it in the past. And part of the reason I am trying to embrace it going forward. Randomness and unpredictability, here I come! [Inking the edges means taking an ink pad and rubbing it against the edge of your paper. You can do a little for just a faint instance of color, as evidenced in my Week in the Life layout on the green journaling card, or a lot like I did on my card above on both of the scalloped circles - the big one in pink and the small one in green.]

And for my astute blog readers, you should not draw the conclusion that pink and green are a new trend in my work. I am working on shower invitations for my cousin whose wedding colors are pink and green, so I have all the pink and green out to get inspired. There's really not much to choose from.

P.S. See here for an invitation to participate in this year's Week in the Life project with Ali Edwards!

Health Care Reform

Okay, I'm biting the bullet and getting "political". I am excited about health care reform. Last night my husband and I dreamed up all the things we would do if we didn't have to have a full-time job in order to have health insurance.

We decided we would sell all our belongings, buy an RV, and homeschool our children using the National Parks for geology lessons and Civil War battlefields for history.

haha. kidding.

about the RV part.

okay, and the rest of it.

What would you do if you didn't have to be constrained to your job for health insurance?

Dream big.

My imaginary contribution to The Paperclipping Roundtable

One goal of the contest was to pick an ordinary (non-industry) scrapbooker. I definitely fit that bill.

So, cia, how did you get started in scrapbooking?
I used to make scrapbooks for my Barbies. Yes, you heard that right. I thought the Barbie magazine was one of the coolest things I had ever seen - all the Barbies arranged to look like they were living a real life, down to the straws in their drinks and half-eaten food. So I used to try my hand at doing something similar. I'd arrange my Barbies all life-like and take pictures of them, and then put the pictures in those old magnetic page albums. My most memorable one was when Barbie and the Rockers hit the beach.

But I think I really started when I decided to do a honeymoon scrapbook. My husband and I traveled through South America for two months on our honeymoon, and I saved everything with the intent of doing a scrapbook when we got back. It's been almost 5 years, and I am still working on that album! When I realized it was taking forever to finish this album, I thought my problem was that I was uninspired. So I started taking classes at Archiver's, and reading the magazines, and then following Ali Edwards' blog, and then I took a class with her at Big Picture Scrapbooking, and well, here I am today, still working on that honeymoon album, but also doing a lot more pages about other trips and my everyday life.

And what do you do when you are not scrapbooking? I am a graduate student in Linguistics.
Izzy says, "linguistics. What is that exactly?"
[I get asked that a lot and I like to change up my answer every now and then, so this is what I came up with for the show.]
Just like botanists study plants and geologists study rocks, linguists study language. We look at the pieces of language - sounds, prefixes, suffixes, words, sentences - as our objects of study. But unlike plants and rocks, language is a human invention. So linguistics has sociology, psychology, and some biology wrapped up in it as well, since we study how people use language as well as how language is built up.

Noell: Interesting. Now what are you thinking to do with that once you are done with graduate school?

...

Izzy: Did we lose her?

I didn't win : (

So, I didn't win the Paperclipping Roundtable contest. I am kind of bummed, to be perfectly frank and honest. I was anxiously awaiting the results, knowing I had a pretty good shot, since for a while it looked like only 11 people had entered. But they narrowed it down to 5 and then to 2 and then picked someone else.

bummer. Yes, I was secretly repeating my name over and over again in my head as they explained how they picked the winner. No, they never said it.

Guess the universe is trying to tell me I need to stop daydreaming about scrapbooking and get back to writing my dissertation. Remember that, Cynthia? Your life dream since you were a senior in high school?!? Now, if I could scrapbook my dissertation, I think I would have been done years ago.

I did have fun writing my entry and thinking about what I would say on the show if I was picked. And I was so glad that I already had a blog in place when the contest started, so it was easy to create my entry. I also liked reading what the other contestants wrote (and getting comments on my blog!) So all in all, I am looking at it as a success. And my consolation prize is to write here all the things I would have said on the show. Stay tuned...

Two birds with one stone

I really wanted to do a red and white layout based on the inspiration I got from the Russian Olympic Team's jacket that I posted about a few weeks ago AND I wanted to use one of the journaling prompts from write.click.scrapbook that I put in my Ten On Tuesday last week. Well, this layout accomplished both of those things. It chronicles Valentine's Day 2010 (our 14th Valentine's Day together) and answers the questions: How will we know you still love your husband? that you are still in love?

Ten on Tuesday

1. It is already March! Yikes! I have three weeks to get a draft of chapters 2-5 to my advisors.
2. I am so close to finishing chapter two - I just wish there were a few more hours in the day so that I could finish it that much sooner.
3. We just drove from Winter Park, Colorado to Austin in my sister's car that she gave us. Thanks, Linnea, the car drove great and Patrick is thrilled! The Colorado-Amarillo drive was pretty and snowy, the Amarillo-Austin drive not so much. West Texas is stinky! But the world's largest wind farm that we drove through was pretty cool.
4. I did a lot of thinking on the drive - now I need to spend some time writing those ideas down.
5. We skied one day while we were in Colorado - great snow, great weather, great company!
6. I liked my rented skis so much that I bought them! The manager at the rental place was willing to sell them for $100 - an excellent deal, especially since I got to try them out before I committed to buying.
7. I really liked Virtue and Moir's ice dance during the Figure Skating exhibition -- I wish more skaters did creative things like this! I still remember Oksana Baiul dancing with Victor Petrenko during the Exhibition Skate in 1994 - an all-time favorite for me.
8. Trend alert: quilting as an inspiration for scrapbook pages and vice versa. I have seen some cross-over already, for instance the line of fabrics done by Basic Grey for moda, but I expect to see a lot more. For instance, check out Studio Calico's March kit, called Quilting Bee.
9. I liked this list of journaling prompts at write.click.scrapbook. I am going to try to do two of them this month.
10. This is a given, but I am saying it anyway: I am so looking forward to being done with my dissertation!