studioL

Happy Valentine's Day!

(from Bev Brazelton's encaustic wax class)

Caffeine Free - Day 5

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I've been feeling rather unmotivated, definitely unfocused for a while now. (Hmmm... no blog update recently... any correlation?)  My friend, Lisa , suggested this book . It basically identifies four main types of  mood issues, and then suggests the appropriate amino acids and dietary changes to cure the problem.

According to this book, I am probably low in the catecholamines (dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline). People low in the catecholamines tend to substitute other stimulants for the lack of catecholamines. (Thankfully, I substitute coffee and not cocaine!) There are foods that help the body manufacture these catecholamines, and then there are foods that inhibit the production of the catecholamines. Soy is one of the latter.

Why is that important?

I cannot even remember how long it has been that a soy latte has been an essential part of my day. And, I mean essential. If I didn't get it early in the day, then I'd have a decaf soy latte later in the evening. I'd already had plenty of regular coffee at home. It used to be a tall latte. A year or two ago it became a grande latte. At CHA, I was jump starting those early days with a TRIPLE grande soy latte!

The impetus to go caffeine free did not just come from the book. Looking back, I realized the time that I was most energetic and productive was when my children were babies. For the 4 1/2 years or so that I was pregnant/nursing/pregnant/nursing, I was off of caffeine.  I was drinking tons of water, and I was eating religiously healthy. I think there's something to that.

For now, I'm concentrating on the caffeine. I'll work on the water and healthy eating in a bit. I think I am past the worst part of the physical withdrawal symptoms. Today was the first day that I did not need to take Motrin for the headaches. (I did have the headaches, but they were gone by the time I got back home to take the Motrin.) Tonight is the first night I wasn't ready to go to sleep before my children's bedtime. Geek Husband is somewhat surprised (and relieved) that he hasn't sustained any physical injuries during this whole process!

But the psychological part is so much harder. I like the taste of coffee. I had my little morning routine of drinking that first cup of coffee while I caught up on my favorite blogs. I felt so trendy walking out of Starbucks with my white cup with the green logo in hand. I loved knowing the lingo (triple grande soy latte, please) - it's like belonging to a secret club. Other than that four year detour, I've been drinking coffee since I was fifteen!! Ummm... that's almost thirty years by the way! (And it's the nuns' fault that I started drinking coffee at fifteen, but that's another story.)

For a few days, I was thinking that it might just be an experiment. If it didn't work, I'd just go back to my lattes (just maybe scale down a little). But I'm somewhat reassured tonight. This may just work.

I've made an attempt to keep the content of this blog art/scrapbook/crafts related. While this post isn't about art, it is about what has been a huge block in the productivity of my art lately. I promise to post art tomorrow!

CHA Sneak Peaks

Zsiage  is releasing some great new stuff at CHA  in Anaheim later this week. Here are some sneak peaks. This stuff is sooo new that even the Design Team hasn't gotten their hands on it yet!

Introducing the Scrap-O-Dex, Accordion Keepsake Book, fun new papers and a whole new line by Jen Starr!

And by the way, guess who gets to go to CHA? Thanks to Zsiage , I get to be in on the fun!

Thunk...

That's the sound of my falling off of the blogosphere.

$&*!!@cr@p)(&^$%cr@p*#&#$!!

That's where I landed.

What I fell into was the pile of junk called my craftroom/studio/pile of junk. I realized one day that I was setting up little "art stations" in various places in my home, because there were no longer any work surfaces left to create on in my studio and the floor was losing ground too. (That means that not only was my studio an artsy craftsy mess; it was starting to spread to the rest of my house like a terrible disease.)

Now, I am not unfamiliar with this phenomenon. (Unfortunately.) I just know that as much as I want to work on a scrapbook page (or whatever other project), that I've boxed myself into a logjam that is seriously impacting my ability to create. The only thing to do is to stop and clean. So, I did.

And what happened after that? Well, that's a heck of good question! I wish I knew! It seems like I posted for Halloween. I had some great pictures from Thanksgiving and ideas for Kid's Art. Thanksgiving? Ummm, where did the month of November go? Then it was Christmas. (Where did December go, too?) I wasn't having too many bright ideas at this point. And now it's January.

A new year, and well...  a new me at this point would require lots of plastic surgery and Botox. (That's supposed to be funny...)

So resolutions, good intentions and all that... it's good to be back.

;0)

It was a white Christmas

in Colorado. Hope yours was merry, blessed and all that you wished for.

The picture above is my front yard. The next picture is my back yard. See the little pink thing sticking out of the snow on my picnic table? That is a 12" ruler that isn't reaching all the way to the table! I had to pull it up an inch or two so that you could see it! Our  official total was 23".

These were pictures were taken last Thursday, but a good chunk of the snow is still here. Geek Husband had to shovel out the grill so that we could grill steak for Christmas dinner!

(More later on my disappearance from the blog world!)

Pumpkin Carving Then and Now

Five years ago:

Last night:

The really amazing thing about this picture is that he asked me to take it and then asked me to post it on my blog.

Tonight:

He chose the most complicated pattern out of the pumpkin carving book that we bought, but he stuck with it until it was done.

This is the pattern his brother chose. (I helped with the "trickier' parts.)

We've come a long way

I started scrapbooking in 1996. Here is a layout I did in about 1998 or 1999. Now, in all fairness, this is how everyone was scrapping at that time.

And, yes, that's what I was doing eight years ago this week - giving birth to my youngest. Our favorite little artist had a birthday, and he's now eight years old.

When I was younger I just assumed that at some point, I would become a mom. It wasn't as big a deal to me as it was to some of my friends who said they had always imagined themselves pregnant or caring for infants and could hardly wait for the day when it finally happened. To me, it was just something that happened in the natural sequence of life events. You graduated from high school, graduated from college, got married, had a baby, etc. And, I was more than happy to wait for it to happen.

What I did imagine, however, was that someday I would be sewing cute, sweet, lacy, frilly dresses for a daughter. I imagined all the cute hairstyles that she would have. I secretly panicked that maybe she would be a tomboy, and I wouldn't be able to all those things.

So what do I do now? I don't sew frilly little dresses, and I don't have any opportunities to display my french braiding skills. Instead I put on Monster Jam monster truck birthday parties. I make birthday cakes that resemble dirt and mud. I buy presents for my child like Bug Microscopes and replicas of monster trucks with names like "Grave Digger" and "Live Wire".

And I can't believe that I actually enjoy it all.

Addendum

Our mysterious beauty from the previous post now has a name. She is Camille Irene.

I did some searching (What did we do before Google?). It turns out that the man who is responsible for the personification of the Gibson Girl, Charles Dana Gibson, used his wife, Irene, as a model - possibly the first one. The most famous Gibson Girl model was apparently Camille Clifford. (Of course, it's a man who is responsible for the female "ideal" of the time. Things haven't changed, but that's another post for another blog!)

I think "Camille Irene" fits.

Lovely Ladies

I have finally finished two pages for Laura's Alphabetical journal. Her theme is vintage ladies and old-fashioned names. For her sign-in page, she found all these old pictures of young ladies (like from a yearbook). We are to pick an alter-ego and sign our name to her picture.

When I saw Laura's journal, I had two images in mind. Since I couldn't make up my mind which one I wanted to use, she got both! Laura's girls are probably from the '20s and '30s, but I played a little loosely with the time frame. One of my ladies is reminiscent of a Gibson girl, and the other is from the '40s.

Here is my "Forties Lady". This is my mother in the mid-forties. She was in her late teens. Isn't she beautiful? (Now, she might not be too happy to be described as "vintage" and "old-fashioned", so we won't tell her, okay?)

The other image is a favorite of mine. It came with the clip art collection in an old version of Printshop, but she shows up in many things I do, including these ATCs. She doesn't have a name yet, and since I really do need to mail the book out tomorrow (I've had it way too long already), she may just end up a mysterious beauty whose name will forever be lost to memory.

Framed Past

I did this with Christine at The Artists' Nook today. She led us through texturing and painting an inexpensive plastic frame to resemble rusted metal. Then we altered a copy of a cabinet card. It was a little out of my box, because I don't tend to work a lot with vintage images, but I had lots of fun playing! Thanks, Christine!

(The color on the card is just a little off - the reds aren't quite that vivid in reality.)

I didn't go

to Memory Trends, but some of my projects did. These are some of items that I created for Zsiage that they requested for their booth.

From their new "Flouristics" line:

From the ABC's or 123's line:

From the Got NuAnCe? line:

All of these also use the AlphaStructures chipboard letters. The last layout also uses Scrapbook Film letters.

Come on in

Beth has been waiting for so long for this. I know she was getting worried that she might never see it! The theme of her Alphabetica book was "Can you come in and play?". I can be rather literal sometimes, and this was one of those times.

Here's the first thing you see:

Then you open to this:

This involved layers of gesso, acrylics, texture with various items and ABC templates and lots of sanding. As did the back:

I could tell you that the colored background letters were purposely placed upside down so that even though they are still clearly typographical in nature, the fact that they are upside down causes them to not be immediately recognizable and thus your brain sees them as shapes and that allows Beth's name to be the focus.

I could tell you that.

But I won't insult your intelligence. ;-)