Pranav Mistry: Sixth Sense

What have I been doing with my time? This kid is going to change the world. Truly inspiring.

Music Inspiration ... KS Rhoads

I find this song completely haunting and inspiring at the same time. It soothes my soul on the dark days and makes me want to write poetry. KS is amazing to see live, I highly recommend it if he's ever in your neighborhood.

10 out of Tenn Show

Oh my, we had so much fun at the show last night! All of the artists were truly amazing and it was great to see them all sing back up for each other and rotate through the different instruments. The playlist included Trent Dabbs, Andrew Belle, Erin McCarley, Tyler James, KS Rhoads, Andy Davis, Jeremy Lister, Katie Herzig, Butterfly Boucher and Matthew Perryman Jones, not to mention Will Sayles, who played drums for the whole set. There were no other backup musicians. These singer/songwriters literally took turns playing all the backup parts for each other. AMAZING! I can't wait until they come back through town.It was great to see Katie Herzig in person, since I've just recently discovered her through Noisetrade, but I have to say that it was Butterfly Boucher who really rocked the show. Now I want to write music too (and play bass and cut my hair really short). ;) Dang, too bad I have no talent in the music realm at all. I can hardly even carry a tune these days. For my own consoling on this note, I took it upon myself to come home with all 11 CD's they were selling at the show! Now, I should mention they gave us a killer deal so it was hard to resist in the first place. And hey! Now I have loads of great music to keep me company while I wait for them to come back to SLC. Yay me!

I Feel A Project Coming On ...

Great vintage photos for a test project. I can't wait to get these printed up to try out my next project. This is another one geared toward family Christmas presents. I'll admit right upfront that this isn't my original idea ... but then, they rarely are. I love to see what other people are doing and then take it my own direction. This one is great if you have old photos from your own family that you can scan and have reprinted.Projects, projects ... I LOVE getting my hands on a new project!

Introducing: Katie Herzig

I made a happy discovery this week as I made my usual blog-rounds. Now, you should know that I'm a bit of a music junkie, not a fanatic ... I just like to have a large variety of new music to listen to. I get bored fast and HATE listening to the radio, so it's always a treat to find a new artist that I enjoy. I try to steer clear of country and rap, but almost anything else goes.

These songs by Katie Herzig made a great new addition this week AND I got them for FREE!!! I chose the share w/ 5 people option and got to download them immediately. There are 14 songs altogether and the offer is available thru November 1st. Have a listen and see what you think.

Artist Crush: Bykali

Ooh, you've gotta love that Etsy has a 'Shop Local' feature. It's great to see what your neighbors are coming up with when you hit a dry spell. Bykali is one of my favorites. She's a long-time crush that I watch from afar. I've even come across her booth at local craft fairs, but haven't had a chance to meet her yet. I love that her pieces are industrial in design, but have this super glossy finish that gives them a bling all their own.I wonder what your neighbors have come up with.

The Full Facelift: Before & After

Here it is, folks. Just look at those bare walls. We've been in this house for just over two years now and still, not even one picture hung. In fact, my sweet girl had picture frames stashed all over the place ... half of them filled with prints and the rest with the original display pictures still in them. It was time, time to make it look like she actually LIVES in this room, this very bright green room.Where to start? First, a shopping trip to IKEA for some quick fixes. We'll go left to right in the pictures below. 1) I located the four prints I gave her for Christmas. They were in nice bright IKEA frames already and were artsy photographs she had taken herself. We dusted them off and hung them. 2) We replaced the old-fashioned standing mirror with the simple MINDE mirror for cheapie-cheap. 3) I started printing photos to frame her closet, kind of a reversed picture frame with all the photos along the outside. I chose photos from the last 12 months and mixed the sizes, 4x6, 5x5 and 5x7. I also picked up a couple packs of printed cards to mix it up a little and give it some variety. I used heavy duty glue dots to attach these all the way around the door frame. 4) This great little picture mobile was only about $7 and holds 10 images. It was a cinch to put together and I love how it moves. 5) Added the LACK shelf to hold even more pictures, a few figurines and her nerd glasses. 6) A comfy padded butterfly chair from Sears to sit and read in.We topped all this off with the fabric covered stretcher frame and some old records. This girl LOVES music almost as much as she loves reading. I married the two and put quotes from Edward and Jacob in the middle of each record. The black vinyl helped tie in the fabric and the new chair. Her brother also got her this fun paper star lamp to hang over her bed. It is even more delicious at night AND we found it at a great shop in Highland called Anna & Rose that you must go check out. It's run by a dear friend of mine and is simply fantastic.

Little Dell Photo Reel

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Quote Book

My oldest daughter just put this great book together as a birthday gift for one of her friends. She had some really great ideas and the whole thing came together so nicely that I thought I would share it here.

She found loads of great quotes that her friend would enjoy, sorted them into different categories and then formated 6" x 5.5" pages on the computer. She color coded the quotes per section. The covers of the book are chipboard cut 6 1/4" square and covered in lovely scrapbooking paper. She added details to the front cover to spice it up. (The hand-stitching is my favorite) Then she made dividers with ribbon loops sewn on to help organize the book. The whole thing is ring bound so it can open up all the way. It's gorgeous and her friend LOVED it.

One Step at a Time

Trying desperately here to get past this blasted cold and get caught up. Ironing - check! Laundry - check! Respond to Etsy Convo's - check! Three down with about 57 to go. Oh well. I can only do what I can do, right? And now I need to kick it into gear to figure out what to do for some upcoming birthdays.

That reminds me, I wanted to pass on a great idea for those hard to shop for people on your list. I put this book together for the ACC show, since all of my products look better in the dark ... hard to portray in a well-lit showroom. It was a huge hit and everyone was impressed with the quality. What I loved most was how completely easy it was to put together and how speedy their delivery got here. Take a look:I ordered this from MyPublisher via the Costco website. My membership got me a 20% discount, but it looks like their current promotion is for 45% off. Hmm, perhaps I should put together a book for my in-laws this Christmas. I wonder how long it would take to get pictures from the rest of the fam.

Just For Fun

During the summer I try to have the kids keep up their math skills by doing worksheets and logic puzzles. Sometimes they love it. Sometimes they think I'm the devil. Either way, while searching for new material this summer I bumped into krazydad. All kinds of free printable games and puzzles here for you to enjoy ... and a lot more than that. At the bottom of the page you'll find his Flickr Color Picker where you can click any shade of any hue and receive a collection of flickr photos to enjoy. You can even use the slider for a lighter or darker variance. Follow his other links at the bottom of that page to see all kinds of other goodies like this cover pop.Amazing.

SF: Post Two

We met all kinds of fabulous people at the show and several who told us we should really try to go to SCRAP while we were there. (I'm thinking scrap yard, scrap metal, not really fun for me) But noooo.

"SCRAP is a creative reuse center, store and workshop space founded in 1976 in San Francisco, California. Donations of high quality, low cost, re-usable materials such as textiles, paper, jewelry findings, wood, buttons and plastics are collected from businesses, institutions and individuals then sorted, displayed and distributed by SCRAP for artists, educational and community groups. Free materials and art activities are provided through our community outreach service. "

That was it. I had to go. We mapped it out and figured if we hit it right when it opened on Saturday, we would have about 30 minutes to zip through it and grab some goodies before we had to get back to the show. Now ... we didn't budget in time for any wrong turns, so we really only had about 10 minutes to enjoy it, but I'm so glad that we did. It was truly fantastic! It was inspiring to see all the materials that had been donated and to bump into other artists and teachers shopping for supplies. I snapped a bunch of photos just to be able to relish it more later, then bought a couple scoops of buttons before we had to run out the door. If you get a chance, take a look at their website and see all the fun things they are involved with. They even give you tips on starting your own scrapping business.

Back to School

Aah ... it's time. The endless summer is over and the kids are back in school tomorrow. I will be able to have complete thoughts. Without interruption. In sequence. I've almost forgotten what that was like. I can't wait. It's time for regrouping, planning, structuring ... oh heck, it's time to cut loose a little and figure out what comes next for me and Mariposa Avenue. Ideas. So many ideas. I will need lots of notebooks to scribble them down in and lots of 'me' time to make things happen. School rocks!

Definitely How I Feel These Days

Here is the latest addition to my music/art journal from Kara's lovely class. This whole style of art is new to me. I'm way too clean, proper, symmetrical ... you know, a little drab. It's hard for me to get excited about wrinkly, bumpy pages that are their own kind of messy beautiful. I'm working on it though. It's great that this particular project is centered around music in all its forms, endless inspiration there.

The class is over now and I have scads of pages to fill up on my own. This is my first self-developed art journal project, my take on a song title. I know, it's not earth-shattering by any stretch, but I still gave myself a little 'yay' when I finished it. Feel free to leave a comment with your ideas for future pages.

Bite Size: Quote of the Day

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Life is Great

I live for days like this. For starters, it's my oldest son's birthday. He's a big 14 yr old now .... (sheez I'm getting old fast) and I couldn't be more proud of the young man he has become. We started the day a with birthday breakfast of scones and monkey bread, per his request. The other kids all made our standard table decorations (placemat, chair sign and crown) and we sang happy birthday as he blew out the candles in his scone tower. A beautiful morning!

Then I went to search for blog/project ideas and was lucky enough to find Fantazya Fantazies' Flickr page. Wow, try saying that five times fast. I was hoping to find out more about this recycling phenom and was led to her Diary 2010 Project. Why don't I have ideas that are this brilliant? Note to self: must ingest more good vitamins and nutrients on a regular basis. She is soliciting 392 artists to each design one of the 392 pages in the calendar. Each participating artist must have an existing website where they sell their own art/crafts. We put our url in the page design and get free publicity. Free art for her. Free advertising for us. Right from the start, there will be at least 392 people who'll want to buy it publicize it because they are featured in it.Pure genius. I want to be her. Luckily, this morning there were 2 pages still available. I sent in my email request and heard back almost immediately. April 16th is mine! Mwah-ha-ha. Now I just need to whip up a killer calendar page and send it in by next week. Yikes. It looks like there is still one page left if you're lucky enough to get it before someone else does. I'll keep you posted on my progres.

Brewing ...

My daughter gave me her fortune this week knowing that I have a new project in the works. This is always a fun stage for me. I love, love, LOVE creating things and always have a new idea or two brewing in the back of my head. Honestly, a lot of them never come to fruition and that's the way it goes. It's easy to talk yourself out of things, to question your skill and creativity and end up throwing in the towel before you even get started. In the last few weeks though, there's been a completely different vibe in my head. Maybe it was the art journaling for Kara's class. Sometimes I just need to get the fire lit and then there's no stopping it. I'm getting things ready here and have won a few eBay auctions for key supplies a little prematurely. I'll keep you posted on this one. Hopefully there will be something to show really soon. I'm just waiting on some good legal advice first.
"Creativity is a drug I cannot live without." - Cecil B. DeMille

I'll Stick Around ...

I woke up to more Etsy sales this morning - I LOVE YOU EMILY!!! Over 100 new hearts and at least 10 sales with a couple custom orders in the works now too. Etsy Finds, you're a life saver. This has a been a tough year when it comes down to numbers and I sometimes wonder if it's time to bury the lanterns and move on. But days like these talk me into sticking it out. I'm inspired and re-energized and ready to put some great new items in my shop. The whole new vibe reminded me of this great video by Arckid ... so I thought I'd share the sentiment with you today. Crank this one up.After the 'abuse' and the 'neglect' over the last few months, the praise and encouragement I received yesterday are enough to talk me into staying. Thank you.

Let's Rasterbate! (It's Not What You Think)

If you haven't seen this yet ... you're in for a treat. I found this great site a while ago and forgot all about it until I was working on my art journal for Kara's class. It's called ... The Rasterbator (not nasty I promise) and it will change the way you look at pictures forever. This is a super cool free online tool where you can upload a photo from your personal collection and have it output as a raster (dot) image. You can crop, choose the paper size and how many pages you want it to go across in the preview mode.When it's done rasterizing, you get a handy PDF file to print and output yourself. Regular printer paper is great if you don't have too much black area, but they also look slick on photo paper. We made one of my youngest son when my father in law was in the hospital. It was 5 pages across and 4 pages long ... the nurses were floored; it was so cool and really cheered up his room.*These images are all from the Rasterbator Gallery. Go make your own and add it to the collection.*

Finished!!!

I just finished up this great class from a fantastic Etsy shop called The Sequined Shoe. Kara is truly ingenious! I wish I'd been that driven as a 17 year old. What in the heck was I doing with all my time?Her art journaling class centered around music inspiration gave me the opportunities to create these goodies. Admittedly, this is not my normal style of art ... but it was a lot of fun to get my hands dirty and glue stuff on to layers and layers of thick, wrinkly paper while listening to some of my favorite music. My girls are both dying to try their hands at it now too.

** Posted edit: Just realized I have one more page to do for random lyric interjection ... and I forgot to make the doily flower embellishment. Oops. Back to work.