Perpetual Playtime

I am participating in two facebook journal groups for 2014 - The Documented Life Project ( https://www.facebook.com/ groups/ thedocumentedlifeproject/ ) and Journal52 ( https://www.facebook.com/ groups/738984112797994/ ). I am combining both in one journal. I started with The Documented Life Project. The admins and many of the participants are using a moleskin weekly planner for this. I ordered one from Amazon but cancelled the order before it shipped due to concerns about the paper being thin and ink bleeding. I kicked around several ideas before just throwing a "Hail Mary" pass and asking the hubs to pick me up a cheap week-at-a-glance at Walmart. I figured the end result would look nothing like the purchased product so as long as there were weekly pages I would be okay.  This is the planner he picked up. Granted it would not have been my first choice, but I was okay with it since I planned to make it over anyway. This is the inside fly pages: Because the boo

. . . I am a blogger. And I'm as qualified to be a blogger as you are. Martha Stewart seems to have gotten blogging and corporate web-presence confused. In an interview on Bloomburg Martha states that she has a minor gripe about bloggers because "who are these bloggers? They're not trained editors of Vogue Magazine. I mean, there are bloggers writing recipes that aren't tested, that aren't necessarily very good or are copies of everything that really good editors have created or done. So bloggers create a kind of . . . umm,  umm, popularity. But they are not the experts. And we have to understand that." Well, that just kinda irritated me. Because, truly, Martha herself is not an expert either! She has a staff that writes her blog posts. She has a staff that markets her products.  And I expect she has a legal staff who negotiates using the MS name on products that have been developed by other people.  This is just my opinion, but, honestly, the Martha of

I posted the picture above on Instagram and Stacy, an online friend from B lissfully ArtJournaling (one of my Yahoo groups) was interested in some close up images so I thought I would post it here so she (and anyone else interested) could see them. I will state upfront – this is not our original idea. Nope, like many crafters we got our inspiration from another crafter. In this case the inspiration came from Gillian’s project on Snazzy’s DT:  Design Team Project #2 ... A Christmas Cottage . As soon as I saw this my first thought was “I want one!” And my second thought was that this would be a fun project for me and my daughter to work on together.  So off I went in search of house shaped shadow boxes.  I have no idea about the house shadowbox Gillian used, but I found one I liked that are made by Kaisercraft.  I sent my daughter an email with links to the inspiration house on Snazzy's blog and to the Kaisercraft shadowboxes I thought we could use. And, as

I follow Krista Smith and her Saturated Canary Blog not only because I love her images, but also because I love her heart, the way she sees life and the way she feels about family. Krista recently blogged "If You Looked..." , which I really enjoyed reading. Krista got her inspiration from a blog she follows, The Shine Project (where The Shine Scholarship Project to help at risk kids get to college started). I found it interesting reading both "If You Looked" (well, actually all four since Ashley, who writes The Shine Project blog, actually has written three "If You Looked" blog posts - I'll link all four below). So, I decided to throw one of my own out here. I hope you enjoy mine and maybe you can link your own in the comments and I can enjoy some more "If You Looked . . . " posts. Anyway, here goes: If you looked into my home, you would find a house that is obviously well lived in. We keep most mess contained to my den and the

True story. But yeah, the big problem with typical coloring books is they are made from paper that is generally best colored on with crayons. Not my medium of choice. :( Ah, but no need for the sad face! Nope, no need at all! I am making my own coloring book! And I am making it with digi-stamps printed on my favorite paper for coloring with, my preferred medium, Copic Markers ( X-Press It Paper ). This image is going to be part of my coloring book cover. Her name is Ani. She is currently available in Krista's shop: Ani , but if you like her and want to own your own copy than I recommend going on over there to buy her because shop stock is dynamic and she may not be there later. Ani, colored with Copic markers I haven't decided on the complete cover yet, but I went ahead and colored my girl so I could enter her in the color challenge ( Challenge #36 ) over on Krista Smith's challenge blog:  Saturated Canary Challenge Blog . I had her printed and had stared at h

I made another journal . . .  This one started (as so many projects do) with a YouTube sitting session. I sometimes spend so much time travelling from one video to the next that in the end I have no idea where I started. That's the case here - I watched a video, linked from that one to another "suggested" video, on to another (rinse & repeat) and then saw one where someone (and I hate that I cannot find the video that provided my first inspiration) made a journal with envelopes. A couple of days later I went on a failed search to watch that video again and ended up watching several envelope journal videos, but never happened upon that specific video again. But I wasn't deterred since I had the general concept. However, on this subsequent video journey I did come across a video by Kathy Orta that showed her Hidden Hinge process . So I went with that and jumped right in. There are actually two different Kathy Orta videos that show the Hidden Hinge, but since