Preservation Arts

Forgotten Friday: Chinese Food, Embossing Charms, and Fun with Family

I took my two girls and my husband out for Chinese yesterday and it was a nice, calm, fun lunch hour. Our little local Chinese restaurant is actually pretty good and Hannah was able to run around and practice her walking skills.

It reminded me of another Chinese lunch hour about four years ago, when my son was about the same age that Hannah is now. He was such a little bundle of energy, a lot like his sister.

This page was a study in creating spots of texture. I used stencils embossed and colored with chalk. I embossed metal with texture sheets and Chinese coins, then painted over it to mute the effect. The page was created in June, 2004.

Forgotten Friday: My Very First Spellbinders Projects

In preparation for the CHA Spellbinders Blog Frenzy, Margie asked me what the first project I ever created with the Wizard was. That took me on a fun little stroll down memory lane and through my digital files. Here’s the scoop on how it began…

I started papercrafting when my son Isaac was born over six years ago. At the time we lived in Cleveland and many of my friends were scrapbookers. I attended church with Becky Higgins, and while we were not close friends, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how much she really inspired my taking up the hobby. It was her baby article in the May 2003 issue of Creating Keepsakes that sealed the deal for me. I saw the issue while in the pediatrician’s office and would not have picked it up to read if I hadn’t recognized her on the cover from church. After reading the article, I really wanted a scrapbook like hers for my baby.

Becky’s fabulously clean style wasn’t quite what came out of me from the start. I began to find myself scouring magazines and websites to learn new and innovative techniques. I especially gravitated toward stamping and the newly popular “grunge” look. Scrapbooking quickly became a creative outlet for me that I hadn’t experienced before. I’m still fully dedicated to preserving memories, but I wholly embrace the art of it all. (Hence the name Preservation Arts!)

In my thorough cover-to-cover examination of the February or March 2004 (I think!) issue of Creating Keepsakes, I ran across a small half-page ad about a “Universal Die-Cutting & Embossing System” called the Wizard. I was intrigued by the idea and did not yet have a die-cutter. Hand cut titles were very popular at the time and I was interested in ways to cut letters that didn’t involve an x-acto knife.

I emailed Stacey to find out more information and found out that her little office was just a few miles down the freeway from where we lived. It was so fun and exciting to see Stacey demonstrate her invention to me. I was immediately enamoured with her and her machine. As soon as the machines and dies were ready (handmade by her husband Jeff), I purchased one of the very first ones and took it home with me.

The first dies I had were the original daisy die and the star and moon… the old ones that Jeff made out of aircraft aluminum. The first project I created was with shrink plastic and the spellbinders Totally Texture Sheets.

Not long after I met Stacey and got my Wizard, she asked me for help with several projects. I started playing with lots of different ways to use die-cuts and many wizard-specific techniques such as photo transfers, charm embossing and more.

I created the beach page shown here with one of Stacey’s photos to be featured on her first appearance on the PBS show Scrapbook Memories filmed in May, 2004.

That summer, I started traveling with Stacey and the two of us taught classes and gave demonstrations all over the country, including Camp Memory Makers, the Great American Scrapbook Convention, Creating Keepsakes Conventions, and more.

I served as officially as Spellbinders Education Director until August 2006 when I took time away to work with my mom and be with my family. I am absolutely loving being on the design team. I missed the creative challenges that being a part of Spellbinders brought to my life.

If you got this far, props to you for reading all this. Have a wonderful day!

Forgotten Friday: Happy 4th

Happy Independence Day everyone! This year the holiday will be low-key for us. House construction is keeping us very busy and pre-CHA projects are keeping me on my toes. I wish I had new art to share with you, but most of what I’m working on can’t be shared until later!

Here’s a Forgotten Friday layout of my son Isaac in Lincoln, Nebraska at a pancake breakfast held at our church meeting house. This was a layout that was commissioned by Fiskars. They’ve kept it up on their website for several years along with many of my other projects, although for some reason they haven’t ever put my name on the projects. (Maybe that’s a rant for another day!) If interested, project instructions can be found here.

Have a wonderful holiday! Thanks for stopping in!

Forgotten Friday: Taking Steps

My youngest daughter Hannah is learning to walk. She hasn’t quite taken her first steps yet, but she’s standing up on her own now and she cruises around with her little walker, which is an adorable sight. If I have time tomorrow between paint touch-ups and other chores I’ll upload a video of her doing it.

Her struggle to find her balance reminded me of this fun page of my daughter Maiah at almost the same stage of development. My two girls are so very different in looks and personality, but their milestones have occurred at about the same age all along the way. My favorite part of this page is the funky way I cut Maiah out of the photograph in the bottom right. Even then it looked kinda weird, but somehow the page all came together. Fun stuff! The paper is Basic Grey, the large ric rac was from Karen Foster. The flowers are Prima and the title is the Spellbinders Indulgence font.

Forgotten Friday: Remembering Cleveland

Last Friday, I was absolutely swamped in house painting chaos and I’m not sure I even really noticed that it was Friday. Obviously I didn’t make a Forgotten Friday post.

So this week, I’m sharing two layouts about Cleveland. After graduating from college, three months before Adam was to start his PhD program at Case Western Reserve University, we high-tailed it out of Utah and drove our tiny U-haul truck and our two cats to Cleveland without a home or job waiting for us. We were a little bit crazy, with just a tad of newlywed stupidity, but we were full of excitement and faith. We found a place to live on Daleford Road, in Shaker Heights, Ohio and I began teaching 9th grade science at SHHS the same fall that Adam began his grad program.

Adam and I both loved living in Cleveland, and we would have stayed there if the opportunity had arisen. (Amazingly, we feel that way about many of the places we’ve lived.) I loved the suburb of Shaker Heights and I greatly appreciate the life lessons I learned while teaching high school there. We had a blast exploring Cleveland’s culinary offerings and every day we miss the wonderful food we experienced.

Both of these layouts were created shortly after we left Cleveland. While I was happy that Adam and I were both done with grad school, I missed our home, friends and my job. The first layout was published in Scrapbooking & Beyond magazine in December of 2005. The second is one I’ve never really shared before. Through creating these, I was able to come to terms with my “homesickness” and move on and appreciate living in Lincoln.

Enjoy these two “Forgotten Friday” layouts and scrapbook your home or city sometime soon!

Check back soon for another quick and easy Father’s Day Card idea!

Forgotten Friday: Baby Blessing Page

Lately I’ve been seeing blog posts that focus on how you started scrapbooking, or what your first projects looked like. I’ve always been an advocate of being proud of your past work… after all, preserving your world is what scrapbooking is all about. It’s a great way to relive the memories that you intended to capture and it also serves as a snapshot into trends, lifestyle, and art from your past. Seeing one’s past evolution can be a bit haunting at times, but just like other parts of life, it’s important that we be at peace with our past and forgive ourselves for our mistakes, transgressions, and most importantly, bad taste!

So, each Friday I’ve decided to post a little something from my paper-crafting past. I cherish the gifts that my hobby has brought me and celebrate the chance to relive the memories. So, without further ado, this was my very first page. My mother gave me the beautiful embossed paper and stickers when she found out that I was going to start scrapbooking. The layout literally took me weeks to complete. It was done in June, 2003.