More ICAD

Well, I haven't been keeping up with the card-a-day, but I am not in the slightest bit concerned. I have enough on my plate. Still, I have been playing with the 3X5 cards, and the other night I gessoed up a bunch so they are ready to go. Here are some of the ones I did:

 For the above card, I just wanted to play with my colored pencils. Nothing crazy. I was thinking about the woman who has taken care of our son for the last two years. We really appreciate the love and car she gave our little guy. They bonded, so the goodbye has been hard.

 Playing with a new stamp and my new Stayz-On ink pad.

Just doodling.

Overwhelm

I spent almost my entire day thinking about education - developing materials for my class, participating in a school improvement meeting, and meeting with Milton Chen. All of this, the evening meeting with the educational guru Chen especially, got me really excited about educational innovation and about my classroom next year. Although it is all very exciting, it is also overwhelming at the same time. Hence, today's card.

This card is definitely very cheesy, but it's art journaling at its journalingist. (Yes, it is a word now, thank you very much.) To me, art journaling is about the process, not the final product, although I often like my final products.

Hopeful for a Renewed Meditation Practice

Tonight's card is about my desire to get back on track with meditating. There was a time when I dreaded meditating, and now I look forward to it. Despite this, I have been far too inconsistent with my practice. Our meditation at sangha tonight inspired this card:

An Index Card a Day

So I have been playing in my studio quite a bit lately. I have discovered the world of art journaling, which is good for me in that it is helping me break away from my creative rut. I am a very left-brained person, and art journaling is very right-brained, which makes this a nice break from the structured, rule-oriented person I can be.

While exploring some art journaling web sites, I discovered an index-card-a-day challenge and decided to do it for a while. I am not committing to any length of time because that would be another rule for me to follow, but I really liked the idea of something small and playful to work with. So here is my first ICAD:

So go play!

Cake Pops

Tonight I broke into this book to make some cake pops. I have always loved the way they looked, and after a friend bought me this book, I decided spring break provided a great opportunity to try the process out.

The process:

• Bake a cake and let it cool completely
• Mix in 3/4 of a container of frosting (This acts as the glue.)
• Roll into balls
• Freeze for about thirty minutes
• Melt melting candy
• Dip balls into candy

Here's what I learned:

• Kids love the taste; adults don't. (Bleh!) Maybe they would be better with different mixes. I used chocolate and vanilla frosting. Mostly, I think it's just the texture. It's like when that kid at lunch time would roll up his bread roll into a hard, moist ball. Just thinking about it gives me the
• We tried making egg shapes for Easter. This was definitely more difficult than just balls. They didn't come out right, and we ended up re-rolling them into balls.
• It was fun, but a lot of work. It's more about enjoying the process and the family time, especially since I can't stomach eating them.
• It helps having a friend there to keep you company and to speed up the process.

 The best part of the evening was the sale on both limes and mint, which means a mojito awaits me. Yum!

Smash Book Droolings

One more thing before I sign off completely. I am totally (read with a valley girl accent) drooling over these SMASH books. As soon as they are available, I am buying two - one for me and one for my daughter. Enjoy this happy little video.

Some Recent Creations

I love card-making because you can create finished product in a relatively short period of time. I am not a fan of using sketches for scrapbook pages, but for some reason I enjoy using them for cards. This one was inspired by Tuesday Morning Sketches. Here's the sketch below.

 Here are a few pages I have done recently:

I love the simplicity and the colors in this page. I am fond of blue and brown together and did my son's baby album in this color scheme.

I adore the little monster guy created with the Cricut. This page is a scraplift of a tutorial from Paper Clipping. I love Noell' approach - instead of providing you with a sketch, she teaches basic design concepts that can be applied to any layout. This summer, I plan on dishing out the money for her membership. In the meantime, if you are a scrapbooker, I highly recommend checking out her site and subscribing to the Paper Clipping Roundtable via iTunes.

 

At the retreat I went to a couple weekends ago, my friends and I all scraplifted the same page from a magazine. I don't have the issue, so I cannot properly give credit.

Because I am a fan of simple pages, this is one of my favorites. I also like that I combined photos from two different outings.

 Happy crafting!