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Papertrey Ink September 2016 Blog Hop Challenge

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As soon as I saw Nicole's inspiration piece for the PTI September Blog Hop, I knew I wanted to play along.

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Kraft, black, white, green, and twine—what's not to like about that? So, I set aside some time to play. I hoped to come up with one card for the hop, but ended up making three. Only one can be linked to the hop, but I'm sharing all of them here.

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The card on the left is the one I started out to create. When I was waiting for the white to dry on the pinecones, I came up with two other cards using tags as the focal point.

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I trimmed off the top edge of the kraft card, and layered a piece of True Black on the inside of the card. The wreath and sentiment are from "Rustic Wreath," and the pinecones came from Avery Elle's "Winter Wreath." Much to my surprise I could not find a pinecone in any of my PTI sets. A bow was tied to the wreath with Rustic Jute Button Twine (PTI.) 

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I used White Enamel Accents to add some "snow" to the pinecones, and used some clear foam tape to add some dimension to the wreath.

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I used Tag Sale #9 to cut two tags, one each from kraft and True Black cardstock to mimic the tags in the inspiration piece. The branch is from last year's "Spruce and Sprigs" stamped with Pinefeather ink. Once tied together with twine, I added the tags to the Select White cardstock and rounded one corner. The sentiment is from "Rustic Wreath."

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This card is essentially the same. I added a second pine bough cut from vellum to place behind the one stamped with Pinefeather, and used two AMuse black pearls instead of the pinecone. I'm posting this before church, but won't be able to link it up with the blog hop until afterwards. I'll be anxious to see all the other creations based on this inspiration. Glad, too, to have a few Christmas cards created!

FUSION Birthday Bash Challenge

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Although my goal of participating in a challenge every week has been only partially successful, the Fusion Challenge is one of my favorites. They offer up a sketch as well as an inspiration piece, and I combined aspects of both for this week's challenge.

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I took the circular design for the focal point, and used some of Maile Belle's Ombre Stripes paper from the inspiration piece as well as a few of the colors. I think there's enough elements from both the sketch and the inspiration piece to fit the challenge.

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All the elements of the focal point are from Papertrey Ink's "Scene It: Celebration" stamps and dies. I die cut the circle element three–once in Summer Sunrise, once in Summer Sunrise Patterned paper, and once in Hawaiian Shores and off set them. Celebrate was die cut with Tropical Teal paper.

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I love the layered look of the three die cuts, and appreciate how Papertrey Ink develops cardstocks that complement one another.

SNAP: The Birthday Party

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Skylar turns five today, and there'll be a dinner tonight with just family. On Saturday she hosted a birthday party for her friends and classmates (and their parents and younger siblings). It was a wonderful event, and everyone, including the birthday girl, had a great time. Coming up with a SNAP collection for Helena's meme was easy this week!

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Skylar greeting friends at the front door, the birthday girl getting her face painted, Ella and her dad with Ella's balloon "dolly," and blowing out the candles on the cake.

Of course, there had to be a special birthday card, and the September Simon Says Kit was just perfect for it. It arrived with scratch-off stickers, bright patterned papers from Doodlebug, and the perfect birthday balloons and sentiments in the "It's No Secret" stamp set.

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I totally forgot to take a photo before I added the scratch-off stickers, but under one it says "Love You" and under the other "You Rock." I colored the balloons with Copic markers and added glitter to each one with a Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen. 

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The colorful sequins are also from a previous Simon Says Card Kit. Hope your week is going well; mine is going by much too quickly!

 

5 in 5 and Memorandum Monday

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I'm waving to Sian and her friends today. It was an incredibly busy weekend here filled with all kinds of new experiences. Tracy's high school class celebrated their 50th High School Reunion this weekend, and he was the chairperson of the event. He and the committee have been planning this event for the last several years, and I actually know more people in his graduating class than I would in my own. (Granted I only attended my that high school for two years.) There was a Friday night gathering at a local bar, a Saturday night dinner, and a Sunday picnic. In addition, we hosted breakfast for seven Saturday morning–friends who had arrived from Florida, England, New Mexico, and Illinois. I took almost no photos of the events since there were several people taking lots of photos. But here's a snapshot from the Saturday night dinner of the planning committee.

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I learned lots about his classmates over the course of the weekend, but nothing of great interest to share here.

Squeezed into Saturday was Skylar's fifth birthday party, and as always, Betsy planned a wonderful event with face painting, and balloon animals. I did take LOTS of photos there. Here are five in five minutes during the breaking of the pinata for Sandi's September 5 in 5 meme:

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You can see the amazing face (and arm) painting in this one. The woman who did these was a wonderful artist.

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There will be more birthday photos come Wednesday for SNAP! For now, I'm off to get my homework done for class, and wrap up some odds and ends that need to be finished this week.

 

 

SNAP: Wildlife on the Trails

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This week's SNAP collection is a series of photos snapped while I was walking. Three were taken on the Erie Canal Trail, and the last one was taken from the pedestrian bridge over the Genesee River on my way to class last week. So technically, it's not a trail.

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I was amazed at how long the deer in the upper right photo stood looking at me while I snapped away on my iPhone. The photo on the bottom left was a really lovely scene, and it was another time when I wished I had had my big camera with me. Evidently the new iPhone 7 will have a much improved zoom capability, but I'm not planning on upgrading my phone anytime soon. The day I saw the blue heron, there was also an egret and a "line" of ducks perched on a log. The egret was too far away to photograph, and none of the duck photos was as sharp as I would have wished. Another problem with the iPhone when you're trying to take a photo from a pretty good distance away.

Linking up with Helena and the other avid SNAPPERS.

Project Life: April 2016

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I decided I was going to finish pages in whatever order was easiest, so you'll be seeing my catch-up pages here out of order for sure. The April pages covered our trip to New Orleans and didn't need too much work to complete.

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I added the photo of the horse and carriage to the calendar card since that just epitomizes New Orleans for me. I love the Paislee Press template for six photos which was perfect for the shots of the street performers. The bottom left photo is of most of the family at the Jackson Brewery and is another Paislee Press template. The rest are Tracy Larsen's. I made the journaling card from our guide for the Garden District tour's business card and a couple of Jolee stickers.

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The reason for our trip was our niece's wedding. I didn't take my big camera to the wedding, so there aren't many good photos. The first three are from the amazing rehearsal dinner at Randy's parents' home. The wedding photos were taken at the reception, a gorgeous restaurant set into the trees along a river. I included one of many little items from the wedding on one of the journaling cards.

I've got so many projects going right now, it's hard to figure out what to do next! I'm taking a class that meets three days a week at the University of Rochester which requires quite a bit of reading, working on the Project Life catch-up, trying to get a few cards made, trying to maintain my workout schedule, and am enrolled in Liz Steel's newest Sketching Now class. My volunteer commitments don't start for another week, so I'm trying to make good use of my time now. I'm hoping blogging won't go by the wayside. 

SNAP: Stairs at the RISD Museum

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On our way home from Nantucket, we spent a day in Providence, Rhode Island. It had been nearly 40 years since we'd last been there, and we knew a lot had changed. We had a wonderful day, shopping on Hope Street, browsing on Thayer Street (the Brown University College Town), and spent two hours at the lovely Rhode Island School of Design Museum. It has a large permanent collection spanning from antiquity to contemporary art, and we enjoyed it all. As we walked from gallery to gallery, I was taken with the variety of staircases, and took photos of many of them with a SNAP collection in mind.

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Here are a couple more shots from Providence.

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They've done a beautiful job of restoring the waterfront.  I'd love to return some day to see the Waterfire display. Sadly, it wasn't scheduled for the Saturday evening we were there.

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Here you can see the braziers along each side of the river which are lit during Waterfire.

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This is the view of downtown Providence from Prospect Terrace Park.

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Providence is the capital of Rhode Island, and although I had another closer photo of the capital building, I preferred this view. 

Linking up with Helena and other SNAP enthusiasts.

CASology: Stitch

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It's a very rare occurrence, but I didn't make a single card in August. The cards I posted were all made in July before we left on our vacation. So when I sat down on Thursday to made a couple September birthday cards, it had been awhile. Luckily, I won a $25 gift certificate to Papertrey Ink during their Stamp-a-Faire event, so I had ordered the new Mini Market Kit: Color Pop Autumn which arrived just before we left. 

When I was making the first of the birthday cards, I felt it needed just something extra, so I tried a technique I saw recently on Jennifer McGuire's blog using die cuts as embossing plates. It worked beautifully and I was very happy with the results. The card itself, however, is too busy for the CASology challenge which focuses on very clean and simple, so I made a second card for the challenge with the same technique, but no patterned paper. 

Here's the first card:

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And a closer view, since the light was better when the card was laying flat.

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Everything for the card except the gingham patterned paper (My Favorite Things) came from the Color Pop Autumn kit. I added a few rainstones at the end as well. I love the preprinted die cuts which come with these kits which make for some quick and easy cards.

Here's the card for the challenge. Everything in this card came from the kit.

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The stitched edge is embossed with Simon Says Stitched Rectangle dies which I used twice on the first card—to cut the patterned paper and then emboss the edge of the card.

And finally, the other birthday card I needed. For this one, I cased Betsy Veldman's card when she used one of the patterned papers from the kit and just stamped the outline images.

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No stitched embossing on this one, although in retrospect I think it could have used it. 

It's a holiday weekend here, and we have a few plans, but mostly a lot of free time and a long list of projects to work on. Hope your weekend is going well.

SNAP: Day and Night

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The last of the Nantucket SNAP collections, assuming I can come up with something original and interesting this week. There seems to be no end of the images from Nantucket that interest me. 

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When I took the upper left photograph, I said to my daughter-in-law's sister, "This is for Maggie," and then explained how many of Maggie's photographs through the door, window, or arch I've enjoyed this year. If you were sitting on that deck you'd see the ocean beyond. The upper right photo is the Nantucket harbor where the ferries come in. I'm not sure of the name of the beach on the lower left, but we ate take-out pizzas on the beach that night, and stayed for the sunset. It was more remote than most, and we had to climb up and over some pretty high dunes. The lower right photo was also taken at the harbor, although in a different spot. The docks there were crowded with some beautiful, and very large, yachts and sailboats.

It's lovely here right now, though. We spent last night at dinner on the Genesee River across from the Rochester Yacht Club watching the sailboats go out to race on Lake Ontario. We sat over our dinner and coffee long enough that we were still there when the boats came in at dark. Because it was a Tuesday there were plenty of empty tables so we didn't have to rush. We know all too well, that these beautiful evenings when you can eat outdoors are soon to be few and far between!

Linking up with Helena for SNAP–a collection of three or four related photos.

Project Life Catch-up

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Truthfully, I wasn't really sure I'd ever catch up with my monthly PL spreads. When we returned from vacation two weeks ago, I was eight months behind. But shortly after we returned, I read on a blog about a woman who prints her photos each month, and then goes back to finish the spread when she has time. It gave me an idea that has worked out well. Yesterday I finished all eight months of the PL spreads. All that's left to do is a bit of journaling and some embellishing. 

As I began to work, I came up with a process that worked really well for me. Since the pictures and words are what I focus on, I started with my Lightroom files. All my photos are uploaded to Lightroom and put in folders by month and year. Within those folders are events or categories. So for November 2015 I had 11 miscellaneous photos from various events like our church's Grocery Run, a folder with photos from Ella's birthday, and a folder with photos from Thanksgiving. For many months, I have as many as five folders filled with photos. How to choose?

Here are my notes from July, and the planning pages for June and July.

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After going through the photos, I made a list of the ones I'd like to include. Because I use photo templates that allow me to get two, three, or as many as six photos in one 4X6 pocket, I have more latitude than I used to. Then I use the planning sheet on the clipboard to decide where the photos should go. The checkmarks indicate the photos that have been printed, and the circles ones I needed to do the next time I sat down to work.

Here's November 2015. 

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I couldn't find a template I liked for the six Thanksgiving photos I wanted to use, so I made my own. The word art is Paislee Press, and the journaling card from Becky Higgins.

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The calendar page I use for all my title cards is from Paislee Press. All the rest of the templates on this page are from Tracy Larsen's Simply White templates. By the time I journal on the templates, lots of the journaling is done. Today I added the brown card (Becky Higgins) and the gold leaf overlay (Pink Press Studio), the journaling with a sticker (Michaels) and some jelly stars (Gossamer Blue kit), as well as some die cuts (Papertrey Ink) and the #1 (AC Thickers) on one of the photo templates to finish off the page.

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All that had to be done for this page, was to attach the 8.5 X 11 page to the 12 X 12 patterned paper by Echo Park, and add some brief journaling to the journaling card.

I've got to say, it feels good to be this far along, and you'll be seeing PL posts pretty regularly now. I even have a start on the August pages before August ends!

Summer Scavenger Hunt: August Edition

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As I expected, I found quite a few of the items from the 2016 Summer Scavenger Hunt while we were on vacation. Some of them are duplicates of items I found earlier, but I couldn't resist adding them to the collection. All together I've found 20 of the 21 items, and both alternatives. I still need a photograph of twins (#17), but have two possibilities, and there are still a few weeks left before the official end of summer. 

So without further ado, here are this month's photos:

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A skeleton (#3) – found at the Whaling Museum on Nantucket. Notice the difference in size between the skeleton and the whaling boat beneath it!

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A book read during 2016 (#4) – I've read 31 books so far this year, 12 since the start of the scavenger hunt. This was one of the most recent ones. 

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A porch (#5) – in 'Sconset, Nantucket

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A camper (#6) – I was hoping to find a cuter one than I found in July, and here it was on the Thruway coming home from vacation. I'd love to see the insides.

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Bicycles (#10) – I never tire of photographing bicycles. The last one is the one I rented in Nantucket,
parked at the weather station near Altar Rock, the second highest point on Nantucket.

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Fresh produce (#11) – at our favorite farm market

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A buffet of food (#14) – We went to the most amazing buffet on Sunday when we were in Nantucket. In addition to the dessert table and salads,there was a raw bar, and a table of hot entrees (all covered so not a very exciting photo).

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A family gathering (#7) – here we are at the buffet on a porch overlooking Nantucket Harbor

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A team logo (#15) – I'm auditing a class this fall at the University of Rochester. When we were there last week trying to find out about parking, I got this shot of their team's logo.

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A map showing a trip taken during the time period (#16) 

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 A photograph of you with a newspaper from the time period covered in the hunt (#21) – My least favorite item on the hunt every year! I picked up a copy
of the local paper in Nantucket. It was first published in 1821.

You can find the original post for the Summertime Photography Hunt right here.

 

SNAP: Views from the Cape and Nantucket

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Only two of the three lighthouses on Nantucket are easily accessible. To reach the third, you need a special pass, which evidently is not that hard to get, but there wasn't enough time to follow through. I have multiple views of the other two; one near 'Sconset (upper left), and the other near the harbor in the town (bottom right.) The view through the door was taken at the Woods Hole Historical Society on the Cape which has a lovely collection of artifacts in a small museum, and this shed next door which houses a variety of boats and boating paraphernalia. The bottom left photo is of the oldest continuous working mill in the United States. We drove by it on Nantucket multiple times, but it wasn't until the last day that I finally got a photo of it. 

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I'm linking up with Helena and other SNAP collectors today. I'm buried under a huge project which has turned my office/studio into a disaster area. Hopefully, I'll be done by the weekend and back in business again

5 in 5: August

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Each month I like to participate in Sandie's 5 in 5 photography meme. I was quite sure I'd be able to come up with five photos in five minutes somewhere on Nantucket, and it proved easy to do. I finally chose these five from the village, Siasconset, commonly referred to as S'conset. On earlier trips to Nantucket, Matt had sent me photos taken with his phone, with the comment, "You'd love it here, Mom." And indeed, I did. The village is very small—a lovely market, a delicious sandwich shop, and a small cafe and wine shop. The rest of the village consists of quaint cottages, all shingled, all with beautiful flowers. Some of the cottages were built in the early 1700's and are still in excellent condition. Later in the day, after these photos were taken, several of us walked the Bluff Path, and I'll share some photos from there later. Along the bluff, overlooking the ocean, are much larger and more elaborate homes, equally beautiful. 

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In the last photo, I love that you can look through the window and see the ocean beyond. It seems like a pretty idyllic place to spend a summer!

SNAP: Boats in the Harbor

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We've just returned from ten days visiting Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Providence, Rhode Island. It's been years since we were on Cape Cod or in Providence, and we'd never visited Nantucket. Betsy grew up with summer vacations on Nantucket, and their family goes each summer. They've invited us every year for the last three years, but this was the first time we were able to join them. There'll be more SNAP collections, and probably a couple vacation posts once I finish editing the many photos we took. I cut the number in half yesterday, but still have a ways to go. 

Nantucket is simply beautiful, and the weather was hot and humid most of the days we were there. We spent a lot of time on the beach with the grandchildren, and had a wonderful time. There were lots of possible collections for SNAP, but this week I decided on four of the photographs of boats in the harbor. 

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The upper left photo was taken in Woods Hole, MA, the rest on Nantucket in various places. Nantucket is sometimes known as the "Gray Lady" because it is frequently socked in by fog. There were only a couple of mornings when it was particularly thick, but the afternoon we drove out to Madaket it was also foggy as you can see in the upper right photo. 

Summer Cards

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I have a couple of cards to share that shout summer to me. The first one was for a friend who has a pretty healthy dislike of flamingoes. Her brother regularly sent her flamingoes from all over the country when he was working, and once I had a "field of flamingoes" delivered to her yard that was a fund raiser for a local youth group. She responded with line of flamingoes up my sidewalk by the same group! So I couldn't resist this year when I found this die cut flamingo in a pack of Simple Stories dies for scrapbooking. It just had to be used for her birthday card. I found a cute set of paper napkins with a gold flamingo on them to go along with her other gifts. It's a good thing she has a sense of humor!

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The die cut and stamped sentiments are from "Birthday Cheer" by Papertrey Ink. I added some rainstones (PTI), enamel dots, and (hard to see) some Wink of Stella glitter to liven it up.

The next card is unusual in that it has no stamping whatsoever. It's all die cuts.

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I started with a piece of Simon Say's woodgrain paper, and die cut the "Garden Garland" from Limeade Ice, adding some detail with Copic markers. The pretty flowers are also part of the Garden Garland die. I finished them off with a few enamel dots for flower centers. The sentiment die, "Big Basics: Birthday," was cut from Summer Sunrise. As soon as I saw the Garden Garland die, I had several ideas for it so you are sure to see it again!