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May in Review and LOAD

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I've kept up with a Photo-a-Day now for five months, two months longer than I've ever done before, and I'm  committed to seeing it through. I love popping all the photos into Ali's monthly template and writing a review of the month. 

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I think you can click on the layout to see it better. I follow the daily prompts when they seem to fit or when I'm feeling uninspired. The rest of the time, I focus on what we're doing. The patterned paper is Bella Blvd, the cute tags from Ormolu, the camera stamp from Studio Calico, and the chevron die for the tag from Papertrey Ink.

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Here's this month's journaling which I put on the "pull-out" tag. I added the little stamp "pull here" from Papertrey Ink's "Movers and Shakers" set:

May was a fabulous month! Our trip to Oregon was as perfect as could be—two cross-country flights with no delays, Caleb’s baptism, a week with Sarah & Caleb, and along weekend with Adam & Matt as well! Mother’s Day & my birthday were celebrated with the whole family—nothing makes me happier!

We spent two days driving up the coast of Oregon & were treated with bright, sunny days. Oregon’s coast is even more stunning that California’s. We finished our trip in Portland, visiting with Jessica & her family, & dinner with Mason & Meghan. An hour or so at Powell’s Bookstore, a self-guided tour of City Hall, & a visit to the Portland Art Museum were highlights. Lots more to see and do!

We ended the month with lots of plant-buying & gardening, including a trip to Ithaca to the Farmer’s Market, always a favorite day trip. Had a great lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant, Rio Tamatlin.

 I finished two books in May:  Thinking About Memoir, & Unless It Moves the Human Heart. Mary & I enjoyed Jennifer Haigh’s talk at Arts & Lectures, and Tracy & I saw a great  Bonnie Raitt concert. Karen & I celebrated our birthdays with dinner at Bennuci’s, I shared meals with Nancy & Mary, & on Memorial Day we helped celebrate Bill Jones’ birthday.

 I’m well into Ali’s class 31 Things, but I’m not sure quiet how I’ll “publish” it. Kat’s Sense of Place has been a fabulous class with lots of thought-provoking ideas about photography. The material here will keep me busy most of the summer. I still need to finish up the Cut Above cards class, & the first of two Silhouette classes with Kerri Bradford. 

There wasn’t a lot of time for creative pursuits at the crafting table, but I did manage to create one layout and ten cards.

I've been participating in Simple As That's monthly review as well, and I added some photos to that collage that didn't make it in the POTD collage. I love the photo of Matt and Caleb watching a golf tournament on TV–the same look of concentration. Skylar Rose's photo will be showing up in a layout sometime soon, as will a series of  Caleb jumping in his "Jolly Jumper."

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I never posted April's since we left early in May for our trip, so here it is as well.

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Participating in LOAD in February was a great experience, and although there was another session in May, I knew I couldn't do it then. So I'm doing my own version this month since I have so many photos that need to be scrapped. The May layout above is today's. Yesterday I created this one.

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This one didn't photograph terribly well. The colors are a bit brighter than they show here. It's much truer in the detail shot below. (Both taken at the same time with the same light; go figure.) The patterned paper is MME "Follow Your Heart," and I added five rows of Washi tape to it to create a border. I think both rolls of Washi came in Studio Calico kits, but I'm not sure. The tag definitely came in a kit, and I backed the cut-out with cardstock from my stash file. The alphabet is October Afternoon.

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The journaling reads: Caleb was perfecting his smile while we were in Oregon, but despite many attempts, I never captured one like this. Adam posted Caleb's five month portrait on Facebook this week, and I just had to get it in the album.

Hope you're having a great day!

 

Memorial Day Weekend

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The weather here was absolutely fabulous for the holiday weekend. In fact, Sunday and Monday were more like the middle of July than the end of May. I thought it might be fun to do a weekend recap (warning: a heavy photo post) ala Deb at Paper Turtle.

Saturday we were up with the birds, and at the Rochester Public Market at 6 am. We bought three flats of impatiens, a flat of geraniums and a flat of Dusty Miller all slated for the front yard. (photo to follow)

After dropping the flowers off at home and having a quick breakfast we headed out for Ithaca, arriving at the Farmer's Market about 9:15. We were greeted by this adorable "Parking Fairy" who assisted us in finding a spot to park.

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She took the time to explain that her wings were made from old stockings stretched on hangers and then painted. The Ithaca Farmer's Market is one of our favorites, and we picked up some seeded sour dough bread, a couple pastries, and some heirloom tomato and pepper plants for our garden.

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On our way out of town we stopped at the Green Star Market, Ithaca's natural food cooperative. I found a market basket there as well as a couple vegetables I didn't see at the Farmer's Market. Driving through Trumansburg I spotted a cute shop and within minutes emerged with a sun hat for the garden and the pool. I was able to put both to use later in the weekend.

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The real reason for this little excursion was a Reisling event at the Silver Thread Winery on Seneca Lake. It had been five or six years since we'd been there, but we remembered liking the white wines. We still do, and we left with a few bottles. The winery sits at the end of a long dirt road abover the lake.

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I offered to take photos for a couple on the porch overlooking the lake, and they reciprocated.

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On the way out, we stopped so I could get a photo of the grape vines as well as a fabulous old red barn at the end of the road.

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By then it was definitely lunch time, but we decided to wait until we got to Canandaigua so we could go to Rio Tomatlin, the very best Mexican restaurant in this area. I had a tamale, which is fast becoming a new favorite!

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On the way home, we stopped at two more nurseries, and now have almost everything we need for the yard and the garden.

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We played bridge Saturday night for the first time since December. Several members of our group have had (and are continuing to have) serious health issues. It was great to get together again with good friends.

Sunday afternoon we finally got to the Community Garden. It took three hours in the blazing sun, but we uncovered the plot, weeded, tilled, and got everything in the garden.

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Sunday night we had a real treat:  tickets to the Bonnie Raitt concert. It was a strictly "no photos allowed" show, but I did get a shot of the stage before the concert began. She did not disappoint, playing for nearly two straight hours. The white slats you can see in the photo were lit with different colored lights as the show progressed. Fabulous staging.

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Yesterday Tracy played 18 holes of golf and I got a chance to visit with a friend who's been ill for nearly a year. They don't know what's wrong despite many, many tests. She's experiencing severe nausea nearly every day. Yesterday was a good day for her, and we caught up sitting on her beautiful porch. When Tracy got home, we met friends at the pool, had supper together, and celebrated Bill's birthday a day early. When we got there the pool was mobbed, but by the time I remembered to take a photo most people had left for the holiday barbeques and parties.

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You might notice a watermark on some of the photos. I recently came across a blog post on how to export your photos from Lightroom with a watermark, and made a quick one to see how it might work. Not all these photos were in Lightroom yet, so some have them and some don't. I think I'd like to do a more sophisticated one, and I need to work on the opacity a bit, but it's another great feature of Lightroom.

Hope your weekend was a good one, and if you stuck through to the end today, you deserve a pat on the back!

Papertrey May Blog Hop Challenge

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It's time once again for the monthly blog hop at Paptertrey Ink. As soon as I saw the inspiration photo, I knew I wanted to participate. I love this color combination.

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Although I had a vague idea of what I might want to create, it wasn't until late last night that it all came together. Luckily my May order with the On The Farm stamps arrived the day before so I had the perfect checked border for the cards. After I finished the first card, I had some reject pieces laying on my desk and reconfigured the card to make use of them. That's good because I have two June 1st events for which I need cards. These will be perfect.

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Both cards use Select White cardstock, Simply Chartruese ink, the Rosie Posie stamps and dies, a circle punch, and the On The Farm checked border.

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This card uses Simply Chartruese cardstock, a sentiment from the Fillable Frames Additions: 2 and two tiny gems from KaiserCraft

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Here I used True Black cardstock and a sentiment from Round and Round. 

You can find more inspiration here.

Back to the Crafting Table

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It's taken us a few days to adjust to the new time zone and get settled in on our routines at home. It was a fabulous two weeks in Oregon, and there'll be more to share here soon. But almost as soon as we got home I needed a "quick recovery" card for my sister-in-law who suddenly needed a pacemaker implanted. The surgery was yesterday, and she's due home today. I took the opportunity to combine two challenges:  The Embellish Bicycle Color Challenge, and the most recent Retro Sketch Challenge. I rotated the sketch to fit my image.

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And here's my take on them. The inside message reads: Hope the road to recovery is short.

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Supplies:  Memory Box card; patterned paper:  Lime Twist Happy Go Lucky (MME); stamps: bicycle (Hero Arts), sentiment (Papertrey Ink); twine (Divine Twine); cloud die (Papertrey Ink); washi tape (Studio Calico kit)

Happy Mother’s Day & Twelve on the Twelfth

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Happy Mother's Day! My very best present is being with all of my family on Mother's Day. After church we got a few Mother's Day photos.

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Yesterday was the perfect day for 12 on the 12th:

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(You can click on the photo to read the journaling–finally figured that out!) We had a great day. When Caleb got up from his morning nap, we headed to the Farmer's Market, and then to an Artisan's Market. After lunch at The Standing Stone Brewery we took a walk and "played" at Lithia Park. Matt and Adam tried climbing a huge jungle gym made from cables. It was a hot, sunny day—just perfect! 

Ten on the Tenth: May

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It's very easy to lose track of the days while you're on vacation, and even easier when you are beguiled by your grandson, so I was a bit surprised this afternoon to open up Shimelle's blog and see that today was the 10th of May. Since I have hundreds of new photos of Caleb what better subject for this post? Here are 10 photos of a real cutie!

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Tracy put up a jumper for Caleb on Monday, and it is a huge hit. When Sarah had one, it was called the Jolly Jumper, and Caleb certainly is a jolly jumper!

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We spent most of the day today shopping and sight seeing in Jacksonville. Caleb and Grandpa walked the streets while Sarah and I browsed.

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On Sunday, Caleb was baptised, and Adam's parents were also here for the service.

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April POTD

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I've managed to take a photo a day for four months now. Some days it was pretty late by the time I got to it, but lots of times the prompt from Capture Your 365 has sent me out with my camera to explore new views and new techniques. I'm dedicated to sticking with it this year. I managed to carve out a few minutes to scrap the April layout before we leave.

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Patterned paper:  Teresa Collins; cardstock:  Bazzil; dotted paper, ribbon and tag from stash; sticker:  Echo Park

The journaling on the tag reads:

The weather in April was dreary and chilly, but the days flew by. 

 It was a photo intensive month. A RPEG photo shoot at Artisan Works, and a four day trip to Washington, D.C. and Frederick, MD. I also worked on my Sense of Place class and took a group of photos of Rochester icons. Matt was here for a weekend and so there are lots of family photos, too, although Skylar won the place for the POTD! A photo of mine that won a prize at Camera Rochester is hanging in the current Image City exhibit this month.

In addition to starting Sense of Place, I finally finished Finding Your Photo Flow, and now have a beginning work flow that incorporates Lightroom. Lots left to do to get the older photos into LR. Other classes this month were Kerry Bradford’s “Getting to Know You” (Silhouette), “Black & White Photography” here with Cole Thompson, and a card making class, “A Cut Above.” All were excellent! I still have work to do with both Kerry’s class and the card class.

 I finished four books this month: The Marriage Plot, Mrs. Kimble, Photographing Washington, D.C., and Wild. Tracy and I saw one movie: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

 Shawn Wallace was the April speaker at Arts & Lectures, and I enjoyed a panel discussion with the Magnum Photographers at the Eastman House followed by a viewing of their House of Cards exhibit at the Visual Studies workshop.

We spent Easter with the family at Randy and Susan’s and lunched with Dan and Jeannie. We enjoyed dinner with our book group and I had dinner with Mona and Jessie, and lunch with Barb & Ev, and Jane.

My OLW for this year is Balance, and I did a pretty good job this month, although scrapbooking took a back seat again to photography and card making, and I’ve yet to institute the daily practice with Copics. 

I didn't add the information to the tag but for the numbers record, I made 18 cards and 2 layouts. Most of the cards are already sent or in envelopes to be mailed in May.

Washington, D.C.: Part 2

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Saturday night we ended up in Georgetown. It was extremely crowded . . .

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(the line at DC Cupcakes)

and we were tired so we opted out of any shopping, and had a lovely dinner alongside the C&O canal.

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After dinner we walked along the Potomac and across the Key Bridge back to Rossyln, VA where we were staying.

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On Sunday, we met our good friends and spent the morning at the National Museum of the American Indian. It is a beautiful building that was designed after long conversations with many Native American groups. You can read about its design here.

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We spent the afternoon at the American Art Museum. I was particularly interested in the Annie Leibovitz exhibit, "Pilgramage," but also enjoyed a wonderful exhibit of models built in the early 1900's that were a requirement of the patent application at that time.

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After Susan and Eric left, we walked back to The Mall since we had not yet visited the World War II Memorial which had been built since we were last in Washington.

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We walked over to the Washington Monument as well. 

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By this time we were more than tired, but managed to get ourselves back to the Metro to return to our hotel. We had dinner in Arlington, and then drove to the Pentagon Memorial which was one of the most moving experiences of the trip. Each bench is named for a victim of the 9/11 disaster. If the victim was on the plane, the bench faces the Pentagon. If the victim was in the Pentagon, their bench faces outward. The benches are arranged by the age of the victims starting with the youngest (three years of age) and ending with the oldest victim (seventy-one). All the benches are illuminated at night.

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I'm still working on some photos from our last day of this trip. We spent several hours in Frederick, MD and had a wonderful time. But we're leaving tomorrow for two weeks in Oregon. I'm hoping to do a bit of blogging from there, but most of my reading of blogs will be on my iPad, so my comments may not be as frequent. I expect to spend a great deal of time holding a baby! 

Washington, D.C.

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It's been two weeks since we returned from a four day weekend in Washington, D.C. and Frederick, MD. It's taken me that long to go through the several hundred photos I took, and get them edited. I love Lightroom and how easy it is to keyword and organize all the photos. The editing tools are also great, although I know I am just skimming the surface in the way I can use them now. Nonetheless, editing photos in a new program took me quite a bit longer. I'm sure that will change when it becomes more automatic. I ended up with 54 photos from the Washington, D.C. part of the trip that I will print, and thought I would share a few of them here; some today, and some tomorrow so you won't be on overload!

We got about an hour out of Rochester on Friday when our van started making a strange whining noise. After a bit of discussion, we decided to come home and switch cars. The van seems to be fine now, but it wasn't worth the chance of being stranded in some unknown town with a car that didn't work. The end result was we got to Washington much later than we expected so we had dinner in Alexandria, and went to the Container Store and called it a night.

Saturday we spent most of the day touring the memorials. We skipped a few we remembered well from our earlier trips, but made sure to see the new ones that have been built since we were last there. On our way from the Metro to the Mall we passed by the beautiful Memorial Bridge. Next time we go I hope to get a chance to take some photographs of the bridge from the Virginia side of the Potomac River.

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Our first stop was at the Lincoln Memorial. It was really crowded with tourists but I managed to get a good shot of the remarkable statue without any one else in it. I also captured a few for our album with all the tourists as well.

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The first new memorial we visited was the Martin Luther King Memorial. It, the FDR Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial all overlook the Tidal Basin and there's a lovely walking path from one to the next.

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Martin Luther King Memorial

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial is one of the larger memorials with four "rooms," each representing one term of his time in office. Each room has a beautiful waterfall, and there are many statues and art work. One of the most fascinating was a wall of carvings. Each image represents a facet of the time when FDR was president.

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This scupture of men waiting in a bread line during the Depression was particularly moving.

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The smallest of the waterfalls, but my favorite.

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Typically, the cherry blossoms would have been in bloom, but they had come and gone by the time we were there. The azaleas along the edge of the FDR Memorial were gorgeous.

On the far side of the Tidal Basin is the Jefferson Memorial. 

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From there we walked to the Korean War Memorial. There are two walls with etchings, and a group of statues of soldiers who appear to be coming out of a woods. 

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This image captures the etchings with the reflection of the soldiers who are across the walkway. I had to wait a while in order to get a shot without anyone walking along the wall.

After lunch we walked to Union Station, and then to the Capitol building. There was a long line to get tickets for a tour of the Capitol so we decided to wait until our next visit to do that.

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One of the places I wanted to visit was the Old Post Office Building. You can take an elevator to the top of the clock tower and I managed to get my little point and shoot camera inbetween the bars on the windows to get a couple of aerial shots of Washington.

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You can see that we had fabulous weather, warm (sometimes hot) and sunny the whole weekend. We walked about 10 miles both days so I was glad to have good weather. 

A Sense of Place: Rochester Icons

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I'm really enjoying Kat's class "A Sense of Place." We've completed three weeks now, and all of it has provided lots of food for thought. The first week was on preparation. The key question was "Do you travel to photograph?" or "Do you photograph while traveling?" I definitely do the latter, but often I do a lot of preparation and thinking about the images I'd like to capture on a trip. Other times it's more, "Oh, look at that!" — a much more spontaneous process. She also asked us to think about how we travel with our cameras and equipment. Lots of times I travel only with my Canon S95. It fits into my purse, and takes awesome photographs. Other times, I want the advantage of my zoom lens or my 50mm 1.4 lens so I travel with the SLR. I've yet to find a camera bag I love, but through this process think I have found a solution. When we were in Washington, D.C. I used a backpack for my camera and my tabletop tripod. It was so much easier to carry, but I worried about the lack of padding around the camera. I've since ordered this bag from Photojojo which slips into the backpack easily, and adds very little weight. I'll be giving this a try on our trip next week.

The second week of class focused on Aspects of Place and we created a list of the things we might photograph while trying to capture the essence of a place. It was a great exercise, and I've typed it up to keep with me.

This week was about capturing icons. Initially I wished I had seen this lesson before our trip to Washington, but once I read the lesson carefully, I discovered that I did use many of the ways to capture icons after all. (Those photos are coming, I promise.) The homework assignment for this week was to capture some icons of the place where you live. I had exactly one really nice day (though windy) in which to do the assignment, and I captured several of the ones on my list. I thought I'd share them here.

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If there's just one icon for Rochester (and I think there are several) this would probably be it. Rochester is known for Kodak and its founder, George Eastman. His home is another Rochester icon as is the beautiful Eastman Theater downtown. Sadly, Kodak has suffered a serious decline in recent years.

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Two views of High Falls. Rochester was originally known as The Flour City. Pioneers settled here on the Genesee River because of the falls and the water power they could provide.

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Now Rochester is known as The Flower City, and hosts an annual Lilac Festival that brings thousands of tourists every spring. Luckily, we live a short walk from Highland Park so we get to enjoy them before and after the festival. This year many are already blooming though the festival does not start until May 11. Our recent cold weather means there will still be lilacs blooming during the festival as well.

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Genesee Brewery has been producing brews for over 100 years. I love the colors in this photograph.

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And, finally, a view of the Broad Street Bridge which was built over the original aqueduct which was built in 1840. The Genesee River is one of a few that flows north, in this case into Lake Ontario.

A Cut Above: Silhouette Lessons

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The emphasis has shifted in A Cut Above from regular die cutting machines to working with the Silhouette. Between this class and the Kerry Bradford class at Jessica Sprague, I'm seeing a lot more possiblities from a machine I already loved! Here are three I made this morning:

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This was a simple one. The heart came from the Silhouette store and is backed with red American Craft cardstock and then adhered to a white card. The inside sentiment reads "Happy Anniversary."

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This one started with two different Silhoutte shapes, both of which I altered. I originally thought I'd use a paper punch to cut out the heart, but it wouldn't reach the place where I wanted it, so I found a heart in my library files and resized it to fit. (The tree is also resized, and I deleted the interior branch design.) I hand cut the grass, and the clouds are Papertrey Ink dies. The background paper is Basic Grey and the stamp is a very old Savvy one that I still love after many, many years!

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I've seen Ali Edwards use these designs on her Project Life pages, but I didn't really understand how easy it is to cut it from the Silhouette. As part of the class, Ali donated six phrases perfect for cards. I just love it! The paper is from the American Craft Neopolitan line. I adhered the die cut with a spray adhesive. Another tip from this class. I've had some for years, but rarely use it. That will change!

April Papertrey Blog Hop & More from A Cut Above

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Today's the monthy PTI Blog Hop, and as soon as I saw the inspiration photo . . .

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I immediately thought of the Rosy Posy stamp set. I had just watched Nichol Magouirk's video on A Cut Above about stamping within an embossed frame, and thought the two would go together nicely. I reversed Nichol's process and masked off the area for the frame first, did my stamping, and then embossed the frame around the image. It's been a long time since I used masking to create an image, and I was surprised at how easily it went. I wanted to incorporate some polka dots as well, but couldn't think of any way to do it without the potential of ruining what I had, so here's another pretty CAS design. The sentiment is from Inside and Out: Birthdays. The frame was embossed with the largest of the Spellbinders Small Labels dies.

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Then in my desire to use the polka dots I went in search of some quilt-like patterns as seen in the photo. I found several, but the colors aren't as true to the inspiration photo as the first card. But that's OK, it's the patterns and polka-dots I'm focusing on here. I tried a whole variety of layouts, but finally ended up with two CAS cards:

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In keeping with the focus on die cuts and embossing folders, I used the Beautiful Blooms 2 dies to cut the flowers and an old favorite Cuttlebug embossing folder, Swiss Dots. The brads are Basic Grey and the sentiment is again from Inside and Out: Birthday. I think I have all the cards I need now for the May birthdays. Just two more anniversary cards needed.

A Cut Above: Dry Embossing with Dies

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Yesterday's lesson for A Cut Above was a series of four videos about embossing folders, Tim Holtz diffusers (I'd never heard of them), and dry embossing with dies. All the lessons are accompanied with pdf documents with the steps to creating all the sample cards. The best part of this class is that all the videos remain available to you after the class ends. This might be my favorite card yet, and certainly one of the simplest ever. The inside sentiment says, "Happy Anniversary." I need four anniversary cards in May. Since we'll be gone for the first two weeks, it's good to get them completed now.

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I used some black wire to create the antennae (another tip from an earlier lesson), and used Copic markers and glitter markers to color the Hero Arts "Antique Engravings" stamp. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "Pretty Poppies." I embossed the circle with two Small Classic Circles by Spellbinders. Here's a closer look at the butterfly.

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I'll definitely be using this technique again.

Here's a view of our front yard yesterday morning:

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Luckily we didn't lose any trees, though some of our neighbors lost large branches from the trees. It's not that we haven't had April snowstorms in the past, but this winter was so mild, this seemed really shocking. It's just as windy and cold today (30's), but the sun is out.

I spent a lot of time yesterday editing photos from our weekend in Washington. I'm doing it in Lightroom with the Visual Quickstart Guide right next to me. I watched the "Up and Running with Lightroom 3" videos at lynda.com so I knew some of the possibilities, but it's impossible to remember where all the tools are, and exactly how to use them. It's taking a long time, but I'm learning a lot in the process.

A Cut Above: Lesson 5 Other Than Paper & Retro Sketches

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Recently I've seen the Retro Sketch site show up on some of my favorite card-making blogs. This week's sketch appealed to me and was perfect for trying out the lesson on cutting materials other than paper in the Cut Above Class.

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I used some Magenta Adhesive-backed cork and some Papertrey Ink felt to die cut the banner.

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The cardstock is Classic Kraft by Papertrey Ink and the patterned paper from the new Neopolitan line by American Craft. The twine is from Paper Source and the brad is an old Making Memories one.

We've had a fabulous weekend despite cold, rainy weather. Yesterday afternoon I attended a three hour workshop with Cole Thompson on Black & White Photography. If I had paid double or triple what I did, I would have thought it worth the money. An excellent speaker, very well-prepared, adn wonderful content.  I've been reading some books by David DuChemin (Within the Frame and Vision and Voice), and Cole's workshop was a perfect accompaniment to what I've been reading. The lessons from my current online course, A Sense of Place, also fall right in line. I could easily immerse myself all day in this material!

Today was the birthday brunch and later this week, I'll have several posts heavy on photography. The egg boats were fabulous (thanks, Deb!) as was the cinnamon French toast, and Chocolate Raspberry Ganache Cake. My sister-in-laws brought wonderful fruit salads. It was great to have the family together. Most of them had not seen Matt since January, or Skylar since October. 

A Cut Above: Lessons 2 & 3 Plus 1

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Lesson three in A Cut Above was about making shaped cards. It's something I've done in the past, but I used a different die than I've ever used in the past, and am very happy with it. I know I'll do this again. (Had to edit this since I had the lessons reversed in the original post!)

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I started with a Memory Box premade card and lined it up with the top of a Spellbinders Grand Nestability Labels die so the top did not cut. Then I cut a the orange piece with a regular Small Labels die and added the die cut "Thanks" from Memory Box. The patterned papers are both from an older MME paper pack: Lime Twist "Fly A Kite." The stamp is from Hero Arts "Everyday Sayings."

Lesson Two was to create a window card. I loved the star card Jennifer made, and did a very close copy of it.

WindowCard

The angle I shot the photo from makes the top look as if there is more space than on the bottom, but IRL the green layer is even all around. I didn't have time to take the photo again. I used Lifestyle Crafts Nested Stars, and patterned papers from Echo Park's "Hometown Summer" Petite Paper Pack. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "Tiny Tags." Here's a look at the inside:

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Since I had all the scraps from this project laying on the table I decided to make another birthday card.

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The only supply I used that is different from the card above is an Edger die on the yellow border strip from Papertrey Ink. The inside sentiment reads: "Have a star-spangled day!"

Matt arrived safe and sound this afternoon. It's always good to get my eyes on him and my arms around him!