a poetry interlude

It truly feels like autumn now. The weather has turned, the leaves are falling. I've been busy working on a few different projects and spending some time with the boy... but I am looking forward to a few new posts on this blog in the next few days.

So, here is some poetry for you, until then:

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.
~Emily Dickinson

p.s.
This time of year I always re-read Nail Gaiman's book Fragile Things. It is just perfect for right now. Especially with a hot cup of cocoa and a cozy couch to curl up on.

Weekend recap

This weekend was all about the tasklist. It was pretty much go go go from Friday to Sunday night. Still didn't get everything done, but quite a large amount of things were accomplished.

Spent some good time on the LT boards and galleries catching up on the haps and welcoming our three new Tulip Girls. Exciting things happening over there lately.

Finished a whole layout using some of my hoarded Collage Press goodies. I have tons and tons of photos still to edit from various daily and vacation adventures... and my printer was out of ink so I dug deep and scrapped with an older photo I had on hand. It worked out quite well. Need to wait for some daylight to photograph it before it goes up on the blog.

Spent some very productive and educational time at the local post office. Got in a quick trip to Michaels for more gluestick and another MS craft punch (I'm addicted... thank goodness for coupons).

To celebrate our 10 year anniversary (which is on Monday, but we've both got work) G and I had a lovely brunch on Saturday followed by a fantastic day at the Puyallup Fair (see evidence of photobooth and ferris wheel polaroid as noted in the picture above).

Read two books (I'm a pretty fast reader) and got some quality time at a really good bookstore (one new book and some stationary goods..one of which is going to end up in the shop, I think).

Good socializing done with various sets of friends and family.

Saw 500 Days of Summer and it was as good as I was hoping it would be. Sweet and sad and funny. Great music and imagery. Lovely props and costumes. It was very good.

It got a little chilly today, so I got to wear my new cape. It is warm and while I am sad that summer is ending, I do love my autumn wardrobe best.

I've utterly neglected my laundry and the grocery shopping.. but that can wait for after work tomorrow. I am going to savor these last moments of the weekend and do something totally non-productive, like catch up on google reader.  ;)

Have a lovely day.

Antique Shop Inspiration

A little eye candy for your friday: scenes from a recent trip to Pacific Antiques in SoDo.

pretty pretty.

Tomorrow it is off to mail packages for the shop, brunch with the boy, and then we are going to the Puyallup Fair! So excited. I love weekends.

Reading books is great. Making them is even better.

On our recent trip to the cabin, I had the chance to stop by Portland's famous bookstore Powell's City of Books. It was every bit as fantastic as I had heard about and while there I treated myself to quite a few books, one of which I am going to review today.

The book is called Re-Bound: Creating Handmade Books from Recycled and Repurposed Materials and it is by Jeannine Stein.

I have long had an interest in learning traditional (and not so traditional) forms of bookbinding, so it was quite a treat to read through this book.

This book has a good variety of projects and the instructions are quite detailed, with diagrams and photographs as well as suggestions for alternate ideas for the projects. The writing style is very open and easy to read through. Good break down of sections lots of lovely photography. The author has a great voice and makes you excited to see what kinds of books your can make and what kind of "trash" you can turn into book-treasure. And there are patterns in the back to assist you with making the projects.

Overall, I would rate this a great book for a novice bookbinder who likes the combination of coffee-table prettiness with basic to moderate bookbinding instruction.

I am really looking forward to curling up during the upcoming chilly season with some paper, waxed linen cord and a needle to see what I can come up with. ;)

Mary Ann Moss has had some really great posts recently about some book making projects she has been working. on. See this link here as an example.

And of course I am very excited to take Dina Wakley's next Art Journaling class, The Graffitti of My Life, which seems to have some bookmaking components as well. 

Are you reading/making anything book related lately? Share. :)

working working working

taking lots of photos for the workshop....

September Label Tulip: New Beginnings

So very excited to share my September Label Tulip layouts with you!

Jennifer put together such a fun kit. I especially love the gallery this month. So many creative options!

And there is a super fun contest that was just announced on the LT blog, the "Share Label Tulip With a Friend" contest. "This contest has 2 ways to win, so please make sure you read carefully so you don't miss out on your chance to pick up one of these FABulous prizes!

1. Forum Freebie RAWK

--For every friend that you can encourage to sign up for and "play" around in our forums, both you and your friend will be eligible to win a Label Tulip RAWK (photo to be released later this week on the blog, but I promise you, it's a good one!). Here are the rules: when your friend signs up for the forums, please have them send me a PM with their name and your name. During the next 2 weeks, they must post at least 10 times in the forum; on October 5th, we will announce the winners and each one will receive the RAWK kit. So, for example, if you encourage your friend Jenny to sign up, Jenny will PM me with her name and yours after registering in the forums. You are eligible to win for each friend that enters. Our online community continues to grow leaps and bounds and this is just one more way we can share our wonderful Label Tulip Message Forums with as many friends as possible.

2. Have a Friend Subscribe and Receive a Free Subscription!

--This is a truly amazing giveaway! For every friend of yours that signs up for either a 3 month or 6 month subscription, you will be eligible to win your own 3 MONTH FREE SUBSCRIPTION in addition to your current! When your friend signs up, have her mention your name in the PayPal comments and you will be automatically entered to win. A few rules:

a) You must already be a kit subscriber to be eligible for your friend to sign up and for you to win the free extension
b) If your friend cancels the subscription, then your free extension will be canceled as well

What am amazing deal to get 3 EXTRA MONTHS of Label Tulip kits -- a value of $118!!!
Both of these contests end 10/5/2009 so get your friends' entries in as soon as possible."

happy first day of fall!

ETSY SHOP IS OPEN

We are open for business my friends.

Please come stop by.

Class access, kits, buttons, labels, stamps.

Oh I am a happy girl!

I am pretty sure that I am going to have to adjust the paypal invoices on any international shipping orders that come in, but that is a problem for after dinner.

Thank you for all your love and support. I am so excited to make this happen.

I'm Back! A mini-update

Huzzah! I survived a week in the wilderness. We spent many days in the car, went caving, swimming, hiking and also spent some good time lazing about reading, cooking and sleeping.

Hot cocoa + starbucks via is the best comfort drink ever.

I took about 746 photos... so I am working on paring them down into something shareable on the blog. It will be a very big post.. probably up a little later this week. And I have some other goodies planned for the blog this week as well.

The only down side of the trip is that I came home and immediately caught a cold. Nasty fever and feeling bleh. But that won't stop me from being crafty (after a long nap, anyway)! I have been working hard on the B+P class blog and I will hopefully have some sneaks of the finished book for you later this week as well.

Here is the winner of the Vintage French Dictionary Star Stamp:

Suzanne please email me at christina(dot)clouse(at)gmail(dot)com with your mailing info and we will get that stamp out to you ASAP--though if you end up buying anything from the shop, give me a heads up so I can ship it to you in the same package ;)

The Etsy shop update is still good to go for this evening. I will have it all loaded up by 6:00 PM PST. If I sell out I will take requests for restock, please convo me through Etsy or send me an email if you miss out.

Off to have more juice and some rest. Until later!

Out of time... and now on vacation.

I had meant to write like four different blog posts to keep you all amused while I am away (because I am leaving out of town through Sunday) but life kind of got in the way and I ran out of time.

So until then, please enjoy this photo of a typewriter (which I want reaally bad) and don't forget to comment on the giveaway post.

Label Tulip kits go on sale tomorrow the 15th, be sure to check them out. And only a few more days for the DT call. Send those apps in! I'll have my pages ready to share when I get back. ;)

More when I come home again. Must get sleep now. Hugs to you all.

:)

Etsy Shop Grand Re-Opening Info + Giveaway

UPDATE!

The stamps arrived and they are fabulous.


Hopefully if all goes well with this venture I will be able to offer other stamp designs in the future. It was hideously difficult to narrow it down to two designs as I have a whole notebook full of ideas at this point.

Anyway... the kits and all other associated items will be loaded up into the Etsy shop ready for purchase at 6:00 pm PST on Monday, September 21st.

All items will begin shipping on that Saturday, September 26th.

The workshop start date has been correspondingly changed to begin Monday October 5th, to give you a little time to receive your goodies in the mail. Also September seems to be quite booked with other scrapbook classes, so hopefully this will give you a little break before coming to start a new project.

To celebrate the arrival of my "stamp babies," I am going to be giving away one of the Vintage French Dictionary Star stamps to a lucky reader. Just leave a comment on this post telling me something you have been inspired by recently. Comments will close at 6:00 PM PST on Sunday, September 20th.

Happy crafting!

A Polaroid Interlude

When I got The Mustache (my Polaroid SX-70) I decided I wanted my first pack of film to be proper SX-70 film. So I picked up some TZ Artistic and loved the grungy, faded results.


Well, a few days a go, I got the chance to pick up some fresh film via The Impossible Project via Urban Outfitters. (If you get a chance, please help save polaroid... I even asked Santa to send me some for Christmas this year.)


Anyway, one of the things about using the more modern 600 or 779 film is that the SX-70 needs a little bit of a mod in order for the film to expose properly.

See the photos below? Exact same subject, shot at about the same time (at night, in my room).

The photo on the right was taken with the Mustache au naturale with the new film. I had the knob all the way on dark and it still overexposed the heck out of that photo.

The photo on the left is after I used a circle punch and some glue dots to (very carefully) adhere a 2-stop ND filter piece over the lens of the camera, avoiding the gears, of course. And as you can see, it turned out much better. The filter does make the viewfinder a little dark, but manageable.

I just like to think that the Mustache is wearing shades.

Art Journal Pages

So I was going through my box of unfinished projects looking for things that I could take up to the cabin next week to work on.. and I found an art journal that I had started last summer (from Rachel's Steady Hands Faulty Heart class) and it seemed like the perfect thing to bring.

In fact, the last time I worked on it was up at the cabin (over a year ago). But in a fit of creative madness and extra time this weekend I decided to add a few new pages to it before I head off into the wilderness. I just love this book because I am using up so many scraps and photos that just don't seem to fit anywhere else.

So these were the pages I made inspired by the class:

And these are the new pages.

It is still in progress (pending me finding my sharpie... it's somewhere around here...)

Anyway, it's fun. Just to make things for me, and to play and make a mess. Good stuff. Art for art's sake. Art therapy. And thrifty too, since all I'm using is junk mail and scraps and photos that are rejects from other projects. ;)

Also have been reading the newest Artful Journaling by Somerset Memories. So nice to see some familiar art (hullo Dina and Glenda!). Love it.

Bits & Pieces Kit Reveal

So here it is:

BITS & PIECES KIT CONTENTS:

- 1 Handmade fabric and chipboard mini book with silver grommets

- 2 One inch silver book rings

- 1 Art mounted rubber stamp with exclusive design by Coffee Girl Crafts

- 12 double-sided 6x6 pieces of Amy Butler Lucky Flowers pattern paper

- 1 single-sided 6x6 piece of woodgrain K&Company pattern paper

- 5 sheets 6x6 cardstock (white, cream, kraft, khaki, brown)

-4 acrylic transparency sheets (4.5x6.5)

- 1 Sheet woodgrain contact paper

- 2 Pages graph notebook paper

- 2 Pages wide ruled notebook paper

- 10 assorted vintage dictionary and textbook pages (Maths, French, Latin)

- 14 Hand-stamped journaling labels

- 6 Hand-painted chipboard buttons

- Various embellishments including a strip of cork, a 12 inch length of brown ribbon, two playing cards, four vintage buttons and 15 punched embellishments (tabs, tags and journaling spots).

PRICING AND SHIPPING INFORMATION IS FORTHCOMING

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OPTIONAL GOODIES (ADD-ONS):

There will be an Online Workshop available as a companion to the kit. The pace of the workshop will be very relaxed. Participants will be able to work at their own pace. And after the "live" part of the class is over, participants will have access to the private blog for at least one year.

There will be journaling prompts, technique tutorials, photography tips, links to really cool online resources, plus some class-exclusive digital content designed by me. Workshop participants will have access to a private blog, a private Flickr group for sharing photos and a PDF of all lessons covered in the class.

Here is a sample shot of the class blog:

Additionally, my Etsy shop will be stocked with a second stamp design in addition to the main kit stamp, paper packs of the Amy Butler and vintage papers, and a few sets of the hand stamped labels and hand-painted chipboard buttons (just in case you want extra). And in case you were as excited about this as me, there are some widgets for your blog over there on the right.
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THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS.

The good news is that except for the stamps, these kits are all ready to be sold and sent off to their new happy homes.

The bad news is that because I don't have the stamps I cannot list the kits for sale... I am SO sorry, but I want to make sure the stamps are A) usable and B) that I have the right costs for shipping (especially for international).

Also as I will be out of town for the majority of next week (and literally without access to internet) I am most likely going to have to delay the sale of the kits until the end of the month.

I promise to have a biiig ol announcement (and tweet) about it when it does go on sale for real.

Thank you so much for your patience and kind words. Please email me or comment on this post with any questions, comments or feedback. I really do appreciate it.

Take care and happy crafting.