pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

If you google Allison Kimball, you’ll find…
her blog which proves she is a superwoman (check out all the photo albums at the right side for heaps of inspiration),
her handwriting as a font,
her name on the list of Hall of Fame scrapbookers,
pictures of her hanging out with other fabulous scrapping superstars,
her take on a CK kit of the month,
and a hilarious birthday wish.

I’m so excited to share some of Allison’s work as part of There’s No Place Like Home. She’s created a fab book and a whole stack of resources that just made me itchy to create as soon as I started looking! Up above is a little sneak shot of Allison’s project, but there’s plenty more to see of course.

Excitingly, you can also win a free place on this course from Scrapscene. Go here and comment to enter. The contest closes today so hurry, hurry!

I know this has come up a few times so let me address the question of Just how much is there to do? All told, you’ll receive full instructions for twenty-five projects. Ten of them are bigger projects, like Allison’s book. Fifteen of them are smaller projects, like things to photograph, something creative to display, or a single layout for your scrapbook. There is absolutely no obligation to keep up and do every project every day! When something really hits you as something you want to do now, then do that one. Some you may really want to make but they won’t fit in your schedule right now, so it’s perfect to save for a rainy day. The community stays up and running permanently, so you can keep checking in on projects when they do fit into your schedule. Or if you actually have a fair bit of free time right now, you could carry right on with each project every day and have tons of stuff completed (and tons of stash used up!) by the end of the class. I firmly believe there should be no stress in scrapbooking so don’t worry about there being any pressure. With the extra snippets of projects over the next few days, it will start to have a fuller picture, but in the meantime, think of it like an idea book: do you instantly make something inspired by everything in there, all at once? So it’s a bit like that, except every project has a full set of instructions and the ten larger projects have printable resources to help complete everything. I’m getting too wordy now, so just know there is no reason to stress.

And if you’d like a little extra help with photography…thinking creatively about composing shots, getting to know your camera and the light and improving pictures from so-so to a new personal best…Cheryl of Feel Good Photos is running her Painting with Light workshop again now that there is some light in this part of the world! It’s a great place to make a real start so you can talk the talk and get the shot. It covers shots both inside and outside, so you could even put your new skills to use when photographing your kitchen for Allison’s project!

xlovesx

Comment [13]

!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2329146914_047b2541bb_o.jpg
(craft supplies)!:http://flickr.com/photos/shimelle/2329146914/

Work Out Wednesday is up!

Back soon with some more info (including pictures) about No Place Like Home.

xlovesx

Comment [8]

That movie I talked about before with kites and abandoned airplanes and this concert amongst others…is free to watch today on youtube. But just for today. So watch it and then realize that you need the actual DVD because it is much nicer huge and and loud and clear than it is on the tiny little youtube screen. But hey. Free. (My favourite price.)

It is very, very pretty. And all about their home. Some somewhat related to the topic at hand right now.

I’ll be iffy on the internets this weekend, so I’ll see you back here on Monday I should think! Have a great one.

xlovesx

Comment [3]

Sometimes projects are just a long time coming. This is one of those. But oh, goodness, am I excited about it now. I keep trying to come up with the ultimate story to lead you into this one but I’m too giddy so I’m just going to cut to the chase with this class.

There’s No Place Like Home is an online class that starts on Monday, the 24th of March. Starting that day, participants will receive 25 prompts by email—a prompt every day Monday to Friday, with weekends free by popular request.

This project is all about our many definitions of home, from our hometowns to our current neighbourhoods to the very buildings in which we live. Four fabulous guest artists have joined me for this project, so you’ll get to see projects from Allison Kimball, Barb Novak, Kate Bucci and Beshka Kueser. And projects from me too.

Each week’s prompts will feature two major renovations and three smaller quick fixes. The major renovations include no fewer than six full albums (with worksheets and resources for each one) and other large scale projects for home display. These projects take a few hours to a few days to complete, depending on your style and speed. Quick fixes include single and double page layouts, journaling prompts and little exercises that tie in with the bigger projects. Some of these will take just a few minutes, while the longest quick fix takes a little over an hour.

The balance of the major renovation projects and the quick fix projects means you can decide how much you want to make during this course. You can go all out and complete all of the five tasks each week—perfect if you want to create a little something every day plus have a bigger project for the weekend. You can just complete the major renovations and you’ll have plenty to show for it from two or three scrapping sessions each week. Or even without much spare time you can complete the three quick fixes each week, then choose one or more of the major renovations to complete in your own time. Lots of flexibility and no pressure to complete anything by a deadline, but at the same time there’s plenty to be doing if you want to create every day.

You’ll receive the daily prompts by email, and they are also archived in a private web forum. (For those who participated in the Christmas Journal forum, we have upgraded to allow us to archive everything in full PDF format, not just plain text. Hurrah!) The private forum hosts discussions about the class projects and you can participate as much or as little as you like. You can also share your work with the other participants on that forum, so you’ll end up seeing even more than the projects presented in the prompts as everyone brings their own ideas and photos to the mix. (Another upgrade for alumni—you can now upload your photo straight into the post, so no more confusing linking from elsewhere.) You’re also invited to participate in an online chat party midway through the course.

None of the projects require special shopping—you can customise each project with your own supplies. We’ll talk about that idea specifically with a few projects.

There’s No Place Like Home, in summary:
...class starts Monday 24th March
...there are 25 prompts delivered Monday to Friday for five weeks
...each week has a theme with two bigger projects and three smaller projects.
...all prompts are permanently archived online
...participants are invited to a private discussion forum and online chat party
...in total, you’ll receive detailed instructions for ten large projects and fifteen smaller creations.
...all twenty-five projects focus on the many definitions of home in your life.

Between now and the 24th, I’ll share a few more sneak peeks of the class projects. Maybe the next one will let you in on a little more than those three snippets above!

How to sign up:

Even if you’ve taken one of my classes before, please read this because there is one little change that is quite important!
To access the class materials, you need a login name at our class forum. If you have one from this past year’s Christmas Journal class, open a new tab/window and login here to make sure you remember your login and password.

If you didn’t participate in Christmas Journal ‘07, you won’t have a login yet. No problem—you just need to pick a name! Go here and register. You won’t be able to actually post on the board yet…that’s absolutely fine. You just need your login name at this point.

Okay! From here on out, it’s easy! You can pay in US Dollars or UK Pounds. (If you’re not from either of those countries, you can still join us—just pick whichever currency you prefer.) Click the button to pay. When you pay, there will be a box for your forum login name. Just put the login name in the box and all will be fine! Ready to click?

$20.00 US Dollars

£10.00 UK Pounds

A few little things to remember:
If you do not put your login name in the box during payment, there may be a delay in receiving class materials.
Please keep your confirmation email from Paypal. It is your receipt for the class.
The first prompt is delivered on Monday the 24th of March.

And now that’s quite enough formal talk for one evening! I think I shall go retire to a room that is more comfortable than the office, because after all, there’s no place like home!

(Yes, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Because I am from Kansas, after all.)

xlovesx

PS: Just to clarify—if you forget your login name or don’t see the box for it, please don’t worry. I can look your name up and all will be fine right now. It’s just really helpful if you do remember. And of course, if you wait until the day the class starts to sign up, then it gets a bit crazy. But so far we are doing just fine and everyone has had a name when I’ve looked it up so we’re all good!

Also, several of you have won places on this course or received them with other classes and so on. That is my big job for Monday, so I will be in touch with you then! ETA: This started today but it was a big job indeed so will finish tomorrow (Tuesday). Today’s other big job turned out to be driving through this. Whoa.

Comment [568]

On the last day of every term, I had such a routine that if a student was absent, I would tease them no end for skipping school in order to miss their self-assessment day. There were only about two that squirmed so much that I think they were actually guilty of just that.

It’s one of those things that goes in and out of fashion in the classroom. Everything in education goes in and out of fashion. The walls should be filled with resources, the walls should be filled with students’ work, the walls should be white to allow for concentration, and back to the beginning. We should teach rote grammar, we should forget grammar, and back and forth. Let’s start a committee to improve the learning for boys, now wait, ditch that, we need to focus on the girls. It all goes round and round and round and you just go with the flow. But sometimes the things that are new and in fashion (or should we say on trend these days?) sound so ridiculous you really do scream.

Like the fact that a big chunk of schools for the past several years have had special committees for…get this…thinking skills.

Yes. Apparently before this became the trend students didn’t think in lessons. No, of course that’s not it at all. (And in fact, if you really want to know, you can read about it here.) It’s just a new name for something that was there in places but needed more attention. But as a lover of words, I find it funny that such educated educators come up with names for things that are pretty daft. Because I do think the name gives the impression that we needed to stop everything we were doing because NO ONE IS THINKING!!! (Best imagined in cartoony stereotyped teacher voice after said cartoon has had far too much coffee in the staffroom because she thought she was drinking decaf and the prefects thought it would be funny to mess with her head. Little did they know it could actually explode.) Anyway, I have digressed.

Whether I like the name or the attention drawn to it, I don’t think we learn at our best if we just read, see and hear new stuff every day. But I don’t know many people who benefit all that much from multiple choice review worksheets either, especially if we’re talking about long-term retention and understanding. So I always asked the students to review things on their terms. Which may tick a lot of boxes for that committee on thinking skills, but it also takes a lot of trial and error.

I taught at my last school for seven years and the first year could have been a reality TV show. I had one class that was lovely, but I only saw them for two hours each week. I had one class that were incredibly clever but also incredibly mischievous and also didn’t fit in my classroom if no one was home sick. There were a few classes that were mostly passable but had two or three key characters that could rip me to shreds in a matter of minutes. And then there was 8C2. Oh. My. Goodness. Thirty-two twelve and thirteen year olds who were deemed ‘somewhere in the middle’. A strange arrangement that year meant we had one class for all the over-achievers and one class for kids who couldn’t make it from morning bell to lunch time without being sent home for fighting. So if you didn’t fit in either of those groups? Welcome to my classroom. Somehow I survive the first five weeks with them (it was a close call) and I sit down with my mentor teacher to discuss end of term reviews.

I was still high on education theory and textbooks and professional development days, so I was convinced it would work just like it was supposed to. I would put a few sentence starters on the board and they would magically compose a well though-out letter to me, with a paragraph each to cover a brief summary of what they learned this term, their highlights and lowpoints for the topics and assignments we completed, an evaluation of their time management and study habits and a self-assessment including what grade they thought they deserved, why they thought they deserved it, their personal target for the next term and three steps to making that a success. All signed yours faithfully, the wonderfully academic and responsible students of 8C2.

Instead, most of them discovered they didn’t know my name and proceeded to draw monsters from the deep lagoon or unicorns in their exercise books, depending on their gender. A few figured that would be a waste of paper and drew them on the desk, the wall or the person next to them instead. To save the trees, clearly.

Click for print-sized card.

For that entire year, I kept an old letter in my desk, where a friend who I haven’t heard from in a dozen years had written some perfectly charming message inside a get well card. You know when you expect the card will just have a signature and then you almost have to press the nurse call button because frankly you may have a heart attack after you read what is actually there? One of those. I have no idea where it is now, but it was the only thing that got me through lessons of monsters from the deep for an entire year. And you know what? That thing they say about the second year being so much easier? It was actually true. Somewhere along the line, I did learn how to get them to produce real letters and not sea creatures with deadly weapons. I wish I could say it was an epiphany. Really, it was more like coming up for air.

And that, my friends, is card twenty-nine, so that’s a wrap with Write it Down for now! Thank you so much for checking in this month…February was definitely a roller coaster here but it ended on a nice point with a whole heap of wonderful potential for March. For starters, I hope you’ll check out something new I’m quite thrilled to be doing—Work Out Wednesdays is a new weekly feature at the Frog Blog, giving one set of stamps a workout each week. The card above is a little peek at this week’s workout. So please stop by and check it out.

And then some of you actually be waiting for the very next post right here. Supercool. Stay tuned—it’ll be up before you know it!

xlovesx

Comment [16]

Before this month of Write it Down is out, I wanted to give you a little update to this story by sharing proof that I am actually getting into the habit of using supplies I’ve been saving for a special day. The paper front is going pretty well and I think I am using more from my drawer of old rub-ons than I have ever rubbed on in the past. So now I’m starting to get into the heavy stuff…bits and pieces that I’ve picked up some time, somewhere with some idea of making them into…something. This little slate is one of those.

I have two, so I think I might have originally thought they would make cute book covers. And they would, but if I have had them for at least three years and they are still in the packaging, somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen. So instead they can live on a wall or a shelf. At least this one. This was the original idea I had in my head when I started thinking about stamps. I like her a bit more in real life than I do in the photo, but in general I just get giddy with cute, simple things like this. Even if I resulted to using stupid flipping text speak to make the message fit into five hearts. (For the record, you can make the chain as many hearts as you like…it’s just that five fit onto the chalkboard.)

Click for print-sized card.

Today I drew a little girl with stripey socks and a red skirt and a banner of hearts in her hands.
...because Bev asked me if I wanted to make something.
...because the little girl had been in my mind for weeks.
...because I wanted to share an idea.
...because we need more art on our walls.
...because I have neglected my supplies long enough.
...because I wondered if I could really draw her at all.
...because it was more fun than doing the ironing.
But really, because making silly little things doesn’t feel silly to me. It feels happy.
And happy is an entirely different thing.

xlovesx

Comment [5]

Just have to say thank you to Wendy from Bad Girls Kits for inviting me to be their guest designer for March. The kit was entirely stuff I never would have bought for myself, but it was lovely fun once I got started. Can I tell you a little secret? This was the first time I had ever used a real, live Prima flower. Ever. I know that is so shocking that I may get thrown out of the world’s scrapbooking club, but seriously, I’d used just about every kind of flower out there except for the Primas. It’s crazy, I know. I’m still not quite sure how it happened.

(And to those of you who aren’t members of the world’s scrapbooking club, let me just explain the level of this seriousness in two ways. One, in scrapbooking, the word ‘prima’ actually means ‘flower’. As in, ‘Hold on, I need to stick a prima over there and then maybe I can call it done.’ Really. But even more impressive is the visual factor. Sure, you can look at this tour of a scrapbook room, but zoom in on her collection of Primas. See all those jars and bottles? Primas. That is some mad devotion.)

Suffice to say, I tried to use a ton of flowers and I still have half of them left. Which is okay, because although there are a bunch of projects I made posted on their website throughout March, the kit club subscribers will also get a special little class with a project from me to download next week.

Click for print-sized card.

So there’s still time for me to find a few more blank spots to fit a few Primas, I’m sure. They should make bumper stickers for crop bags. And one should read ‘If there’s room for a brad, there’s room for a Prima!’

xlovesx

Comment [6]

Oh my goodness, do you know how many places you can get a free daily horoscope on the internet? So many. I didn’t know because I had never looked until right now. Because I don’t go out of my way to read them.

I will, however, read them if I happen upon yesterday’s newspaper or a magazine from this time last year at the doctor’s office. Really it is only the out of date horoscopes I am interested in. I don’t like knowing or pretending to know the future. But I find it funny to look back and see if it was right.

You know the thing is they can always be right, right? If you read the one in yesterday’s paper. It’s now time for an embarrassing admission, you see. Please tell me that most of us have had moments in life where we needed to be a bit…creative…with employment. So one year when my Christmas job at the mall came to an end, I fell into something…interesting. I read tarot cards. Except I knew I was just spouting rubbish, because my entire training in tarot cards came from one paperback book bought from Spencer’s Gifts and repeatedly watching this episode of My So-Called Life on a worn-out copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy video tape. Because of that, I prefaced every reading with a speech about everything being for entertainment and not to take any of it seriously and people seemed to get that, so that was how I paid for my books one semester. I had a sociology class that term with a completely inane self-published textbook and I was always half-tempted to tell the teacher how I had raised the ridiculous $75 for her mandatory stack of photocopies, but of course I never had nerve like that. The textbook was probably the worst I ever used, but that didn’t mean I wanted to risk not getting a good grade. Survival over humour, you see.

Click for print-sized card.

And seriously, I cannot tell you how many times I said that ‘one door closes; another door opens’ line during this particular stint of employment. It covers everything.

xlovesx

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