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

greetings from the garden state. internet access is easier and cheaper (not to mention working) in newark airport. not so much for my hotel room in atlanta, but hey…that’s how it goes.

{this is the first flight in ages where i have had a layover that meant i could do something other than run from one gate to the next. i just ate lunch at the garden state diner, where the waitress said no one my age knows what an ice cream soda is – their loss – and they had a suitable in-diner soundtrack, except for this really random playing of ace of base in the middle. so yeah…exploring airports. and listen up youngsters: ice cream sodas = yum. just had to clear that up.}

that’s proof that i actually did some scrapbooking on this trip. in ali’s awesome album track. and you know something is good if i pull out words like…awesome. i must be jetlagged already. those are my tablemates, pj, kelly & meredith. we ate cupcakes and carrot sticks and drank twenty-seven minute wait coffee and talked and scrapped. there will be more proof later.

and that would be just one of the obligatory scrapceleb photos. but seriously. she’s a gem. totally.

now i’m gonna get on a plane on monday, wake up in england on tuesday and fly to iceland on wednesday. there is no way to get me off this high, i tell you.

{there is the fact that i need to drive a manual car in iceland. this will be an adventure in itself.}

more later.

xlovesx

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i was working on anne’s ‘self-portrait’ journal when we spent an art-girl weekend at sherwood forest. this was just past my just started phase—when i’ve got the main stuff where i want it and take the time to figure out what details i want elsewhere. except anne was THERE. and she loved it just like THIS. so to me, it’s still unfinished…but maybe that’s quite appropriate for a self-portrait?

interestingly, this is much more like my style of years ago, when i was in love with white space, except what isn’t white isn’t quite so minimal as it was then. never know what this is going to cause.

photos by tami – december 2004. if you live in that lovely suburban mecca that is kansas city, you should have your pictures taken. she’s amazing, she is.

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sally’s rules: you can not include mushy fall-in-love-get-married-have-children stuff, but list five things you want to do before you die. which is just as well by my terms. sally and i have a subtle icelandic joke thing going due to her recent trip, hence the top one. the back of each tag explains why and how. and bygoshbygolly: I DID NOT USE EARTH TONES. go me.

seriously, you have no idea how hard that is for me. shim + colour = MESS.

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i don’t know about some of these journal girls. they’ve already got you sending off pages in your diary for them to read and then they go and set a topic like this—ten things you never knew about me. well, pssh. everyone else in this book seemed to have kept some nice, normal things secret previously. i obviously talk too much because there is no way i could get away with saying how many siblings i have or where i was born. no. i had to come up with the goods.
but ha, you can’t see it. cuz it’s all hidden behind those tags. they all open like this:

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anie’s constructed a swatch ring of envelopes, each with a cd inside. each of us has to pick a colour so that the completed ring will hold all the colours in the rainbow and then some. i went with black for a few reason: because i was in love with my new can of matte-finish black spray paint, because i thought no one else would, because it is half of my favourite colour (redandblack) and because i’d just heard ‘paint it black’ about three minutes before i opened the parcel and it just seemed appropriate.

one note on altering cds: i don’t think i will ever take the cover-in-paper route. i just don’t think that’s playing fair. you’re supposed to alter the cd itself. putting paper over the top means you’re just working in a circle, not with the unique surface at all. i am a big fan of the embossing enamel approach and now i’ve added spray paint to that. anything but paper, really. that’s just cheating.

ok, off cd-altering-soapbox now.

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and we enter a new era of photos…the ones where i actually like how things look just sitting naturally on the table. hmm. we’ll see how long this trend lasts, eh?

i found cheryl’s circular journal so difficult that i took it out several times before i finally brought myself to commit an idea to paper. i tried to go with an overall feeling, then break it down into the senses rather than building up the other way around, if that makes any sense at all. it very well may not. material wise: new textured cardstock that i’m in love with, half a bouquet of house of fraser silk flowers, obvious corporate literature, denim and hot pink safety pins. it’s far more legible in real life than it is here.

for the record? i don’t like round. apparently, i really am a square (or a rectangle) after all.

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cherry wanted recipes.

i do not cook.

i did, however, find the recipe for my favourite and most habitual dish: moyashi soba @ wagamama. thanks to the covent garden wagamama for the giant supply of menus and postcards to use at my disposal. love you.

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Bev asked a dangerous question…what did we do with the summers of our youth? i spent mine at a variety of summer camps for brainy and creative kids.

the painting is not mine, i’m afraid. it’s a paul mccartney print, cut apart and pieced back together a bit wrong. the transparent text is from an old letter.

bev also asked us to make a tag with a recent photo, separate from the book. an excuse to break out my adorable instax camera, then!

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