rubber stamping, collage, mixed media & altered art

My excitement knows no bounds today. Christine at The Artists’ Nook just announced she’s taking preorders for two new products. The first one is the morpheus box that Michael deMeng has been teaching in his workshops recently. I wasn’t able to take that particular class, and I was so hoping that I’d be able to buy a “blank” morpheus box and wing it myself. And WOOHOO! Here it is!

In June, I was junking for a bit with Christine and Leighanna Light at one of the cooler stores in the “antique store row” of Fort Collins. I found a printers tray I really liked, but couldn’t afford and then I found a knockoff which I could afford and I was delighted. Christine had told me she was thinking of having some made and lo and behold, here it is. I am so giddy, I can barely contain myself.

If you click on these images, you will be taken to the shop at The Artists’ Nook, where you can preorder these items. I knew all of my arty friends would be into these cool finds! I’m thinking of getting a couple of the printers trays…one for my most used wood mounted stamps and one for some sort of special soul-searching project. For the morpheus box, I’m thinking something like “the many faces of tracey” is a good starting point.

What will YOU do with these cool treasures?

I’m in northern California this weekend, visiting a dear friend whose birthday was yesterday. Her husband and I schemed to surprise her with my (and my husband’s presence) and we showed up Thursday after work (after driving all day Wednesday and Thursday). It was pretty cool to surprise her like that. We almost didn’t go on this trip because of a few financial and health related issues, but I’m really glad Tim talked me into it. I have been truly exhausted and drained lately and I think this was just what I needed to help refill my well.

There was a lot of birthday-related activity this weekend, but today we were able to just have some unplanned fun. We four got in the car armed with the names of a few shops and headed to 4th Street in Berkeley to get our craft on. (Well, one husband spent a lot of time with his iPhone and the other husband toodled around pointing out cool stuff that I may have missed, and also took quite a bit of video footage for me.)

First stop was Paper Source, then we headed to Castle in the Air and Scrapbook Territory. Well, nothing had me prepared for the joys ahead. The photos you see here are most of my crafty purchases for today. I spent way more than I intended, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Barely any guilt at all!

I have been to various Paper Source stores before, but I managed to find a few stamps and little bits that I’d never seen before, including the little curse word, the dreams stamp, the face and the little checkbox stamp. oh, and the super heavy chipboard tags with grommets in them. YUM! (You can click on the photos to see larger images.)

Castle in the Air was sweet and funky and very unusual. I found some stamps and other goodies there, as well, including some spun cotton mushrooms (!). I don’t know what I’m doing with them for sure, but I suspect it will have something to do with gnomes., probably from Ellie (I think that’s her name). I’ve been coveting this gnome stamp for quite a while now. I also got a set of 6 metallic Lyra Ferbry pencils and cool birds…I forget what that style of die cut that is, with the little strips that you cut to get them apart, is. They are gorgeous.

Scrapbook Territory — Oh my stars and garters — I have never seen such a bounty of papercrafty goodness. I’ve never seen a scrapping store with such a great stamp collection, there were so many rubber and acrylic stamps, a great selection of Hambly stuff, I could go on and on. Seriously, if you are ever in the area, it is a store to behold. I also found some awesome brads, cool rubons and a clear acrylic tag book. I am drooling just thinking about what I’m going to do with it (I don’t know for sure yet, but the possibilities are endless, aren’t they?).

We also hit Hydra, where I got a few cool bath beads. Then we went to Ghiradelli, where we got some hot fudge to take home. I also splurged and Jennie and I picked out a few bracelets from a sidewalk vendor. I never buy stuff like that for myself and I’m on vacation, so I set myself free for a bit. that made me really happy and now my wrists are all girly and pretty!

This trip, more than any before, has really hit home for me how much I need to take time for myself now and then, and how I need to get my ass out of town and step back from life to rest my soul. I think I learned this from my Artists’ Way stuff I’ve been doing during the past two weeks. More on that later.

P.S. Jennie’s mom is big into decorating gourds and gave me two to take home and art up. I’m really excited. I wonder if that gnome and a mushroom should go to live inside a gourd! Also, Jennie’s husband saved me two cigar boxes and I’ve been saving all sorts of little odd bits and pieces for journaling, etc. Her sister mixed up a homemade batch of color spray using mod podge, water and pearl ex and then showed me her scrapbook pages and her die cut thing that plugs into her PC (I forget the name). It’s been a super crafty weekend, for not having actually made anything!

P.P.S. S.C.R.A.P. is closed on Sundays and Mondays, so we won’t be getting there this trip. I am crushed.

…although I wouldn’t call work and worrying about my dad’s health fun, necessarily.

This is a quick note, since I’m a bit late for my self-imposed Thursday blog update. I ordered more color mists from Outside The Margins and I believe Tim is picking them up from my PO box today, so I’m looking forward to getting out some of my aggression tomorrow with those. Also, Kelly Kilmer, evil enabler that she is, posted about jetpens.com on her blog a few days ago, thus causing me to place a large (for me) order of pens I don’t really need, but that I need. If you know what I mean.

This past weekend, I managed to do some backgrounds. They’re big, and made mostly of scraps lying around the studio, and I intend to cut them up to make Valentine’s Day cards. We’ll see how that goes. My dad has been in the ICU in upstate New York for almost two weeks now and things aren’t looking good, so it’s distracting me from everything else I need to do in my daily life. I hope to catch up on work tomorrow so I can spend at least an hour doing some art.

And that’s all I got for today. Maybe Thursday’s update will be inspiring!

This is going to sound silly, but you just don’t appreciate a pair of scissors as much as you do when they’ve just been sharpened. In my world, growing up, you just don’t do things like that…You just suffer with dull scissors. I didn’t even know until probably college that scissors could be sharpened!

Anyway, years ago, I bought a pair of rubber scissors made by Kai. I had read they were the best scissors for trimming rubber stamps and I found a pair on sale (because I was very poor back then) so I got them. They were great. I must have bought them 10 years ago, at least. Well, they just haven’t been cutting very well lately and I remembered that Kai offered a sharpening service, so I went and sought out their website. Which says nothing about sharpening service, by the way.

But I called and spoke with Jim and he said it was $5, which included return postage. I received them the other day and just this morning, tried them out. I trimmed my new Cat’s Pajamas margarita stamps and I couldn’t believe how smoothly and quickly those thing went through the rubber. I had to be really careful not to slip and ruin the image!

So let that be your lesson for today kids. First of all, buy a pair of Kai scissors for trimming your rubber. And send them to be sharpened, when needed, over to Jim at Shear Precision Scissor Co. You’ll be so glad you did!

Oh. MY. Run, do not walk, to reasonableribbon.com and join her ribbon club. Debbie finds the most gorgeous stuff and it’s all lovely. I have never once been unhappy when my ribbon club or any ribbon order arrived. Here’s what came in this month’s mailing.