Photo Walk

One beautiful spring afternoon, Haley and I grabbed our camera's and headed to a wonderful trail close to our house on a photo walk.

Haley was taking some awesome photo's of some dead wood, of the creek and using her great eye for different angles and shapes. I'm proud of the way she is developing her talent of perspective.

Specifically, I wanted to use some magnifying lenses that Torrey turned me onto. They provide a very detailed close up, but also have a fun fish-eye barrel type perspective that is unusual and quite fun to play with. I spent most of my time looking for things that would work well with those rings on the end of my camera.

I'm quite happy with some of the results, although I do feel I still have a learning curve to get it to work just right and consistantly.

Haley and I have decided we need to do this more often. It was a wonderful time together and a great way to share our passion for photography.

One Special Lady

There are very few people in my life that have a bigger place in my heart than this lady. She's not only my aunt, she's an inspiration and a light to my soul.

I'm terrible about keeping in touch with her...and I vow to do better...but when we get together, I realize how much she means to me.

She's such a sweet soul and I know that we are connected not only by blood, but by spirit as well...kindred spirits.

She just makes me smile! And you know what? That's right...
I love you Aunt Laura!

Ready or Not...Here They Come

• It's happening.... Any parent of a cute daughter would relate.... It's a nightmare! ACK!!!
• The boys are showing up on our doorstep, they're calling, they're texting, they're HERE! ACK!!!
• The flavor of the week? Jacob. He's a polite and cute kid, who never says goodbye, just "peace". ACK!!!
• What's a parent to do? That's not rhetorical...seriously, tell me please!

Weekend Scrapbooking Retreat Report

What a wonderful weekend! Lots of great time for scrapbooking, excellent food and most important, being surrounded by terrifically talented and awesome people. Gosh I love these weekends. Tons and tons of time to scrap, late night after late night, chick flick after chick flick, great food and fabulous fellowship.

I admit, my first few pages were very subpar...but it's been a long time since I've actually scrapped a page. So, I'm chaulking those up to "warm-up"... Once I finally got some mojo flowing, I was pretty happy with the end results. Although, my stack of completed work was far minimal compared to some of these gals who scrapped circles around me.

Thanks Mom....You rock in my book. I so appreciate all your hard work and dedication to pulling this together. I love and adore you.

(By the way girls...first to post! hahahaha)

Paper anyone?

With all the jewelry play I've been experimenting with, I realized how long it's been since I've worked with paper....my true medium of choice.

So, last weekend I had the chance to go play a little at Heather's house and although we didn't pull an all-nighter like we thought we would, we did have a chance to play and make some fun cards. I haven't done anything creative with paper in a long long time, so it seemed a little rough. But it has reawaken my desire to scrap and make cards.

With the scrapbook weekend retreat at mom's fast approaching, I think my goal this weekend will be to clean up my scrap space, put away some of the jewelry stuff for now and bring out the paper. I even had a few good photo's of Haley that are screaming to be scrapped.

Here's hoping the inspiration flows.....

Two weeks in...and loving it

I haven't posted about the new job because I keep meaning to go take some photos of the office / firehouse and post them. Well, so far that hasn't happened. Maybe I could just add ....

But that wouldn't be right now would it?

Here's a synopsis of my new job.... I am working for the Boulder County Sherrif's office. The small town of Superior sub contracts with the Boulder County Sherrif's office to provide a police force for their small community. I work with that force. I am the administrative person for the small sub-station.

Now, some might ask what does that have to do with fireman? Well, our small sub-station has a small three-room office in the firehouse. So, not only do I get to work with all the deputies, but I get to see and work around all the firemen as well. Now, what girl would not like that job? That's right ladies....eat your heart out!

More on the job later....

Fun stuff - Friendly Plastic w/ Rub-on's

So, while Linda Peterson was here she taught me this fun technique. She was taking white friendly plastic, using rub-ons on top and then using alcohol inks to add color to the piece. I loved the look (and by-the-way, got a wonderful prototype piece from her...), but tried it with a metalic silver piece of Friendly Plastic instead of the white. Here are some samples of the pendants I've made using this technique.

The metalic underneath the alcohol inks gives it almost a satin-like finish under the rub-ons. In fact, some of the pieces have a very Asian-silk-print-material-look to them. The photo's don't really do them justice.

I'm really liking the way these are turning out and looking for more innovative ways to use this fun medium.