Jumping back in

Goodness!  It's been a whole year since my last post!  Since then I have sold a couple of custom items on etsy, moved again (still in MD), my husband is now working for the Maryland Science Center designing and building exhibits once again, our cats are officially diagnosed as crazy and on generic prozac, and an opportunity to sell our items in a brick and mortar store fell through due to lack of vendor interest.

It's this last experience that has given a jump start to our creativity and an opportunity to collaborate on some really awesome pieces.  My husband is truly talented as an exhibit designer.  But he also has some awesome ideas for frames that highlight the beauty of the frameable scrapbook pages and cards I've been making.

This great frame has raised corners.  It holds a 12" x 12" page.

  

The pieces of this simple-looking frame are attached with dowels rather than nails.

Both of these are posted on etsy with more designs coming over the next few days.

My first... and second convention

I really do love scrapbooking. But, for Bill and me, it's more than scrapbooking. It's about preserving - or even recreating - memories. One year ago, my mom and I planned to go to the CKC in Nashville, TN, just south of where she lives. Even though I made this page for myself, I thought of my mom when I picked the paper. She loves polka dots.


After having gone to the convention with Mom in Nashville, I just had to go to the convention north of Boston in Manchester, NH. When I was in TN, I bought a "scraplete" shirt for Bill as a souvenir. He wore it when he went with me to Manchester. Never has a fully clothed man ever gotten so many looks, I think, as Bill that day.

Anyhow, I didn't have room for the booklets from both conventions, so I cut out the Manchester label from that booklet and pasted it onto the Nashville booklet. Cool, huh?

This large sticker had been sitting in my stash for months. Had to go on the page. I also used the same scissor and ribbon motif on a card (posted on Etsy - wink wink) you can see on an earlier post.

The narrative I created in a text box in Word and printed it on sticker paper. (Notice my correction? I've lived in Boston 5 years now after a lifetime in Florida. Still figuring out where all the states are.) Used a brad to attach the wrist bands on the page. Used the same kind of brad to hold together the tickets then tied the same ribbon (above) through the brad.

Here you can see the photo corner holding the booklet. And, the envelope holding the tickets had the list of classes we took. Cut out that section, distressed it, framed it with a color-coordinating card stock, and pasted here.

Happy scrapping 'til next time.

Music and Scrapbook Pages - Part 7 - Pops goes Soundheim!

I was a huge Sondheim fan before I ever knew he was the genius behind West Side Story! And this performance of the Boston Pops Orchestra and the singers shown here was phenomenal. They performed selections from various Sondheim pieces including West Side Story and Into the Woods.

Symphony Hall only had enough programs to give one to each party. So, rather than include the entire program mounted on photo corners, I cut mine up to create this page.

I used scissors with a decorative edge on two sides of the cover and placed the cover on a coordinating solid. The program pages themselves I placed on the left side of this page using brown ink on the edges to make it pop from the blush-colored musical background.

The pictures I also cut from the program and framed them with solid yellow squares.

A very simple page, I used just a couple of stickers. The final touch was the ribbon with staff lines and musical notes attached to the page with orange brads.



No need to adjust your computer filters for the next posting. This is "spam" you will love.

Music and Scrapbook Pages - Part 5 - Spacey as Darin

I l-o-v-e Kevin Spacey! He is a fantastic actor - do you know he went to high school with Val Kilmer and Mare Winningham? - and when I discovered he actually had a voice, I was hooked! I first heard him sing That Old Black Magic on the soundtrack for the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I was impressed.
Then came the release of the Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea. I know some critics panned the movie, but I bought it hook, line, and sinker! I got the soundtrack and a Bobby Darin CD to make the comparison. Just astounding!
I am a sucker for guys who can sing and act AND look good on screen - like Jesse L. Martin and this guy!

I happened to be looking online one day and found out about this 13-city concert tour. I bought the tickets, called Bill, and told him we were going.

Spacey sang with a small band of a dozen or so. He didn't try to be Bobby Darin - just sing Bobby Darin songs. Since I didn't feel I could do justice to the event with my own words, I copied an article from the local paper and snuck in a picture from the same concert into a Word text box. I also separately printed a color-copy of the same picture to pop up from the text.

This is the first page where I used uncoordinating paper - the bright orange stripes over the black and gold swirly music theme. I used a pair of scissors with a designer edge to soften the brightness of the orange.

From the concert itself, I cut out a piece of the bright pink flyer to use as an embellishment. Again we created our "We sat here" embellishment. Not orchestra seats, but near the front of the balcony anyway.


With so much already going on with the papers themselves, I did not want to go overboard with the embellishments. I added one heat-set embossed image in gold and another in glitter. But the glitter image was so subtle, I offset it with a matching 1/8 note die cut.

Stay "tuned" for the next page for a lesson in rainy day preparedness.

Music and Scrapbook Pages - Part 1

Today, we went to a Handel and Haydn Society program at Boston's Symphony Hall - so no scrapbooking... But, I had an idea to post scrapbook pages to commemorate past musical events. Be sure to return to this site over the next few days to see these pages - some made by me - others by my guy.

I can't wait to share these experiences and the creative results.

Thank you.

KittyKards

I am inspired by my mom, encouraged by my husband, and supported by both to begin this blog. While I have a full-time job that requires sporadic travelling, whatever free time I can manage to scrape together goes into card making and scrapbooking. Even when I travel, I can occassionally manage to create two or three cards (like the one below) on the road from my extremely stuffed scrapping travel bag.

You can check out my wares at my kittykards6473 store site on etsy.com.

My inspiration... mom... You should definitely check out her blogspace AND her creativity at her online studiobeecreations shop at etsy.com.

My encouragement... and heart of hearts... and closet scrapper... my guy... He is SOOO supportive. And creative, too. He helped me design this card by drawing the truck using the draw function in MS Word. Believe it! How talented is that?!

There are so many wonderful things I can say about these two rocks in my life. I look forward to sharing with you in future postings.