St. Charles Part 2

Here are a few more precious gems from St. Charles.

St. Charles Part 1

I have been to St. Charles in both summer and spring, but wow....FALL is gorgeous. Check out these lovely photos of the historic downtown. It was beautiful.

Prompt #21 Negative Space

I have been craving a good challenge lately. Over at the Creative Type there is a fun one this week.

I decided to use some of my new Earth Love Cosmo Cricket paper from Archiver's. It is divine. I LOVE it. Actually everything is from Earth Love...except the 'create' card...it is from 7Gypsies...and the little Matryoshka stamp...I can't remember where it is from....but it is a really cute set, I will look when I get home later.

Hope you are having a great day!

Fall Thank You cards

Last week, I somehow managed to stamp up a whole bunch of leaves. I took them with me to St. Louis and on my downtime in the hotel room, I managed to cut out a bunch of them for cards. I whipped up a huge stack of thank you cards earlier this week. Yahoo! Trying to get ahead. feels good.






Oh, and while I was in St. Louis I visited an Archiver's. Wow. They were hiring. I was tempted to leave my career for an hourly wage in retail so long as it included some teaching of techinques....very tempted.

Guest Book

Okay, so somehow I managed to finish Danielle's guest book. I promise, I am not a procrastinator. I literally could not have finished it any earlier than the morning of the wedding. She wanted it to be a guest book/photo album and I got the pictures from her while I was at my art teacher's conference. Then I had to make the book. And get the pictures printed. Then put it all together. Needless to say, I was still adding pictures the morning of the wedding so I do not have any pictures of the pictures in the book. But here you can see what I did with it.


Danielle is a metalsmith so I had to include some lovely copper paper with little metal accents.




Ooh, and gold embossing.


Some handmade paper is on the inside of the book and also some gold vellum.





The front cover is cardstock with a ribbon down the seam. I really wanted a nice pressed hand made paper, but I just didnt' have time to order anything and there isn't anything like that in Joplin.



Everyone signed it in gold pen and the colors of the book reflect the wedding colors. This guest book is sort of taking the place of a traditional wedding guest book and combining it with the idea of getting a picture matted with a huge mat so that there is room for everyone to sign around it. I had all of their engagement pictures printed in wallet size, in sepia tones so that they would coordinate with all the rust colored paper.

Thanks for reading!

On scrapbooking and paper art.

The term scrapbooking is a little dorky. My friends (the non-scrappers) tend to make fun of me for my late night scrapping habits. They just don't get it. I love photos. I love paper. I love techniques. I feel like what I do is more than scrapbooking. I create art with paper and photos. I am inspired by other people who make art with paper and photos. I am not inspired by boring photo albums. I want beauty. I want art. I like to combine good design with text and stamps and stickers. I love making cards. Here is a kit from Close to My Heart that helped me to combine all of my favorite things. I made 2 'scrap book' pages and LOTs of cards using this awesome Twitterpated kit. I changed it a little to make it more mine, but the workshop guide made it easy for me to get it completely finished in a reasonable amount of time. So great for me. I haven't had a lot of time to make anything lately. I actually made all of this last weekend when my brother stayed the weekend with me. In between going to the recycling center, lunch, hitting up a scrapbooking sale (thanks Yvonne and Stacy!), where the wild things are (fantastic, I want to build a fort!), chuck-e-cheese and the late-night spookhouses, I was able to create a 2 page layout and 12 cards.






WOW! This was perfect for me. If I am not 'feeling it' with all the creative mojo...which is often....a kit like this helps me to break through and actually complete SOMETHING. And it was fun. And I am proud of myself. And I like it. So yeah. I don't care if scrapbooking is dorky. Or if it makes me less of an artist. It is fun. It is a creative outlet. It keeps me going. I need it.

p.s. I followed the workshop guide for my first six cards. They look exactly like the ones in the guide. These additional cards, I made up using the same layout but different paper and stamps.

The Wedding was lovely...

I don't feel entirely prepared for the week ahead of me. I need to unpack. I need to write. I need to create something. I need to get ready for Red Ribbon Week (with the entire array of dress up days.)

Anyway....I thought I would share some pics from the wedding with you!
While I wasn't the official wedding photographer, I got some great shots! These are some of my favorite pictures. I thought it would be fun to convert them to poladroids...

I miss bloging....

i am busy. so busy.

i got a few crafty things done recently, i will share them soon.

i got some new black boots.

my halloween costume has finally come together.

isn't this just the sweetest little Carol from Where the Wild things Are?


i have started an art teacher blog. i will be posting lesson plans and student examples as sort of an archive and reflective space for my career. i think it is going to be great. now if i just had time to type anything up.....

off to st. louis this weekend. i am super excited!!

Whew What a Weekend!

I spent a lot of time this weekend doing family stuff and some photography. I did squeeze in a bit of craftiness. I put together a scrapbook layout and a bunch of cards. I will try to take some pictures of those today...hmmm....the sun is going down so much earlier now...I don't want daylight savings time to end. Anyway, I am working on my Down on Main Street photo series and I shot a few pictures this weekend of the courthouse in Carthage. The pictures turned out really cool. Enjoy!

No time....

For a {real} post. So here is a quick shot of something cool.

This is a butterfly collage, card and necklace I made for a birthday gift this weekend. The collage will be framed. The chipboard butterflies are K&Co, mixed with a variety of Basic Grey stickers, CTMH paper and an Hero Arts woodgrain stamp. Enjoy!

So what does one do at an art teacher's convention?

Well, this particular convention is held every fall at a beautiful camp ground in Missouri. Two years ago, I was wearing shorts, sweating the entire time...this year, I was totally bundled up and freezing. But I thought it would be fun to give you a taste of what we do there.

My trip.
I drove from Joplin to Knob Noster taking a slight detour to the Osceola Cheese place.....the hap.hap.Happiest place on earth (well, on highway 13 anyway!)....They have a giant cheese cooler with free samples. You can try anything from plain old cheddar to blue berry gouda. YUM!


It was freezing so I stopped to buy some red boots to keep my feet dry. I got the last pair of red ones. Totally worth every penny.



I found a really cool laundromat and decided to take a few pictures before heading to the campground. I was trying to kill some time, it was cold and I got into town really early.


First workshop. Edible color wheel. Yum! Frosting and vanilla wafers.


From there I went to several other cool workshops...didn't take any super cool photos to share...most of it was elementary artwork in bad lighting.

@ Drag'n'Brag teachers bring some of their recent lessons that they are proud to share with others. Saw a few cool things there.


Bundled up with my friend Danielle. We met at this conference 2 years ago. She met her future husband at the conference last year. They are getting married in 2 weeks. We only see each other a couple of times a year, but we have so much in common!

On Friday night there is a big tent set up and everyone paints giant canvas art advocacy banners. Here is a really cool one based on a Boulevard Beer label. I love it!



We slept in bunk beds...

On Saturday, we got dirty.


And crafty.



I made this clay hedgehog. Isn't he so cute! (Lindsay...don't look at him...he might be a Christmas gift for you)


I just love this conference, it is so easy to make friends and I can just be me.



I didn't get out my new camera on this trip, it was just super heavy and I wanted something lightweight and easy to use. On a couple of the photos above, I used my iPhone. Anyway, I hope you are having a great week. I hope I get home before dark today so that I can take a few pictures of some Christmas cards I have been working on. Thanks for reading!