Society of Stampaholics

And the Morsel Goes To...

Thank you for everyone who linked to their favorite inspiration this week! If you would like to see what terrific inspirations were declared, visit this post and click on the links provided by Mr. Linky. (There's some amazing stuff there, so check it out!)

And the random generator selected:

Number 22 was Sally Sherfield, and she was inspired by Dierdre - Irl's fabulous card:

Ladies, message me through flickr - I'm Deborah (aka Gigi) - with your snail mail addresses so I can send you your morsels!

Thank you to everyone who participated, and we'll do this again in two weeks (October 9-11). Mr. Linky will be up and accepting links to what inspired you from September 28 - October 11, 2009. In November, we'll do an uber-draw for a Hero Arts 4x6 clear set!

Gigi and Project Runway

I spent Saturday rushing around trying to get our house in order before my mother showed up the next day for Gigi's baptism. Being your typical 7-year-old, Gigi was about as helpful as - oh, I don't know - an oil slick on a staircase?

Well, that's a little harsh, actually. But she was making me a little nuts with some of her antics. Finally, I said to her, "Why  don't you go into the living room and watch TV?" (Yes, I was that desperate.) So off she went, and I later found her engrossed in Project Runway, of all things!  When I arrived, they had reached the runway part of the program, and Gigi had no problem asserting her opinion on which "on song" was good and which one was "just an embarrassment."

"Just an embarrassment...?!"

Tim Gunn, you've corrupted my child....

I was moving in and out of surrounding rooms, so Gigi proceeded to shriek a play-by-play of the show.

I was in the bedroom when I heard a new episode starting. Heidi Klum was being very coy about their guest judge - saying she was a professional model and a celebrated movie and television actress. Not being all that familiar with current shows, I figured it had to be Tyra Banks (because, no offense to Rosie and Ellen and Oprah, but supermodels, they ain't). And doesn't Tyra have a couple of shows - a talk show and something about models?) I hollered out my guess and Gigi brays back, "Is she preeeeeeegnant? Cause this lady says she's preeeeeeegnant!"

(Well, I ask you, how would I know that, for crying out loud?! I can't even keep track of all Angelina Jolie's baby-making, and SHE I recognize.)

About a second later, I hear Heidi reveal Miss Thang's name. So did Gigi, and being the self-appointed Bob Costas of Casual Wear, she bellows, "YOU WERE WRONG, MAMA! It's not her - it's REBECCA OF MAINE!"

I have to tell you that I got this picture in my mind of a Teutonic diva - straight out of Wagner - sporting braids and a horned helmet with matching breastplate - the works. And in my mind's eye, I saw Rebecca Romijn in this get-up, brandishing Maine's state flag in one hand and a lobster in the other....

And I just lost it.

Have You Been to The Farm? AND Lookit What I Got!

No, not the kind that produces milk or corn or other less-glamorous products.

I'm talking about a Farm that sows a far more exotic seed... that then grows and blossoms into a full-grown rubber delight...

I'm talking about The Greeting Farm!  

And lest you think we're talking about images of Bessie the Cow and Mr. Ed and the like, know that approximately 95% of the images are of people and 5% are of animals. If you love coloring stamped images with your Copics, and you haven't been to The Farm, you are missing out because:

• These images are perfect for Copics.

• They're very versatile - you can use them for both adult and child cards, masculine and feminine.

• They're very nicely priced - especially the shipping, because they aren't mounted on wood (they're uncut rubber mounted on gray foam backing). You cut them out, slap 'em onto an acrylic block, and you're in business, baby!

• They have a cool blog with daily prizes.

So what's not to love?

My friend Donna Mikasa is a big Farm Addict. She's made many cards with Farm images and posted them on her blog, Three Umbrellas.  Go here to see a card she made honoring two of our friends who were just selected to work on The Farm's design team.

Kelly Booth (one of the above mentioned DT members) is certified in Copic markers, and she's another big Farm lover. You can see her amazing Farm work at her blog, Lovin' the Life I Color.

I'm not really up to their cardmaking abilities, but I made Spouse a card using a Farm owl. 

You, too, can take a trip to the Farm and pick some rubber, so go now!!!

The Greeting Farm Rubber Stamps

LATER...

As you know, I mentioned above the uber-fabulous Kelly Booth as a Copic Goddess. And guess what I got in the mail from her yesterday?!

A card! And it features a Greeting Farm image:

Did I not tell you that Kelly's a wonderful card maker?! And a real sweetie, to boot!

You should definitely go check out her blog for more card-making goodness at Lovin' the Life I Color.

Thank you, Kelly!

Blog Morsels - Rewards for Inspiration!

If Blog Candy refers to a prize that meets a specific monetary threshold, what do we call a prize that falls beneath that amount?

I'm calling such a thing a Blog Morsel. Plenty tasty but not large enough to impress a date.

After surveying my rather swollen stash of goodies, I thought I'd put together two card kits as prizes (see inventory below) - one for the nominator and one for the nominee who inspired the nominator. The pair will be selected via the random number generator located in the left panel of my blog.

After conducting an informal poll - thank you all for your suggestions - I thought we could do this every other Friday, and THEN, at the end of two months, we could have a random drawing from ALL the nominees and nominators for ONE piece of actual Blog Candy - something a little more substantial than a Morsel (like a Hero Arts Clear Set).

WHAT TO DO

1. Nominate someone whose work has inspired you in the past two weeks by linking to the art that inspired you (use Mr. Linky below). You will put YOUR name into the name field, but link to HER art.

2. If your nominee is randomly chosen, you, the nominator, will need to leave me a comment on the announcement post telling me how to contact you so I can get your snail mail address. If you don't, I'll have no way of getting your prize to you because Mr. Linky will only have a link to your nominee, not you.

"RULES"

As a nominator, you can nominate as many as three different people each time we have a draw.

As a nominee, you can be nominated an unlimited number of times.

The nomination period for this draw is September 12 - 25.

The nomination deadline is midnight, EST, on Sunday, September 27, 2009.

"THE PRIZE"

The prize is a card kit I created out of coordinating materials from my stash. Although I'm only including one card base, there are enough materials to make more than one card.

This card kit includes:
- 1 card base and envelope (Hero Arts)
- 8 pieces of 6" x 6" patterned paper (2 pieces each pattern) (My Mind's Eye)
- 2 Nestibility paper shapes
- 2 stamped Greeting Farm images (not pictured - it's a surprise!)
- 1 roll of ribbon (Martha Stewart)
- 3 regular buttons & 1 flower button (Autumn Leaves)
- 3 pewter brads (Making Memories)
- 4 clear gems (Creative Imagination)
- 3 flowers (Prima)
- 1 large flower (Heidi Swapp)
- 1 tag rim (Making Memories)

I hope everybody decides to join in and have a good time!

The Me-Me Award

I've had a few people give me some awards in the last few months. I very studiously copied them into a folder to pass on when I had the chance. Now I'm getting some time, and I find that I no longer remember who sent me what.

What a chowderhead.

So if you sent me an award and I didn't post and pass it along, it's because I was too stupid to actually attach some sort of note identifying the rules, etc. If you have been miffed at my lax behavior, please feel free to send me an email taking me to task as I so richly deserve!

My lovely Hero Arts buddy and fellow former Hostess, Donna Mikasa, has sent me the MeMe Award, and I am determined to not blow it this time!!! The rules to this one are that you have to reveal seven secrets about yourself and pass the award on to seven other bloggers. Now somebody sent me something like this on Facebook, and I went ahead and posted it on my page there. So this information is technically NOT a secret anymore, but the majority of the world doesn't know it, so I'm thinking it counts as a secret.

Seven "Secret" Things About Me

1. My maternal grandfather was 70 years old when my mother was born... and she is an only child. I’m the only person of my generation that I know who can claim a grandparent born in 1875.

2. I flunked Algebra in high school because I was so intimidated by everything that I’d heard about it, I didn’t do the homework. When I took the class again, I did the homework and felt like a total idiot for ever being afraid of it.

3. I was a goodie-two-shoes who never did drugs or drank or anything even remotely racy until my freshman year in college when I decided to see what was the big deal about mind expansion via pharmaceuticals by dropping a hit of acid. I found the whole experience to be overrated and kind of annoying.

4. In 1987, I was on my way to Washington, DC, with no job and no prospects, so I figured I might as well have no money, too. I gave my last $3 to a woman begging in the Port Authority bus station in NYC. And thus I entered into the most successful period of personal growth that I have ever experienced.

5. Watching Survivor is my Guilty Pleasure.

6. I am a logic puzzle junkie.

7. As a child, I loved The Little Colonel series by Evansville, Indiana, native Annie Fellows Johnston, and I have managed to collect all but one of them as an adult. Written in the early 1900's, these books were last published in the 1940's - which is why it's been difficult to collect them.

I would lie to share the Me-Me Award with the following seven people:

1. Pia
2. Jacqueline
3. Beverley
4. Diana
5. Alana
6. Susanne
7. Andi

Thank you, Donna, for sharing this award with me!

Spotlight on Tracey Kuzniak

Ah, it's Wednesday again! I like Wednesdays. It means I am officially on the downhill slope to the weekend.

And I loooooves me a good weekend!

Today's Wonder is like all the others: Basically Brilliant. She's also Hot. (I didn't look this good when I was 23 and at my peak.)

Please shake hands with Tracey Kuzniak:

And here she is being all fit:

And here she is poolside - looking like a Hollywood power broker making multi-million-dollar-deals with the likes of Brad Pitt and Renee Zellwegger.

I feel distinctly frumpy right now.

And now that Tracey's face is probably redder than her hair, (sorry, girl - that's the price you pay for being a Hottie!) we can examine her art.

Which is also Very Hot.

I am trying so hard to select a few favorites, but it's downright impossible. There are so many fabulous choices. Let's start out by saying that she's a Detail Diva - which I am so envious of! I look down at my cards as I'm creating them and feel soooooo not up to the task - I have to really struggle to make my cards interesting because I am gifted in wailing not detailing. But Tracey is not so cursed. Check it out:

I could sit there all day (have sat there all day, in fact) and not come up with something this cool. It's the little details that make the difference. Like the embossing  of the sentiment. And that little bow behind the brown button - such a small thing, but if you imagine the card without it, there would be a real diminishing of the whole. And then there's the mix of patterns - oh, she's good at that! (I myself need to take a Remedial Pattern Placement class.)

Here she's working that embossing again, (very nice detail choice with the simple dots provided by the dry embossing on the scalloped base) and the double-button is just perfection. This card is a good "negative" example of Tracey's skills. "Negative" referring to the choices she didn't make. Those choices are rarely noticed because of their very absence - but it's their absence that lifts the thing above the crowd. As an example, you see there is no bow tied under the button this time - that would have been overkill (as would stitching around any of the paper elements). You also see an absence of patterned paper - which is a good thing because this card is already visually stimulating enough with all those curves. The card is small and the curve-to-area ratio is through the roof, so adding patterned paper to the mix would create a battle for dominance, and your eyes would scream, "Enough, already!"

Tracey knows when to stop. Which is one of the hardest skills to master.

I like this one because, again, she's got a handle on all those little details - picture this card without the button on the bow or the button having just a simple threading rather than seeing the knot and ends. I also love what she did with the stitched background design - that is so cool! There's a very subtle pattern on the butterflies - which is great because a complete lack of pattern would have been a little boring, and a more aggressive pattern would have blown the visual balance of all the elements as a whole. And notice that she didn't highlight any of the angled edges with ink distressing or stitching. Add either in your mind's eye, and you'd see a card with too many interesting elements - a Craft Stew, if you will.  

So what do you think about this lovely? Can you discern what's NOT there and why its absence makes this card fabulous? Can you imagine changing any of the things that ARE present - and why a different choice(s) would diminish this card?

(Just in case any of you didn't know it, I have an education steeped in the arts and taught college for ten years, so I'm big on analysis as a learning tool. And I Yearn to Learn what Tracey knows!)

Would you like to see Tracey's creative space? I was tickled by the following pictures - I know that my attic is a prettied-up slum, but at least I do have a dedicated space. I know that most of us don't have that luxury, so I think it's cool that she's giving us a peek into a less-than-ideal work space. (However, I am filled with lust over her windows - would you look at all that LIGHT?!)

The bad news about Tracey's set-up is that it kind of chops you off at the knees if you're telling yourself you need a dedicated space to be brilliant!

Tracey's talent has earned her some honors and recognition. She's done very well over at the Hero Arts blog in the weekly challenges: Thanks (Fresh Face), Inspired By (WAD) (2nd Place), Go Green (Scrapbook Page), Heartfelt (Scrapbook Page), Diecuts (2nd Place), and Distress (2nd Place). Tracey also won some Hero Arts stamps for her entry in the Caardvarks Winter Wonderland challenge, and she's been published twice in Canadian Scrapbooker magazine for winning inspiration challenges. Last of all, she was a guest designer on the Card Patterns blog (you get to be the next week's designer if you win their weekly challenge).

Oh, and let's not forget that she's a Hero Arts Hostess!

So the girl's gettin' around!

With no further ado, lift your Diet-Cokes to Tracy Kuzniak, the Detail Diva!

Tracey's Wonder-ful Interview

1. Do you pre-sketch a design or do you just leap out of the gate? How long does it usually take you to make a page? A card?

Sometimes I presketch, but mostly not! Takes me a good many hours to make a card, and usually a day or two for a scrapbook page. I watch TV and eat while scrappin', so this probably slows me down? (!!!)

2. How many, on average, pages per week do you make? Cards?

I try to make one scrapbook page - if it fits with the challenge - and 1-3 cards.

 3. How has your process evolved to make you a leaner, meaner crafting machine? (In other words, what are some lessons you've learned or tips you can share that allow you to make better and faster design choices?

I haven’t got there yet… so NO tips to share  LOL!

4. What's your stand-by, FAST dinner solution for those times when you really want to get to your scrap space ASAP (or stay ALAP)?

Ask hubby if he would like to BBQ! I don’t do this “blue job” and don’t plan on learning anytime soon!

Now there's a good answer!

5. If you were stranded on an island that had a billion supplies but NO tools, what ten TOOLS would you HAVE to have? (All the stamps in the world are available, so you don't need to list them as one of your tools. EX: we've got all the embroidery floss in the world, but you're going to have to bring your own needle if you want to use any of it!)

Cuttlebug and embossing folders, Wescott presion scissors, bone folder, Nestability dies, sewing machine, punches, heat gun, piercing tool, pop dots, and Prisma colouring pencils.

6. If you were still on that island, what kind of noise would you want (if any) in the background? List as many as five different favorite musical artists.

I would love to have Sting singing to me in person! LOL!

AH, yes. He would make an excellent addition to the Cabana Boy Cadre. Let's see... we're up to Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Hugh Jackman... and didn't we have someone else in there? We need someone from Europe to flesh out our International flavor - no pun intended. Antonio Banderas is from Spain, right? He would do nicely, I think.

7. If you could have anything you wanted, (concerning scrapping or stamping) what would it be?

Of course a scraproom to call just my own, and I really liked the idea of 72 hours to a day to scrap more with less guilt!

8.What about your style/artistry are you least satisfied with?

Still trying to find it... my style, that is! Sometimes I find my scrapbook pages are very busy - I want to put a lot of pictures and embellishments on a page. I want to learn to simplify things.

This is very common among scrapbookers and cardmakers, I think. It's like straight-haired woman wishing they had curly hair and curly-haired women wishing they had straight hair. The crafters who use multiple embellishments fear their work is too busy and yearn to develop a less-is-more style, and the crafters who use less embellishments always worry their creations are too spartan and envy those with a flair for multiple-embellishment placement.  

9. What cameras have you tried, which one is your favorite, and why? (You can shorten this to just the one you're using now if you like.)

I'm currently using my daughter's SONY DSC-W150, but I would love to have a manual digital camera!

I get so nervous when I buy high-tech items, but I've had very good salespersons at adorama.com! This company has a great reputation and very competitive pricing. I definitely recommend this company for any future technology purchases y'all might be considering.

10. What's the word or phrase that comes to your lips when you mess up while creating? ("Unprintable" is definitely an option!)

"Oh, poo!" or "Oh, Shoot!"

Don't you love the word "poo"? For some reason, I find that word hysterically funny...

❧

Run! Run like the wind to see more of Tracey's amazing art on her Flickr photostream!!!

An Apple a Day

Okay, I looooove my Mac. My first computer was a Mac Performa, and I would never have purchased a PC if my law school had been set up to handle Apples (they got set up the year AFTER I graduated).

Macs kick PC butt from this way to Sunday because they are (1) super fast; (2) have a terrific immune system (as in virus-resistant); (3) have customer support that is UNEQUALED; (4) hold their value; (5) have a longer life span.

That Performa I mentioned above? We bought that in 1996 for $1,300, and it was destroyed when our basement was flooded in 2003. Also destroyed in that same flood was the Gateway I had purchased for law school in the fall of 1998 (at a cost of $2,100). The value of the Gateway was determined to be about $200. The value of the Mac?

$1,700.00.

Which doesn't really surprise me because, although that thing was tiny, it was powerful, and, right up to the day it died its watery death, it would start up in 30 seconds and run all day long with nary a glitch. (It never seemed to understand that it was ancient by computer standards - one people year being like 25 years for a computer.) By comparison, that wretched Gateway started complaining about its "internal miz'ries" before it was old enough to buy a beer.

So go with Apple the next time you need to buy a computer.

I'm on this Mac kick because of the demonstration video I shot on my camera (I have a 4.0 gig memory card that's good for about 60 minutes of filming).

Or had a 4.0 gig memory card, I should say.

I called technical support at Apple with a question about iMovie, and the technician had me do something with my memory card that inadvertently ended its career in the digital imaging industry. (Given its rather specialized skill set, I see no further employment opportunities on its horizon... except maybe as a guitar pick. But even that's doubtful in this economy.)

Now, lest you think that Apple employs bumbling idiots, this was the first time I ever encountered anything less than A+ service, and they made it right.

Boy, howdy, did they make it right.

Within 24 hours I received a 4.0 gig memory ScanDisk HC memory card AND a 4.0 gig Wi-Fi memory card. (So now I don't even have to plug my camera into the computer or remove the card to download my photos.)

You can bet your sweet bippy that Microsoft would never do something like that.

So, there you have it!

Hmmmm.... I wonder if I can trick them into making me destroy our television set...?