Project Life . . . A Year In Review

Am I still keeping up with my Project Life albums?  You bet, but that's not what I'm sharing today.  For the past year my BFF Brandy and I have been working on her version of Project Life that she uses at Christmas gifts for relatives at the end of the year.  In 2012 we did it in a day and let's just say that was anything BUT  a pleasant day.  After I made it clear that I would NOT subject myself to that craziness again we tried a different approach.  Every month we made a point to sit down and work on a few pages.  Brandy's PL covers major events - birthdays, holidays, and vacations that occur through the year etc.  She uses SNAP albums and page protectors and generally that makes it go quicker and easier.  That said, we did not one, not two, but THREE of these albums this year (all the same).  So it was again a lot of work.  The end results were really awesome though.  I event took the time to cover the front and backs of the albums - paper is from DCWV's Vintage Collection and WRMK's Chalk something or other line.  Here they are!

Another labor of love with great results. Brandy was thrilled and I heard her Mamaw even cried when she received her book.  What more could you ever ask for?

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I'm So Grateful and Thankful

New set of cards.  I have so many supplies I have never used and one of my goals of 2014 is to remedy that.  So today I pulled out some dies that I've had for a while but haven't used yet - Thankful and Grateful dies by Papertrey Ink.  I had initially planned on going plain, but as I was getting into it the cards needed a little something so ended up adding ribbon and flowers, all from my stash, thankyouverymuch!

Be gentle, it's my first time playing with paper in what has to be at least a month.  It takes a while to get back into the groove.  Still, I like these and will use them.  Lots of thank you need to be sent out for the wonderful gifts I received over the holidays.

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Friduss Family Mission Statement v 2.0

It's the end of the year and my family has spent a bit of time reflecting on this past year.  My husband and I sat down to re-write our family mission statement because where our kids are today, well, we felt like we needed an update.  We kept the things that we need to continue to work on as individuals and as a family, and added some new ones.  Always one to try to outdue myself (working on that!), I wanted this one to more closely resemble actual subway art than the last one.  And so with a few ideas I got to work using Make the Cut.   

It's in the same spot as the last one - our kitchen which looks out to our deck.  Yes, it is big.  I was initially going for something that would be 2' x around 4' but once I got into the design program I quickly figured out it would have to be bigger.  So it's actually 2' by about 6.5'.  I know, right?!  

Thankfully a good friend of mine has a sign shop and she was able to cut it for me on her machine using a roll of vinyl I purchased.  Weeding was NOT the time of my life, however, the actual application was a breeze.  We decided it would be easiest to cut it into five pieces from top to bottom and they all went on like buttah!  I also added a collage of photos of the four of us through the years to hang next to it.   

I am super stoked at how great this turned out.  It took me five days of designing to get it just the way I wanted it.  Make the Cut was an easy choice because I needed to able to export it in a file format my friend's sign shop could use, and really that program is much better at manipulating fonts than the Silhouette Studio.  There are probably at close to twenty different fonts.  I honestly lost count. 

So there it is.  The Friduss Family Mission Statement v 2.0.  We're moving into 2014 with the right frame of mind for sure.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Radical Acts

Buckle up, I'm about to get more personal here than I think I ever have before.  I started this blog, two and a half year ago now, I believe as an act of self-expression.  At the time I was crafting heavily, spending a lot of time on message boards and just starting to get into the whole follow this blog versus that blog craze.  I guess I was probably full of a bit of "my stuff is as good or better so I need to put it out there" too.  Total honestly here.  

But I needed paper crafting as a way to sort of deal with the rest of my life and everything going on in it.  Some of you know that I have a little boy with autism.  I don't talk about it a lot here because I wanted this to be my autism free zone frankly,  it's permeates so much of my life.  I wanted a place where that wasn't front and center.  Spending time in my craft room was therapy.  And from the looks of everything I've accumulated over this time, that therapy hasn't come cheaply.

Over months of soul searching and taking a real and hard look at what this is and what it has been, I have come to place where I understand that I don't need this place to be what it was before, which was frankly, an escape.  And with that escape came the whole blogging culture, the challenges, the design teams, the blog followers, the adulating that comes along with it.  Creating to blog, not blogging what I've create is where I found myself at various points over these last two and a half years.  Not all of the time, but enough of the time to suck a bit of the joy out of this.  Hmmm, that's not so healthy, and not why I started doing this and  it's not why  or how I want to continue creating.  

So where does that leave me and my craft?  In a pretty good place actually. If there is anything I am certain of its that this is a craft, my craft, I am good at it, and I still get a tremendous amount of joy out of it.  But the focus has changed from an escape to expression nothing more, nothing less.  And who knows what else I may need it to be in the future, I am open to whatever my artist wants to use this platform for.  But for right now I know that my days in the blogging fast lane are over.  And with that statement I feel a tremendous amount of relief and peace.

My plan, currently, is to blog whenever I feel like it.  It may be a few times over the course of months, it may be eighteen times in a single month if I've been really creative and have a ton of stuff to share.  I've actually got three projects now that I want to share, I just haven't felt like photographing them yet.  Eh, not going to worry about that so much anymore.

I'm giving up the worry about the trends, about the new product, the design teams, the really goofy stuff that should never have been a part of this to begin with. I am a competitive person by nature, and I have to do a bit of self-check to make sure I don't bring that back into this.  This is not the place for that. I am going back to basics - me and paper.  And maybe vinyl.  And glass etching.  I have been really wanting to try watercolors too! Some of it will be really good, some exceptional, and some is going to be just okay if not kind of stinky (it does actually happen).  It's all mine and I own and embrace it all.  Right now, this is what is best, what I know is necessary for me.

If you're along for the ride, however it has changed, great.  If not, thanks for being around as long as you have.  I wish you the best in your crafty endeavors.  

So there it is. The big Radical Act, which really in the great scheme of things is not so big, but again, very necessary.

I want to share a quote with you from a book I have been reading and working through.  It's called The Artist's Way.  It's by Julia Cameron and it's a twelve week course in regaining your creativity.  It has been life-changing in ways that I just can't describe.  I can't recommend this book enough.  Anyway, back to the quote:  "Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how.  The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.  The artist never entirely knows.  We guess.  We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."  ~ Agnes de Mille

Sam I Am!

A new friend of mine just had a little boy. He was a bit early but thankfully his hospital stay was short and he is now at home with Mom.  I wanted to personalize some things for her so I pulled out my heat transfer, bought some little preemie onsies and got to work.

Thanks for stopping by today!