Monday, May 31, 2010

Be true

Well hello there! It's taken me forever to get back on track after Inspired. Its funny how you can be away just a week and come back to what it feels a sea of to dos...

I've been working on some classes for SreappyB that I can't wait to share with you! but for now I'll leave you with this burlap canvas I made earlier . I heart pink and orange and I absolutely heart this picture of Dean and I. I've known I wanted to do something special with it and now I get to hang it. Woot!



for now though, it will be at ScrappyB as a sample for these awesome 12x12 burlap canvases. Be sure to take a peek next time you stop by :o)

Stay sweet,
Mari

Share/Save/Bookmark

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I am feeling... Inspired :o)

All right. So its been a whole week since I've been back. It's probably about time I get this out there. Better late than never!, right?! I really wanted this post to be special and spend some type writing about the classes and what not. I guess that's why I've put it off for so long. I'm not much of a writer. So bare with me. Hopefully you'll get some insight on an awesome Inspired weekend.

quick side note - I just *had* to get an Inspired t-shirt. I wore it Friday, the first day of our core classes.

Thursday at 9:30am was registration. We all got one of these cute badges with our name, where we came from, and the letter of our group on the back. Love it!

I've decided to start with the core classes. In no particular order, except for the one they got uploaded to this post hehe :oP

Core Classes - Friday May 16th and Saturday May 17th:


CD Muckosky's class was our very first on Friday morning. 8:00am bright and early! She had made this awesome book filled with freeing techniques. Well, we only had three hours to play lol. So the book is nowhere near finished. But one thing is for sure, this class opened the possibilities to just about anything. Many of us are so concerned about our finished product that we limit our creativity in fear we will mess up the bigger picture. Well, there was no bigger picture here. It was pure play for the sake of playing and I loved it. We stamped with random stuff, experimented with gel medium and gesso, played with packing and masking tape and misted just about everything using anything you could find around you as masks. What did I take from this class? Be free. CD's free spirit Inspired me to try something, anything... because after all, it's just paper, and you never know what you might discover.

Angela Bannatyne's class was so much fun! we played with UTEE and melting pots to cover some silver beads and make them any color you wanted. I made them pearl so they would compliment my orange and yellow beads. Let me tell you though, this requires skills. That's if you want your beads to come out round after coating them with the UTEE. As you can see mine are egg-shaped and I'm ok with that :oP

Oh my lady, how much fun it was making you. Regine Dossche's class was an absolute hoot! It was our very last class Saturday night. You could totally tell it was getting to be that giggle for no reason time. It was great to learn more about making sculptures, and although I probably wont be making any in the near future, it was definitely fun to experiment and try new things. It's what Inspired is all about :o)
(Maura, thanks for an awesome laugh when we went to pick our ladies up. It was one of those good hearty ones that are not easily forgotten :oP I would try to explain but it was the kind you can't ever remember what you were laughing about lol.)

She is now sitting next to my Victoria's Secret blue dog. Dean says she looks like a dementor from Harry Potter. I'm ok with that too...

Suze Weinberg let us play with wax. Which I can say, since Dean's incident earlier this year made it a little scary. The hotel must have been on its toes with all these paints, wax, powertex and what not lol. This was a really fun technique to learn. A little challenging though, having to keep everything flat because of the wax. Those of you that have stuck around long enough know I have a hard time with flat hehe. I'm loving that vintage look though, I thought those Graphic 45 papers would be great for this project!

Pam Garrison - I heart Pam and her style. When I saw her on the list of core instructors I almost had a heart attack. She's an awesome collage artist and doodler and I absolutely love her work. This was another one of those freeing classes. You know the type that says paint here and there and play with these tools. Again, just for the sake of playing and experimenting, with no final product in mind. This was my favorite one of all. It might have had something to do with being the first time I sewed on paper without breaking the needle! WOOT!

Dara Troshane's class was our first on Saturday morning. You had the option to paint or collage on your wood board. I wasn't feeling much like painting so I whipped out some of my Basic Grey and made a little something that said follow your heart. It now sits as my reminder to do just that. After you had finished your piece you were to cover it using cut glass. Much like a puzzle, it took lots of time and patience. It's meant to be grouted but I decided not to. I like it just the way it is. :o)

What I love most about each and everyone of these classes (except probably the lady, her I pretty much copied) is that they are my own. These awesome instructors went over a sea of techniques and it was up to us to interpret them into our own art.

Mini Workshops
I was crazy enough to sign up for 11 mini workshops, plus one I signed up over there for my only free spot! that made a total of 12.. YIKES! I figured if I'm going all the way there I'm going full force. And I'm glad I did. I got to meet some awesome instructors and learn some great new crafts I've always been interested in knowing more of. I would do it all over again if I had the opportunity :o)

Alright this is already the longest post ever so I will keep these short and sweet. Teacher name and a gist of what the class was about. Hang in there with me :oP

Susan Edmonson - Posie Pins
Aren't these adorable? We learned to make this using wool and a little thread. Love them!

Margie Romney-Asslet - Cuff class
Well I didn't get that far. But I did learn how to make all these different type of fabric flowers! Which will soon enough go on my apple green fabric belt :oP
I also took another class with Margie (all good tag mini album) with some of her own yummy product from the Girls Paperie (Paper Girl) I didn't get too far on this one, hence the lack of picture :-X
Margie is super sweet and has an awesome sense of humor. There wasn't a time I wasn't smiling during her classes.

Anna Willet - an embroidery primer
Remember how I said I added an extra class at the last minute? This was it.. and I LOVED it! So glad I tagged along Amber and Angel. Anna did an awesome job. Couldn't believe it was her very first time teaching.

Donna Downey - Apron. Modeling it: Blue.
I'm not quite finished with this just yet. But I'm already loving it. My favorite thing about this class? Every-single-person that took the class came out with something different. Donna is an absolute wonderful teacher. She encourages you to just play. A little word of advice, if you ever take a class with her, don't ask her about measurement of exact placement of stuff. To all these she replies: "Yes" - made me snicker every time.

Cari Fennell - House Book
What an honor it was to take a class with Prima's so talented Cari. She is as sweet as can be. Loved this book. This is what you would call flower layering at its best. It was such a nice surprise to find Jo and Debbie in this class! Wish I had seen more of them throughout the weekend...

Janice Kalin - Fabulous Felted Flowers
One thing I have to say about felting: Very therapeutic. I wish I knew about this back when I was working at Full Sail hehe

Cari Fennell - Camera Bag
Another of Cari's beautiful creations. Loved playing with glimmer mist and getting to hang out with Jo and Debbie again. I might be using this as a mini purse.. too cute :o)


Stephanie Ackerman - The Inspired me
Stephanie is such a sweetheart. She baked chocolate chip cookies for us and everything.. She taught us how to make her awesome roses. They are super easy. I'm gonna be making them out of all my scraps! Oooh! and I had the pleasure of sitting next to Stacy Julian in this class.. She's a hoot. Loved them both!

Cari Fennell - Art Tin
Yup.. I love her stuff lol. I took all of her classes. :oP This was just too cute to pass up! How cute is that little necklace we made with small blue gems? she's too clever...



Donna Downey - Inspiration Journal
I loved, loved, looooooooved this class. It was definitely inspiring. Donna basically told us of a couple of things she wanted us to include in our page, such as a button and some fabric and she encouraged us to take it from there. This was just a fun, freeing class. That's my favorite kind.

So... what do you think? That's if you're still with me, I know it was a mighty long post lol. If there's anything else you want to know about the event feel free to ask. I absolutely loved it and hope to do it again next year.. maybe I'll even be able to drag a few ladies up with me! hehe

Just a quick note to Angel, Amber, Maura, Kelly and Terri... Thanks for making it such a great weekend. I'm so glad I got to know all of you better and hope we can do it again soon! We definitely had a lucky table going on :oP It wouldn't have been the same without you!

Hope I left you a little inspiration from my trip..
Stay sweet,
Mari


Share/Save/Bookmark

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Friends are the family you choose...

Slacker alert... Slacker alert! That's right that's me. I have been nonstop since we got back; been to the vet, work and trying to get some projects done. And right when I think I can devote some time to the blog I realize there's more stuff going on, like a meeting with a printing company in just a couple of hours! I have most of the class pictures uploaded in a post but need some text to go with it, otherwise you'll just be all sorts of confused like I am right now lol. I figured I could at least check in since I can't sleep with a layout I got done for the store before I left... Hope you're still hanging tight, I like having you around :oP



I couldn't have to come up with a better title for some pics of Eileen and I than this cute BoBunny one. I love her to death and am so very happy to have her in my life and be able to share moments like this with her. We had a blast!



Come back soon.. :o)
Stay sweet,
Mari
Share/Save/Bookmark

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

14 little things I learned on my first day at Inspired :o)

  1. If you wanna leave in the middle of the night you might wanna set your alarm. Otherwise you'll end up waking up *hours* after your scheduled departure.
  2. Half an hr is kinda tight to get ready when you're going out of town
  3. Even at 21 your parents will get all overprotective and resort to sleeping on the couch so they can say goodbye.. And well, hover as you're trying to hurry
  4. Velcro and my pretty flower ring don't mix
  5. Trying to find a black dog at 4 in the morning - not easy
  6. Doing your makeup in the car is cool... Unless you're trying to do it in the dark. No idea what I ended up doing to my face
  7. Stopping at Cracker Barrels along the way would be fun... If we were driving during working hours.
  8. I-95 has two sets of numbers
  9. Not all Cracker Barrels have doggy gear :o( But we did find one that did and got a "Crime Lab" T-shirt. WOOT!
  10. I felt starstruck for the very first time while meeting Donna... I know, silly.
  11. If the GPS is not cooperating it is likely I did something wrong - like skip a step
  12. While taking photos in the middle of the road check for cars. Repeatedly.
  13. Not all hotels have free wi-fi (seating in the business center trying to get this posted :oP )
  14. And last but not least, ATCs are meant to be flat.

The story behind the ATCs... One of the things I really wanted to do at Inspired was meet new people and hopefully future friends. Something I have a hard time doing on my own. I'm not one to approach someone out of the blue and start a conversation. Although I really wish I were. When I saw a bunch of ladies were swapping ATCs I had to join in! I thought.. what a great way to meet some wonderful creative ladies and share our info... To my defense, I've never done this before and if you've hung around this blog long enough, you know I *heart* 3D and my pages are always at least 1.5" tall lol. Anyway... so are my ATCs. YIKES! The way I'm looking at it? It'll def. give me something to talk about while swapping! and no, they will not fit in the common baseball card holders, but hopefully they are cute enough to hang on to anyway hehe

enough babble... these are it:

I made half with Blue and half with Indy. Speaking of which, I miss them like crazy! :o(


Off to see if I can get myself to man up and mingle :oP
Stay sweet,

Mari


Share/Save/Bookmark

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Happy Mothers Day!

I hope all moms out there had a great mothers day today! Filled with love, hugs, pampering and your kids, of course :oP
I always try to make something for both my mom and Dean's mom on this day, but let me be honest, I'm running out of ideas after all these years! Since canvases are my new love I figured I couldn't go wrong to make one for each of them with some of their pictures. I used Graphic 45's Le' Romantique and some yummy embellies including Websters Pages' rose ribbon which happened to go perfect with this line :o)

Here's the I one I made for Dean's mom. He found the perfect picture for it too! That's him, his mom, and her mom. I know it meant the world to her... totally worth it.



and here's the one I made for my mom with a picture of her and my grandma. It's really neat to find these pictures and know exactly where they were taken. This one in particular was at my great-grandma's front door. Can you believe its been 12 years? (since I've been to her house, not 12 years since this pic was taken hehe)


**Thanks Lisa for the canvas inspiration once again! I'm loving them. :o) **

One last time for today... HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! hope you had a great one...

Stay sweet,
Mari

Share/Save/Bookmark

Friday, May 7, 2010

Happiness is...

Tired from packing and working but wanted to share a layout with you tonight :o) TGIF!!!! Have a great weekend everyone!





Stay sweet,
Mari
Share/Save/Bookmark

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Canvas + Webster pages = Love

I've been wanting to make a canvas for a while but I just kept getting involved with pages and pushing it aside. I guess I just needed a little push! well... all I really needed was someone else making a canvas to be totally on-board on pushing everything *else* aside lol. Lisa was working on some during our Fab NSD crop that I totally fell in love with. You can check them out on her blog here :o) and that was my push! A day later I was making this one below and two more for mothers day that I will share on Monday (Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise hehe)

For now, I'll share this one I made with one of my favorite pictures of the puppies. Can you believe how little Indy is in that picture? He's actually smaller than Blue.. God I love them!

Thanks Lisa for the inspiration! I can't wait to make more.. now all I have to do is find more wall space :oP


and some artsy shots, of course, by my personal photographer - Dean :o)


I can't believe Inspired is just *days* away! So much to get done before we go... so little time. Tomorrow we're taking the car to get it all ready for the trip. Can't wait! Oh! and I hope to post pictures of the ATCs soon. First time doing them but so far so good :o) I can't wait to meet everyone and learn tons of good stuff hehe... I will have to keep you updated as the event goes and show you all the awesome projects such talented ladies come up with... just blows my mind :oP

Stay sweet,
Mari


Share/Save/Bookmark

Monday, May 3, 2010

A Crealde layout and a blurb about NSD

So... how was your NSD?!?! I spent Friday afternoon at Scrapendipity Retreats teaching (Thanks Brenda for having me!) and Saturday day and night at ScrappyB's NSD crop working with the best girls ever... It was such a great weekend. Everyone seemed to be having such a great time! Food was amazing (thanks Joyce!) and the company irreplaceable. Hope everyone had a great time too!!! I would love to hear about what you did :o)

Here's a layout I made with some pictures Dean and I took on our first day of our paper making class. I can't believe 6 weeks have gone by and we're all done with it! We learned so much in such short time and I can't wait to start implementing it in scrapbooking and jewelry making and just about everything! hehe





Happy Monday!
Stay sweet,
Mari
Share/Save/Bookmark