Now She's Done It!

Somerset Wedding Vol. 4! - I'm published!

Very exciting! I just got my copy of the new Somerset Wedding Vol. 4 with my wedding invitation right there on Page 37! I'm so proud, and so pleased to be included with such wonderful things. Even though my wedding is over and I didn't pour over the pages with the same eye I would have say ... 6 months ago ... I still find so many of the published projects inspiring. Really fun stuff! Check off number 3 on my list of Resolutions! Well, not really fair because I knew it was getting published BEFORE I wrote my resolutions. Hopefully I'll get a chance to check it off again!

Traci's Birthday

I love Birthdays. Not necessarily mine. It's not a big deal to me, but I love other people's Birthdays. I love celebrating them and making special little presents and cards for friends and family. I started making gifts for friends because I didn't have any money to buy them nice things like I wanted to. Now I do it because I LOVE to see their faces when they open something that was made especially for them.

Well, yesterday was my good friend Traci's Birthday! And even though I'm CRAZY busy these days with a particularly overwhelming graphic design gig (thus the lack of blogging), I made the time to put together this really fun little shadow-box inspired by the great bundle of Claudine Hellmuth books & a DVD I got for Christmas! BTW - I'm a HUGE fan of Claudine's work. And her blog is really great too. Check it out here.

Now, back to Traci. She is such a great person, and I'm really sad because she's moving in a couple of weeks to the other side of the state and I'll be losing my movie/coffee buddy. It was a tough decision to take the new job and I wanted to give her something that kind of reflected the tough decisions she's had to make over the last year and how she's come through them all for the better. So, here's what I came up with:

Then of course ... TRAGEDY! ... the piece of plexiglass I cut to encase the front was off by almost 1/8 inch in length. But, I figured out a way to fix it. I had some black and white paisley fabric tape that I wrapped around the border, which made it look even better if you ask me!

And then, because I love making cards, I had to make one just for her. She's a big movie buff, like myself, so I had this Cary Grant stamp and I just HAD to use it on her card. Then I found this film strip tissue paper and wrapped it all up into a nice color-coordinated package.

Needless to say, she LOVED it! I should have brought my camera and gotten a picture of her with it, but I just wasn't thinking in "blog" mode.

I Resolve to Stick to My Resolutions ...

I’ve never been very good at resolutions. Actually I haven’t even made any ... in earnest ... in a few years. Not that there weren’t things I wanted to work on. I just figured I’d work on them ... no need for resolutions.

But, this year feels different. I feel settled and content and like I’m ready to tackle some resolutions with gusto!

2008 Resolutions

Do a little art every day - if I’m going to take this seriously, I need to be dedicated. I will start an art journal and play in it every day. Then, at the end of the year, I can page through it and see how far my technique has come. I’ve already bought the journal - a spiral bound Canson Field Drawing Book with a hard black cover.

Open up Etsy store. I’ve got the shop already but I haven’t tried to sell anything yet because I haven’t had any time to create anything to sell! But, this is the year. I’ll probably start with some greeting cards or blank journals and see how they go. I know I won’t be able to start on all that until probably February because of the Graphic Design jobs I have going on right now. Hmmm. If I shoot for late January, I can start right off with Valentine’s Cards!

Get artwork published. Technically I’ve already taken care of this since my invitation will be published in the upcoming Somerset Wedding out in February. But, I’d like to continue to try to get some artwork published. So, I’ve put a few Somerset theme deadlines on my calendar and will try to work towards those, as well as find a couple of other publications.

Get better at housework! LOL I’m a lazy housekeeper - truly. There are just soooo many other things I’d rather be doing than cleaning. Sigh. But, I know it’s something I need to work on. If I can’t keep the house clean now, how am I ever going to manage it once we have kids? So ... work on it now so that it’s second nature by the time we have kids.

The usual eat better and exercise. Doesn’t everyone have this on their list of resolutions? I don’t really need to lose weight or anything, but I know that I don’t eat as well as I should and I hardly get any exercise at all when I’m working like this because I’m sitting at the computer all the time. So, I need to schedule exercise into my day.

There, I think 5 resolutions are good. I don’t want to get too carried away and I think that all of these are definitely doable. I’ll try to check in periodically on the blog to comment on how things are coming along. So, wish me luck!!!!