Besides a granddaughter and a whole bunch of other little kids to love on (grandnieces, grandnephews, and three boys belonging to two of my cousins, all of whom are two and younger, our "kids" include two cats. Like all cats, they are usually a source of joy and amusement to us, but sometimes a source of frustration. Lombard because he's a little shy at times, Segunda because she acts either rambunctious or just plain stupid at times. Saturday night, she ended up being both. She leaped from the top of Don's easy chair onto the TV tray in front of him, knocking his computer down and breaking four keys. She was completely oblivious that she had done anything wrong!
This could hardly have come at a worse time. Don is in the thick of finishing assignments for the end of the CBU term the end of this month. One of them, a final project in his Educational Computing class, is due tonight. He already felt hamstrung by having Powerpoint 2003 instead of 2010 on the computer, but now not having use of four keys was almost enough to set him over the edge. He was ready to take Segunda back to the animal shelter where we found her, and possibly send Lombard there with her. Thankfully, we still have our kitties, and Don has figured out a way to get his assignment done without those four keys (it does entail borrowing my computer sometimes.)
I had selected a photo of Segunda to use for a weekly scrapbooking challenge at CSI Color Stories. The scrapbooking challenges the website's host, Debbi Tehrani, puts up here now, and put up at the scrapbooking site Two Peas In A Bucket until recently, have been creative diversions for me every week for about seven years. This year we were challenged to do scrapbook pages with the colors of orange (a yellowish shade of it), yellow, grey, black and white. Doing pages about reading was an optional component of the challenge. When I saw this photo of Segunda on Friday afternoon, it seemed like the perfect fit. I had thought, that since these were cookbooks, I would pretend Segunda could actually read them and was telling me which seafood recipe I should prepare for her.
We then went away until late Saturday afternoon. We weren't home very long when Segunda knocked Don's computer off the TV tray. That quickly changed how I felt about doing a scrapbook page accusing
Segunda of being smart enough to read cookbooks!
But, CSI has had a new thing for about a month. There are little doodads you can download off its website that go with the color scheme of the week. Some of these doodads are words you can use as titles. One of these, this week, was a phrase "Imagination is More Important than Knowledge." Bingo! That's exactly how I feel about Segunda. I love how imaginative she is most of the time. It doesn't matter that knowledge, even cat knowledge, seems to elude her.
And so I created a page focusing on that reality. Well, that's my title and the journaling explains why. CSI is about stories, and if you didn't really want to write about reading this week writing about monsters and adventures were OK too. Life is an adventure with this monster cat.
The rest of a CSI page is about getting all the colors and certain embellishments (i.e. layered embellishments and metal things, which fits all of these flowers.) Most of the pages you would see on CSI are quite a bit more embellished than mine. It must be nice having the kind of money to throw that many embellishments on one page - I did not even when I was working. I don't know how they get other pages done each week.
But, I digress. The thing is, one flower especially on my scrapbook page, the one on the lower left hand corner, is highly creative for me. I made it myself, by hand, from foil. And a few visitors to my blog are probably wondering how I did that. So, for them, I offer these instructions:
1. Cut or punch three circles or scalloped circles from a sheet of foil. If you've got a circle cutter, die cutting tool or punches that will do this, it's easy. If you're like me, take three increasingly larger flower stamps and trace around them. Cut those out with scissors. Not quite as easy, but you can do it. You can also freehand cut three increasingly larger circles if you don't have any tools that will help.
2. Lightly crumple each of your circles, and unfold. If you have a Cuttlebug or other embossing tool, you could possibly just emboss texture into them instead of going for the crumpled look.
3. (Optional) Ink the circles. My three layers of flower actually have been dipped, front side down, into three different ink pads - two shades of yellow and one shade of gold. I am sure this hardly shows up on the scan, it isn't much better in real life. But, in real life, there is a subtle sheen of yellow on each layer. Very subtle because I heatset the ink to help it dry faster. This was fine for awhile. I made this flower in a Two Peas card making event about six months ago. I never got it onto a card then, but it sat in my stash of flowers until now. And then some of the dried ink flaked right off the flower. Lesson learned: Don't heatset the ink if you're not putting the flower on a card.
4. Secure all three layers with a brad and attach to your card or page.
