Color studies

I'm going to let you in on one of my best scrapbooking secrets here. Scrapbook.com has a tool that makes picking colors easy! Just add a photo and look at the colors it chooses. Do any of those colors make a pleasing color combo? Then that's the colors you should use! Even if they aren't the colors you were thinking of.

Are those colors not making any combinations you like? Then pick one of the colors, just one, any one. Even if you're surprised to see it as one of the choices. Just make it a color you like.

Now pick any one of the schemes on the right. Because I am sure that since you liked the one color you picked, you will also like the colors that combine with in monochromatic, complementary, analogous or split complementary or triadic color schemes. At least you will like one of those combos, maybe more. But just pick one from there.

Now that you've identified two, three or four colors that you like, you will use those colors to select what else you need. Theoretically, that stuff will match the colors in the combination you just selected. But it may only inspire them.

Here is a layout that is my case in point.

The color scheme I picked from scrapbook.com capitalized on the green that is predominant in these photos, and the orange that many of the runners are wearing.  From the orange, I selected the triadic color scheme, which throws in a green a little darker than the one woman' shirt, a blue the color of Don's shorts and a little darker orange. Based on that scheme, I picked both of the green pattern papers in this page, the grass and the geometric shaped print. I was not able to find a suitable orange paper among those I already own, but I did find this yellow polka-dot paper. And yellow and green is a nice combo to me! My almost high school, Le Grand, had it for school colors. (Really glad I got to stay at Chowchilla High and its red and white though.) Because of things that coordinate with the yellow paper, I also changed the blue to a lighter shade. Although the blue is almost cobalt on the far left circle (which is not cut off in real life), in the C in camp and all the letters in Corona, even that blue is lighter than I had originally planned, and the more predominant blue, in the pinwheels, in three of the other circles, and in one of the O's in Boot, is almost pastel. But I think it works, especially since I also was able to incorporate three shades of orange in the words Boot Camp and the circles on the bottom. I have been loving the colors in this Splash collection of Echo Park (from either summer 2010 or 2011), for awhile, so I hope when I run out of Splash, something else is out there with them.

I'm working on another layout right now that took this color matching tool a step farther. The photo for that layout is of my granddaughter wearing yellow pajamas. I would have thought some kind of cheery yellow would have shown up as one of the color choices, but that did not happen. Instead, a shade of lavender was one of the predominant colors. I love lavender, and that's the complement of yellow, so I went with it!

If you use the complementary scheme with most shades of lavender, it will give you three hues of lavender and one of turquoise to choose from. To me, lavender and turquoise are lovely together, but when scrapbooking a little girl in that combo, pink is a great addition. And so, I found in my stash of supplies a few lavender things that would work, and a bunch of pink and turquoise things. I actually do have a lot of lavender things, but  how I decide which things to look at first, and which to use, is a little bit of trial and error I think most artists of any kind may be familiar with. But I still was not expecting what happened. When the page came together, there was absolutely no lavender on it. Just pink and turquoise. I love it, and I hope Abigail will too. She's getting this page, along with an entire scrapbook about the time she was ages 1and 2, for her third birthday.

Me? Organized?

Over at one of my favorite scrapbooking websites, Two Peas in a Bucket, they have started the Organize Your Stuff Challenge, Round 6. This means participants who see it through to the end will again spend 29 weeks taking serious looks at the rooms or corners of rooms where they keep their scrapbooking supplies (and where some of them, in fact do their scrapbooking). In theory, by the end of the 29 weeks, they will have some very nice scrap rooms.

This is Round 6 because different groups of Peas have already gone through the process five other times, starting back in 2009. I signed up for rounds 1 and 2 with good intentions. Both times, the overwhelming amount of CRAP I had all over my scrap room left me feeling discouraged at Round 2, and I dropped out. I mean, the first time, we still had the dreaded and used one time guest bed in there. The second time, I was able to figure out that what I needed, instead of the departed guest bed, was a bookcase where I could put some of the things I used to store on the bed. I don't think I was able to buy that bookcase until about a year later, when I finally found one at Target that fit my budget. Because it fits my budget and was purchased new, you know it's not the sturdiest bookcase out there, but it is working so far.

However, I decided the bookcase is not sturdy enough to hold the growing collection of scrapbooks. So that really left two places for them. The clear full shelf under my scrap desk, and the closet shelf. New books are all eventually going to end up in that scrap desk, you see. The closet is for the OLD books. But the books in progress needed to be somewhere easier to get to than under my scrapbook desk. For a long time that was the floor. That made my scraproom look just as messy as ever, because with the books on the floor, I sometimes had trouble getting to other supplies that were more neatly put away.

Finally, a few weeks ago, I came up with my own solution. My large but not too large collection of loose papers are now in an accordian file cabinet that was mostly just collecting useless papers, some dating back to my days in the High Desert. (We moved to Riverside in 2005, and what is now known as Jurupa Valley the following year.) Because that file cabinet (just a little paper thing) has 14 dividers, I have been able to not only sort my paper by color, but do some further sorting within each color. I only had eight places to put these papers in its previous location, which is a set of stacking trays. Instead, about 10 of my scrapbooks are now in the trays. These are the ones I work on all the time (My Jurupa Valley scrapbook, my life in general scrapbook, and my granddaughter's scrapbook are the main ones, although a recently purchased scrapbook that's now in the bookcase will be joining the others in the trays just as soon as James is born.)

I didn't know the Two Peas Organize Your Stuff challenge would be coming back for Round 6. Rounds 1-5 came fairly quick, almost one after another, but the longer-term participants in those rounds were ready for a break after the last one. And break they did, for at least six months.

But it is back as of Sept. 10. And I'm glad, because this time I know Round 2 won't make me fling my arms in despair. I'm ready to get this room REALLY organized.

Week 1's challenge is simply to make a scrapbook page. Easy enough, but then you have to analyze how easy it was for you to find the things you needed to make the page.

I've done that now too, for both the page I had created on Sept. 9, and the one that I am almost finished with today. And I am happy to say that finding the most important thing after pictures, which is paper, was very easy to find. So were all the tools I needed, which was the paper trimmer, the glue, a pad of ink and a binder full of letter stickers.  And, in the case of today's layout, so were all the embellishments. I just need to remember the adage, "Everything has a place, and keep everything in its place."

One of the other very important things on most scrapbook pages, besides pictures and paper, is embellishments. The other is lettering, which technically means the letters used to write the title of the page and the story told on the page, a.k.a. journaling. Since the vast majority of scrapbookers either handwrite or type out on computer their journaling, lettering decisions USUALLY focus on letters used in a title. I am happy to say that in both of my recent layouts, those were easy decisions.

The layout I did on Sunday (actually Sunday and Monday) was a bit less easy to complete, and that's because I had trouble figuring out the embellishments. To begin with this layout is about Riverside Road Runners. The facing page in my book that is also about RRR relied on a clip art of a running shoe I created digitally, but I did not want to do the same thing on this page. So, I was looking for generic embellishments that said "summer," but were not of any theme in particular beyond that. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, nothing I owned in the way of embellishments seemed to work. That's usually my cue to go scrapbook shopping, but I only had time to go to the stores on Canyon Springs Parkway on the far east side of Riverside ( a large Michael's, a normal sized Joann's and a normal-sized Target). While things there were cute, not cute enough to make me want them. So I ended up making some embellishments from a scrap of paper. Yeah me!

Sometimes, that's not what happens after an unsuccessful embellishment shopping trip. I end up calling the page "done" and moving on, sans any embellishments. Then a few months later, I find something in my Could Be Much Better Organized stash that I had not thought of before. I don't know if my embellishments could be organized well enough to prevent that from happening, but I'm hoping to find out on Round 6 of the Organize Your Stuff Challenge.

Such drama!

There were two layouts I had in my existing collection that fit other challenges for the crop I am working on. one of them was this one, Tarnished Gold.

The assignment was, for "Drama Class," to do a layout about something dramatic. And for those who don't know the saga behind this layout, has it ever been dramatic. Hopefully, the series finale is coming soon, and Jurupa Valley will get the stolen money back and live happily ever after.

The clincher has come, it did so Sept. 1 when the Legislature passed legislation to restore the $6 million + each year Jurupa Valley had been counting on, but has never received because the state redirected Vehicle License Funds away from cities on June 28, 2011 - two days before Jurupa Valley's official incorporation. We were supposed to build a surplus during our first year, and we did. It was $3 million instead of $10 million. We were supposed to have a budget of $24 million this year, and right now we don't. Without the VLF, it's only $18 million. We cut our police force by 10 percent, but how much can a city cut when it's just getting started? For us, there would have been no way we could have cut enough. We will be toast if Gov. Brown does not sign the legislation. He has until Sept. 30. The Senate passed the legislation unanimously, the Assembly by a more than-two thirds vote.

But there are some villians in this drama. Most county governments, except Riverside of course, are opposed to this legislation because if more new cities incorporate, there is a slight potential it will mean less money for their existing cities law enforcement programs. At this time, the legislation is Jurupa Valley's only hope for survival, and will greatly help three other new cities in Riverside County (Eastvale, Menifee and Wildomar) and 144 others throughout California that incorporated territory and would have to make cutbacks somewhere to serve all of the new people without VLF. These villians are worried about what could happen, and in their mind, the potential inconvenience of that  trumps Jurupa Valley's survival and the ill effects on 147 other cites. The Los Angeles Times is also a villain in this drama, as it callously dismisses the four most severely affected cities as "unnecessary."

So, I am asking anyone who lives in California - especially ANYWHERE in Riverside County - to go to Jurupa Valley's website (www.jurupavalley.org) and find addresses of the governor's staff to write letters encouraging his support for AB 1098. This is important in such places as Fontana (where a large annexation happened) and in east Los Angeles County (where there is perennial talk of creating ONE MORE CITY), and in Madera County where it is hoped the orderly development of Rio Mesa will eventually lead to both the much less orderly developed Oakhurst and Rio Mesa joining Madera and Chowchilla as cities. In 2008, Oakhurst said no to cityhood the day Wildomar said yes. Oakhurst probably loves their 20/20 hindsight now, but I'm sure those people want the option to revisit cityhood some day.

And it's really important for Jurupa Valley, and for me.

Update (12/15/12): I was just looking at this and realized I failed to update all that the drama continues. Gov.  Brown did veto the bill in mid-September. We now have elected a Democrat to the state Senate, he is sworn in, and fixing this problem will be his second highest priority. His top priority is getting a medical school at UC Riverside. I wish him well on both endeavors, although I wish his priorities were reversed.

And now, three months later, we've all learned the Governor is being treated for prostate cancer. I have to say I hope he gets well soon, but I also have to wonder - Karma?

Some scrapbooking fun

Hapy Grandparents' Day everyone! I was so happy to be wished one myself by my stepdaughter, who is a mom to 1.9 kids (the younger expected to arrive any day now). And it was so fun to see my friend Thena Cullen Smith's pages about her grandparents that she's been posting on Facebook this morning, especially since those are true heritage pages, as Thena is at least old enough to be a grandmother herself.

I may or may not celebrate Grandparents' Day with my scrapbooking. I have an idea to do one page about Abigail, but seeing Thena's pages makes me wonder if I should just do something about my own, now all deceased, grandparents instead.

The page about Abigail I have planned would fit in with a very fun online crop I have discovered.  Back 2 Class doesn't mean much here of course. The only person in school at this time is Don, and he was not only taking classes all summer, he was also volunteering all summer in a classroom at a year-round school, a class that went off track in September. I will be joining Don at school in October, although I will be going to UCR-Extension instead of CBU. So with the elementary school class and my class starting in October, I guess that's really back-to-school month for us.

But the Back 2 Class Online Crop is fun. It offers multiple challenges, each based on a certain subject you might have taken at some point in school. You can submit one layout for each challenge. Unfortunately, the requirement is one layout, one challenge, and it must be a new layout.

My problem is, one of my layouts fits at least five of their challenges, and I actually created it with Friday's CSIColorStories challenge in mind, not this one. Another one of the challenges inspired me to redo the page about what I did on my 50th birthday. I of course finished that page some six months ago, but the challenge helped me give it some more oomph, so for that I am glad. Sunday, I saw that it also would have fit a second challenge.

And so far, I have done one page that fits one challenge of this online crop. In addition, there were five existing layouts that fit one of the challenges. In those cases, I hope a great crop like this will inspire some new ones as well, but I usually have to have some more of a starting point than  these challenges offer. That's why I often combine crop challenges.

I'm going to share all three of the recently completed or redone pages here, as well as what I posted to CSI on Friday night before redoing for this crop. In the post after this, I'm sharing an existing layout that fit the crop's "drama" challenge, because you all need to know the state/local political drama that has been going on here for 14 months, and has influenced how I think about government.

My original Run 2012 layout as posted on CSI Color Stories

The redo, which fits the Back2Class Online Crop's Math assignment, which is to use four pattern papers, three cardstock pieces (I used four), four of one emellishment (green flowers), three of another (white flowers) and 14 of something else (brads.) This layout also fits the crop's journalism assignment (write at least three to four sentences of journaling), the recess assignment (use a photo of outdoor activity), the and the physical education assignment (use a photo showing motion). It even fits the somewhat more complicated health assignment, which was to do a layout focusing on my (the scrapbooker's) body. Although there is a group of us in this photo, that's me in the orange shirt and white shorts. The journaling I had already done tells how running has affected me physically, and concludes with my desire to run farther and faster in the rest of 2012.  I did not run today, but I did walk nine miles this morning with some of these same people.

The health assignment also specified to use things starting with the letters B-O-D-Y. This layout already had that. It uses brads, one photo, Die Cuts With A View brand paper (known as DCWV in the scrapbooking world) and yellow cardstock.

I have come along ways since this day a little more than six months ago. On that day, my actual 50th birthday, I went three miles with Riverside Road Runners beginners' group, running part of the way and sprinting into Arlington Heights Sports Park at the end of my workout. Then I did everything you see pictured here. A few days later, I made this layout, but a little differently than what you see here. It was the perfect candidate for the Back2Class online crop's Home Ec class, which required following a recipe of five pattern papers, a border punched element, "stitching" a pennant and a butterfly element. I already had two of the pattern papers and the pendant on the page, but this redo required a little bit of lifting up and fixing. The red strip 2/3 of the way down, already cut on its jagged printed lines, is now border-punched as well. Above that, and above the pendant, there is some purple fiber. Since I don't have a sewing machine and punching this background paper full of needle holes wasn't an acceptable option, I like how the fiber resembles "messy" stitching. The pendant itself was made of the same three colors of solid papers, but I like these patterns. The pink and lavender ones have been in my stash since about 2005, the Basic Grey almost as long, and the red pendant paper is something I once received in a swap. Lastly, I added a butterfly, cut from pattern paper I bought in June. Sometimes you just have to wait until something good comes along.

This is the one layout that I made so far only because of the Back2Class Online Crop. The "reading" assignment provides a list of current best-selling book titles, one of which is The Dog Stars. That book surely must be about these adorable pooches a friend (somewhat related) placed on Facebook a few days ago. So they deserved to be captured on page.

They have some more classes for me to work on today. Yearbook is my next choice. You know how some lucky students were given the superlatives like "Best Looking" or "Most Spirited?" The assignment is to make a layout giving someone one of those superlative students.

I was not awarded a superlative, and I'm not sure if my stepdaughter was, but we can hope my granddaughter will receive one in 2028. For now, she's definitely already caught onto her mom's love of Ohio State, because Holly sent me a really cute picture of Abigail in a Buckeye dress. So, she will be my subject for the next assignment, most likely. Stay tuned.

Thoughts about Rubidoux

To pass the time on some hot summer days, I wrote an essay about Rubidoux, the oldest and most urbanized community in Jurupa Valley. Then I took a picture of some pretty trees, replicated them in my art journal, and added a bit of my original essay.

The prompt from CSI Color Stories International prompted me to draw the trees again and write yet another short essay about relaxing and drawing trees at the Rubidoux Library.  An then I wrote the epic essay posted below.

Update: Summer's over! The scary finances I've been weaving into this essay were improved in one way already, and likely will be vastly more improved tomorrow. And then even more vastly improved on Saturday, when Don starts getting his Air Force pension.

I haven't had the best summer, and that may be part of why I haven't been diligent with this blog. But that's an excuse, a copout even. Because today's probably one of the worst days of days that have been going progressively downhill, and in that downhill spiral, I've come up with something good to write.

I have to be honest about the direction my life is going right now. Other than the blessing of having two job interviews this month (bringing the grand total I've had all year to five), I pretty much am an old, possibly retired lady of 50. I have all the time in the world it seems. And of course, nowhere near enough money to match that time. In fact, all this week,  EDD decided to hold up funds until they figure out that they have to extend my claim instead of giving me a new one, which in essence means they've decided my husband and I do not actually need an income to survive.

 Meanwhile, my husband, who just turned 60, is not quite in the same situation. He is very busy completing requirements for a course at CBU. In fact, CBU is on summer break, but they're requiring him to complete some extra work so they will give him transfer credit for a course he took at University of Phoenix awhile back. There are two phases to this. First, he tutors a third-grade boy at an elementary school. Second, he goes home and completes very time intensive assignments related to that tutoring. Except that he has not stayed home to do this lately. Because of the extreme heat the past two weeks, he has opted most of the days to go to the local library instead.

Now, when Don goes somewhere I have the (very unappealing to me) choice of staying home without a car, or going with him. The elementary school isn't any of the ones near here. Because when he started the tutoring project in June, with a different boy who is now in fourth grade, it was for a summer quarter course at CBU. Problem was, the local schools were getting ready to go on summer break at that time. So, he had to find a school in Corona-Norco School District, which has year-round elementary schools, at which he could do this tutoring. That ended up being Eastvale Elementary School, which is of course in Eastvale. That's a 20-minute drive from here, maybe 25. Don tutors for 90 minutes, so that really doesn't give me enough time to justify coming back home. So, in spite of financial troubles, I have at least a small Cafe Americano at Starbucks in Eastvale, and often a medium-sized Carmel Macchiato and/or a scone. In spite of having no money in the checking account, I probably will even do that on Monday, because we do have money on Don's Starbuck's card. I think EDD is going to make a determination about my claim Monday afternoon, which will hopefully mean we have money on Tuesday. If not, we will limp through this entire week as best we can, and at long last, Don will start receiving his military pension next Saturday!

When at Starbucks, I spend the time checking my email. my Facebook, some job boards and Two Peas in A Bucket's message boards. I may need more time than my less than 90 minutes at Starbucks to do all that, but usually by late morning, or early afternoon at the latest, I am done with my daily computer routine. And there are still hours to kill. I often fill them with scrapbooking, but I'm not always so motivated.

I actually started a new hobby, art journaling, earlier this year. I of course also have the hobby of running, but that one has been a little difficult when it's 90 degrees at 6 a.m. and cooled back down to that at 9 p.m. Daytime temps in mid-August soared to well over 100, maybe 110. We just needed to find a cool place and sit, and that's the library.

I've made it a rule that I will buy NO new art supplies for the art journal, so I tend to rely on my old acrylic paints and very old scraps of paper, along with other scrapbooking and stamping supplies. to make this art journal . Since I can't really take bits of paper, paint, ink, etc. to the library, sI spent most of the time while we were there reading scrapbooking books. I'm grateful this is a large library, so large I wasn't able to read all these books during this period we were hanging out there. But another part of the reason I didn't finish them all is I just got tired of reading books all day. So, I tried to do the journaling part of my art journals on two of the days.

I'm using prompts I found on the website daisyyellowsquarespace.com. It's one of the best art journal blogs out there, and her "Kick Start Your Art Journal" archived section was the best thing for a beginning art journaler. I'm actually almost done working my way through the kick start prompts, and will soon be using her more recent, always updated posts for more great ideas. But recently, I was working on a prompt that suggested I find an unusual place to journal. To me, that would not be a library. But it would be the Bakers' Restaurant about one mile down the street from the library.

The library and Bakers are on Mission Drive, which is as "downtown" as you can get in Jurupa Valley. Mission Drive is the heart of Rubidoux, which was a community before the turn of the 20th century. Rubidoux alone is a community of more than 20,000 residents, so I'm not really sure why it never incorporated into a city prior to 2011. It certainly could have been a city in 1911,  and by the early 21st Century was a blighted semi-urban area.

Before and even for a short time after the city incorporated, Riverside County had used what was known as "redevelopment money" (another source of funds the state of California has taken away from local governments) to revive what had been a stale neighborhood. Buildings were cleaned up and given attractive storefronts, in fact the library and a few other county-run buildings were built from the ground up with redevelopment. Also, the median along the entire length of Mission Drive, at least from north of the library to the Riverside city limit, was spruced up.

The good work was either in the process or started shortly after we moved to Jurupa Valley in 2006. I want to say, but can't remember for sure, that the huge flowering trees were there before the project began, and redevelopment simply allowed the county to give them a good trim. In either case, they are now attractive trees and a dominant feature of what you see when you look at "downtown" in my city.

After writing an essay at Bakers, about Rubidoux and its troubles, I returned to the library and took a photograph while stopped at one of the four lights between the restaurant and the library. The trees dominate the photo. These particular trees were in the middle of the street in front of a mostly vacant lot, where a grocery store would have been built had the state allowed Riverside County to keep enough redevelopment to finish the project.

So, when I got back to the library, I decided to draw a picture of the trees and write a little bit about Rubidoux in my art journal. And a few days later, back home in the Jurupa Hills part of Jurupa Valley, I drew another picture of the trees, glued them to a 12 x 12 cardstock sheet and journaled about my life as it is this weekend. Doing that makes my life, and Rubidoux, look a little better.

The cats and a crafty project or two

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.

What Grandpa's up to

Although this blog is about my life as a grandmother, I would not be a grandmother if I were not married to Abigail's biological maternal grandfather, Don Porter. He is the star of my life. And he is the driving force behind a new scrapbooking project I embarked upon today.

Don decided in January that it is not time for him to retire, so he has gone back to school to obtain a special education teaching credential. He is taking an introductory teaching course this semester, which has an interesting final project.

He will have to address 10 foundations of education, and present them in some sort of artistic fashion. Although this could have been a brochure, a poster or something presented electronically, the instructor showed a sample that from Don's description sounds like an art journal. Since I have just started making one for myself, I offered to make an art journal for Don as well. But we've decided instead that we will make a scrapbook.

So, today I planned backgrounds and pulled scrapbook papers for these pages. I will need to print photos and stamp or otherwise embellish some things as well. The journaling, however, will be left up to Don. I believe he will be able to get each of his 10 topics onto one page in the 8x8 scrapbook album he has chosen, but if we are mistaken, I will also need to make pockets for his journaling.

It's late, so I will begin nailing down the details of my part tomorrow.

I also worked on one more page of my art journal this morning. I used my one bottle of spray ink to create the background for this page. While spray ink is one of the newest and hottest ways to embellish paper art, I have only been able to justify purchasing one color, and that was while I was working. So there is an area of the page that I am going to have to color some other way. I'll either water color or attempt to spray my watered down baby blue paint on this.

After I finished the spray job and left it to dry, I went with Don to school. I normally do this, and then hang out in that neighborhood of Riverside until he's done with class. I spent today at Barnes and Noble reading the latest issue of Scrapbooks Etc. (and found one more idea for a new scrapbook page to do on a growing list of random scrapbook pages I might want to do.)

But when Don was done with school, he wanted to eat lunch, go to Michael's to look at art journals, scrapbooks and scrapbook supplies (although I advised him we should try to use the many papers we have at home, at least until we figured out an idea). He then got his haircut while I hung out at Canyon Crest Shopping Center. I found a cool shop where you buy and paint ceramics, which they then glaze for you. So in a week, I will be the proud owner of a coffee mug I painted myself. It's a $23 coffee mug, so I won't be creating matched sets anytime soon, but it was a fun way to while away the time.

Just as Don got out of the car to go to our hair stylist, he noticed we had run over a screw that was imbedded in our tire. Since that probably had created a slow leak, we took it over to Kurt's Auto as soon as he was done. They plugged it for free!

Don also wanted to go to the commissary, since we were in that neighborhood. We didn't get home until about 6 p.m., so and after dinner we spent until now planning his new book. So that left me no time to work on my own projects, or even house cleaning, as it is now time for bed. So good night, and happy creating.