A Bit of Leominster HIstory

I was working on a geocaching puzzle cache today, and stopped by this monument in Leominster. I had never heard of it, and it was interesting to learn more about the history of our city and how citizens contributed to the movement of escaped slaves. Massachusetts has so many historical markers and plaques around that we sort of take them for granted. But it's interesting to stop and take in a bit of history, and think about the people that walked the streets you are walking now.


This article from the Worcester Telegram tells more about the house and the family.

Where has she been?

It's been a bit since I've posted, mostly because life got crazy and I didn't have enough down time to post. Over the last week, I've:

Gone to a two-day conference in Washington DC for National Science Foundation SBIR Grantees. While I was there, I did manage to do a little sightseeing.


I also managed to do some geocaching in DC, which is very different than the woods caches you mostly find up here. The caches I found in DC and Virginia are either urban caches, or virtual caches, where you have to email the owner answers that you can find at the site. I felt like a secret agent pulling out some of these teeny caches.


Back Friday night from DC and up early Saturday morning for Perrin's Pinewood Derby! His "Sword of Omens" car (totally his idea, seriously), won second place in his pack and an invitation to the District race next month.



Then on Sunday after church, we decided to take advantage of the great weather and did some family geocaching at a local site that we hadn't been to yet. We had a super day, going 9/9 on finds!


So that's where I've been. I actually have a couple of projects I plan on posting later this week if I can ever get pictures taken. Too busy making memories to preserve memories last week. :)

Dream

A little card I put together for a teenage girl using scraps. I had assembled several of those large flowers for another project and this one was a leftover. I think there's My Mind's Eye, Graphic 45, and Basic Grey paper, and the "Dream" word piece is from My Mind's Eye. Small flowers I think are Prima, and bling is Recollections from Michael's.

Winter Wonderland

So, we haven't had much more of a dusting of snow since the big storm back in October, so as soon as the calendar ticked over to March, Mother Nature decided it had been long enough. This is the view out my front door a few hours ago, although it pretty much still looks the same now, although I think it has finally stopped snowing. The kids had a snow day, which means I'm ready to tear my hair out, and they only spent about 30 minutes outside.

And....here's the backyard. I'm hoping no trees come down, but that's unlikely as most of the loose and weak trees and branches came down in the fall.

It's Monday.

I don't do mornings, and I don't do Mondays, so I really don't do Monday mornings. Although today is that glorious Monday morning after February break, so my darling children and thankfully back in the wonderful confines of school, and I can get back to keeping myself sane. :) We did do some fun stuff last week, like go kite flying in Maine. It was cold, and it was windy, and we came home covered in sand, but it was a lot of fun.

A Wedge of Heaven

There's cheese, and then there's Cheese, and that's with a capital C. I love good cheese, and I had heard that Grafton Village was creating a raw milk cheddar, and I happened to find this at Market Basket yesterday. It's absolutely delicious. Not super extra sharp, but very mellow flavor, very smooth. I ate some all by itself, jut broke a piece off the wedge and ate it. So, so, so good!

Graphic 45 Design Team 2012 Audition

I am super excited to be auditioning for the 2012 Graphic 45 Design Team! Graphic 45 has the most creative and amazing papers and products, and I loved seeing what the current design team produced for the recent CHA expo. As I've mentioned before, it was Steampunk Debutante that put Graphic 45 onto my radar, but I have fallen in love with so many of the other lines. Anyhow, enough gushing, and on with the audition.

I looked at my library of paper craft creations and picked out some of my favorites to display here. Some use Graphic 45 products, some do not, but the latter showcase some of my favorite techniques and products. I am a technique junkie, so I love to see how to do things, rather than just looking at pretty pictures of final results.

Project #1 - Strano Ribbon Dresses


Several years ago I had the opportunity to make some items for the Strano Ribbon CHA booth. I was given a bag of ribbon, some Ribbon Stiff, and free reign to create. While I did several layouts, a card or two, and some other projects, my favorite result was these ribbon dresses. Each of these is made on a papier mache dress form that is about 7" tall. The photo above was taken by the Strano team and was used at one point for a Ribbon Stiff advertisement. The dresses made it back to me from CHA and are now displayed in my scrap attic. If I am selected as a finalist for the Graphic 45 design team, I will make a dress specifically using G45 products (No, I am not above bribery!).

Project #2: Steampunk Birdhouse

This is a recent project, and I just blogged about it this week. I totally love the steampunk genre, and I've been looking for excuses to use this G45 for Hampton Arts Stamp. I love altering stuff, and I have been known to "rescue" stuff from the trash to use, like the copper wire in this project that my husband had put in the recycle bin.



Project #3: Tags

As a technique junkie, I love tags because they give me a chance to try out new things on a small canvas. I have been following Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas for several years, and always knock out a few tags. here are a few samples of tags I've created.

















I also recently posted a tag using Graphic 45 products: Graphic 45 Corset Tag.

Project #4: "Unraveled"

This is an older project that I really love and takes some unconventional turns, merging my hobbies of scrapbooking and knitting. The layout and journaling hidden behind the knitting describes how my labor and delivery of my first son was nowhere near "textbook", and not what I was expecting as a first-time-mom.

Project #5: Altered Notepad Holder

This is a fun little project that is a great teacher or friend gift, and I have sold many of them at local fairs. I'm including this one because I created a tutorial article at Suite101 that has been very popular since I wrote it.

Project #6: Island Adventure

My husband and I were married in 2000 in Hawaii, and we took our new fangled (at the time) digital camera and took all sorts of pictures and uploaded them to our new fangled "website" so our family could see the pictures. My brother in law had all of our photos printed in 8x10 size, so I have this wonderful stack of images to pull from for my wedding scrapbook. These two particular photos are from the Polynesian Cultural Center on the island of Oahu. I used some of the cardstock sticker elements from the G45 Tropical Travelogue line as well as one of the journaling cards. The cardstock is Core'dinations Core Impressions Graphic 45 Timeless collection. In this case I did not sand the cardstock because I wanted to keep the color consistent while adding some texture to the background.

Project 7: Stamping and Copic Tutorial

I recently posted this tutorial about using Copic markers to color a fun stamp. I love using scraps for cardmaking, and I {heart} my Copic markers!



















Thanks for holding out to the end of my audition!