Fact: Far-Flung Fiskateers Fantatics' Festivities F-ing Fabulous

A few weeks ago I was surprised to hear from Ellen, a woman I had met at Certified Fiskars Demonstrator training who had attended a few of my Stampin' Up classes a while ago. It had been a while since I'd seen her so I was totally psyched when I got an email asking me if I wanted to go to the Fiskateer Meet-n-Greet at Brains on Fire in Greenville, SC. I had been reading about the event on the Fiskateer message board but had completely dismissed any hope of going because

a) It was scheduled on a Tuesday night.

b) I don't drive and Scott both had to work and likely had no desire to chauffer me to SC.

I jumped at the opportunity to go as well as getting the chance to get to know a fellow Fiskateer better. Roadtrips are really unparalleled for that. I met Scott that way, actually (long story. Perhaps another entry.) I wasn't disappointed. It's the lag time between events--riding on the interstate, meandering around the hotel grounds, girltalk over a glass of wine before sleep--the conversation and commentary traded leisurely that helps you understand how another person lives and functions.

One of the things I enjoyed most was getting a closer look at the fountains and other things we could see in micro-scale from our 5th story window. We discovered that our hotel was directly beside a beautiful river and park full of ducks, gosslings, and dogs! I had to stop and take a million photos of the friendly (and perhaps a little chubby) birds swimming right up to everyone (even the little girl yelling "NO! Go away!"...your voice says 'no, no', but your breadcrumbs say 'yes yes!')

Check out this dad who doesn't want the other geese getting anywhere near his progeny.

I was freaking out at how crazy yellow the goslings were! I don't know how well my camera caught it, but honestly, they looked like a black and white photo that someone had run over with a highlighter pen!

As we continued walking we ran into a gaggle of lead Fiskateers (the head bloggers and hostesses of the site). They were as orange as the gosslings were yellow and thus very easy to spot. (Most everyone has been exposed to Fiskars via their orange-handled scissors, hence orange is the color to wear to these things. Oddly enough, my Fiskateer shirt is pale blue. I'm not sure how that happened.) As they passed, I shouted "Hey! 1135!" (my Fiskateer number) at them and they reacted just as you, the reader, probably would if someone shouted numbers at you. They rapidly turned and walked away as quickly as possible. Apparently they don't get this greeting often. We also passed a dog parade (or what I assume was a group of professional dog walkers on the job). Always a welcome sight, especially for Ellen and I who were missing our little yappers at home. It's really a shame that our hotel didn't allow dogs. I would have totally dragged Scott and the dogs back for a weekend of exploring the town and the park. C'mon people. Dogs make excellent guests!

Back at the hotel, we ran into some of our favorite leads and legends. I'm framing this one! :)

Food was in the plans, but time slipped by so quickly, I only had time to grab a quick blueberry bubble tea (mmm...) and it was off to Brains on Fire. The theme of the evening was cupcakes. Checkout this mondo one this lucky Fiskateer got to take home. I have to wonder though. Is it still a cupcake when it's bigger than a regular cake?

And while I thought, the night before, oh yeah I should make something for the other fiskateers. Debby actually thought ahead and made it happen. Maybe that's why she's the Fiskateer of the Year and I'm not. ;)

Back to cupcakes. Each placesetting included a fresh, albeit bald, cupcake amongst all sorts of goodies I won't tell you about for fear of making you terribly jealous. Once the leads got the rest of us to sit down and shut up, the baker took the stage and showed us how to do all sorts of fancypants cake decorating. Roses, leaves, beautiful swirls of icing, before handing the frosting over to us.


Lest you be concerned that the Fiskateers will put her out of business with our newly aquired skills, scroll down.

It says "Lauren" on it, since she was the person who volunteered to eat mine (since I'm vegan and all.) And here she is, just prior to consuming.


Now onto my favorite part...make-n-takes! The entire evening was devoted to making elaborate scissor charms (like an earring for your scissors. Just wait till it comes back with its nipple pierced.) beginning with beads, then adding shrinky things:

and these ubercool sparkly cupcakes made of beads:

The night closed with more sweets (I went for the Twizzlers and Oreos, myself.) and a ton of giveaways...generous goodiebags, page kits that were more like album kits, and templates galore. And people still ask what the big deal is about being a Fiskateer. Go figure.

Projects All Over the Place!

I felt really remorseful about quitting the Club Scrap kit club, so I caved and rejoined. I just love their totally unique papers and the people in the Club Scrap Community. I all the swaps and other ways of sharing our work and ideas. Not that I *have* to be in the club to participate, but it helps. I had let my kits stack up, being rather depressed, having lost interest in just about everything for about 6 mo. to a year there. I didn't realize that my depression had jumped from being down about my pain, losing my dad, the tough nature of rescue work, to a clinical form.

I don't know why, but somewhere in that nasty bout of bronchitis, etc. the depression broke like my fever. Don't fret, I am still getting help, but suddenly things were in color again, Wizard of Oz style.

Jumping into the last kit I received before quitting, which I had just set aside without touching, here are some projects made with the Milestones kit. Honestly, this one's a little hard to connect to its name, but on the other hand, that's probably a good thing. "Milestones" sounds like something painfully...er...stodgey, which is far from this hip, vibrant, eggplant and chartruese combination. Warning: One kit makes a LOT of stuff!

ATC's. Most have been given away by now via my ATC/Altered Art meetup. It's fun. Come with us sometime.

I love these regal lions. You may recognize them from the Cricut which I used profusely the last time I was visiting Cary Table Scraps Meetup. I'd never really used a Cricut before, so I cut a slew of stuff to bring home, as you'll see in the following pics.

Longstem rose stamp courtesy of Big Lots. Last time I was there they had a small assortment of Hampton Arts stamps--really excellent quality stamps--for $1-$2. Hoopla! I colored these in using some really cool AtyouSpica twinkling pens. Kind of like Twinkling H2O's but in a pen. Love them!

Check it out. Little embossed doggies! Are they not painfully cute? Of course they are! You can hardly stand it, I know! Thank you Jen K! These were a birthday present she gave me. The balloon one s my favorite. I could just see Revco having that same expression if I was nasty enough to tie him to a balloon and let it go. Aww!

This is my favorite project. It's a Tombo adhesive box I was carrying my ATC's around in after I noticed they fit perfectly inside. The problem was, who wants to be seen lugging around a Tombo adhesive box like some kind of security blanket. Not me, pal! So, I covered it, added some wire and charms (hard to see, but on the side, there's a little silver bird and some neat brightly colored wire from the old-school Stampin' Up Wire Works kit. Why-oh-why-oh did they ever discontinue this item?

Oh my lord, am I sure I want this on the internet? Yeah, that's me on the right, my long-time pal-for-life, Jeni O on the left, both of us defining the term "awkward phase" for the camera.

Meeeeeyooow!

Teresa let me play with her Stampin' Up rose embossing folder. The neat corner thingies came with the kit, so did the cool gold paint marker that I used to trace the embossed design in the middle.

Sorry this layout is split into two pictures, but I couldn't get a clear pic close enough that everything wasn't just a mess of tiny little purple and chartreuse blips. Every Club Scrap kit comes with a page map (actually they come with lots, but only one that's a extra complicated one, which I like to do each time, just for kicks. These are pics I took when Iwas in San Francisco in Feb. There's such a cool bond between Darcy and Tara, I couldn't miss a chance to snap some pics I think capture that love. Working rescue all these years, I see so much sadness, so many unwanted, unloved animals completely alone in the world, when I see a bond like this one, I have to grab that moment on "film". This is why I adore pet photography.

Whew! That's quite a bit from one kit. Stay tuned for more, coming soon!

Something Different: Buddhist Holidays

In the west, it's easy to miss out on the festivals and holidays that highlight various events in the Buddha's life. Growing up in a Catholic household, I still hold onto the Judeo-Christian holidays I grew up with, and I don't think that's a bad thing. The Buddha taught us to respect other religions and beliefs that are intended to promote compassion and love, though I sometimes find it hard to understand when religious leaders seem to be preaching the very opposite--condemning the expression of love in homosexual marriage, glorifying war, fighting or tormenting animals via sacrifice (ceremonial killings in Voodoo or Santaria), ceremonial consumption (eating or using parts for specific celebrations and whatnot like Greek Easter's lamb meal or the deer meat at Yule), or as a matter of biblical law (Kosher slaughter is a very frightening way to be killed.) But...those are just the things I muddle over, and not any kind of reason to be nasty or exclusive, certainly. We're talking about intent. So, all in all, I don't think that anyone means to hurt others, we just have varying concepts about what constitutes love and compassion in some cases.

Anyway, I've been celebrating most of the standard Christian holidays my whole life, and even added a few more as friends have taught me about their own religious traditions--Hannukah, Yule, Summer Solstice, and the like, as well as the fun secular holidays like Thanksgiving (carefully sidestepping the Turkey issue via Tofurkey and sponsoring a Farm Sanctuary one via their painfully cute Thanksgiving campaign.) After all, I don't want to be left out on visiting my family and friends, giving gifts, sending cards, and decorating. I don't want to sit around and mope instead of joining in, and I like to think that the people I celebrate with feel the same way.

When it comes to celebrating the holidays of my religion, however, it can be a little lonely. It's not like I wake up to a mailbox full of Losar cards on the Lunar New Year or drive around the neighborhood admiring the beautiful Wasak decorations. Part of it is my own fault. I could make more of an effort to get out to the ol' Zendo, but honestly, it's not the easiest thing to find in Raleigh, NC (if there's one around here that I've somehow missed, please let me know!) It's a lot of work to find other Buddhists in the South, let alone Zen ones. It can be a little lonely.

On the other hand, why should I sit around and mope on the holidays of my own religion when I'm fully festive on the western ones? My solution thus far has been to celebrate mostly on my own, or to drag in a friend or two (with varying degrees of success--eating yummy food is a lot more popular than meditating our bad karma into imaginary scorpions) adding a little more to the holiday each year. A few more decorations. A "new" tradition to add on (new to me, anyway). Invite somebody else over to run around the house waving incense with me, maybe.

What all this rambling is leading to is a brief list of Buddhist holidays, just so my friends and readers can see what it is I'm celebrating next time you see me making tiny boats or having dinner with my dead grandparents.

Losar: Lunar New Year (usually celebrated in January/February.) Often called "Chinese New Year" though they don't have a corner on the market. The lunar calendar runs a bit different than the Roman one. For example, 2009 is actually 4706.

Avalokitesvara's Birthday: She's the Boddhisattva of compassion. This holiday is celebrated on the first full moon of March.

Wesak: Shakyamuni Buddha's Birthday. He's the one commonly called The Buddha (and no, he's not the overweight "rub the Buddha's belly guy". That's a totally different guy who was named Hotei who, as far as I can tell, has little to do with Buddhism)This year, Wesak it's May 2.

Ullambana: Celebrating our ancestors, we make offerings of food to the dead. (Make those dead a bit more lively and it's almost like Thanksgiving .) Aug. 15

Sejiki: Remembering our dead and pacifying agitated spirits. Oct. 30...a bit like a lot of other holidays around that time. :)

Loy Krathong: Festival of Floating Bowls. Little rafts carry our troubles away. Nov. 24

Bodhi Day: Celebrating the Enlightenment of the Buddha. Dec. 8

So, there you go. A few more reasons to celebrate. Who can't use more of those?

Hangin' out

I've been popping in on a couple of new (to me) forums so I thought I'd share them with you, the viewing audience.

As you already know, I'm an avid (possibly rabid) Fiskateer, so you can pretty much count on finding me there.

And of course, for those of you Stampin' Up folk, I try to check in on the demonstrator forum from time to time to make sure I haven't missed out on something I should not be clueless about.

But the other day I got an email about a chat with one of the 7 Gypsies designers, and since I love their blend of old-timey and sassy junk, I hopped on over and ended up checking out the host site, Scrapbook Dreamer.

Lo and behold, they were hosting two really cool contests--a 7 Gypsies ATC competition, and one by Bo-Bunny * (one of my top 10 favorite scrapbooking companies. Whoo hoo!) I had hopes of joining in on the ATC challenge, but sadly could not find any suitable 7 Gypsies papers or embellishments on my trip to Archivers, darn it. They did have some stamp sets, but I was not of the wealthiness to pick up a new set of stamps just to complete a challenge this week so, dejected, I moved on.

I did, however, feel inspired to join in on the Bo Bunny layout contest. You can see my layout here. There's a lot of good competition (this and this for example!) so wish me luck.

Next, I noticed for the first time that A.C. Moore has a forum. It's sparse, but the people are extremely kind and outgoing, so let's flesh it out a little. It's worth poking around, in my opinion, especially in the stamping area. There are some really cool, knowledgeable people there. Ask them questions. :)

So, that's where I've been. Say hi if you get there.

*I promise that Bo-Bunny's products aren't *all* frilly foo foo like the layout on their opening page would seem to indicate. No offense to the designer, or those who are into frilly foo foo, but I personally have an aversion to Dunkin' Donuts' pink and orange color combo.

So, is it still vegan?

Just had to share this article with all of you out there in TV Land. I have to wonder if those canned mushrooms are still considered vegan if they can have that many insects included with my yummy fungus?

Seriously, until now I had chalked rumors of this up to elementary school legend, much like the spider eggs in Bubble Yum (or was that Bubblicious? One of those juicy cubed gums, anyway.) I realize that having 3 pet rats, a little rodent hair may be found, from time to time, in something I cook, but those are *my* rodent hairs. I don't want some stranger rat swimming in my pasta sauce. Gross!

Why the dark, poor-quality picture of Zombie, my short-tailed-opossum today? He's sadly very weak and elderly and many not have a lot of time left. If you have a moment, please send him a little love. Thanks.

AC Moore: Festive Fiskars Fun Forthcoming!

Want a preview of the Fiskars Holiday Card Class coming up on Friday, Nov. 7? We'll be making 6 cards using the ultra easy to use brand new texture plates! They're an easy, inexpensive, yet beautiful way to create fabulous cards for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukkah, Yule, or make sets of notecards for friends and family on your gift list.

Wanna come? Sign up at A.C. Moore on Capital Blvd. in Raleigh anytime between now and the start of class on the 7th. :) If you let me know you're planning to come, that not only helps me make sure I have enough kits put together ahead of time, but also makes me think you're extra super nice. Awwww!

The class fee is $15, and that includes all supplies plus your very own Fiskars embossing stylus to take home so you can start making more cards asap!

P.S. Are you a Fiskateer yet? Want to be one? Just go to http://www.fiskateers.com/ and contact any lead Fiskateer you want. Tell them Veronica (Fiskateer #1135) sent you. It's free and it's fun. I love the online crops, challenges, chats, and project ideas. It's a fun little community and it must be cool--I hang out there! ;)

I love you, Club Scrap (with an homage to "Sheetload")

My most recent obsession comes in pizza boxes, but there's no way I'm going to eat it. Sorry, I don't like mouthfuls of paper, beads, brads and ribbons, though I do like them on my table.



It all started when I saw my friend Barbie working with some paper lines I'd never seen before, ones that had a kind of funky, hand-screened look to them. It turned out to be the Cruizin' line, the motel design which, if you know me, you know I'm a sucker for since I spent most of my toddler years (and travelled quite a bit with my dad (and early on, Mom too) in the years beyond) happily playing in cement kiddies pools, cutting paper dolls from a book while sitting on brightly colored '70's polyester beadspreads, watching Peter Pan on a swivling television, while eating tuna helper cooked in an electric frying pan perched on the bathroom counter.



So one thing led to another and I signed up for their kit club. It's a big committment to sight-unseen kits and projects, but it's also exciting to open that box and find a total surprise, like a present from yourself. Neat!




But before my first kit could arrive, Darleen invited me to something called "ALS" or Assembly Line Scrapbooking. To be honest, I balked at the idea of mechanical scrapping, but the invitation she made was so darn cute, a tiny little Revolution-cut dog, red shimmer paper, I couldn't say no.


Apparently, Club Scrap not only has a regular kit club, it's also got a demonstrator program something like Stampin' Up, Close to My Heart, Creative Memories and the like. Darleen is a FFC or FCC or something--either way it has nothing to do with regulating the airwaves or growing up to be a farmer someday), hence hosting the event.


When I arrived, I was surprised (and pleased) to see that everything we could possibly need for the class was provided. I didn't even need to have brought my everpresent essentials bag of pens and adhesive and all that. But I did anyway. Some of us need our security blankets.


For the $20 fee, each of us received a "Jr." kit which was pretty whopping for a "Jr." anything. It was called "Study in Red" and, as you've likely guess, it was predominantly red with some black and grey accents. It not only included paper, newsletter, copy-able embellishments, pop-out details, alpha stickers, and other little extras, it also had a matching stamp and ink that coordinated with the kit.


Everyone bantered back and forth a while before lunch. Darlene was kind enough to think of my pain-in-the-butt vegan self and made veggie dogs and a super juicylicious fruit salad for me which I attacked like a ravenous wombat. A ravenous vegan wombat, if there is such a thing. By this time I had begun to notice something unusual about the house. For September, there were an awful lot of Christmas trees around. Actually, for Christmas there were a lot of Christmas trees around. I couldn't believe I forgot my camera, because everyone should get to see her house, filled to overflowing with her holiday ornament collections. One room is completely surrounded by glowing Christmas village houses--so many that the tiny little lights inside warm the room and offer enough light that even your mom would approve of reading with no additional lampitude. I'm anxiously awaiting her next workshop so I can bring home pictures. Every room has a theme. I'm particularly fond of the "mice" in the kitchen, personally.


Assembly Line Scrapbooking is very much like something I've raved about before...Sheetload of Cards (see my previous entry for more details). In both cases, you cut all your pieces first, the assemble your project based upon a page map (a sketch showing where each pre-cut piece belongs, along with embellishments and the like). Lest this sound painfully uncreative, think of it as a framework intented to inspire. How you execute the map is really up to you. You can follow it exactly or move things around a bit, and it ends up being pretty exciting when you get to see how very differently 2 people can execute the same basic instructions.



So that got me thinking, what if I combine the two? When my first real kit finally arrived (I say finally not because it was later than promised, but because there was a mail holiday that held it up, and because their schedule isn't set to mail it on the first day of the month I found the wait tormenting. Each day as the UPS truck passed my house, I was right there in the window, watching anxiously as my dogs hop up and down barking their heads off at the "intruder" from the brown truck they are convinced is coming to kill us all. Then, one sparkling day I got a knock on the door and two loaded pizza boxes. Whoo hoo! I decided to break into the "old" kit I'd ordered, Haberdashery, which was released in June. I fell in love with it because, well, it's very French, lots of Fleur de Lise and other icons. So, using this kit and the latest issue (the mid-month mini, which is rapidly becoming my favorite) here are 2 sets of cards I made. I think the stamps coordinated beautifully with the kit. Take a look:





I also received this month's kit, Cyprus, which I just barely had time to begin before writing this. I'm pleased with my first layout from the kit, made on my own, no templates or anything (yes, I can do that, too. Gasp!) It's my pen pal from Finland and especially her oft commended Finnish Spitz, Mini. Is the pun too much? Oh, of course it is. Still, I couldn't let it slide by.




One last thing...since it's my first kit since I subscribed, they sent me a neat free card kit. I was worried that the stamps might be too shallowly cut, but surprisingly the images came out beautifully and I was impressed with the very textured looking mosaic effect that appeared to have a lot of depth, even if the stamps didn't. I had no problems getting the stamp to make a clean image and I was very happy to have an excuse to use my Stampin' Up Pacific Point stamp pad on a non-stampin-up project. It was a perfect match to the marbled blue paper, so beautiful I felt bad using is as a layer under the white sheet where few will see it--that's some darn pretty cardstock. And while I'm dropping names, note the use of glitter on every little detail. Yes, I carefully did that all by hand using a glue pen and loose superfine glitter because I have no life and don't mind spending hours sprinkling glitter onto thin, nearly invisible lines, but I also have to give credit to my Big Picture Scrapbooking Class I'm in the midst of attending online. Glitter projects were last week's assignment so these cards were among the items I coated in shimmery metal bits. Glitter RULES!