Moving

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Kristie Sloan

KS profile_lf Just so you know, this is not necessarily an artsy post today. I always have mixed feelings about sharing too much of my life in a blog post, and yet balancing that with letting you know me. So today, it’s a little more personal.

After suffering for years with Alzheimers, and being in care for six years, my dad passed away in mid January. These diseases that keep people hanging on, with no quality of life, are so cruel. Here is a post where I talked some about my dad. My husband and I, along with our three daughters, moved from Colorado to Minnesota 26 years ago. So during my dad’s illness, it was not always easy helping my mother from 1,000 miles away. I’m not sure how I would have ever done it without the help of my oldest daughter, Kathy. She was often able to go help and check on things when I was not able to go.

At the very end of last year, my husband and I decided we would go back to Colorado. My husband works from home, and the stars must have been aligned correctly because most all of our family is going to be able to move back as well! Leaving my grandkids in Minnesota was nothing I ever wanted to do!

We are now trying to get our home, as well as a daughter’s home ready to put up for sale. We are in a whirlwind of activity, doing MAJOR downsizing. Think just a bit larger than “tiny home” size. I was doing well until I started in my studio. All I can say about that is, YIKES! My art and scrapbooking supplies were not an area I planned to downsize, and it may be a lot harder to deal with than I first thought! Plus living in a home for 20 years, which was 20 years old when we moved in, is requiring some updates to plan for a quick sale. I may not have as much time to create and post here, but I am thinking about it most of the time. I hope you will enjoy posts like yesterday, where I share ideas from others! If I come up with any great ideas for organizing supplies to move, I’ll be sure to share those!

Take care, and Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Creative Blog Tour

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Kristie Sloan

It is always fun to meet new people, make new friends, and find out what people are doing! That’s exactly what the Creative Blog Tour is all about! This is an ongoing blog hop. I’m not sure who first started it, but has been fun visiting new blogs, meeting new creative people, seeing their creations, and hearing about their process. Last week, Lisa Harris, from MyKreativePursuits.com was kind enough to tag me in her blog post. Be sure to check out her blog and meet her if you haven’t already!

At the end of this post I’m tagging other people. Since this blog tour was set up to allow readers to get to know a little more about the bloggers, we were given a list of four questions to answer. So here we go:

1. What am I working on?

School Theme Layout Lately I’ve been working on a series showing how easy it is to do digital scrapbooking with Studio J free, online software from Close to My Heart! It is perfect for anyone who thought they couldn’t learn to do digital scrapbooking, or even for someone who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time learning a software program! Here is a recent video showing how easy it is to make this 2 page layout! Here are also some other layouts using Studio J.

take heart ideas square logo Most recently, I am in the middle of an unexpected project, like I am so often! In the midst of of applying to a design team, as a group, we decided that since it was a new endeavor, we would create a new website and blog. I ended up sharing the back end of building a website with one of my online business friends. There was some basic artwork needed for the website, and I worked on that as well. You can often find me doing techie things along with my more creative projects. This particular site is a challenge site, where there will be creative challenges and winners! It will be launching on July 2nd, and I’ll post the info and link then! So stay tuned.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

This is a difficult question because I find it hard to identify with a single genre. I love creating in general, and don’t like to box myself into a single type of work. Some people may feel like that makes me a jack of all trades and master of none. I can live with that, because I thrive on learning and expanding my knowledge and skills. Even within some of my projects, you’ll find variety. For instance, I do paper scrapbooking as well as digital. In card making I may create in paper and embellishments, or I may do a hybrid version combining digital with paper and embellishments. I’m not sure anyone could identify my art journaling, because it has variety as well! Mixed media – well that’s mixed, too!

Here is a sampling of some of my projects. You can click on the images, they are linked back to the posts they were in. I’m happy to say I have a better camera now, and hope my photography skills will soon improve your view of my work!

Mixed media with paint and paper piecing.

Mixed media home decor using maps.

Mixed media with image transfer and masking.

Artful Adventures Kristie Sloan Always Happy Scrapbook Layout

Digital scrapbooking.

Art journal page with image transfer.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

The main reason I started my website was to really urge others to give new techniques or products a try! You never know what you may really enjoy doing! Often you’ll find me telling a crazy story about myself or my family, because that’s life and who we are! People tend to take themselves too seriously! Lighten up, have some fun. Life can be too short and we should enjoy the special people around us. I firmly believe we should also take time for the creative things we want to do, or our creative soul just withers away and a part of us dies. People who spend time on whatever their creative hearts desire tend to be a little happier. I like to be happy and have fun! How about you?

4. How does your writing/creating process work?

When scrapbooking, it usually is a story that starts a page; or a photo or group of photos which I really want to get on a page and tell the story. Other creative aspects are much more free flowing in the way they come about. Inspiration can come from a color scheme, phrase, word, photo or something random. Inspiration is everywhere!

Now, I’d like you to meet these crafty bloggers and visit them on their websites:

Kelli Panique is creator of Use It Scrapbooking. Her mission is to motivate scrappers to use all the fun products they purchase! Kelli made her first scrapbook at age 14 in a magnetic album with hand drawn rainbow bubble letters for titles. She has been ~~hoarding~~ collecting crafty supplies ever since. Her style (and handwriting) has improved since then and she enjoys teaching others how to get the most out of their scrapbooking supplies while telling their stories. Kelli has taught at local scrapbook stores and now is teaching scrapbooking techniques on her YouTube channel. You can find Kelli at www.UseItScrapbooking.com.

Debbie O’Neal is the creator of Scrap Me Quick Designs and is passionate about die cut machine crafting. She shares die cut tips and techniques to inspire your own creativity and expand your die cut machine knowledge. She has been a contributor to the online die cut magazine, Die Cut Crazy; and those of us who know Debbie like to call her the Queen of Die Cutting! Visit Debbie at www.ScrapMeQuickDesigns.com

Thanks for visiting!

Teacher Gift and Project Perseverance

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Kristie Sloan

Have you ever wanted to create something for a gift and thought it was going to be easy, only to find it didn’t work out quite the way you envisioned? Today is the last day of school for kids in our district, and I thought I’d create a special gift for my grandson’s teacher. It all started with something I saw online. I wish I had an idea of whose work was my inspiration, because her items were gorgeous! She had used an electronic cutting machine and cut word art from vinyl and placed it on wood she had painted black. This description just isn’t going to do her work justice, so I’ll just stop now!

Everyone raved about how personal and appreciative a teacher would be with a gift of this nature. I decided I would make do with things I had on hand. So my plan was:

Paint a 12×12″ canvas black
Cut a word art file to use as a stencil
Paint the word art in white

Simple, right? That was the idea.

After I had envisioned how great this would be, I went down and grabbed out a 12×12 canvas, and was thinking how great it was that I had everything I needed right in my craft room. I reach for one of my new tubes of heavy body acrylic paint so that I can quickly get a good coat of paint on my background. There is no black! Seriously? I looked around to find another black, and decide it’s worth a 2 mile trip to go get the paint I want. I got to the craft store and found the paint I wanted was sale! Score! I walked out with one tube of paint and a package of sawtooth picture hangers to use on the project.

Back at home, I quickly covered the canvas with the paint. It went on like a dream, covering easily. At that point I decided it was too hot in my craft room and had to move the fan, because I needed the outlet to plug in my Cameo electronic cutter. While looking for a plug on the other side of the room, I leaned over the table, supporting myself with my hand on top of….. wait for it…. my freshly painted canvas! (Now if I would have thought fast enough, I could have made a handprint on something to use later.) Baby wipes are standard issue in my craft area, and I cleaned up nicely and hurried to fix my canvas. Whew, crisis averted.

I started my cut file and cut out of a 12×12″ sheet of card stock. Thank goodness for scrapbooking and having plenty of card stock! Oh it was beautiful when it was cut! I carefully worked and worked to remove the letters so that I would end up with a stencil. As I began looking at it, I realized that letters like A, R, P, 0, etc. needed to have little parts added back in so that the whole letter wasn’t just a solid blob of white when it was painted. Great, now how was I going to get those to just lay there and be able to stencil? Aha, I decided to use a glue pen that if I let dry first, it would make them removable, like a sticky note! I glued tiny parts of those letters and let them dry.

Finally, I was ready to start painting the stencil using heavy body acrylic to keep oozing at bay. I put it on top of the canvas, and then painstakingly inserted the little sections of the insides of the letters. I began gently dabbing in the white paint so that it wouldn’t ooze under the stencil. Some of the insides of the letters came up with pouncing my brush. Okay, I could use black paint and go back in and create the middles of letters. As I continued, I was very careful about keeping those little critters down.

The moment of truth came as I gently pulled up the stencil. Oh no! It was a mess. With all the care I had given to gently tapping in my color, it still was a mess around almost every letter. I just looked at it in disappointment. On the bright side, the white paint over the black looked like I wanted it, not took opaque. That way it had a bit of the current “chalkboard” look to the lettering. Not to be deterred from this great plan for a gift, I persevered.

Next I took out a tiny little brush and I went around every stinkin’ letter with black paint to clean up the edges! Project saved.

Even though things didn’t work out like I had anticipated, I didn’t give up! I’m glad I didn’t, because in the end, it is a perfectly imperfect piece!

I bet you have a great “How I Saved My Project” story or two, and good for you! If you are the kind of person whose projects go off without any problems, hats off to you! Otherwise feel free to share a story with us! I’m sure I’m not alone with my clumsy crafting!

Word for 2014

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Kristie Sloan

I can’t believe today is the last day of January 2014! What kinds of wonderful things are you planning to accomplish this year? Whatever you plan to do, wherever you plan to go, I wish you the best year ever. Now I am waving my fairy godmother wand over you, so you know you have the power to go out and do it!

I have a theme this year of “More Doing, Less Thinking about Doing!” Towards the end of last year I really got sidetracked with so many things that were going on around me. I did so much more thinking about doing than the actual doing of the things I wanted to get done. That brings me to something many of you have heard of, or may do yourself, which is select a single word for your year. My word this year is “NOW!”

Here is a dictionary definition

Now – adverb

1. at the present time or moment

2. without further delay; immediately; at once

For me, this goes along with more doing and less thinking about doing! However, it is so much more. I want to make sure that I enjoy the moments of everyday, being in the present, being in the now. Each day I wake up to a new day, enjoy it now! Each day I have with my family – enjoy them now. I want to be grateful for all the little things we take for granted – now. I don’t want to put things off that I want to do – so I want to work them in – now! If I can’t actually do it now, write time on the calendar to make the time. I’m sure you get the picture!

This page was done in an online class I’m taking with Joanne Sharpe, called “Draw Your Awesome Year.” It was colored by using Inktense Pencils, which are a water soluble ink. If you like using bright colors and water – you would love these!

Have you selected a word for the year? Please share it in the comments!

Doing What You Love, NOW!

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Kristie Sloan

It is amazing how quickly time slips by! Speaking of which, you may have wondered what has happened to me. The fact is, we have had a number of health issues at our house, including my own health. Thankfully, I’m good to go, and you can still find me here.

Today, I was thinking about how few posts I’ve written over the last weeks. The reality is that during that same time period I haven’t done much crafting, scrapbooking, or the things like that which I enjoy doing. I would think about it, but just didn’t do it. Now I have nothing to show for that time!

It made me think about how important it is to just DO it! “It” being whatever you are interested in doing. You never know how long you will have to do it, so don’t procrastinate. I look at my dad, and am reminded how important it is to not procrastinate.

For years, my dad was busy from the time he woke up until he fell into bed. After being in the Navy, he became an electrician and eventually also taught part time at the electrical apprenticeship. He became certified in welding because he could often get a job in welding when the electrical jobs were few. He often drove extensive distances to have a job. We were very active in our church. We lived on a hobby farm which kept him busy when he wasn’t at work. He built the home we lived in; and in later years he added a 1 bedroom home onto our house for my mom’s parents; and of course did all the repairs! He worked on our vehicles and other equipment to keep everything running. When he retired from the electrical trade, he started working for an airline and did ground maintenance, which was about everything EXCEPT the airplanes. So what does all this have to do with anything? Believe it or not, besides all that kept him busy, he had a hobby! He had worked in the shoe shop in the Navy, and had learned to tool leather!

Since I had grown up seeing his work, it was what I assumed everyone’s leather tooling looked like. Not true! After I was grown and had a chance to see more leather work, I realized how perfectly wonderful his work was. He had developed his skills to a level that you rarely see. Over the years he made us purses, belts, wallets, binder covers and more. He always wanted to make a saddle, and he finally did it! People thought it was odd that it was on a stand in their front room! Well, it was a work of love, and since it had never been on a horse, that’s where it resided! I once saw another handmade saddle at our state fair, and even though it had earned a blue ribbon, the work was nowhere as exquisite as my dad’s.

A number of years ago, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Those who are not familiar with the disease often think it is just about not being able to remember. It is so much more debilitating than that. As the disease progresses, the person is less and less functional, becoming just a shell of the vibrant people they once were. We now go and sit with my dad, and many days wonder if he understands what is going on or who we are. A once busy and active man now just sits there, as he is unable to even get around anymore.

I am so thankful for the example he set not only in work ethic, but also of taking time to do other things he was interested in!

If you have something you want to do, make time for it!

Don’t look back and wish you had made the time to do it.

Note: I just remembered I recently made one of those ruffly scarves — and was reminded why knitting is not my fave! Last, but not least, the saddle has been “used” by his grandchildren and great grandchildren!

Artful Adventures

Ideas for scrapbooking, art journaling, mixed media, card making and stamping projects.

Category Archives: Ramblings