Some years are upgrade years

Over the past few years we have been doing little renos to our house. It's almost twenty years old and we've lived here for twelve. Last year we got a new sidewalk, and thanks to a hailstorm, a new roof. This summer I am hoping to have the wood trim replaced. 2015 is really going to be an upgrade year for my business too. I just got in a big order of display supplies, ordered new business cards, made some postcards, and updated my brochure. My last brochure was made in 2008, yikes! But, finally, I have a nifty vinyl banner for my business thanks to the good folks at Ingraph. A banner was something that I had been promising myself for years. After passing by some websites, especially one that a too good to be true vibe, I picked Ingraph and the helpful staff produced my banner for under the cost of the quote. Their turn around was extremely fast. The banner is made on heavy duty, grey backed vinyl and looks fabulous! This banner is going to last for years to come before I need to upgrade it :-)

Two Scherenschnitte Cards

Scherenschnitte - what the heck is that? It's one way of saying papercuttings! I really enjoy making silhouettes and over the Christmas break I made a whole bunch of them. Drawing and cutting a silhouette is harder than it looks, because of the lack of detail. Here's the first one I made, a moose (click for larger):

And the second, a pegasus flying over a rainbow. You will notice it's a three legged pegasus, doh!

Here's to 2015!

For many years now, I haven't been good at sending Christmas cards. I think a few trickled out though. Over the holidays I made a lot of special cards for friends, and you'll be seeing more of them soon. Here's one for a budgie friend of mine:


I really enjoyed making the cards. Truly, my friends inspired me! Best of all, I didn't let thinking get in the way of doing. I just went with what I felt and didn't worry about being perfect. I would love to do a giant disco Muffin down the road. In terms of 2014...well, for the Year of the Horse, I felt more like the horse was dragging me through the mud and gleefully running under trees instead of me riding it. Hopefully I don't get headbutted by the ram next month :-)

Lucky Loot

It's been a while since I blogged about the fabulous British papercraft magazines that I load up on every time I visit Chapters. The loot that a whole bunch of Christmas issues came with was crazy! Even more impressive was that the Christmas issues were on shelves before Christmas. One issue of Papercraft Inspirations came with a wafer thin metal die. Super cool, but the little pieces do get stuck in the die pretty easily.

The goodies below are from Crafts Beautiful are hilariously awesome. I'm ready to try paper quilling with the strips, tool and shape board. PaperCrafter one upped them with a giant card making kit that included fold up birdhouses and bling. The magazines are always a little pricier, but I think it's well worth it, especially if I didn't want to invest too much in a new technique beforehand.

An Old Favourite!

Yeeesh, sometimes I forget this blog exists :-D Preparation for Christmas craft sales has kept me busy, plus I bought Adobe Lightroom last month. It's given my older photos a lot of new life and easy to use, plus it's surprisingly inexpensive - $149 for the perpetual licence.

 Here's one picture from our trip to California that I felt really lucky to capture because the line up was crazy. Don't go to Disneyland on a Saturday, folks! You can buy this image on cards and stickers from Zazzle.

At the Mopar Show

Sadly it feels like we didn't do much this summer, mostly due to some mystery health problems that I was having, and I hope to have solved soon. There's nothing worse than being a high energy person with no energy, and the waiting is a little long. I feel like I could be a patient on House ;-)

One thing we did finally get out to was the Mopar Show back in August. I have been wanting to go for a few years but the timing was always wrong. It was a little overcast, but still a good turnout, even if the exhibitors occasionally looked upwards for signs of rain and hail. I took a lot of photographs that I haven't processed yet, but naturally did get a few snaps with my cell phone. There were lots of beauties, old and news, from the 1920s to the 1990s. My favourites were all the 60s and 70s muscle cars though!

How fabulous is this Barracuda? It's totally my style! At first I thought it was a Challenger, but my husband knew all the small details that made the difference.

Canada Day at Fort Calgary

Canada celebrated it's 147th birthday on Tuesday, and the family and I went down to Fort Calgary to celebrate. I didn't grow up in Calgary, but I am celebrating my 20th year here, so it's a little embarrassing to admit that there are tons of places I haven't visited or things that I haven't done yet. It's easy to take a lot of things for granted when you live in a place. Canada Day activities are a little tricky as Calgary is now a city of over 1 million people! That means it seems like half of Calgary is everywhere in one place, and Fort Calgary was no exception.

Along with a show and shine featuring over 100 classic cars, there were food trucks, Lord Strathcona's Horse Mounted Troop, a free pancake breakfast and half price admission to the museum. I will have to go to the museum again. It's small, but there's still so much to read. It's better than Heritage Park in some ways, as it is far more informative and historical, instead of just being a great place to stroll around with an ice cream cone :-) It's hard to believe that the Fort Calgary site used to have warehouses on it, until a new roadway threatened the site and steps were taken to save the site and recreate the barracks. Archeological digs took place too! Calgary loves to reinvent itself, and it's fortunately that forty, fifty years ago, someone could see the need to save it for the future.

Sadly, the only photos I took of the celebrations were with my cell phone. I had packed up my camera kit, remembering an SD card, but completely forgetting the battery on the charger. Ah well! Pam of Always Artistic gave me a great simple tip - buy a second battery :-D Here are a few snaps - the yellow shaggin' wagon was my favourite - it reminded me so much of our family van from the 80s :-)