What's new at The Loft - Episode 102

Happy Halloween from The Loft!!!

PUMPKIN ETCHING

As an alternative to my carving or painting a pumpkin this year I tried something a little different.  Pumpkin Etching is easy and a lot less messy.


I simply traced a design onto the pumpkin.  I used a utility knife to score the area to be etched out, and then used a rubber stamp cutting blade to scrape away the pumpkin skin.  If you don't have a rubber stamp cutting blade you can use a utility knife or even a steak knife.    The orange is scraped away exposing the white rind of the pumpkin.  The only mess to clean up are a few scrapings.

Have a safe and fun Halloween.  Thanks for stopping by, and come back soon.

What's new at The Loft - Episode 101

Family Night Out


I love my family dearly and sometimes with our busy schedules we forget that we need to take time to do things as a family.  So as a special treat my husband got us tickets to last Saturday's hockey game.  As an added bonus our current hometown team, the Tampa Bay Lightning were playing our original home town team the Buffalo Sabres.  

The Lightning organization spent a lot of money (approx. $40 million dollars) making upgrades to their arena this year (The St. Pete Times Forum), which included a huge pipe organ and a Tesla coil to shoot out real lightning bolts.  I didn't have my good camera with me but was pleased at how well some of my photos came out on my camera phone (not an iphone) so I thought I'd share them.


Here's hubby and I, along with daughter # 1 Ashlyn on our way into the arena.  Daughter #2 Cassidy took a great photo here.

Here is a close up of the pipe organ, as I'm standing almost under it.  It's great how they let you go up there to see it up close.

And when you turn around you can look down on the ice.  I snapped this picture standing behind one of the cameramen. 

Here's a picture of the Tesla coil in action.  This was the only time it worked throughout the game (they are still working the bugs out of it), so I was lucky to get this shot.  I blew it up here (messing up the blog columns so you could see it )

Here is a picture of the action down on the ice, but you can see the organ on the other side of the arena.

Here's a shot of the action down by our end.

We all had such a great time.  Made all the better with a victory for Tampa Bay (sorry Buffalo)

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to see you back here soon.

What's new at The Loft - Episode 100

Teaching the Art of ATC's

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to teach another class at the Scrapendipity Retreats - Scrapajama weekend crop on Sept. 24th.  I love making ATC's and I try to promote the art form to a wider audience by teaching classes that I like to call "ATC's for the Everyday Scrapbooker."  In my classes I try to teach how to make simple ATC's using basic paper crafting skills so that the ATC's can be traded or used in layouts.

For this class I designed 3 new projects and to get things going, we started with a simple little apron card, which utlized some basic paper crafting like faux stitching and featured an over skirt that opens.  Mine had a little quote in it, but in scrapbooking it can also be used for a more personal message or other journaling.

And here is how I used my card in a layout.

The second card was a small Halloween inspired stained glass window, and for this project my students learned to use a paper crimper, stamped on vellum, and worked with Sharpies.

And here was how I used the card in a layout.  In my layout however I changed the ATC back by using a black "spooky" text paper, to better fit the theme and provide more of a contrast to all the orange on the page.

The last project I created was actually an ATC or Tag holder.  The holder was made from a small paper bag, and the students had to fray linen, use distress ink to dye lace, and worked with pan pastel chalks.  I was really happy the way these turned out.

And here are some pictures of my students working hard.  

I really enjoy teaching, and I hope I can continue to do so in the future.

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you come back soon.