Crafting When We Travel

As we wrap up July here at Crafty Neighbor, we are still focusing on crafting when we travel. I love taking my crafts with me when I travel, and I’ve been known to take crochet, embroidery, and, of course, scrapbooking along on my trips. Packing projects like embroidery and crochet are pretty straight-forward; you just need needles or hooks, thread or yarn, some scissors, and a pattern. But traveling with paper-crafting supplies can be a bit more challenging, especially if you are someone like me who likes to take everything I own. I have been known to completely fill my SUV with supplies when I head out to a retreat, but I’m trying to learn to bring less so I can get more done.

I recently went on an over-night canoe trip with my family, and my daughter and I both wanted to take our craft supplies along so we could document our trip. Since we have such limited space in our canoes (and not a lot of time for documenting), we restricted our supplies to travelers notebooks and a simple set of drawing/journaling tools. 

 

For this minimalist kit, I included three pens: a Tombow Mono Twin, and two Tombow brush pens, a hard tip and a soft tip. I also brought several pencils of varying hardness, including a .9 mm mechanical pencil, 4H and B graphite pencils, 3 black charcoal pencils (4B, 5B, and 6B), a white charcoal pencil, and a white 2B colored pencil. I also threw in a pencil sharpener, a Tombow Mono eraser, and a couple of bulldog clips to hold the notebooks open/closed as necessary. Since we were in canoes, we stored them in water-proof zipper bags. The idea behind this kind of kit is to do more drawing and journaling. I can still leave room for photos, but I will add those later. Mainly I just want to get the stories into the book before I forget them.

 

For other kinds of travel, I will often add other supplies to my kits. A cruise to the Bahamas for an Aggie Mom’s fundraiser in 2016 allowed me to bring my dual-tipped Stampin’ Up markers (which I am slowly replacing with Tombow markers), scissors, glue pens, Wink of Stella brushes, a white Uniball Signo pen, Tombow Mono adhesive, a Xyron adhesive eraser, a corner rounder punch, a small blender sponge (for use with the markers), Scor-Tape and red line tape, a 6”x6” paper pad, StazOn ink, and a very small assortment of stamps (numbers, letters, weather, travel). In the end, I wound up with a lot of things I never used, so for later trips, I went back to a more minimalist approach with just a few items.

 

My travel kits have evolved a lot since then. The addition of an HP Sprocket photo printer has allowed me to add photos on the spot to my cruise scrapbooks. And since the printer runs on a USB charge, there was no need for electricity. Washi tape allows me to tape ephemera and memorabilia into the album without gluing it down. And the pens, markers, and pencils change according to whatever is my favorite at the time.

 

When I traveled to Las Vegas last summer with my daughter’s bachelorette party, we both took along craft supplies for documenting in our traveler’s notebooks. My kit this time included stickers, an assortment of diecuts, a Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher, a date stamp, alpha-numeric stickers, a small assortment of patterned papers, the usual pens and scissors, Versa Fine black ink, a black Uniball Signo pen, plus my watercolor pencils and my Canon Selphy printer (great for photos up to 4”x6”). What got left behind? All those colored markers, most of the stamps, the Wink of Stella, and the blender sponge. This kit fit in my suitcase with my other belongings, and has become my standard go-to kit for traveling.

 

Sometimes, when I am going to be crafting only for one day, I will bring a single project to work on. For instance, one year at our Think Pink crop, I brought my Christmas cards to work on. The supplies for this were very limited: cardstock, scissors, paper trimmer, adhesive, Score-Pal, ink, and a stamp. I’ve also been known to bring my planner and a few stickers, or a bullet journal and pens. I’ve also brought mini albums I made in a class and finally took the time to add photos and journaling.

 

Learning to take smaller kits and one-off projects has helped me get more done when I do travel. When I bring too many supplies, I find that I actually get less done because I spend more time setting up my crafts and choosing supplies and less time actually crafting. Plus it’s a nice change not to lug all those supplies around in a second suitcase or tote bag. 

 

You can read more about taking crafts with you when you travel in our August newsletter, which will go out on the 1^st. Brandi is going to share her travel kit, and I’ll have a new blog article about documenting your travels on the go. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter at http://eepurl.com/TZULf, and you can subscribe to this newsletter using the links on the left.

Words Have Power

 Howdy, crafty neighbors! This month in our newsletter, Brandi Reyna will be introducing the Crafty Neighbor Craft of the Month (CotM for short?) a new theme that will be featured across all our Crafty Neighbor media from the newsletter to Facebook, blog, and Instagram. I hope you’ll enjoy this new segment; we think it will be a great way to help us dig deeper into our various crafts and widen our skills and knowledge in some unique ways.

Our topic this month is The Power of Words: Planning and Goal Setting. Back in 2012, I wrote several blog articles about using power words as part of my 365 art journaling project. (I’ve linked those articles below.) My use of power words has evolved in the last nine years, but my belief in the power of words has stayed the same. In her novel, A Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood wrote,

 “A word after a word after a word is power.”

And even Mother Theresa proclaims,

 “Kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are truly endless.”

The idea of a power word is not a new one.  My son’s high school orchestra used power words in a unity circle before every concert.  Each student would share his or her word and the idea was that in unity, all these powerful words come together to make a whole, cohesive orchestra. 

Blogger Christine Kane uses power words in a different way.  She contends that your power words give you intent.  Each year, instead of making New Years resolutions, she does a lot of soul searching and comes up with her Word of the Year.  The word becomes her touchstone to stay focused on what’s important and to remind her of her goals. You can read more about it in that link above, and she even offers a free worksheet to help you find the right word for you.

Since 2012, I have been choosing an annual that has helped me change and grow and learn a lot about myself in the process. In 2013, I used my word as the foundation of my 365 art journaling project mentioned above, and I continued to work in that art journal using various words over the years. For the last three years, I have been doing so through a process designed by Ali Edwards called One Little Word. One Little Word is an online workshop with monthly prompts that guide you through exploring your word. I posted flip-through videos on my YouTube channel that illustrate two of the albums I created as part of One Little Word. This year, I’m working in a journal rather than a pocket album, which is providing a different experience in the creative aspect, but is just as effective at facilitating the process of growing in my word. In fact, I’ve worked many of the prompts exactly the same as in previous years, but in a flatter bullet journal style, which has really challenged my creativity. You can see most of my 2021 project on my Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

Here are a couple of examples of some of the work I’ve been doing:

My 2021 vision board.

A page in my OLW journal.

A page in my OLW journal.

A page in my OLW journal.

This year, I have also committed to exploring Lara Casey’s Cultivate What Matters Power Sheets goal planner. It’s yet another way to set some intentions and build on what you are doing with your power word. In fact, part of the prep work that goes into Power Sheets is a step that helps you find the right word. Power sheets can be started any time and there is even an undated, 6-month planner if you want to give it a try without a full-on commitment. Christine Kane’s worksheet is free, but both One Little Word and Power Sheets are paid products. These are all great places to start, but you can also do what I did when I first started – just find a word and find some projects that speak to you and let you express and explore that word. I’d be interested to see where it takes you.

 

A page in my Power Sheets workbook.

 

For more information:

• Crafty Neighbor 365 Project:  https://craftyneighbor.blogspot.com/p/365-challenge.html
• Crafty Neighbor YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/CindyMCraftyNeighbor
• Crafty Neighbor Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/craftyneighbor/
• Crafty Neighbor Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/CraftyNeighbor/
• Amazon Affiliate Link:  Stock Up on Your Supplies

*As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

My Month in Quarantine (Part 3)

Happy National Scrapbook Day to all my crafty friends and followers!  I hope you are finding ways to be both crafty and social (in a safe way) today! I am currently enjoying a virtual retreat with some of my friends using Zoom, so I'm in my PJs, and snacking on a little taco dip and veggies.

A day or two ago, I mentioned a project I've been working on during this coronavirus lockdown.  So today I wanted to give you a little peak. On one of our wedding work days, Christen and I were talking about COVID-19 and what an unprecedented time in history this was (this was before the order to stay home). Not unlike the Spanish Flu epidemic in the early 20th century, this time in our lives was something that people of the future would not understand unless we spelled it out for them -- you just can't grasp the scope of something like this from a textbook or a few photos. So we decided that it was important to keep a COVID journal to document our lives during this time.  We are, of course, documenters and storytellers...that's why we scrapbook, right?

So in discussing this with one of our friends, we decided we needed to make a challenge of it.  We needed to come up with daily prompts a la Layout-a-Day, that would keep us all motivated and inspired to tell our stories.  I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit that I went back to an old Layout-a-Day list from the days when it was owned by Lain Ehman, and I repurposed that old list (with a few changes, of course) to be used for what we called our Stay-at-Home Challenge. For the entire month of April we had daily prompts (via automated emails) that led us through creating a journal of our time in "quarantine". The experience has been fun, creative, inspiring, and even a bit enlightening as we explore the many aspects of this pandemic and its affect on our daily lives. 

We all worked in different formats, including pocket pages, traditional scrapbooking, traveler's notebooks, and even Happy Planners.  I decided on a travelers notebook, and since this little challenge was something of a last-minute affair, I didn't have time to order one online, so I made my own.  (I may do a post about that soon!) I love the traveler's notebook because it's basically a blank slate, and it's just the right size for either journaling or photos. I've actually already filled one notebook (we started on April 1) and am well into my second (I ordered the others online).  There are so many stories to tell, I'm sure I'll have several of the books filled by the time this is all over.

When we started this project, we quickly found that there are a number of crafty celebs and others who are doing similar projects.  I've been following Layle Koncar and Heidi Swapp on Instagram and via blog.  They both have some great pages that are very inspiring.  And, most recently, Christen stumbled across The Isolation Journals created by Suleika Jaouad. This article is a great read and shares how the whole thing got started and why archiving these stories is important.

The point of all this is to share with you what we're doing, and I'm really excited about these journals. You can see most of what I've done so far on my Instagram and Facebook pages (linked here).  I'll leave you with a couple of pages below. Until next time, keep crafting!

Cindy Murray

Crafty Neighbor

Bible Journal Like a Pro

Yep, I'm still playing with videos.  This time I actually have a project to share!  Sunday I was doing some journalling in my Bible, and I thought, "Hey, my blog readers might like to know how I did that!"  So here it is:

I think for my next video, I might demonstrate the techniques I was talking about.  I'm just having too much fun!

365 Week 9

It’s already well past midnight, I just finished my LOAD page for today, and I need to work on my art journal.  Have I mentioned that the LOAD challenge is a little too much right now?  Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it, and normally I would really be enjoying the process, but trying to do it while keeping up with the art journal and the blog is way more work than I thought it would be.  So for that reason, I’m going to keep my a365 project recap short and sweet….

Day 50:  Yearly….

I made this simple page to illustrate something I do every year – take a cruise.  I tore pieces from a magazine.  The sky was the background of one page and the water was the shirt a model was wearing on another.  The ship came from an old cruise brochure.  I feel like it needs something more, but I haven’t decided what yet.

Am I afraid of change?

This page evolved after I tried a technique that failed.  I’m quickly learning that art journaling isn’t always about putting what you envision down on the paper.  Sometimes a page developes as you work your way through the steps.  Sometimes I don’t even know what the steps are; I just do whatever feels right at the time.

Which direction am I going?

This is another page that kind of just evolved.  I knew I wanted to use some maps and my compass stamps.  Then all the other pieces fell into place.  As I hunted through my stamps for whatever might work, the page began to take form.

Math

This page was made using a piece of ledger paper, stamps, and spraying some glimmer mist over masks.  It was simple and quick.

Never underestimate the power of…

I’ve been wanting to use this piece of paper for a while.  It was actually a card sent to me by a friend.  It was so pretty, I just had to use it.  I decided on the scalloped circles to illustrate my answers because they matched well with the pattern.  You may notice there are some additions to this one that are not on the version I posted to the Flickr group -- namely the gold scalloped circle that says "prayer". 

Daydream…

Daydream was a hard topic for me.  I don’t spend a lot of time daydreaming any more, and when I do, it’s usually work related – how boring!  So I dug deep in my past for a time when I used to daydream about being a performer.  Some magazine clippings I found made a great collage.

Wealthy

The first thought I had when I read this prompt was, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”  And since that didn’t really fit my intentions for this page, I went looking for something better.  The artwork isn’t all that pretty, but I love the quote.

That’s it for this week.  I hope you are keeping up better than I am.  I’ve had a few days where I barely had time to start my project for the day and wound up having to finish it on the next.  I have just three more days of LOAD and then everything will settle back down to normal for a while.  Whew! 

Here’s your next 7 prompts:

• My nickname
• The greatest gift
• Salad days
• Rejuvenation
• The kitchen
• Adventure
• If I had a magic carpet…

365 Week 8

After a frantic week of trying to keep up with the 365 and LOAD 213, I finally buckled and let a few days slide on the 365.  It’s not that I didn't create, because I did complete a scrapbook layout for each of those days.  I also did at least a little on my art journal, even if I didn’t finish the entry for that day.  So what I wound up with was several half-finished or barely started pages.

Luckily, today was a good day to catch up, and I spent the entire day working on my art journal, my LOAD entries, and this blog.  I am now back to my usual week ahead of everyone else (in order to keep the blog on time), and I had a lot of fun finishing up the daily projects.  If I can make it through the rest of February without getting to far behind, I’ll be able to sit back and relax a little in March and April before I have to get all revved up to do LOAD 513 in May.

You may be asking, why would I torture myself further by doing another LOAD in May when I can barely keep up with this one?  In the words of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mt. Everest, “Because it’s there.”  I just can’t resist a challenge, and I’m using this one to help me learn to just think outside the box, get the pictures down on paper and be, in general, quicker about getting my pages done.  I’ve gotten so comfy sitting here cropping in my own room, that I often spend hours on one page, but what I really want is to get the same results, but do it more quickly.

The same thing applies to my art journal for the 365.  On some of my early entries, I took a lot of time planning it out and trying to make it look just “so”.  Now that I’m in a rush, I find that more of my projects come together really quickly.  Rather than thinking hard about the process or what steps I want to take, I’ve just gone with my instincts and tried not to second-guess my decisions.  Some of these pages came together in 20 minutes or less.  I think they look just fine.  What do you think?

Day 43:  Do I dare?

As you can see, this entry is not finished.  I dared to leave it only partially done and have come back to add something to it several times.  The background was created by cutting 1” squares from a magazine photo.  After I glued them down, I whitewashed them with a bit of gesso to mute the bright colors.

Day 44:  A promise never kept

As you can see from this entry, I have some hidden journaling behind the house.  I put hinges on the house so I could use the space behind it for my journaling.

Day 45:  Winter means….

I used the Tim Holtz crackle paint for this page.  The results aren’t exactly what I would have expected.  I had “painted” the paper underneath with a walnut stain so that the cracks would show the walnut underneath, but apparently the two reacted together and caused this dirty crackle blend.  Then I colored the dog with my Copic markers, but the Copic doesn’t react the same on this slick paper.

Day 46:  Time for...

I had fun making this page about one of my favorite self-indulgences.  The journaling is on a tag I made out of some scraps.

Day 47:  What the world needs now…

I don't know why, but I drew a complete stump on this one until I wound up with the song stuck in my head.  And then, all I could think of was the Jerry Lewis telethon, which made me think of the word love.  Do I think “love” is the answer to the world’s problems?  No, compassion would be a better focus for the prompt, but my stencil said “love” so that’s what I used.

Day 48:  A photo of me laughing

This one is actually a big joke in our family.  There really are hardly any photos of me and most of the ones I do have are terrible.  So what better way to illustrate the lack of photos than with an empty photo frame. 

Day 49:  Luck

I got a little stuck on this one, so I just started cutting stuff out and slapping it together.  It’s nothing fancy, but then, no one ever said it had to be, right?

If you’re still keeping up with the challenge, then you’ll be wanting the next 7 prompts, so here they are:

• Yearly….
• Am I afraid of change?
• Which direction am I going?
• Math
• Never underestimate the power of…
• Daydream…
• Wealthy

I hope you are hanging with us!  If you started the 365 and missed a few days, don't worry, just pick up where you left off or anywhere in between.  If you're just now finding us, it's not too late to jump in, too.  I can't state it often enough that there aren't any rules to this little challenge.  So dust off your craft supplies and do something a little creative.  And while you're at it, post some of your work to our Flickr Group.  

We had a lot of activity in January, but February has slacked off quite a bit.  So to get you motivated, I'm offering a little incentive.  For each upload you make in February, your name will be entered into a drawing.  The more you upload, the more entries you'll receive.  We also want to know that you're following the blog, so if you haven't already joined and you're just reading it on the fly, go join!  Because each follower on the blog also gets an entry as long as they are also uploading pictures to the Flickr Group.

The prize will be determined by what kind of art/craft photos you upload.  So if you do mostly crochet, the prize will be related to that, or if you do mostly scrapbooking, it will be some kind of scrapbooking supplies.  So hurry up and show us all those great things you've been making with our prompts and good luck!

365 Week 7

What was I thinking?!  This week I’ve been trying to decide just how crazy I really am for taking on not only a 365 challenge, but also Layout A Day  (LOAD 213), and, just this past week, a giant scrapbooking garage sale.  This is on top of planning and organizing all the other Crafty Neighbor events that we have planned and my other job as a travel agent.  Needless to say, I’ve been a bit scattered, and my work is showing it.  It was a real struggle to get some of these pages done, but I did, and I’m ready to move on to the next set.  Here’s what I’ve been up to this week:

The color yellow

When I think of the color yellow, I think of bright, sun-shiny days, so I couldn’t resist painting this giant sun on my page.  It gave me some practice in using the acrylic paints (something I haven’t done in years) and I also wanted to try my hand at filling a space with journaling.  Not all of my pages have journaling on them, but I do feel like it is an integral process of the journal, and I want to fill it with as much journaling and symbolism as I can.

Fate

This prompt was a little difficult for me, because I wanted to examine what I really thought about fate versus chance versus free will.  I didn’t initially intend for the person to have no head, but I already used the head in another entry and I never could find another one that fit.  After sort of meditating on the question while I worked, I still had no concrete answer.

My parents

As the questions get more personal, I find that I have to curb my initial reaction to the prompts and try to be more artistic and symbolic in my answers.  There’s a lot of symbolism in this one.  The flower petals were made from a rain drops stencil.  The centers of the flowers were made with punches.

My favorite holiday

Sometimes I get a prompt and I know exactly what I want to do with it.  This was one of them.  I used a mask to create the tree and then used a sponge to ink the entire background blue.  The snowflakes were stamped in white pigment ink.  After removing the mask, I decided to paint the tree and journal in it.

Daily…

I had fun matching up my gear stamps to each other on the page.  I also used a stencil to sponge some additional accents onto the page.  The journaling block was torn from an empty checkbook register.  I tried my hand at a different font, which was also fun.

Chores

This page was a little challenging.  I knew right away I wanted to use some magazine clippings to represent some of my many chores, but then when I clipped them I wasn’t sure what to do with them.  I also wanted to fill the entire background with journaling, and the more clippings I had, the less journaling I could use.  I wrote out my text several times, and just kept editing it until I could get it down small enough to fit on the one page.  Wow!  It was a lot of work!

An arm and a leg

After seeing Christen do pages where she mixed and matched faces and body parts, I thought it would be fun to do a little myself.  I really didn’t have any kind of journaling or thoughts about the prompt, so I thought of changing the arms and legs on the cut outs.  I used parts from at least four different pictures.  I also used Tim Holtz tissue tape, stamps, ink, green paint, and green glimmer mist.

I had fun with these prompts, but I really will be glad when LOAD 213 is over.  That extra project every day is wearing me out!  Will we make it through next week’s prompts?

• Do I dare?
• A promise never kept
• Winter means….
• Time for...
• What the world needs now…
• A photo of me laughing
• Luck

Good luck!