a super quick one!

today was a day for running around; crazy early morning dentist appointment, a train trip to philly to get my hair done and shopping for some easy autumn/winter basics that turned into dresses & tights shopping instead. so, due to said crazypants day, i leave you with some fun rainbow pics of the new store. love.

quick cards to go

often people come into the store looking for some inspiration or a new product to jump start their creativity and what i usually tell them is to use a card they have already made as a blueprint for a new card, and then usually once you've started stamping and putting things down on paper more ideas will start flowing.

well, to take it one step farther, i sometimes just about completely re-make a card, changing only the paper. it's pretty amazing how different something can look even when all you switch up is a card base and the patterned paper.

here are 3 cards i made using one of my all time favorite stamps, "to go cup" from a muse. it's such an easy stamp to paper piece with and a tiny bit of paper piecing can really make something pop! i also always use a white glaze pen to make the to go lid look like plastic.

just a random, easy tip from someone who usually appreciates a good idea to help her through a creative slump!

friday five #08

umm... we'll call this a central, mountain & pacific standard time friday five! so close...

01. "up" - i actually fell in love with "up" when kerry brought me to see it at the alamo drafthouse on my birthday, but now i'm loving the fact that it's out on dvd, and i've already seen it twice! i've been renting it from the redbox because i refuse to buy it if it's going to come out in 3d like 6 months from now, but i can't wait 'til it does.

02. work! - is it nerdy to talk about how much i love my job in my stuff-i'm-digging-on-friday-five? i don't even care if it is. i've always loved my job at scraptasia and now that we are in our new location and i get to place orders over in our new "high strung" chartreuse studio from the comfort of our new rolling chairs it's even better. obvs that's just one of the million things i'm loving at work, but it's the little thing i was thinking about when i added it to this week's five, so there it is.

03. peter bjorn and john's "living thing" - in a classic morgan maneuver... i didn't really like this album on my first couple of listens when it initially came out. but, as always, it's a few months down the line and i'm soooooo into it! it's one of 3 or 4 albums on constant rotation right now and i think it has that perfect dark, but playful feel for the fall. don't expect the whistling tv & commercial fodder type of peter bjorn & john, this is a whole different animal. i've already listed a couple of these on house party mixes here, specifically "it don't move me" and "nothing to worry about", but for a different feel also try "4 out of 5", "living thing" and "i want you".

04. dr. sheldon cooper - i am not usually a half hour sitcom kind of girl, but i am a bit of a nerd and even if you aren't, you can definitely appreciate big bang theory. this is easily one of the laugh-out-loud funniest 30 minutes of tv and sheldon totally makes it for me. i don't know that i can really describe sheldon, but you can experience him in all his matter of fact, spock-like, face popping goodness here.

05. taylor swift's snl - i was pretty disappointed by the january jones episode last week, and i haven't yet seen joseph gordon-levitt's this week, but right now my love of snl has been renewed and is being kept alive by thoughts of taylor swift's episode from the week before last. i'm not really into taylor swift or know much about her (other than the fact that i dig that she is in her mid-teens and dresses, writes songs and acts like she's in her mid-teens, which i pretty rare & cool) anyway, almost every single sketch in this episode, wether she was in them or not, was hilarious. i'm not even going to try to explain them to you, you just need to get on hulu to watch the full episode!

kitty robot!

the rad girls of kitty robot asked me a couple of months ago to be their guest designer this month, i of course said yes and they sent over some of their fun buttons for me to play with! here's what came about with my somewhat limited time;

"never not" is something that i've picked up from kristina's vernacular and it's beyond appropriate for this "never not looking for trouble" layout. the biggest picture is from our trip to philly to see the get up kids a week or so ago, and the others are just a couple of the many versions of photos of us looking for trouble over the past couple of years. loved the cute set of camera buttons, loved actually thinking to use my nestabilities on a layout & loved mixing a few of my current favorite papers & thickers.

i used one of the cameos from the deer cameo set on this card and mixed paper from cosmo cricket's "nutmeg" 6x6 paper pad & 12x12. also, you can't really tell in this photo, but i got my bling that perfect dark brown by coloring over yellow bling with a super dark brown copic marker. it's an easy way to get your bling to match whatever you are working on and it dries super quick. just remember to pick a marker that is just a couple shades darker than you want the final product to look, because the transparent nature of the bling lightens it a little.

seriously? loved this snowy town paper from basic grey's "eskimo kisses" collection as soon as i saw it, and these little kissing deer are perfect with it!

p.s. you can also see my bad answers to the cute kitty robot questionnaire on the kitty robot blog.

221 sherman avenue: a before & after

so, the latest absence from my blog was due to the huge undertaking that was helping to move scraptasia (the scrapping & stamping store i work for) to it's new location, which has about 2.5 times the space as the original! when dawn found the space it was totally stripped down, i.e. no floors, half a ceiling and a lot of work that needed to be done, but we went at it and although we are still taking care of some finishes, we are open and love how it has turned out! totally worth all the 12 & 14 hour days! so, in the spirit of design sponge's before & after and oh joy!'s this or that, i bring you scraptasia's very own edition of before & after!

we went with a ridiculously rad color called "high strung" for the cash wrap & the studio area because it's awesome and because it matches our logo! jessica is going to work her magic soon and paint said logo and store name on the front of the cash wrap. the cash wrap itself is about 3 times bigger than our original and allows us space to start doing make & takes soon!

before = cement floor & empty space. after = sweet new floors in a yummy chocolate & drool-worthy stock!

we have 55 new to us colors of bazzill in our newly re-arranged bazzill corner!

we are super stoked on all the natural light and i am love with that fact that we have room to hang all our mini albums along with samples!

the contractors took out that little partial wall and we now have a huge studio/class room, tool area & a kitchen! plus a bigger ribbon wall! this is obviously one of my favorite areas of the new location!

i don't really want to call this a stamp corner, since that sounds small, but this huge stamp corner is another one of my favorite spots. so many stamps, so many inks & so many fun tools, dies & punches. even though i work at scraptasia i will still occasionally spot a stamp i don't remember, it's like a magical stamp wall, and now there are two of them!

it's been so amazing over the last week and half to have the store re-opened and see how excited our customers are to see our new space! i also can't wait for all my scrappy friends to see it soon!

friday five #07

01. monsters of folk - i don't know if i can really even explain my monsters of folk experience in terms that will be able to do it any sort of justice, but i'll try. i had heard rumblings of this "super group", but had just put them in my mental to-check-out-list until my friend john off handedly mentioned that he had a spare ticket for their philadelphia show at the academy of music, which i jumped on. these 4 guys, m. ward (solo work, she & him), conor oberst (commander venus, desparacidos, bright eyes and solo work), jim james (my morning jacket and solo work as yim yames) and mike mogis (bright eyes + 5 million other things) have written, performed, produced or appeared on like 70% of the albums i love most in the world and their degree of musicianship is INSANE (and you know i don't use caps!) anyway, the show was definitely one of my favorite performances of all time, if not the favorite. it was obvious that these dudes all really dig each other and thoroughly enjoy writing & playing music together. they performed some of their songs from their album as well as a ton of each others' songs for 2ish+ hours and it was amazing! beyond words.

02. screen printed tour posters - i have written before about my love for a good gig poster, but i just have to revisit it since the past week and a half has yielded two! kristina & i scored the amazing screen printed typewriter tour poster (pictured up there) at the get up kids show last thursday, and then i also scored an amazing one with metallic-y bits at the monsters of folk show monday. i die. now they just need a good framing so they can join the art wall.

03. new york magazine - just go ahead and subscribe now. new york magazine is the perfect length for a weekly reading, an awesome mix of news & entertainment, and it always supplies me with at least one or two interesting stories i want to share. i love it so much that i will even forgive it for this weeks cover story about how there are bands back in brooklyn. duh, nym!

04. chapstick "classic" - any of you who know me in person know that if i can't get my hands on my lip stuff it's all over. in fact john and i had to dash to the locust deli pre-show because i almost started hyperventilating sans-lip moisturizer. anyway, chapstick medicated used to be my go to love, but then they switched it all around when they changed their packaging and so i had to start using burts bees instead. it's good, but it's no chapstick medicated. anyway, on said pre-show dash for lippy stuff i made a wonderful discovery, chapstick "classic" is in fact chapstick medicated!!! rejoice with me.

05. penguin classic hardcovers - i think i have blogged in the past about my desire to read the classics that i somehow skipped in my earlier days. i started with pride & prejudice and am enjoying it so much that i'm slowing my reading down so that it doesn't end. and it's making me wonder what other classics are out there that i would love as much as this one. and now the design/literary world has given me yet another reason to keep reading; penguin hardback classics designed by coralie bickford-smith. gorgeous repeated images, printed and debossed on cloth hardcovers. so yum. my favorites are the picture of dorian gray, madame bovary, great expectations and oliver twist i am putting them on my christmas list, and have already visited them in the book store. you can drool over them all here. how beautiful will they be on their very own set of shelves?!?