Vacation Fun and a CONTEST!

I'm a fan of--

*Cheap. Yeah, I like saving money.

*Green. The best "green" strategy of all? Use what you have first.

* Color. Now that I live part-time in Florida, my wardrobe is much brighter.

* Recycling. Before you toss it, what can you do with it?

* Cute. I need a dose of it daily.

This page satisfies all my "fan" yearnings.

CHEAP The flowers came from a set of cheap drink charms I bought at the dollar store.

GREEN  Most of the paper on this page is old. The dots are from K & Co., and I plan to use up the rest of the page in small pieces because this adorable pattern is a bit overwhelming otherwise.

COLOR  There's a lot of it here! You could make a similar background paper to the K & Co. dotted pattern by using a circle punch on a bunch of your paper scraps, couldn't you? Hmmm.

RECYCLING The round circle is paper glued to and tucked around the cardboard circular top of a spool of ribbon. I just peeled the top off the spool, and voila!

CUTE My sister Meg drew this flamingo. He'd be the perfect accent for any vacation page. You can upload the file and print it out by going to my YouPublish library.

While you're there, be sure to check out the excerpt from Make, Take, Murder, the latest Kiki Lowenstein Mystery. It's available now through Amazon
CONTEST

The fabulous "VACATION" and the cute sunglasses on this page came from a K & Company Adhesive Chipboard pack.

You can win your own pack. Here's how:

1. Invite a friend to become a follower of this blog. Or become a follower yourself.

2. Leave me a comment telling me your friend's name or yours.

3. Do this before May 12 at midnight.

The first FIVE commenters to do so will win a package with 12 cool embellishments.

DEADLINE: May 12 at midnight.

How to Do a Design Transfer

This is a cheap, fun way to transfer almost any simple image. I use it to start many of my customized drawings, and I mentioned it in my latest book, Cut, Crop & Die.

Basically, you are creating “carbon paper” on the back of your image. Here are the steps:

1. Print out your image on a piece of paper. The thinner, the better. The simpler your image (that is, the fewer the lines and the less complexity it has), the better.





2. Turn over your image onto the WRONG side. Using a graphite pencil (#2 lead or softer is best), color the paper on the WRONG side of the image. I like to make strokes one way (say from upper left to lower right) and then the other way (upper right to lower left).

3. Flip your original over to the right side. Tape it down to a new piece of paper. Copy over the lines of the original with your pencil. This will transfer the graphite on the back to the new paper.

4. Tada! You will have the original and a much, much lighter pencil version of the same. Now you can correct your new version—you’ll always have a few lines that are too thin or wobbly. But you have transferred your design. Good on you!

Okay, now that you know how to do this...here's a tip: You can also transfer any image onto DARK paper by using the same process with one change. Instead of a regular lead pencil, use a white lead pencil like you find in a box of colored pencils. Heck, you could even use a yellow pencil or any pastel. It might be a little harder to lay down the coating of lead, but it does work!

Enjoy! And remember to respect copyrights and just use art that's copyright free.

How to Make a Paper Bag Album

Start with a stack of paper bags, folded shut.
Stack them alternately, open end, closed end. As seen below:

Now, sew them together through the middle axis, or alternately you can staple them together. I used a big bulldog clip to hold mine together and punched holes in them with my Crop-A-Dile. Then I sewed them together. Finally, I laced paper punched flowers through the holes.

Fold your album like a book, with the sewing line as your binding (as in a book.

Decorate the cover. Put a clear adhesive laminate film over the cover for stability. (Contact Paper will do fine.)

Decorate the inside pages and enjoy!

Cute Coaster Album

How to make your own coaster album:

1. Decide which coaster will be your first, second and so on in the album chain. Also decide what will be your album "cover." You might want to play with your shapes to decide this!

2. Now decide how you will attach your album "pages" (coasters) together. This will help you determine what sorts of holes you'll need and where they'll go. You might even wish to draw a small thumbnail sketch of your album so you remember where your attachment points will be.

3. Cover your coasters with paper. Again, think in terms of pleasing patterns! I chose to alternate pink and green. Also, think about where your photos will go. I decided my cover will not have a photo. All the inside pages will. On the green page with the big heart, the photo will go under the heart. On the other pages, the photos will go above the words "dreams" and "love."

4. Do the same for your back sides. (Uh, of the album! You know what I mean!)

5. If you decide to have an image extend beyond the edge of the coaster, remember it will show its reverse side on the reverse side of the coaster. For example, next to my cute little tree, I have a "sun" with a heart in it. The reverse of the "sun," the round shape, also shows when I flip the album over. So I had to cover both sides of the "sun" with paper. (You can see what I did by looking above at the album, the far left coaster shows the backside of the "sun.")

6. Punch your holes, add ribbon. Enjoy!


TIP: You'll notice that the second coaster from the left above doesn't have flat paper. I should have spread my glue across the center of the coaster rather than just around the edges. My bad.

Paper Piecing Tips

Paper piecing is fun and easy. Over the years, I've gotten better at it. Here are some of my best tips--and I invite you to share yours as well!

1. Make two copies of your pattern--always. That way, when you cut the pieces apart, you can tell what goes where.

2. Find patterns by going to "google," clicking on images, and putting in "line drawing + WHATEVER." Of course, you'll change the word "WHATEVER" to rabbit, deer, or whatever you want. Also try "cartoon" instead of "line drawing." Now, you don't have to limit yourself to simple drawings, but it does make it easier.

3. Use Herma's Dotto repositional glue dots on the back of your pattern to adhere it to the paper you want to use as a base. I always cut out the biggest part of the pattern first. You don't want to be piecing together small bits to make the overall shape of your image. For example, with the deer above, I cut out the whole body from brown paper. Then I peeled off what was left of my pattern, stuck it on the lighter paper, and cut those pieces out next.

4. Remember that your paper piecing won't really look great until you add pen or pencil and chalk. For my deer, I filled in the inside of the ears and his mouth with white pen. Then, I put a thin layer of pink ink over the white pen. I also used the white pen on the black of the eye, around the iris of the eye, and on the nose.

5. Use chalk as your best friend! It adds tons of definition and totally melds your pieces together. Remember that dark colors are the shadows or the receding portion of an image. Light colors are for the highlights, for areas that are nearest you.

6. Touch areas you wish to lighten with a rolled up eraser, the gummy kind, to lift away chalk. Since chalk can be hard to control, the type of gummy art eraser you can manipulate is perfect for getting into small areas. You don't have to scrub your paper. Just touch down the eraser.

CUPCAKES and THINK PINK

Yum, yum, yum.

I drew and colored the cupcake embellishment, the journaling box and the page title. You can get a copy of the art file by emailing me at SAVETALES@AOL.COM Just put CUPCAKE in the subject box.

We try to get these files out as quickly as possible, but after our newsletter has been out two weeks or more, we don't check that mailbox (savetales@aol.com) as often as we probably should. So...if you want it, tell me FAST.

Here's another set of images we'll send along with the CUPCAKE file--The doodling for THINK PINK which is above CUPCAKES. (For some reason, Blogger refused to let me move THINK PINK below CUPCAKES. Sigh. Life is like that!)

When Your Project Just Refuses to Co-Operate!

Since this is the blog where I share with my scrapbooking buddies, I can give you the straight scoop--

I agreed to do a page to be auctioned off Malice this weekend. The work goes to help the John Gildner charity which works with severely emotionally disturbed adolescents.

I decided to duplicate the page as I made it. In part, so I could test ideas on Page 1--and have a fall back to Page 2 if things didn't go as I wanted. Here's an admission: One of my favorite portions of the Design Team pages for ScrapBook inspirations is where the artists tell you what they tried that failed. It's very inspiring to think that their beautiful creations didn't just come together easily. At least, it's inspiring to me!

So I started work by pulling out all the papers I had in the official Malice colors. Then I changed the color on an orangish piece of paper because I liked the skull--very Malice since it's a gathering of mystery lovers. And finally, I created my own papers.

Along the way I had this super idea to add a small glass bottle to represent the poison that Dame Agatha Christie (who is the mystery author who spawned the genre that Malice honors) worked with. All was cool--until I tried to put the finished page into the frame I'd purchased. It was a "no go," because the small glass bottle caused the frame to sit lopsided. I fussed and fumed with it. Finally, I reverted to using Page 2--to which I added the customized flower and the AC initials.

Inside the small album is room for 8 photos (4" x 6" size). The cover of the album is sewn with sequins sprinkled throughout. The papers were customized and colored just for this, and the "not everyone's cup of tea" paper was custom made. The upper right with its overlapping letters pays homage to Agatha Christie's many books. The three red drops of blood lower right are in homage to the Killer Hobbies blog in which I participate. The tea bag on the left has glitter "inside." Agatha's portrait was sewn on by hand. The name of my book--Paper, Scissors, Death--appears on the page.

I'm also offering to review three chapters of someone's manuscript as an auction item.

Last week, the naming rights to a character in Book #3 of the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series fetched in excess of $500 (we think it was $750, but we can't confirm that yet) for the Guardian Angel group here in St. Louis.

I'd love to hear about your adventures with pages that just didn't work as planned!

The Wisdom of Mary Engelbreit: How to Live a Creative Life

All of us in the creative world have role models and heroines. One of mine has long been Mary Engelbreit. Last Thursday, thanks to the nice folks at For Keeps Sake Scrapbooking Superstore, I had the chance to finally meet the woman whose career I've followed with admiration.

I didn't think to take notes...which is unusual for me. I was too stunned, to tell you the truth. I figured she would be distant from all of us. She's a superstar. I didn't expect her to be approachable. But she was.

Mary made a short presentation and took questions. I'll try to share what I remember:

* She started by saying that if you choose to make a living of your creativity that you need to give up control. Her point was that there will be ups and downs, high-points and disappointments.

* She owes so much of her start to the support of her parents. As a child, she came home from an older friend's house where she saw her first art studio and announced to her mother, "I need my own studio." So her mother turned a closet into Mary's work area. "It was about 120 degrees in there," says Mary with a laugh. (Anyone who's lived through a summer in St. Louis can understand exactly what that must have felt like.)

* Which led to her advice, "Surround yourself with supportive people." And if the people around you aren't supportive? What if you have a boyfriend, best friend, whoever and that person can't share your vision? She said, "Get rid of them." (And let me say that this was the only time in her presentation where Mary seemed cut-and-dried. She said this with such utter authority that you knew she was speaking both from her heart and from experience.)

* I asked her how she handled career set backs. She said, "You can be upset about them. For about a week. That's it. Then...I always think, 'Okay, now I can do something else with that time.' You can't get bitter."

* I can tell you that she's a lifelong learner with a total lack of pretension about her skills. She mentioned at one point that she's unable to do illustrations that are representative art. (In other words, she can't draw one of her people and make that person look like someone living.) When she learned that you can use the blending tool of a Copic pen to lift color, she immediately asked Nancy (who teaches Copic marker use at For Keeps Sake) to come to her studio and give her a lesson! "I didn't know that," she marveled about the pens. "Hmmm."

* She draws for five or six hours a day. Once in a while, she doesn't want to work on her art. But, when that happens, she says, "Deadlines are great for inspiring creativity." After she gets started, she "gets into the drawing." She starts with pencil sketches and works to get them just right. ("I wish I could just do pencil sketches," she says with a sigh. But she knows her audience loves her sense of color.) After the pencil drawing is perfect, she goes over it with ink. Then she lays down color with markers. Finally she goes over the markers with colored pencils.

* I asked her if she ever made a mistake with the colors she chooses or whatever. "In the beginning," she says with a half-smile of remembrance, "there was a lot of throwing and stomping around. Now...I see the finished product in my mind. Besides, things can always be fixed with computer." (But she quickly admits she knows nothing about computers. She does have someone who works with her who is an expert.)

I've asked if I can come take Mary and her assistant Beth to lunch. Stay tuned!

You know, I wore ME colors to the event and a special pin that I thought she'd like. By golly, she honed right in on the pin....did my heart do a flutter-kick or what?

PS Does she scrapbook? She hesitated. She looked at us. We looked at her. Finally she said, "Uh, no. But I sure own a lot of scrapbook paper! And I know I should!"

You Inspire Me!

Yes, it's true. The notes, the comments, the responses I get keep me going. I imagine that some of you think this is a one-way street: I write and that's it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. YOU and YOU and YOU are why I write. I wake up in the morning thinking about you and how to reach you, how to get my books into your hands, how to offer you more than just a bunch of pages with a story typed on them.

Here are some ideas I'm noodling around:

1. I'm working with a group here in the St. Louis area to have a big inaugural launch of the Kiki Lowenstein Fan Club. It would include a weekend crop with lots of prizes, buttons that say "Get Kiki", and fan club membership cards. Of course, being a crop there has to be food, fun, classes and prizes.

2. I've written one Kiki short story. I'll probably send it off to a magazine first, but now I'm itching to write OTHER Kiki short stories. I have to decide the best way to share these--if my publisher agrees that I can.

3. I'm working on a blog tour. What scrapbooking blogs do you like best? What chat rooms?

4. I'm going to post scenes from Paper, Scissors, Death on my website.

5. I'm working on getting more tutorials onto the website--and making it easier for scrapbookers to find scrapbooking info.

6. I'm working on an online writing class--Writers Online Workshops has given me back the rights to my class "How to Get Started (Quickly) in Scrapbook Journaling" because they've made some changes.

7. I'm working on formatting all my old Graceful Bee columns into an e-book that I'll give away with the purchase of two books--Paper, Scissors, Death and Cut, Crop & Die.

Any other ideas for me? What would you like for me to do? Send me a GREAT idea and I'll come up with a gift for you!

Okay, back to the new book I'm writing! Ta-ta for now!

Joanna

The Bookmarks Have Arrived!

Yippee!

The new bookmarks have arrived for Cut, Crop & Die--Book #2 in the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery series. I had them designed especially to look like the FIRST bookmarks so you could collect the set. (I've already written Book #3, and we're on pace for #4, so the sky's the limit.)

Aren't they gorgeous?

Here's how to get yours...PLUS a signed copy of the galley for the first book. What's that? A galley? It's the original proof an author uses to make corrections. There's only one in existence per book, but I'm willing to sign one of my pages and give it to YOU.

Here's what you need to do:

Send a STAMPED, self-addressed envelope to Joanna Slan's Bookmarks and Galley, 12033 Dorsett Road, Maryland Heights, MO 63043. Be sure to let me know if you want the galley pages autographed to someone in particular!