Officially on hiatus

Well it's official, I'm on hiatus. The last of my studio went into boxes last night and of course right after wards we got news that the duplex is behind schedule to be ready for us to move into. I'll now be without my studio for over a week!
To top off the bad news I messed up my foot quite badly today at work- well on the way to finding lunch. I was walking with a co-worker (the awesome Chris G) down to Friendly Street Market to get some accouterments for lunch and walked right into a huge pothole and did something awful to my foot. At the time it was just a little twinge, but by the time I left work my foot was huge and I could barely walk on it.
My ankle oddly enough is perfect, I messed up something in my arch and I'm hoping it's not something that's going to require a cast. Just a light sprain rather than something torn or worse. Either way my long holiday weekend has been shot and I'm on the R.I.C.E (rest, ice, compression, & elevation) plan along with some Chinese herbs for injuries of this type.
I am hoping to be mobile enough for planned trip to Portland this Sunday, it's a $2 Sunday at OMSI and I want to be able to walk around and explore!

As it doesn't feel right to leave my blog with such a somber post let's look at something cute and fuzzy!

That my friends is a 3 week old lion cub from the West Coast Game Park in Bandon, OR. We took a road trip down last weekend and it was fantastic! I held both Bella pictured above and her brother Simba. I also got to hold a 4 week old spotted leopard cub Bentley, but he was squirmy and is pretty blurry in most of my pictures. They have many more of other fantastic animals for petting and viewing but the cubs are a pretty special thing. I also held two Opossoms, two farrets, and something else I can't remember or find in my photos... out for petting was a baby fox, baby wallaby, a baby black skunk, and an adult golden skunk (both de-skunked) and a few other animals- plus the heard of deer and goats that run over small children to obtain food.

I'll leave you with another picture my husband and I with Bella. I am going to make my way towards bed and contemplate unpacking some of my tools.

A different kind of book for a different kinda swap

In my slew of creative work last week I also finally completed my swap book for the Book Arts Forum swap! This book went to Billie and she kindly provided the pictures as I was so excited to get it in the mail across the pond I forgot all about taking pictures to share!
The cover is made from old x-rays, this one is of a chest. Kinda hard to tell from the pictures, but trust me it's a chest :) The theme of the swap was to use materials we had never used before. I received my book from Rhonda and I think it's already packed in a moving box but you can see pictures on her blog!
The x-rays of course came from MECCA my favorite craft reuse center, and in exciting news I'll be teaching classes there again in the fall. I'll be teaching an introduction class, probably a coptic class, and a class on ATC albums as they do a monthly swap. I also just signed up for their summer artist challenge and should be getting my materials next week. I'm a little frightened as I've never let someone pick my materials for me, but it should be a lot of fun.
I have enough x-ray left to make another book, maybe two. I haven't decided if they would be good for the shop or if they would be too strange...

I haven't made any new books yet this week, almost all of my creative energies have been going into my CSA box and finding wonderful new things to eat. While I haven't been taking pictures I think I'll put up a post later with all the tasty things I've been eatting and links to how to make them.

Hey look, crafty stuff!

After my last post I realized how much I missed working in my studio and how I needed to get back to work ASAP before I lost my sanity in this whole moving process. The good news is that I now have a cute little duplex to call home and I got some quality studio time in!

I had an extra white case left from the first order of folio's I made and I had found this awesome heart paper after I shipped Brie's order.

This was stop numero uno on studio time, I had been wanting to put the case and the paper together for a long time. Pockets were made, ribbon was attached and I am really happy with the results. This lovely little dvd folio can be found my shop!

This lovely star book is my first attempt at the structure, I asked Amanda to teach it at my local bookarts meeting this month!
I love the book and color combo's, but I'm not thrilled with the holes I punched in it... at this point I think I liked it better without the holes. However I also only own a star punch, a 4-leaf clover punch, and my screw punch so my punching was kind of limited....
I'm very excited about making a bunch of these to use a Christmas ornaments and maybe just some an ornaments to hang in my new studio space. I never decorated the current studio space I'm in and I really want to remedy that when we move this time.
I also got a fun blue flower celtic weave finished a few days ago, but don't have it photographed yet.. coming soon!
p.s. for those of you who visit the site I think I'll be playing with the set up over the next few days so don't be alarmed if things look different!

Yes, I'm still alive

Holy cow, life has been a crazy whirlwind around here and I think it's only going to get worse for a little while!
I found out the day our lease was up that it was up and we've been searching around for a new place to live. After two weeks of an exhausting & time consuming search we have an application in on a place and hopefully we will have a nice little duplex to call home soon.
Things you've missed due to my crazy life, I've created yet another style of wedding dvd folio like my fold up brag books, I was interviewed for Billie's Craft Room, and I bought an awesome seat bag for my husbands new bike!This awesome picture is the packaging for Dark Roast Photography who I made the chocolate and ivory folio's for. You can see one of the 3 dvd folio's unfolded up front and one folded up lurking with the boxes. I still love these folio's and I really love how great they look with the rest of her packaging!

Stay with me over the next month or so as we prepare to move and actually make the move, I promise to try to not fall off the map quite so badly!

Graffiti Blizzard Book

As I said in my last post I made a Celtic Weave Sketchbook for a trade. What I traded for was some graffiti sketch work on a book I made. My local book arts group had our meeting this week and our swap theme this month was Graffiti. I made a blank blizzard book out of craft paper and filled it with 6 atc's for him to decorate any way he wanted too.
Below are several shots of the book in it's finished state. I still feel bad that I didn't get any pictures of the sketchbook I traded him, but I've been told he loved it!
On with the book porn!

A Tasty Give Away!

As I have said before I work for Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss and we make fantastic coconut milk ice cream. This week the wonderful Coconutgal has been reviewing our flavors and we decided to join in the fun and give her some coupons to give away for free pints!
You can find her blog here, and details on the contest here. Sorry to all of my international readers but Coconut Bliss is currently only available in the US. We are still a very small company (7 of us work here in the office) and have just recently gone nation wide here in the states.

In other news my laptop is now back in my hands, much sooner than expected and as I got it back I didn't get much work done this week. I made a celtic weave to trade yesterday but forgot to take pictures of it... Hopefully I'll have time to get some pictures of what I traded it for before I have to give it away too! Other than that this week I need to finish the rest of Leslie's chocolate and ivory folio's as I've been taking my dear sweet time on it.

A Short Pause

My laptop and I are going to be separated for what will hopefully be a few short days. My case has cracked in the exact same spot again and it's been leaving marks on my wrist so I decided it was finally time to send it in to be repaired. Sadly as I'll be mailing her off tomorrow I know she won't reach Apple until Friday so at the soonest I would have her back on Tuesday of next week. I'm expecting it to be more like Wednesday or Thursday in reality. The good news is that without the interwebs to distract me I am expecting some time next week to do some serious binding.
Next week you ask? Why not sooner? I have a graduation in Portland Friday evening, a reservation at the Grand Lodge Friday night, and an appointment with the tide pools in Cannon Beach on Saturday morning :)
The bad news, I can't imagine the number of post that are going to be in my reader that I'll need to catch up on!

In the mean time I'll leave you with a few photo's of the DVD folio's I've been working on. The first is a gold and chocolate 1 pocket. While you can't see the paper inside it's a sparkly chocolate paper that matches the ribbon and cloth perfectly. This photographer wanted an elegant simple folio and I think this works fantastically. I'm also working on a few new designs for her that hopefully will involve a flap.
The brown silk and ivory folio are also very elegant and simple. These are still in production but as I said the other day I was staring at the piles of materials and I had to see what one looked like finished.... and they are stunning! I love the flocked ivory damask fabric and the silk cloth, it's a wonderful combination and in retrospect I should have taken a photo of the inside for you to see as well!

Well with that it's time for Lost so I'll see you all when I get my laptop back!