I had to put a hold on my Awareness card collection due to an amazing turn of events. In late September there was talk on Facebook about a possible fundraiser for my friend Tiffany, maybe a gig or a cabaret. A week went by and nothing had been organized, so I emailed a couple of local bands and asked if they would be willing to play a Benefit for Tiff.

Lizband was my first choice, as Tiffany and I have been fans since 1993. Of course Liz said yes, so my next email was to Jody Richardson, lead singer/guitarist of The Pathological Lovers (another local band). In my email, I told Jody what was going on and mentioned that I was still looking for a third band with a personal connection to Tiff. Jody replied and said “Lovers are all in. All proceeds go to the cause. Just wait on the third band for a sec will ya’?”

So the next morning Jody emails me and tells me “The third band is Fur Packed Action. We have all agreed. ALL money goes to the cause.” I cried from joy, I could hardly believe such a selfless act. You see, Fur Packed Action, aside from being my *favourite* local band of ALL time, have been broken up since 2001. TEN YEARS. They have played only ONE reunion show since that time, five years ago in 2006. There was always something so special about an FPA show.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many friendships I’ve forged through mutal love of this band. My best friend Jenni and I spent every other weekend at FPA shows. I met my other best friend Peggy at an FPA show. I instantly adored an old co-worker named Susy because she loved FPA – she is still my friend today. When I met my friend Heidi, we bonded over a mutual love of FPA. Deebs (Darryl) and I met at FPA shows and became fast friends, and he introduced me to other great pals who love FPA. Jody, the singer of FPA has become like a brother but better – he’s been there for me through every tough time in my adult life with just the right amount of perspective.

Anyhow. Needless to say, I love that band a lot. Jody asked another old fave, Persona, to play the show as well and they all agreed. We announced the Benefit on Facebook on a Wednesday, the tickets were available the following Friday at 5pm and they were *totally* sold out by Saturday evening. Over 250 tickets sold in 24 hours. It became apparent we’d need to announce a second show, so that’s what we did and it looks as though that show is almost sold out too (tickets available at Fred’s Records until they sell out!).

Talk about overwhelmed. I am so excited to see FPA again, but that excitement is matched by feelings of shock and joy, knowing that… I put this in motion. I didn’t ask FPA to play, I never would’ve been so presumptious, I just wanted to raise $1000 for a friend in need. As it happens, we have currently raised almost $10,000 for Tiffany so far. The bands are not just giving up their time for two nights, there will be countless hours of rehearsal for them all to relearn songs they haven’t played in 5 years. I just cannot begin to thank them enough.

In other news, I decided to book a trip to Toronto on a whim, so I spent a week on the mainland visiting some friends and see a Canadian band called C’MON play their last two shows. October was certainly a whirlwind, and November is shaping up to be even crazier. Exciting times!

To keep this post relevant to the usual content, here’s a few pictures of the Star Book I made after the last FPA reunion in 2006…

Recently Tiffany found out that she has Breast Cancer, which came as a great shock to all of us because she’s only 33 years old. Her story could very easily be your story or mine, and there is no time like the present to remind everyone you know and love to check their breasts. You can read more about Tiffany’s journey and her fantastic outlook on life over on her blog:  http://tiffanyannemartin.wordpress.com

I have been trying to come up with meaningful ways to help out and spread the word, that Breast Cancer can affect any woman, of any age, at any time. I have decided to sell some handmade “Awareness” cards, I will let you know soon where they will be available to purchase.

Here’s an example…

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The cards will be very similar to this one, featuring a Pink awareness ribbon paired with a variety of words of encouragement. Special orders can be made for other coloured ribbons, and a portion of all proceeds will be going to a local breast cancer charity (which is yet to be named).

I know the profit from these cards won’t be huge, but it is one small way that I can help.

What can you do you shed some light on Breast Cancer Awareness this month? Talking about it is the first step.

Here is a picture of Tiffany and I at one of our favourite establishments, The Ship Inn…

I only have three pictures of us, and they are all taken at The Ship

Click to link to Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger

Result:

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O Captain

Actually, at first I thought about saying no. I mean, who wants to make a card for an Art collector who owns his own gallery? But I’d like to think Ally’s dad won’t be critiquing my watercolouring technique. Especially since I carelessly scribbled watercolor pencil strokes all over the map stamp and added water to blend. I copied Lisa with the Vintage Photo distress ink too – thanks for the inspiration, Lisa!

Map Stamp: Impression Obsession, Sentiment: computer generated

Here’s the winning card again… I’ll take a photo of my goodies when they arrive!

Click picture to go to Hero Arts Blog Post

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Then I thought to myself “I wonder how vellum would look if I coloured the back of it” and this card was born…

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Then I saw another card that I thought had been masked, but upon closer inspection I noticed that the image was peeking through a window so I thought – “I wonder how the masking would turn out”…

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I needed one last card to teach my May Flowers Card Class (this past Wednesday) so I came up with this clean and simple design using Copic Markers to colour the image…

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So as you can see, I’ve had a productive week - even though all of these cards were designed to teach a class, I had lots of fun making them. I even made a Scrapbook Page, which I’ll save for another post.

Hope you all have a great weekend

We are also busy planning for our Spring Scrapbook Retreat (May 13-15th) AND I was reunited with Jenn Shurkus this past weekend when The Paperie brought her in to teach COPIC & LuminArte Classes! I wore my flip-flops just for her

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Anyhow, I just thought I would pop on to let y’all know that I’m still alive and with the exception of 10 cupcake cards, I haven’t made any other cards in 2011! Ack! My other big news is that I am moving to my very own bachelor apartment on May 1st so I am hoping that once I get my little crafty space set up and move my laptop AWAY from that space, I will be much more productive – we’ll see!

OH! I also designed my FIRST EVER business logo for one of my co-workers! And I got paid for it! I can now pretend I am a freelance designer, hehe

Hope you are all well!

This week Glenda is celebrating her 100th Amusing Challenge and she has asked a bunch of her buddies (including lots of us from the old A Muse team) to play along in a blog hop of sorts. There’s lots of great cards to see, so scroll down below my card to see everyone’s creations!

Glenda’s 100th Challenge is: Use red on your card or project.  Use as much or as little as you like. Incorporate it by using paper, ink, ribbon, embellishments, whatever you like! It’s that simple!  You must play along with the challenge to be eligible to win the blog candy.  If you play along, please leave a comment on Glenda’s blog and link back to her post from your post.  If you upload to an online gallery, please use the keyword GRAC100.  You have until midnight Pacific Time on January 23rd to play along and you can play along as many times as you like.  The winner will be randomly chosen and announced on January 24th. Have fun!

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I’m extra excited to see Jenn Shurkus again – she will be coming up to Newfoundland in April to teach some wicked fun classes at The Paperie. Jenn is on the Creative Imaginations design team, Copic Certified, Ranger Certified and was the most successful instructor from the A Muse Instructor program. This girl has got teaching down to a science and we can’t wait to see her in action.

Looking forward to making new discoveries in 2011!

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I love the A Muse Marigold stamps very much, and often reach for them when I need an elegant card. Also in love with their Currant shimmer couture paper – the colour is delicious. I experimented with Copics for the colouring and tried that cutting technique I keep seeing everywhere. I just stamped the image on a square piece of white cardstock (on top of the Hero Arts Friendship Definition cling stamp), coloured and cut along the edge of the definition stamp, then trimmed around part of the flower.

Hope this finds you all well - I’ve been making a LOT of cards lately to sell. Fun!

Christmas Card Class – Tuesday, November 30th (6:30pm) FULL
With less than a month left to get your Christmas cards made and sent out, this class will focus on clean and simple designs that will be quick and easy to reproduce for the holiday season. We will make FIVE cute and simple cards, showing you some neat tips and tricks to make quick holiday card making a breeze.

Hopefully I can fit in some shoe shopping, mama needs a new pair of shoes!

This is my first time actually finishing an A Muse Calendar, if you can believe that. I was going to use the Bind-it-All but then I thought “what else could I do with this?” Then it came to me. A tear-away calendar!

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I started with the A2 A Muse Calendar pages mounted on black cardstock, then perforated with the Scor-Bug 0.5 inches from the top (it’s best to go back and forth a few times for extra perforations because there are two layers). The top of the calendar pages were punched with the Crop-a-dile and then taped together with Scor-tape above the holes so you can easily tear away the pages one month at a time. The ribbon is threaded through the back of the calendar out through the lip of the matchbook and tied in a bow.

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It stands up nicely on its own, but once I start tearing pages away each month I will likely prop it up on a little easel or a CD jewel case. I went fairly basic with the stamping because I had it all taped together before figuring out what I wanted to put on each page - talk about doing things backwards! Definitely not recommended

http://www.criminalgrace.com/?p=2247 (check out the rest of her blog for tons of inspiration).

30 Goals for my 30th Year:

1. get my learner’s permit and learn how to drive (september 10th)
2. figure out how to use my canon rebel
3. do something that terrifies me
4. get my taxes done (shocking, i know) (april 10th!)
5. make at least two cards a week
6. redesign the paperie website
7. live by myself (as of may 1st!)
8. keep a camera in my purse for all those kodak moments
9. sell things that i just don’t use (ie: my computer desk)
10. buy my very own brand new laptop – no more hand-me-downs!
11. get a grown-up comforter for my bed  (august 18th)
12. quit drinking diet pepsi (do i have to?)
13. see the northern lights
14. travel outside canada (september 23-28th, flew to orlando, back to toronto, took a bus to buffalo)
15. read at least one book per month
16. weed through my belongings
17. go to deep water fitness every week
18. learn how to cook and eat healthier
19. get 8 hours of sleep a night
20. start a savings account (april 15th!)
21. make jewelry to sell
22. sell cards or birth announcements in stores
23. go somewhere to see built to spill live (a girl can dream) (september 28th, 2010 in buffalo, NY)
24. sort out my dual (american) citizenship (september 14th)
25. see my niece more often
26. keep a paper journal
27. drive across the country (okay, so that probably won’t happen this year)
28. get a credit card  (april 15th!)
29. rely on myself more
30. contribute something to a charity (september, it wasn’t a lot but i donated to the a muse calendar project and emailed others to participate as well – hopefully made a small difference in donations). organized a charitable bake sale at the paperie on valentine’s day weekend and another on easter weekend. donated to heavenly creatures when their donation boxes were stolen in march).

(updated on april 15th, 2011 – crossed a few more off the list!)

We are also taking classes with TIM HOLTZ! But the excitement doesn’t stop there; I’m taking a class from Claudine Hellmuth of Ranger, and both Chris and I will take classes with Sally Traidman of Hero Arts! We are actually signed up for over 15 classes altogether and can’t wait to bring back some exciting class ideas to The Paperie.

When my mom told me to find my passion and turn it into a career, she really knew what she was talking about. I ♥ stamps. I have a secret ambition to one day illustrate a stamp line. I always joke that if I knew how to draw, I wouldn’t stamp but that’s not quite true – I actually can draw! I’d just rather stamp.