Friday Freebie

One of the fantastic parts of The Creative Connection Event was all the giveaways!!!! Once I arrived back home, I discovered that a few of the items we received are items I already have. So, in the spirit of sharing the love, I'm offering my first giveaway! I'm hoping to make this a more regular occurrence so keep your eyes (and computers) peeled in the future!

I love both of these magazines but want to share them with my followers, so if you leave a comment before noon Central Time on Monday, September 27, I'll do a drawing and the winner will have two new mags to add to their collection!

Just Desserts

Even the food at The Creative Connection Event is creative and inspired. The S'mores cupcake wasn't actually at the event but what I consumed before heading to the Handmade Market the first night of the conference - I needed massive sugar intake to power me through all those aisles of fantastic art and crafting possibilities! This little delicacy comes from Hell's Kitchen - an amazing restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. I've missed it terribly living along the North Shore as ours has been converted to a burger place.

The lovely red velvet cake was served at our luncheon on the opening day of the conference. The recipe comes straight from the Pioneer Woman Cooks, courtesy of Ree Drummond, the speaker at our luncheon. I have a sentimental attachment to red velvet cake as it is what my husband and I served at our wedding reception. This recipe is my very favorite of Ree's many wonderful recipes!

Sign here, please

This is the minuscule pile of books that was my traveling companion to The Creative Connection Event. This little, light stack of hardboard and paper necessitated it's very own bag to Minneapolis. While others were purchasing their books at the Barnes and Noble booth at the conference site, I brought all these books that have graced my bookshelves for years and are now graced by the greetings and autographs of all my "she"roes! Though I did not have the books of all 30 or so authors at the event, this was quite enough for me! I think any more would have necessitated back surgery on my part following the conference! You'll also notice that Amy Butler's books are at the very top of the stack!

Swap meet

The weekend before The Creative Connection Event was spent finishing up this "little" project to swap with my new friend, Vicki. We met through the message board set up for the event and connected initially because she lived in an area of the country where I had lived for many years. As we emailed one another prior to the event we decided to set up our own little swap and create traveling art kits from old cigar boxes. We each answered a few questions to guide our choices as we were creating for each other.

Vicki shared some of her interests - personal and creativity-wise. As I was putting her kit together, I tried to incorporate her favorite colors and personal interests into the exterior design of the kit. She and her husband like to go cruising on their motorcycle on weekends so I chose to cover the exterior in black and mustard colored leather all stitched together with thick mustard thread. Punching the little holes to thread the pieces together is not for the faint of heart (or those prone to carpal tunnel!). All the work was definitely worth it and I loved it when I was finished and Vicki did, too!!! You can see the original cigar tin in the pic below.

I filled the inside with lots of little trinkets, beads and baubles - perfect for creating lots of mixed media art journals. Little fabric yo-yos, hand-lettered ribbons, tiny cardboard flowers, wooden spools of bakers twine, and mini journals fill vintage baking molds. Covered matchbooks are filled with tiny pinked denim patches, handmade paper beads, cork circles, vintage stamps, and paint chip buttons.

We got to meet in person after the end of the first full day of the conference following the incredible keynote address and opening dinner. We got to talk for about an hour before fatigue completely took over and the excitement of going to look through our gigantic goodie bags from the dinner was too much to bear!!!

Creating these gifts for each other was so much fun and is something I love to do in my everyday life. When birthdays and holidays come up, I always try to create personalized, meaningful gifts for others. In the next few days I'll share the fun kit that Vicki put together for me - I just have to stop myself from using all the stuff in my art before I get to take pictures of it all!!! You should also check out Vicki's blog, Killer Queen Boutique sometime!

The Butler did it!

I will have so much more to say about this in the coming days, but for right now I just wanted to share one pic from my magnificent trip to The Creative Connection Event in Minneapolis over the last few days. One of the absolute highlights, if not the best moment, for me was getting to meet Amy Butler!!!!! This is the moment I got to meet her and have her sign the books she's authored. This amazing autograph party was jam-packed with nearly 30 amazing women creatives and authors. I did not get books signed by all of them, but suffice it to say I did have to pack a whole extra bag just for all the books of my "she"roes!!!!!

The autograph party was followed by the opening dinner and keynote addresses given by Amy as well as Mary Jane Butters, farmgirl extraordinaire! It was the best way to wrap up an exciting first day of this amazing event. I loved Amy's presentation which included a slide show of the evolution of her life and business. She also shared the influences in her life that inspired her love of stitching and design. Probably most inspiring to me was her message of being your genuine, authentic self and following your passion - something I must remind myself of everyday and the message I will strive to pass on to every one I meet.

That's all I can manage for tonight - unpacking and ooohing and aaahing over all of the gifts we were given during the conference just absolutely took it all out of me!!!! More to come tomorrow and in the following days (along with some giveaways to share my stash of artistic booty with my faithful followers!!!!!)

So excited!!!!!!!!!

I can hardly stand the excitement!!!!! I am not very patiently waiting to hit the road for The Creative Connection event in Minneapolis!!!!! The actual event begins next Thursday but there is a Handmade Market preview on Wednesday evening. I'll be heading down on Wednesday morning on board the Rocket Rider to get checked in at my hotel and get all checked in at the conference. I can't wait to pick up my goodie bag and start meeting face-to-face all the wonderful people that I've only "met" online so far!!! I keep looking over my class choices and panel selections and all the special events like the Pajama Party and the Cupcake Farewell (though I shouldn't be excited for the farewell when it hasn't even begun yet!) and getting more giddy! I've already started packing for the event - I thought I was the only person doing that when it's still about a week away, but then I got an email from one of my new friends that I'll be swapping with at the event and she was packing, too! Now I don't feel like such a dork but I really don't care about feeling so dorkily (is that a word? I just made it one!) excited for the conference!

How can I not be excited about getting to hear and meet so many of my arts and crafts and women entrepreneurial sheroes! Amy Butler, Mary Jane Butters, Ree Drummond, and Kaari Meng are but a few of the incredible women that will share their amazing stories and wisdom with us. The pile of books that I have to be signed by them nearly necessitates it's very own suitcase for the trip! As wonderful and thrilling as it is to meet all of them, I can't wait to be among all the other attendees and form new friendships with all the other creative and artistic souls out there!

I have to be at least a bit patient as I haven't finished all of my items for swapping with others at the event. The main job for this weekend (in addition to making sure there are enough frozen meals for my husband so he doesn't just go out and get McDonald's salads and Subway to eat) is to finish a cigar box traveling art kit (which I'll share when it's all finished).

One project I did finish up early this week is a set of my Dual Duty Coasters. I stitched them up using my most recent fabric designs at Spoonflower called Family Forever (that's a baby pic of my mom you see in the close-up photo) and vintage linen. Once they were all stitched up, I wanted to make them even more vintage-y feeling so I tatted a little edge around each of them. It was a nice little task to keep me busy on the car trip to Iowa last weekend. Once they were all finished, I knew I didn't want to just hand these coasters over to Nan (my new online buddy and I hope face-to-face friend very soon). I discovered that these coasters fit perfectly inside those little rounds Laughing Cow Cheese boxes. I grabbed the box that I knew I had been keeping for some special reason and added vintage scrapbook paper, a coffee filter ruffle, sage raffia and little coffee cuff corrugated flowers. I topped with more corrugated cardboard and an orange juice can lid embellishment with my Family Forever design and mini Scrabble tiles. I can't wait to meet Nan in person and share this little gift and I'm so excited to see what she's created for me!

A picture is worth a thousand words...

... but sometimes the combination of the two is profoundly more beautiful and meaningful. Letters and words have been my obsession for so long which I mostly attribute to beginning my practice of the art of calligraphy at age 10. I've collected notebooks full of quotations and meaningful verse that inspires me. Those words find their way into my calligraphic creations and other design work.

I am also a collector of many things vintage and one of my favorite vintage collectibles are photos. I am lucky enough to have a wonderful collection of old photos of my ancestors which I love to pull out and also often find their way into my designs. I've also been compiling other written memorabilia from my family - grandma's recipes, poems that my great grandfather authored, letters and cards crafted by my mom and grandma. I have plans and sketches to combine these items on projects in the future; there are just not enough hours in the day for all the plans in my head.

In the meantime, I have combined some of these family photos with words of different languages meaning family in fabric form. You saw the preview of one color combination in my last post. Above you'll see a second color combo, which is my favorite! A lovely blogger named Gay took note of this design, which you can find at Spoonflower, in her most recent posting at www.idreamedisaw.com. It is a beautiful site and very inspirational and I feel so blessed and honored that she chose to highlight one of my designs among other stunning works that combine words and images!

Spoonflower Sharing

I was so excited to get back home from our visit back to North Dakota to find that my recent order from Spoonflower had arrived! A bunch of proofs of my latest designs which feature family. The designs include vintage photos of my ancestors in four colorways; I've always loved looking at these pics over the years and now I can't wait to use these designs in my sewing, quilting and art quilting projects. The first project I'll be using them in are some coasters for a swap at The Creative Connection Event in a few short weeks!

It was also very exciting to check out the Spoonflower blog today and find that they are doing a giveaway again in a few short days and hours. I was lucky enough to discover Spoonflower a year ago when they were doing a swatch giveaway so I got my first couple of designs together and shortly after, my very own fabric designs arrived at my doorstep. I was completely hooked!!!

Spoonflower is doing another swatch giveaway to celebrate the move to their new facilities. You can give a small donation in lieu of the cost of a swatch or just get your free swatch. You'll need to set up a Spoonflower account if you want a swatch of your own design or you can get a free swatch of an existing Spoonflower designer (like me!). I've now got over 100 designs - hard to believe that in the space of a year!!!! I get no money for swatch orders, just so you know. The giveaway is for 24 hours only, between noon Eastern time on Thursday, August 26 until noon the following day.

Burgers, fries and a big surprise!

Okay, not really a surprise as any trip back home means at least one visit (and usually more) to our iconic Big Boy drive-thru! It may be surprising to others that you eat your fries with their fantastic gravy and a pizza burger flying style. Big Boy has many other items on their menu, but for most people in our family (and anyone who marries into it) those are the only items ever ordered. There might be one more item - a Hot N' Tot (Coke with cinnamon syrup).

It's not just the food that makes the Big Boy experience so memorable, it's the shared event of eating your food in your car in the parking lot next to the restaurant as there is no eat-in option. Some folks choose to take their food out to one of the picnic tables under the trees but then you're a much easier target for the squirrels begging for your lunch. On our second visit to Big Boy on our trip home, we were treated to a show of a half dozen turkeys chasing one of their own around the trees trying to establish their pecking order.

Big Boy is also part of most Bismarck and Mandan high school students experience. Dragging Main in Bismarck included the Big Boy as one of the turn-around spots is the Big Boy parking lot!

A more elegant part of our culinary experience on this trip was a little visit to the Patisserie on Fourth. They hosted a Night at the Opera event which featured cakes all inspired by and named for elements or characters of the Phantom of the Opera. We sampled the Phantom and Opera cakes which were both beyond wonderful! We bought a box of truffles to take home with us for good measure and bought mom and dad a dessert as they didn't join us. Roses graced each table and art from area artists decorated the walls. I was particularly enamored with the artwork of Julie Neidlinger. I was also very tempted by the gorgeous silent auction cakes that were created for the event!

I only wish there had been more in attendance to support this fantastic and unique event. It's frustrating to find that people are so reluctant to step out of their comfort zone and try something new and really frustrating to realize the lack of support for artists and their creations.

Rollin' on the River

This very hot North Dakota day found us riding the Lewis and Clark Riverboat. This little excursion on the Missouri River between Bismarck and Mandan is a journey I haven't taken since around junior high and it's a trip my husband has never had the chance to experience. Admiring the railroad bridge from a different point of view is a treat. Slowly paddling along between the banks of the river, admiring the cottonwood trees, and waving to the passengers on the passing pontoons and the speedy folks on jet skis is a great way to spend a sunny summer day.

I've also realized I'm nearing 100 posts on my little blog - something that didn't seem possible when I began about year ago. I'll have to plan for a little giveaway contest when I reach the momentous event! I think I'll have to do a giveaway when I reach 25 followers! Speaking of giveaways, I've discovered this cool site, giveawayscout.com, where they gather up all sorts of giveaway and contest opportunities out there on the web - you should check them out and find the contests that would be of interest to you. Who can't use more free stuff?!