enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

project monday : little art book.

Where am I going? A little art book of photos and patterns.

The colors in this simple book are favorites right now. Creams, blues, greens, and yellows. Not exactly fall colors but fun none the less. Pieces of this book are going to be available in a kit for Wednesday's update. 

It's hard to see in the photo, but I glued the little gold stars to clear transparencies. They look so cool as a page in a book and seem to float on the page before and after it. For this kit, I also printed original stickers. It was A LABOR OF LOVE to get them to come out right, but I triumphed over technology and they turned out. I am pretty excited about them. I hope you like them too.

And last, I wanted to share how I bound this book using a few pieces of string. It's hard to type the directions but hopefully the photos will explain it :

 

1. Punch two holes in the side of your book through each page.
2. Thread your string through one hole of each page.
3. Cross the ribbon over itself on the backside of the book.
4. Thread the string through towards the front.
5. Pull tight.
6. Bring the end of the string back under the strip of string on the back.

To finish, twist the string around itself a bit and then tie a bow or knot. I had tape on the end of mine to make it easier to thread through. You will want to keep it pretty lose so there is some space for the pages to turn.

 

& then it was friday.

Yesterday got stranger and stranger. My tiredness turned into dizziness which resulted in an email to Paul listing my symptoms. He was at the hospital but made time to call and check in. "How's your pulse?" he asked. "Uhhh, there?" Quite obviously, he was relieved.

Lots of water and bad television and I started to feel better again. Whew.

AND THEN my day went from blah to best when I got an email that the Paper Source I work at is selling their (used) Gocco Machines. If you don't know what Gocco is, read here. To see what Gocco can do, look here. Gocco machines are usually about $400 (Georgetown is selling them for $100 if there are any left) but are no longer being produced so they, like dinosaurs, are impossible to find. I had to scoop one up. Especially because I am backing away from letterpress until I can find my own press. So that victory made me dizzy but it a much more excited and frantic way.

And yep, my ampersand cards arrived. I will be quite surprised if any last long enough to use for the wedding. I like this little size for writing notes like "Babe! Not dizzy NEmore! Also, buy milk!"

SO TODAY, I am not tired, NOR dizzy. I will not turn on the television. I will use up the remaining five hours I have on Pandora this month. I will make some finishing touches on the first week of the workshop (starts Monday!). I will finish up some pieces for the update next week. I will be productive and enjoy this day.

eating dry cereal with a spoon.

I got a late start this morning. My alarm went off and instead of getting up and getting started I turned it off and slept another hour. Everything feels different. A bit like daylight savings. I will probably be back later with more to say.

wedding wednesday : thank you cards, guestbook + website.

I still have a dream of using good vintage looking Bora Bora postcards for our wedding thank you notes. But in the meantime, I made up some folded notes with WHAT ELSE? "e&p" printed on them. Fun Fact : after the wedding we are BOTH changing our names to "e&p". Not really, but you would think so. We have been debating the pros and cons of naming our children "Orange" & "Gray" though.

My guest book plan came together last week. (Have I mentioned that if we have a third child he will be named "Photo Mosaic"?) Except that when I bought the materials I got white pages instead of cream. Oh, the horror. So I will be changing those, but you get the general idea. There will still be little gray envelopes. And like a crazy person, I ordered little business cards with an orange ampersand on them. I figured they would be cute in the envelopes and could also make fun seating cards.

I bought a domain name and have the basic framework built for our wedding website but am drawing a blank on all the necessary text. I have to get it together because all 107 save the dates have the wedding website printed on them. I suppose I could just put up a page that says "PSYCH!" but that would be awkward.

Still excited to marry Paul. You could even say I love him more and more each day. Awww.

Happy Wednesday.

these lovelies have inspired my next shop update.