Posted by:
Gail
My son, Zach, is okay with stamping, but just doesn't ask to do it much. I usually have to ask him if it's something he wants to do. He'll do it when there's a thank you card to be made or if he's really bored. He actually enjoys it when he does it, but he's more interested in bugs, dinosaurs and architecture and finds plenty to do that revolve around those things.
My daughter loves to stamp and has a container full of her own stamps and just recently acquired one of Melanie Muenchinger's new sets: the Just so Hoppy set. She gets very serious about her projects. Just Saturday, I did a Valentine's Mailbox class here at my house and my daughter wanted to decorate another mailbox after seeing what all the ladies had done with their's. I let her pick out which color mailbox she wanted to decorate and then let her pick out the papers she wanted.
Here's her finished mailbox and what she put inside it:
Girly (yes, she has a real name, but we just don't use it) raided my chocolate stash and picked out things to put in it to take to school with her on Valentine's Day to give out to all her classmates. Good thing I have three more bags of Dove dark chocolates in my drawer or I might have been a tad on the defensive. *wink*
As for the question about my kids motivating me creatively.....well, my daughter's mailbox DID motivate me. I loved the colors she chose and that she picked a heart punch to create the hearts that went on the arm of the mailbox, so this morning, I created my own mailbox and used some of her ideas and papers. I'll be sharing that a little later in the day, so make sure to check back for that.
One of the questions that I get asked a lot is this:
I would like to know how you organize your time to do all that you do? You must be extremely well disciplined.
Posted by: Vivian
my question is what are your secrets to accomplishing so much? Teach us how to get more done!
Posted by: mary puskar
One of the keys to me being able to have so many irons in the fire is because this IS my full time job. I work from home. I own my own business. My husband goes off to work in the morning at 7 am and gets home at 3:30 pm. My kids are off to school by 7:45 am. I'm home by myself 5 days a week. While there are things that I do at home that don't include business, I do have a good amount of time every day to work on my business. I also have a lot of time uninterrupted that I can devote to getting things done.
Now......that's not to say that everything always gets done. But the other key for me in organizing my time is to set time aside to do certain things. I'm forever writing lists of things that need to be done and revising them. Things get put on the list in order of importance and those are the things that take precedence.
I try to make sure that I get the bulk of my work done while the kids are at school and the husband is at work so that I have time to spend with them when they come home. Something else that I found has worked for me is giving myself a time limit to do something or to work on something. I find that I get a lot more done and am a lot more efficient if I put tasks into time limits. 15 and 30 minute segments seem to work really well for me.
I grew up in a family that had several businesses running on at one time and my mother was very strict about time management. She's extremely efficient and is also a master list-maker. She taught us how to multi-task in a way that actually gets things done rather than getting things done in a half-baked manner. We've always worked well under pressure and that's usually when our best work gets done.
What's your dream vacation?
Posted by Shawn K.
My dream vacation is going somewhere that I've never been before. I have wanderlust like you wouldn't believe. Every day, I think about traveling somewhere. It pervades my thoughts. I'm constantly thinking of new places to go, new things to see and new things to do. I'm trying to take it all in before my time is up. We never know when that's going to be, so I have to make sure I get as much in as I can.
I do have a list of places I want to see before I go.....but that list is SO long and pretty much includes EVERYWHERE, so I'll give you my top 6 for now:
* Costa Rica (we flew into CR for a plane change in 2000 and only got to see the land from the plane and from the inside of the airport, but what we saw was enough to make us want to go back in a very bad way)
* Italy (I would love to see the Tuscan Valley)
* India (I have always been intrigued by the people, the culture, the colors, the food)
* Morocco (for pretty much the same reasons as India)
* Burkina Faso and Tunisia (my heart is drawn to the continent of Africa and I've been turned on to these two countries through seeing shots of them on different seasons of The Amazing Race)
My dream vacations include seeing places for what they really are....not just the touristy stuff that's plastered on the front of brochures. I want to see into the heart of the culture. To really experience the place for what makes it what it is.
My question is, Have you ever been in another country? If yes, for how
long and what country is it?
Posted by: Jill Marie
As for how and when I started stamping, you can check out the answer in this past "Q & A" post here: Q & A from January 20th
I actually don't have the first thing I ever stamped, as I sent it to a friend after I created it, otherwise I would definitely share it with you. I don't have any of the first things I stamped as the rest were sent to someone putting together a box of cards for the soliders in Iraq (so that they would have cards to send home to family). I'd been hanging on to a lot of them for so long and decided they needed to see some use, so I finally let go of them and sent them on to a better place. :)
When I looked back at the first things I created, they all seem SO different than what I make now. I don't necessarily think they looked juvenile, but rather that I was trying to find my style back then. Even now, I have a hard time trying to think of what I can nail my style down as. Oftentimes, I just think of it as "free style" because I'm usually all over the place.
I have always wondered everytime i see someone with dreads...how do you put dreads in? i have been a hair dresser for 13 years and have never ran across it but i have seen them and always wondered what the process of starting or maintaining them is.
Regina Cornelius
There's a few different ways that dreads can be put in.
* Natural method - this method is just letting your hair go without brushing. Hair will knot up on its own, though going the natural route can take much longer than other methods. With the natural method, you'll get varying textures and sizes of dreads, which make for a very interesting and diverse look. The natural method is sometimes called the "neglect method," though most people that choose this method are not neglecting their hair at all....just not brushing it.
* Backcombing method - this is one of the most popular methods used. The hair is sectioned out and then combed down against the scalp. The more you backcomb (and make sure you do it TIGHTLY), the more hair will slip away from the section of hair and pack against each other. If you pack them down tight enough, you'll end up with a head of dreads that stick straight out for a while, but they'll eventually tame down.
* Rip & Twist Method- this method is basically described as "chaotic braiding." It consists of sectioning off your hair just like you would if you were backcombing. You twist the section so that it's tight, then pull the section apart in 2 parts, pulling apart hard. A knot will form up the hair. Then twist it again, pull apart again hard. Keep doing this until you've knotted the hair all the way to the end. Each time you twist and separate, you should separate in two different pieces. Usually a little bit of backcombing to the roots helps to start them off a little tighter. Some people combine both the backcombing and Rip & Twist Method to create their locks.
* Dread Perm - some people opt for this method as they would rather have someone else do it and it does cost quite a bit. The hair is sectioned off and shaped using a comb. A chemical (perm solution) is put on the hair that locks them up. The hair is usually overprocessed to achieve these results.
There's a couple other methods, but these are the most popular.
I started mine with backcombing back in Sept. 2006. My mom put them in and it was a first for both of us. It took her 4 1/2 but they weren't done tight enough. Over time, they started to fall out a bit. In October 2006, my sister and I combed quite a few of them out and redid many of them by the Rip & Twist method. That seemed to hold much better for me. We didn't really touch them again until October of 2007. I had combined a couple here and there, but other than that, I've left them to do their own thing. Back in October, my sister went through my hair and pulled some dreads apart from others and combined many others since they had been merging at the roots. They wanted to combine so we let them. I started out with around 65 really thin dreads and now have a total of 19.
They're not hard to maintain....that's one of the nicest things about them. I just let them be. Some people like to have maintanence done on their's, but I guess I'm just not one of those types of people.
The picture on the left is just a few days after I had them done in Sept. 2006. The picture on the right was taken last month and is what I like to call "The Pineapple Head" hairdo. I've bleached my hair in the meantime (back on Dec. 8th).
(you can click on the pictures for larger views)
Thanks for all the questions.....this run was long winded, but there was a lot for me to say, I guess. :)
Happy Creating! Have a lovely week!
-Erika
Apparently I scared a few of you with the new picture of myself in my side bar at the top of my blog. It seems that some of you are very attached to my dreads. :) I got some emails telling me that my picture was nice but asked if I'd cut off my dreads.
Have a great night and a wonderful weekend!
There were so many great questions that you've all asked that I might just do another post before Sunday to answer some more.