Peaceful Civil Rights Protesters in Los Angeles, June 2020 Original photo in Los Angeles Times. Let's face it. It is hard to focus on the trivial right now. Like many people, my creative energy was already sapped from the strangely timeless world of pandemic lock down. It was weird and twitchy to have my husband and daughter at home all the time, just when I had become accustomed to an empty house. But I have reoriented, and now I'm happy they are here and safe. My focus was on how to generate income to make up for the loss of it, while my husband is furloughed. I'm a little old white lady. Now suddenly I am living in a nation where the pain that was a dull ache that I could ignore most of the time because of my privilege, has turned into a conflagration of fury and outrage.  At this minute, my artworks don't seem needed in comparison to my ability to write letters to my representatives, or local officials. My energy is better spent helping people find work ,...

Here's my latest card making video, using tiny amounts of Best Glue Ever and lots of layering. Find the products here: https://scraperfect.com/shop/

Halloween Mini-Canvases Halloween Trick or Treat Banner Miss Tick - from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels Skull and Bones vintage image collage sheet

Here's the tutorial about my double sided Halloween Banner using my vintage collage sheets. So fun.

We are looking for a few creative individuals to join us on the DT - using some of the most versatile and efficient scrapbooking, mixed media and papercrafting helper products available today. Here is the link to the ScraPerfect blog with all the call information.  I've been on the DT for a couple of years, and I love the products. Recently added are a line of beautiful foil sheets, and fine clog free writing tips for paint, glue and other liquid crafting materials bottles. The tips come two standard bottle sizes with three different tip sizes to suit your needs. These join Best Glue Ever, Perfect Crafting Pouch, Embellie Gellie, Perfect Cleaning Cloth and Best Cleaner Ever - all of which have become invaluable to me not just in my scrapbooking, but also in my art doll making. It was thanks to ScraPerfect that I got to attend CHA a couple of years ago - which was terrific fun. Please consider us - it's so much fun.

Here are some mini-canvases for Halloween decorations - mantel or table-scape to label bowls of treats. The tutorial is on the ScraPerfect blog . You can find the downloadable Collage Sheets here . Please Pin!

Here are some gift tags, made so easily and quickly from the Serenity From Asia Collage Sheet. I made some with ordinary manilla mailing tags, and the other two from some chipboard tags I had leftover from another project. All I did was combine the trimmed images with some origami rice papers, a few assorted embellishments, sentiment stickers, and a stamped journal tag on cream colored paper for the "who to" message on the back. Then I added some colored twine and buttons. Oh and inking the sanded edges, like always. I don't know who will get these pretties, but using similar twines and the origami papers unifies them very nicely. I love making tags that are sturdy enough to become holiday decor after the gifts are opened. As usual I used my ScraPerfect products throughout - Best Glue Ever for all the adhering, Perfect Crafting Pouch (to dry inks fast) and the Embellie Gellie tool to place those Dew Drops.

Gathered all the materials. So finished page here at Scraperfect . So here's my scrapbooking confession. I haven't really used sketches - my own or anyone else's - very much. Sometimes I do a layout and then convert it to a sketch for my blog. One time I did use my sketch was the double page layout here , and then yesterday. Yesterday's layout went so very smoothly and quickly. It was more than just the space planning aspect too. I had, perhaps subconsciously, included mental suggestions for the kinds of papers to use - an abstract texture, a layer with text. Please Pin.

Here are some more of the photo transfer ornaments. These are all of my late mother-in-law who passed away a week ago. They are to be gifts. You can see a tutorial of how they were made at the ScraPerfect blog . I used Mod Podge Matte finish for the photo transfer, and Best Glue Ever for all the other adhering. The decorations are Dew Drops, some other assorted rhinestones, and vintage lace fragments. The yarns are Sugar 'n' Cream and Red Heart.

You can see more finished ornaments, and a step by step, today over at the ScraPerfect blog .

Jayn decided to be Rose Lalonde in God Tier Costume for Halloween trick or treating. The character is from the web comic, Homestuck . There seem to be some cosplayers online, who like the character and the costume, although Jayn told me that she had to explain her costume a lot to people on Halloween. The sewing was not difficult. We had a few moments of difficulty finding the exact colors at the fabric store, and I ended up custom dyeing white cotton interlock for the hood - after working out the exact dye proportions on scraps. The leggings we bought at JC Penney - and I like them a lot. I'll be going back for more in other colors for fall/winter for me, since they go so well into boots. Initially I tried doing an applique treatment for the sunburst, but it was too big and insufficiently detailed. The stretchy base tunic would not react well to stitching, so I tried Steam a Seam and dimensional fabric paint on the edges. This was a mistake as the fabric from the bad appl...

As promised the double page layout is up at the ScraPerfect blog . Here's a little taste: By the way, I sent out my latest Creativity Blast newsletter yesterday - 5 Ways to Make Your Own Writing Prompts - are you s ubscribed to get this exclusive content?

Here's a card sketch - I know it should be a "Saturday" sketch. Lots of small embellies on this idea. Stay tuned for a double page layout based on last week's Friday Sketch, at the ScraPerfect blog . I will be making some cards for the ScraPerfect DT's contribution to Operation Write Home this month, and next.

Three pretty thank you cards in my Etsy store, made using Best Glue Ever and all the ScraPerfect products. $3.50 each plus shipping. If you like it, Pin it!

In honor of Independence Day, here is a manufacturer's  coupon for $2.12 off a bottle of Best Glue Ever (which totally lives up to its name). I love this glue so much, as well as all the other ScraPerfect products. The coupon expires July 7, 2012 , so hurry. Use: BestGlueEver4Independence2012 in the checkout, one per customer. Please follow ScraPerfect on Facebook too.

Celebrate Earth Day 2012 with a coupon.  Get $2.12 off the  Best Cleaner Ever ! It’s  safe for the environment  AND safe for you. This solvent is safe for skin  and  has NO harmful fumes and cleans almost anything from and spray paint off your hands and permanent marker off your table, to solvent ink off stamps adhesive off scissors . It seriously works like magic (without the hocus-pocus). Use coupon Code:   BestCleanerEver4EarthDay2012 Go here! This is a great cleaner for inks and glues on your hands, your rubber stamps, your cutting tools - and your makeup brushes. Go to the site to see videos of it in action.

I made a rolled rose using Best Glue Ever , and my Tweezer Bee tweezers . First a quick sketch of a wacky oval spiral. I like roses that are a bit uneven and have a cabbage rose feel. Important tip: use double sided cardstock unless you want one side to be white. I cut out the lines and inked the edges, dried the ink fast with my Perfect Crafting Pouch , then I wound the rose from the outside around my Embellie Gellie stick to relax the cardstock into a curve. I used my tweezers to grab and hold the wound paper, because they are sprung to stay closed. (I don't use them nearly as much as I used to since I have the EG to place small items, but I like the non-stick surface.) A nice blob of BGE, and I carefully set the rose aside to let the glue dry a bit and get tacky, then I pushed the coil into the blob and held it in place for about 30 seconds. It gripped and held! Next the leaves - cut out, inked and split to allow them to be 3D. The tweezers held the fiddly little ov...

I love the printed washi tapes, but I can't afford 'em. Oh but I have some plain masking tape. Hmmmm. I laid some strips of the masking tape (in two colors) along some release paper left over from stickers. I tend to keep these in order to make home made glue dots with my Best Glue Ever . Then, for good measure, I pre-treated with a light dusting of the Perfect Crafting Pouch to make the ink cling. I clustered a bunch of tiny cling stamps ( Just Rite Stamps ) together and stamped once with brown archival dye ink from Colorbox . Then I stamped again with another detailed scroll type of stamp in black dye ink. What...wait...am I done? Already? Why, yes, yes I am. And here are the easiest chipboard tags ever, because I had these chipboard and corrugated card shapes already. Inked, taped, stamped, a single jewel placed with my Embellie Gellie , some yarn. Literally 45 minutes, and only so long because I stopped to take photos.

Deborah has some cool stuff to giveaway after the ScraPerfect trip to CHA. Go to the ScraPerfect blog , leave a comment there , and you will be entered to win. Deadline to enter: Saturday March 3rd. While you're at it be sure to check out the You Tube videos of the new Best Cleaner Ever, a completely non-toxic cleaner that removes glue residues, stamp ink (even Staz-On) and markers from all kinds of surfaces, including skin. It will not cause your rubber stamps to deteriorate. My current experiment in progress is that I have used it to clean my make up brushes. I easily cleaned the eye make up and concealer brushes with the spray and absorbent paper. I cleaned the blusher brush with spray, paper and then rinsed in plain water - just because it's so much fuller than the other two, and I wanted to make sure there was no residue. It seemed to rinse very easily and they are all still nice and soft. My next trial will be so see how it does with a brush where some old gl...