Monday, October 01, 2007

The girl who has been putting it off

I am a procrastinator by nature.

I swear it's an inherited trait as I distinctly remember my Mother (a retired teacher) always stressing out about the lesson plans she hadn't completed. Now, the benefit of this is that I am a great improvisor and work well under pressure. Give me a six-week deadline and I guarantee you I will be starting (rather than putting the finishing touches on) the project at 11:30 the night before it's due. And I'll probably be missing some vital companent which will force me to get creative to replace it or at least get creative in whatever excuse I use to justify its absence. I also guarantee that the project will probably turn out just fine. Nothing like a deadline to get the ol' creative juices flowing.



Add to that the fact I am also pretty competitive and what do you get? You get someone who was on the varsity speech team in high school and routinely wrote her speeches on the bus on the way to the tournament I signed up for six weeks ago. Or, in my present life, you have someone who hasn't managed to find or inspiration to scrap in the past three months, yet still enters TWO large elimination based scrapping contests.

What the hell was I thinking?

So, the two contests I have entered are the Bad Girls Top Designer and the Effer Dares Last Scrapper Standing, Vol. 2. I entered LSS 1 last year and was so stoked! It really challenged me to produce some awesome layouts and kept me going. I'll admit to being a little burned out when all was said and done, but I made it to the final round and every layout I produced for that contest was picked up for publication. Awesome!

This year I hope the creative juices get flowing again and I make it through all of the rounds again. I doubt I'll win, considering the talent this contest pulls, but I enjoy the creative push. I have so much respect and admiration for the Effers (including a huge scrappy crush on Kristina Contes) that I really push myself to impress them.
Anyway, the first challenge was to use 8 transparent elements on a layout. And this is what I came up with.






I printed the pictures on transparency and then sprayed chrome paint on the back to make them metallic. Trust me, it looks completely awesome IRL. Then I mounted all of my transparent elements on a 12x12 mirror tile, but I spaced them using clear acrylic beads. The effect of the transparent elements reflecting in the mirror came out exactly as I had hoped and is elegant and funky at the same time.

LOVE IT!

And apprently the Effers did too because I made it through to Round 2 along with about 80 other girls. I don't have exact numbers of entrants, but it looks like they cut the competition down by more than half. So now I'm just waiting for the next challenge.

For the Bad Girls contest, I am up to round four. Entries are due today and, silly me, I actually got mine in a day EARLY! lol!

party animal


This is the Round 3 entry where the contestents were given a lesson in seven elements of design and then asked to choose one to emphasize in their layout. I used the element of line. Notice that all of the horizontal and vertical lines converge on the picture, making it the focal point. Apparently the judges liked my take because it led to this:

so in love

Yes, my early entry for Round 4. This round's assignment was to use white space effectively. Now I LOVE using white space. I think it could be one of my favorite design elements. In this case, my white space isn't truly "white" it's actually a subtley textured background, but I think it adds to the feeling of peaceful serenity of the picture and the banner element continues the lines of my embellishments, helping direct the eye to the picture. I love this layout!

In other news:

Aramis has grown a beard. I think it's part a.) laziness and b.) because he can. Anyway, I am now married to Grizzly Adams' Cuban brother. I kinda like it. I like a simple goatee better, but I can deal with this.
Plus it cuts his prep time for work down to, like, ten minutes. lol!

Zack is doing well in school, despite his best efforts to not do his homework. I swear, he spends more time and effort in thinking of excuses and hiding his Agenda so he can say he "forgot" it then it would take if he just the darn homework in the first place!

Ian is talking non-stop these days. Still can only understand about half of what he's saying, but at least he's vocal. He has switched allegiance from Matthew to Zachary. Now the two of them gang up on Matthew and use him as the universal scapegoat. For the first time, I'm having to tell the boys they are not allowed to say they don't like their brother.
Matthew (and maybe because of being picked on by his bigger brothers) is a little pill. A cute and adorable little pill, but a pill nontheless. Yesterday we had an epic 20 min temper tantrum over leaving his backpack at the sitter's. He ended up getting a fully clothed cold shower and early bedtime with no dinner for that performance. And yet, I still melt when he demands a "hug, kiss!" even after being punished. His new ritual is to give me an imaginary present before I leave for work and admonish me not to open it. Awww! Although I really am curious as to what he thinks he's giving me. Maybe just the fact its a present is enough.
And Eli is getting bigger every day. I know he's over 8 lbs now, but now the exact weight. He is a clingy little guy though. He's happiest when he is *on* someone. And by "someone" I mean, me. And by "on" I mean using my breast as either a pacifier or pillow. He can be dead asleep and you move him to the bed and off his "pillow" and, while he won't wake for the transfer, within five minutes, he's figured out something is missing and is wailing away again. It's nice to be appreciated!



Finally, the weather was GORGEOUS this past weekend. So much so, I even braved taking all four boys to the park. There were TWO birthday parties going on so I had to really watch the boys, but they had fun and it got them out of the house for awhile. (It also gave me an excuse not to do laundry, shh!) Considering the beautiful day, I tried to get a pic of all four boys in the sunshine.
This is the best I could come up with.
And these are all the "other" shots.

Notice at least one, if not two, kiddos are not looking at the camera or looking with a horrible expression in each shot.
And yes, I know Ian needs a haircut. I planned on doing that, but we went to the park instead!






2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think the picture you got of the four boys is absolutely PERFECT!

And you know I love those layouts... all of 'em! YOU ROCK! And you could very well win LSS - you're just THAT talented!

Eli is getting cuter and cuter each day!!

zooky said...

Did I see mention of needing a haircut? Step right this way Ian.