Leading Ladies

I feel like I've been waiting forever to share this with you, and though I know that's not the case, I'm just about ready to burst, I'm so excited.  Today is the official launch day of a new series I've designed with Ellen Hutson called the "Leading Ladies". Who are these ladies? We are all the leading ladies in our lives!  Whether we are crafters, or gardeners, bakers, or sometimes just a hot mess doing our best to get by, we are ladies who live life to the fullest.  We are witty, sassy, and thoughtful.  We are sensitive, hopeful, and kind.  We make mistakes, we give it our all, and we carve out a place for ourselves, and each other.

The Leading Ladies stamps are a fun way to celebrate all of what makes us great.  Whether we are using these ladies to make cards for family or friends, or maybe something for ourselves to remind us we’re doing our best, whatever we use them for, my hope is that they be little reminders that ladies lead the way, no matter how tough times get, and we do it together.

I've put together a short video talking about this collection and sharing some of the first pieces I made with the first set, the Crafty Lady:

The Crafty Lady definitely has a sense of humor, but she's got a sweet side, too, and like most of us, she loves options, which is why this set is perfect for building just the right lady every time. Add sentiments to her shirt and tote, put supplies in her hands and pockets, no matter what you choose, I have a feeling she'll bring a smile to your face.

To go along with the Crafty Lady, but certainly not exclusive to being used with her, I designed a large phrase set, "Crafty Ladies Say". This 4x8 set is packed with encouraging and creative sentiments that are perfect for cards, but are already getting a workout in my Project Life album, too. 

This post contains affiliate links.  Looking for the supplies I used to make these projects: Find them here:

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Essentials by Ellen Clear Stamps, Leading Ladies - Crafty Lady by Brandi Kincaid

Essentials by Ellen Clear Stamps, Crafty Ladies Say by Brandi Kincaid

Essentials by Ellen Designer Dies, Crafty Lady by Brandi Kincaid

Derwent Watercolour Collection, Set of 24

WOW Embossing Powder, Regular - Clear Gloss

VersaFine Ink Pad, Onyx Black

Scrapbook Adhesives 3-D Foam Squares, Small Black

Ranger Super Fine Embossing Powder, Gold

Lists

“I have a thing about about collections, and a list is a collection with purpose.”

— Adam Savage

Some of them are practical and messy - work to do, people to write to, bills to pay. Some of them are nostalgic - favorites from childhood, things I'd love to do again, things I never want to do again. Some are little day dreams put to paper - bits of life I'd like to see, words I'd like to write, places I'd like to go. No matter the shape or size, I'm a list girl.

Notebooks, envelopes from junk mail, the backs of the 2,468 crumpled receipts at the bottom of my bag, the blank pages at the back of my books, the notes app on my phone, and yes, in a pinch yesterday, the kraft paper packaging for the chocolate chip cookies I bought in a moment of weakness, are all up for grabs when it comes time to make a list; there are no safe surfaces when I need to get this information out of my head, and into the world.

Flipping back through previous commonplace books yesterday, I noticed that my lists, not unlike my life, seem to have seasons, and while the common to-do list is always present, the other collections I'm keeping seem to fit what I am most needing to pay attention to at the time. When I was feeling stuck and overwhelmed by my work, the lists captured what could be, what I could do, what might happen, where I could take myself if I could just see it all clear enough. When I was feeling anxious about what might happen, or solemn about what had, the lists were little compilations of grace and gratitude, reminders of what was already worth celebrating right there, exactly where I was at the moment. 

When I started thinking about this project of writing for the month of July, I decided I'd go with whatever struck me to write about each day - no lists. This unrealistic plan lasted for about three more days, and then I found myself with a short scribbling of topics, and the realization, once again, that I'm just a list kind of girl, and that's that.

It's already the fourth of July, though I likely won't post this until tomorrow, and my list morning was a lengthy rundown of all the things I wanted to do this summer, which includes, but it not limited to, picking blueberries, spending as much time as possible in our yard, growing my own tiny vegetable garden, eating at least one thing from said garden, reading To Kill A Mockingbird for my seventeenth straight summer, and trying my best to make peace with the sun.

In the middle of writing just now, I stopped for a minute to make a list of my favorite books, because I looked up and saw one of them on the shelf, and I have a good feeling I'll be writing about them soon. This is usually how it goes - I think about something, then something else, and before I know it, I've got what amounts to an overflowing basket of thoughts in my head, and I need to put them down before they topple out in unexpected directions and make a mess of the place. 

There's a good chance that by the end of the day I'll have made more lists, and to be honest I am already thinking I'd like to make another list of my one hundred favorite things, which I haven't done in nearly a decade. I'd love to put those lists side by side and see what's changed. For now though, I think I'll tackle a few to-dos so that list can shrink and expand as it will, and so I can free up a little brain space for what's next.

For safe keeping until I am ready to do my current version, here are all 100 of my favorite things from the autumn of 2008. I can already see so many carryovers to now, so many that will never likely leave my list, some that I have no clue what they are, and some that lost my favor completely over the years. I love how much things change, how much they stay the same, and how making a list can remind us of all of that.

1. cardigan sweaters
2. old library books
3. clear, crunchy plastic book covers
4. tiny envelopes
5. coffee in the evening
6. 1980 Dell Yearling Editions of Beverly Cleary Books
7. glass jars with metal lids
8. Andrew Paul Thompson (aka, Noodle)
9. The Gleaners and I
10. Pipi Longstocking
11. photos of objects that don't initially seem important
12. scraps of old newspaper in books
13. other people's lists found on the ground
14. soft lined paper with aged, yellowed edges
15. apples
16. muted colors
17. lavender and pine sachets
18. names scrawled inside old paperback books
19. masking tape
20. coffee/tea dates
21. aisles in the library
22. sharp pencils
23. cold weather
24. utilitarian stamps
25. silverware patterns
26. peeling fruit
27. M&M (K)
28. old picture dictionaries
29. NPR
30. rolodex
31. harvest colored tupperware
32. the smell of granola in the oven
33. tiny spoons
34. cherry cola
35. semicolons
36. brown ink pads
37. yellow
38. orange
39. miniature plastic figures
40. gummy worms and gin rummy before bed
41. night walks
42. paper that crinkles when you fold it
43. bicycles with baskets
44. jaguar sharks
45. thrift stores
46. grandmothers
47. other people's recipe books
48. yellow legal pads
49. snail mail
50. postage stamps
51. puzzles with odd, detailed images
52. pyrex
53. lattes in large mugs with artful foam
54. board games
55. knee socks
56. stickers
57. polaroid pictures
58. fountain pens
59. brand new boxes of crayons
60. large maps
61. packing for trips
62. fresh laundry
63. a well-packed lunch
64. typewriters
65. library book cards (names and dates)
66. cookie jars
67. pocket doors
68. cold, soft, cotton pillow cases
69. the blue room
70. lists
71. my father's handwriting
72. the comfort of my mother's (terrible) handwriting
73. malachite green
74. my sister's laugh
75. crossword puzzles
76. red nail polish
77. extremely spicy food
78. speaking in front of crowds
79. the coral necklace that my mother wore to church
80. notes passed during inappropriate times
81. scones with strawberry jam
82. glass Christmas ornaments
83. wooden hangers
84. butter shaped like flowers
85. hot chocolate with marshmallows
86. sending unexpected packages
87. hand stitching
88. stripes
89. long, slow grocery trips
90. finding snippets of old wallpaper in/under cabinets
91. the sound of packing tape tearing off a box
92. the two year old version of "question" - "squestion"
93. an unused Sharpie
94. Brinner
95. avocados
96. whales
97. soft blue cotton ribbon
98. the odd clanking of old radiators
99. colorful leaves on the ground
100. knowing how important it is to have things in life worth taking note of...

All This Color

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

— Alice Walker

For me, it's always been yellow. I love orange, too, and currently a pale peachy almost pink that my younger self would have rolled her eyes at, a deep jade green with hints of blue inside it, green the color of old paint primer, the kind you find when you peel back that terrible old wallpaper you wish had been just a decade better design-wise, the blue of the sky just before a storm rolls in - smokey with a hint of warm elephant grey at the edges, a warm tomato red, almost vermilion, but not quite, though it will do, too, the minty green of bath water tempered with scented salts, and sometimes, the bubble gum pink of the ice cream I ate as a little girl, but always, always, if I had to pick just one, yellow is my favorite color.

If we're being honest, which you know by now that we are, I think I chose it because it was the color everyone else I knew liked least. There weren't a lot of other kids in Kindergarten who proclaimed the color of mustard to be the best - there were plenty who loved blue, green, and too many, I felt at the time, who loved pink, but no one claimed yellow, so I did. It didn't take long to realize that it really wasn't a mercy choice at all, and the more options I found in my crayon box, the more I grew to love every one. Dandelion, Cornsilk, Goldenrod, Marigold, and Canary, all there, waiting to be suns, flowers, dresses, shirts, bananas, lemons, capes, or a bit of a bumblebee. 

Though my love of color has always been fierce, these days it seems to be taking on an even bigger role, so much of my days in the depths of design work, looking for just the right shade of green that's not too sage, and not too lime, not kelly or forest, but somehow, if possible to capture, the color of the leaves just after the sun passes over them in the morning. My phone holds an album of photos I've taken during my days in all manner of places from our yard to the bedding aisle at Target, the large bin of peaches in the supermarket to the perfectly designed cover in the bookshop, and from each of these I am instantly tugged back to the time in which I took them, and the color, it's always the color, that stopped me in my tracks.  From produce and packaging to prints, these colors always go on to have new lives in my work at some point.

If our endless and proper work, according to Mary Oliver, is to pay attention, then I'd like to think that what I see first is the color, and next the endless possibility of what it could be, not just what it is right then (an apple, a red suitcase, a stop sign, or a balloon), but also all of the other things that color could, and will become. 

In the late summer of our first year in Washington, knee deep in grad school and trying to figure out the sights and sounds of this new coast, I found myself beginning to think about the collecting of color, and what it can mean to surround yourself such saturation in the form of objects. In a post on the blog I maintained at the time, which is surprisingly difficult to read through now, both for the pause of seeing my mother's comments, and the very different me who was writing, I wrote, "And if these colors are more than just the pigments my eyes and mind recognize, if they are tiny histories packaged in the tomato red spine of a classic book or the grainy brown wood of family built furniture, the pieces I choose to surround myself with are telling a constantly evolving story of which I am a part." My story has changed so much since then, so have the pieces that surround me, but I know exactly which book I was thinking of because it still sits prominently on the wood bookshelf my grandfather built, and because of that, I am reminded that once again the stories evolve, and shift, but do not stop.

I love that each day I walk past my big yellow table to my green couch to sit and work, that there are salmon pink pillows to keep my elbows from growing stiff as I draw, and when I look up, there's a cluster of old board games on the shelf that are bursting with so much color and life you can almost feel all the lives they've lived before this one. I can almost feel all the rounds won and lost, and the tiny, likely sticky hands that reached for their boxes, selecting them by the color of their edge, not yet knowing not to read, but certain by practice that red meant Monopoly, orange Battleship, and black the Pop-o-Matic Trouble. I love that I use the yellow mug when it's my morning off, the bright pink when I'm on a deadline, the blue whales when I miss Andrew, the white with black script when I miss my dearest friend, and the pale green when I miss my mother. I love that our chairs are red, our shelves are mostly all grey, and my cozy reading spot a soft baby kale green. I love that color is so much a part of my day that it both surprises and soothes me, and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Morning

“...it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.”

— Mary Oliver

Things I woke up to when I was younger: the framework for a full deck around the swimming pool, a missing half-wall surrounded by rubble where large wooden planters would one day soon live, and all the contents of our attic laid out on the floor to be sorted and prepped for a garage sale. My mother was a morning person, and I tell you this because while I, too, am about to label myself in this same way, our versions of what this looks like are worlds apart, and yet, and yet, they really aren't at all.

Whereas my mother was the Martha Stewart of diving in and taking charge of grand household projects pre-dawn, I am the slow and quiet type, a puttering poet of habit, mapping out my mornings by moving between books, pencil, paint, and paper. Tracing a cross hatched path from one shelf to another, and then back again, my morning beat and early hours are a kind of conversation between what's interesting me at the time, each one leading to another. It is quite possibly the slowest pinball game of inspiration that's ever been played. Putter; I putter.

Since moving into our new home, this puttering has shifted, and the shelves that once pushed me back and forth between them, each piece referencing and urging me to another, are now a place from which I pull, borrow, and return much later. Now, moments after I hear the first bird call, I'm stumbling out the door, hoping that the extra padding I keep on my behind for just such an occasion (special thanks to all that bread and jam I cannot resist) slows the screen door from slamming, thus allowing Andrew a bit more rest. Prepared, always, I balance basket on my left hip, a wire bound collection of books, paper, pencil, pen, birdseed, and peanuts. My right hand juggles a mug full of hot black coffee and my phone, and object that could easily fit alongside the other treasures in my basket, but which always seems to end up scrunched between my fingers and the mug handle, just on the edge of toppling over at any misstep. The first and more miraculous part of my mornings isn't the sun, or the bird's song, the cool breeze, or the new blooms - it's that I don't tumble onto my rump along the brick walkway moments after leave the house. 

These days I put out another peanut every few pages so that my newfound friend Stanley, a handsome Steller's Jay, has a treat to punctuate the seed, heaven forbid he only have seed, and instead of shuffling around the shelves, I sit in one place with the sun and breeze alternating on my face, and I find what I'm looking for in what I have with me. These days I am offering myself more room to try new things with this time, the slip of pigmented water across paper, an attempt at a little humor while illustrating a childhood memory, just enough pause to write all of the things that have been on my mind. These days I am taking more morning for myself, if that makes any sense, and it's given me back pieces of my day that I hadn't realized I'd been missing. Waking up and making something, anything, whether it be a deck or a diagram, taking in beauty, anything, whether it be a quilt or a quote, sets the tone for a day of purpose, begun by being a participatory part of the world. I love that. 

Some mornings the space between when I wake and when Andrew wakes is greater, some days only mere minutes, but regardless of our proximity, there's a bit of quiet we have with our books and thoughts, available to share, but also not requiring anything from each other amidst the silence. 

I started this piece by quoting a few lines from Mary Oliver's poem, The Invitation, and though I deeply love the ones I share, I know that they are shared often, and people miss the rest of the poem, all of which is so, so good, and I'd urge you to click over and read it, but in case you don't, and you have patience enough to indulge me just a few more here in this space, when she follows those lines from before with these, in reference to the musical morning goldfinches:

“I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.”

As silly as it might seem, I sometimes believe my life changes every morning when I decide what I am willing to welcome to the day. In all honesty, I am often grumpy and stingy, so please don't get caught on the image of Snow White and some form of frolicking.  These hours are good, so good, but they are also lived by me - messy, hopeful, doubtful, stumbling, bumbling, joyful me.

For my mother, these hours prior to everyone else waking brought external work, the kind that filled her heart and mind, left her muscles sore and happy, gave her problems to solve and end results - she loved a good end result. For me, these hours are internal, and the work I'm doing weaves my own thoughts with those of people whose work I love and appreciate. These hours give me time to read and draw, paint, and just generally practice without any audience or expectations beyond rising and offering my time to a slow meander through what's been knocking around in my head. Though our versions of these early hours seem so very different, night left us both so much the same - with too many questions and too little time, but morning, morning brought us the chance to work our way toward answers, and though our paths were, and are, very different, I like to think that she got to where she needed to go, and so will I.

This Season

“Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe,” he said. “Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.”

— Anne Lamott's friend Tom, on getting though life

When I chose my word(s) for this year, I pictured a kind of presence paired with peace, a centered and calm approach to life that would call me to listen and learn from the here and now as opposed to my tendency to spend so much time looking both ahead of and behind me. I chose Here/Hear with some fuzzy waft of Enya playing through my ears, and imagined, though I would have argued against this then, a meditative and mundane year filled with being so captured by the now that I'd come to some beautiful and transfixing realization about my life, and where I am in the midst of it all. It's nearing six months into 2017, and almost a year from when I changed my life to begin this career as an artist, so it seems only fitting to do this thing that's been tugging at me, which is to sit and write about where I am, and how I am feeling, and to be as honest as I can about this season.

Here is the sentence I wanted to write next: Being fully present in life as it is, in my life as I am, right now, is the most beautiful and important gift I could have offered myself this year, and it makes all of the ebb and flow of the days even more rewarding. Here is a truer version of that sentence: Being present in life as it is, in my life as I am, right now, is uncomfortable.

It's less poetic, this season of discomfort, and what it offers, though rewarding, is hard won, and often almost missed in the blur of figuring it out. Here's the thing about this season of discomfort - it's not without joy, unabashed heart pounding joy, or laughing, creating, hope, and love. This season, while it feels as if I'm a raw potato, peeled of all my protections, has been brimming with goodness, and that's where it gets a little tricky. 

I am learning, sometimes the hard way, that following your heart means you have listen to it, all of it, and no matter how graceful you think you may be, or how good and true you believe yourself to be, our hearts are still human, still beating with the flawed and flummoxed truth of people who real, contradictory, beautiful, and bruised. This season is uncomfortable because I am choosing, through gritted teeth most days, to sit with myself in the midst of all the things my heart and head tell me, and to figure out what to learn from, what to trust, what to toss, what to keep, what to allow to sink in, really sink in, and slowly, so slowly, where to go next. 

You already know what I'm about to say, but indulge the naive me from months ago, thick in the fog of grief, who imagined that what I'd hear and feel when paying such close attention would be inspiring and motivational, when I tell you that I thought being "here" would be full of the best emotion, carved out from a life that is long and short all at the same time. And now of course I admit that instead what I found mingled with the good stuff was a lot jealousy, shaky, stumbling confidence, or lack thereof, complications in the boundaries between self-worth, creation, and business, so, so much doubt, fear, mistrust, a healthy dose of excuse for why anyone might have expressed love for what I do or who I am, and though it used to seem impossible, an even more fragile and sensitive feeling heart than the one beating in me a year ago. I tell you these things, though it make me itchy to be so forthright about such unloveliness, because none of these feelings are new, and I know, though I'm not always clear hearted enough to believe it, that I am not alone in any of these. I tell you these things because I am very good at finding a solution that will make life more comfortable, fantastic at finding an easier way out, and I am choosing in this season of discomfort not to do that. I tell you these things because I've realized it's so easy for me to imagine that everyone else has it all together, all figured out, and they never grow jealous of anyone else, never feel that little tug in their chest when they want nothing more to support those around them, but kind of wish they'd thought of that first, or garnered as much response, who really, wholeheartedly support others, but still kind of wish they had half their talent, they never feel the pang of doubt and confusion when they're unfollowed on social media, or when someone says an unkind word about them about them in a public space, and never question their talent or their path when their work doesn't sell as well as they'd hoped. I tell you these things because while it's easy for me to imagine all of this when times feel tough and confusing, I know it cannot be true, and if you feel this way at times, too, I want you to know, without a doubt, that you are not alone. I tell you these things because part of making my way through this process is believing that for myself, and just letting myself be uncomfortable within those emotions, making sense of them without searching for a quick fix out of, or around them.

It's been interesting to live in these months of so much goodness, of birds and gardens, reading and painting, and sun that punctuated a very long stretch of grey, while also living my way through such uncomfortable feelings and questions, but I know I need to be in it, here. I remember the first time I read Rilke's line, which I am sure I've shared a thousand times since then, but here it is once more:

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I remember it because I was very young, and searching as hard as I could for the what/where/how/when, and why's of life, and at the time, the words gave me hope that all I needed to do to get there was just be alive. I am still young by many counts, though not nearly as young as I was then, which in hindsight feels impossibly young, and though I am still working my way through the questions, still living my way to the answers, the thing I've learned in this season is that the questions won't always be ones we want to answer, and the answers won't always be ones we want to hear, but that doesn't make them matter any less, heck they might matter even more, because in the middle of the mess are some of the most beautiful and truthful things I've ever stumbled upon in this life.

I had lunch with a dear friend recently who told me that some of life's best comes after being uncomfortable, and I hope she's right, because while I might be embracing it, I am not always enjoying it. The only thing I know for sure right now is that I need to be here, that I need to sit with the ugliness and doubt as much as I do with the hope, and that I need to be okay with needing help, and with asking others for guidance and grace when I have trouble finding it on my own. I need to know deep down that it's okay to feel all of these things, but it's what I do with what I learn from them that really matters in the end, and there's really no way to learn from something without taking the time to get to know it.

For the month of July I am carving out the time to write each day, and because I know myself, and how I work best, I am doing that in the form of these posts. They won't all be this long, thank goodness, right? And they won't all be full of the tough stuff, though some of them will, because they'll all be firmly rooted in where I am now, this beautiful, uncomfortable place that I've yet to figure out, and the very best thing I can ever offer you, and myself, is to be honest about where I am. I told someone last week that that this summer for me is like being outside and enjoying the warm sun, but with only an itchy wool sweater to wear, and rough as it may be, I have to keep it on, live in it, work with it, and be ever so grateful for the cool breezes that give rest to the hotter times. 

So, here's to a month of good work and good words, of being real and rough, of writing my way to more answers, and likely more questions, of drawing and painting, reading and dreaming, of showing up and being here, and of hearing what I might have otherwise tuned out when it didn't come in a form I was ready to listen to.

Here, Hear!

Better Together

I am so excited to share that the latest kit I designed for the Feed Your Craft shop, "Better Together" is now available. This kit is full of nostalgia, broken heart friendship necklaces and beaded pins, paper dolls and tin can phones, friendship bracelets and happy mail - so many of the images that have symbolized our connections with each other over time. It was so much fun thinking about all the ways we connect, all of the ways we are better together, that in the end when I finally sat down to play with the kit, I had more stories to tell than I expected. 

I used the tin can stamp and the digital version of the "YOU ME US" card to make this two page layout about my nephew, reflecting the incredible impact he's made since he was born, and my sister and her husband were lucky enough to be called to be he's parents.  They were meant to be together all along. 

I love too much of this kit to pick a favorite, but this card definitely tugs at my heartstrings, and I am hoping it does the same for you, because I've been so excited to share it with you.  You can grab your own kit in the Feed Your Craft shop now - I hope you'll pick one up, and share what you make with it!

Elise and the entire Feed Your Craft Creative Team are making gorgeous things with this new collection, so make sure to head over to the Feed Your Craft blog to see more inspiration!

Week in the Life: 2017

Lens

I had so much fun playing with the digital Lens kit from this month's Ali Edwards Story Kit release. I have a long, long list of stories I want to tell, but I decided to mix it up this time and start very literally, and then work into a more metaphorical view of the theme.

I'm Mr. Magoo blind, so glasses or contact are an absolute must for me, and with months and months of being out of contacts and putting up my appointment for a new prescription, this prompt came at just the right time.

I started out with a favorite quote from Yeats, and then decided on a two page spread when my journaling, as is usual, got a little lengthy. It turned out to be just perfect to have two pages, because collecting some of my favorite pairs of glasses and capturing them in one spot was a fun way to make sure I get them in the books since I am not always wearing them when I add a photo of myself. This is what I love about really simple hybrid design when scrapbooking - all it took was adding Ali's simple digital stamp, and then a few chipboard stars to give the pages more personality without taking away from the story.

Next up will be recording the story of seeing our home we're moving out of after a number of years through two lenses - one full of our belongings, and one empty.  I can't wait to document this, and I'm wishing I had this for previous homes.  

There's still time to pick up this digital kit if you love it - trust me, it won't leave you short of stories to tell.