It's Official!!!! Exciting News!!

I have some exciting news to share. I have been appointed to the Creative Director of Inky Hot Mess! The first thing I am doing is assembling a Creative Team....some would call it a design team, but we'll be doing so many different creative things - traditional scrapbooking, pocket scrapbooking, stamping, card making, altered art, and mixed media - that we're a Creative Team. 

Would you like to be part of the new Creative Team? Please apply! Here's what we are looking for:

inky hot mess is 

looking for a creative team! 

inky hot mess is a family run business located in the heart of the finger lakes in upstate new york. the focus of inky hot mess is on pocket scrapbooking. our goal is to get everyone to get their photos off their computers and phones and printed. we offer a jammed packed monthly kit featuring dozens of journaling cards and a mountain of embellishments. we also offer theme kits, stamps, dies, and embellishments.

what are we looking for? we are looking for individuals with mega talent. all team members are asked to stay with us for six months. inky hot mess will provide all the goodies needed to create your masterpieces as well as a discount at our shop. 

submissions are open until july 31st at 2 pm est. all team members must be located in the usa. the team will be announced on august 15th. your commitment begins september 1st and ends february 28th. 

you agree to submit a minimum of 12 journaling cards every month. more than 12 is highly encouraged! the bulk of the cards will need to correspond to the monthly kit themes. you also agree to promote inky hot mess on your blog, facebook, pinterest, youtube, instagram, etc. you agree to keep the upcoming monthly kit themes under tight wraps. we don't announce our monthly themes before our reveal on the inky hot mess blog. you agree to post our creative team member on your blog.

please send the following items to office@inkyhotmess.com. please use "creative team" for the subject so we get your message right away! 

include your blog, pinterest, youtube, facebook, instagram, address, phone number, and a bio. 

​photos required:

six - eight journaling cards you created

six - eight layouts (pocket page protectors filled) you created 

please answer the following questions:

how long have you been working with project life/pocket scrapbooking?

what is your artistic background? 

what design/creative teams have you been apart of?

have you taught classes? if yes, where?

can you successfully complete a six month commitment? 

why do you want to be a creative team member?

would be able to travel to new york state for a team meeting during your six month term?

are you comfortable working with mixed media?

​do you take fabulous photographs along with step by step instructions? 

*if you don't have a youtube page, no worries! prior design/creative experience is not a requirement!

Coming Soon...

I know I've been super quiet on here. I've been soooo busy behind the scenes! I have been working like a dog on something really huge. Starting on June 10th, there will be sneak peaks for my new adventure!

Here's a hint.....

Pocket Scrapbooking Handmade Cards

Crop on the Cape was fabulous as always. It's so great seeing friends and others I only get to see once a year since our store is gone. This year was sooooo darn cold that I didn't go to the ocean even though it's only a few blocks away. I had to leave a few days early to go and my travel was completely messed up because of a crazy March blizzard we got hit with in Western New York. Yup, an ACTUAL blizzard! Then I had to get out ahead of an ice storm. UGH! Then I woke up to an inch snow outside my hotel. At least I made it to Ikea! And to the Crop on the Cape. 

I worked on my first nephew's first year of life. I now have three nephews! And the first one is going to be seven years old shortly. It would be nice to get all of his photos printed and into an album before he's 40. Pocket scrapbooking to the rescue! 

I lived on the edge while at the Crop. I didn't bring many printed journaling or filler cards with me. I did bring mountains with me though. I spent a few weeks cutting up all of the baby boy paper I bought for him. Yes, I really cut up an entire Ikea Expedit cube full of paper into 4x6 cards. I didn't cut any into 3x4 because I figured I would cut them when I need them and I was really sick of cutting paper! I spent about three weeks doing it. And to think, there's only 27 cubes of paper and 10 cubes of cardstock left! I know you're totally jealous. :)

I brought several stamps, stickers, rub-ons, and embellishments with me. I knew I would make some of my own journaling cards. Some of the embellishments were washi tape (can't get enough of that stuff!!), buttons, brads, and twine (another fave). Instead of full size ink pads, I brought ink cubes. They take up far less space and weigh less. Two things to think about when going to a crop. It always feels like you're moving which is not fun.

I made several journaling cards over the four days and will be sharing them all with you in a series of posts. There's far too many to put them all in one post.

Journaling Card #1
Stamps from Close To My Heart
Stickers from Close To My Heart
Button

Journaling Card #2
Enamel Dots from My Mind's Eye
Stamp from Close To My Heart
Baker's twine

Journaling Card #3
Rub-ons
Large brad from Oriental Trading Company
Washi tape

Journaling Card #4
Rub-ons
Stamp from
Sticker from

Journaling Card #5
Enamel Dots
Washi tape
Rub-ons

Journaling Card #6
Stamp from

Journaling Card #7
Double cards!
Stickers
Buttons

Journaling Card #8
Stamp from 
Stickers
Enamel Dots

More cards revealed tomorrow!!!

Digital Scrapbooking Playing

So I've been playing in Photoshop a bit thanks to Jessica Sprague and the mountain of classes she offers. If you have any interest in digital scrapbooking, I highly recommend her classes. You learn a great deal, get digital supplies, have access to the class forever, you can repeat the class or sections of the class as often as you wish, you can take breaks whenever you wish, and her classes are not expensive. There's also a community forum where you can ask questions and people are happy to help you out. 

There are different levels to each class. They start out very basic and you build on what you've learned and completed. I'm up to the point where I get free play time! I know technically I could play around all I want, but I've been trying to stick to the classes.

One thing Jessica recommends is that you brag about your work. She wants you to feel like you accomplished something and share it. Pretty cool. 

Here's my first brag. I went apple picking a few years ago with my sister-in-law and nephew. I lived in South Carolina at the time and had never gone apple picking with them before. It was a blast. We have some great photos from that day.

You will notice that the faces have been blurred. Honestly, my family does not have blurred faces in real life.I did this because I don't want my family's faces all over the internet. There are far too many freaky people out there. Call me overprotective, but oh well!

My next layout was all me. Jessica gave us a ton of papers and embellishments to work with and said have fun. The photos are of Ashley and Maxx. So strange that there was only two dogs in our lives at that point. Very rare for us to have such a small family.

My final layout is a collage I made of all of our kids. Yup, all of our kids are furry and four legged. The orange cat is Dale named after NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr., the tabby is Azreaelle named after the cat in the Smurfs spelled a little funky because she's a tad crazy, the grey and cream tiger cat is Tigger who is our oldest kid, Ashley is the Yorkie and she's a bit famous cough cough for being a diva cough cough, and Maxx the Puggle who is the old fart of the gang. Ha I just noticed Ashley is sticking her tongue out a teeny bit. She doesn't have any bottom teeth except for her canines so her tongue sticks out often. Yes, it's common for senior Yorkies to lose their teeth.

Until next time.....have fun creating!

Pocket Scrapbooking

There are so many companies that have jumped on the pocket scrapbooking party train. Most make pocket page protectors and journaling cards (filler cards fall into the same overall category). Here are the companies that I have stumbled across that make all these goodies:

Project Life/Becky Higgins

Studio Calico

American Crafts

We R Memory Keepers

Teresa Collins

Close To My Heart

Kaisercraft

Papertrey Ink (brand new this month!)

Echo Park

My Mind's Eye

Simple Stories (their entire philosophy is simple scrapbooking)

Crate Paper

Now there are also companies who make 12x12 papers that have journaling cards on them. You simply cut them up yourself. 

About that mountain of 12x12 patterned papers and cardstock sitting in my studio? Yeah, about them. I'm slowly working my way through them and cutting most of them into 4x6 journaling cards/filler cards. Yup, even the cardstock. Why? Perfect for using some of my stamps and stickers/chipboard pieces on to make my own cards! 

I have started my first album. It's a week long vacation in the Smoky Mountains. Over 600 photos and they ALL fit into one - yup one - album! I used a mix of Project Life, My Mind's Eye, We R Memory Keepers, and Kaisercraft journaling cards along with the ones I cut up myself. 

Here's the fun part. Journaling. I hate it. I stink at it. But guess what. Doing pocket scrapbooking is making me journal! I've even Googled places we went for historic details. Crazy I know! 

Oh and the best part. I spent less than 12 hours on this album. Normally, I could spend two entire weekends doing traditional scrapbooking to get that many photos done. I also still would have to do all of my embellishing. And there's no way this would all fit into one album....probably not even two. So I saved a ton of time and shelf space.

I'll have photos of these projects soon! I want to finish my album before I post pics. But stay tuned!  

One last thing about pocket scrapbooking. I also collect postcards from all of my trips and travels. I’ve been looking for a few years for something to organize my collection in. I haven’t had any luck except for plastic envelopes and those were ugly. There are pocket pages that hold 12 postcards! There are page protectors that will hold 12 horizontal or vertical. Thank you We R Memory Keepers! I have been able to give hundreds of postcards a lovely home finally!

I'm Back!!!!

 I've been working on doing some reorganizing in my studio. Some things just aren't working for me. I also received a Silhouette Cameo for Christmas and that baby needs a home! A few pieces of my furniture went back to their real purpose in life. My armoire went back to my bedroom. It needs a paint job to blend into the nautical bedroom we have. The hutch went to the dining room now that we have the space for it. So that left me with many things needing a new home. Thanks to Home Depot for having some really nice white cheapo bookcases that worked perfectly for this project!

I've been going through many supplies and really considering if I need or want it. Amazing how much I have accumulated over the last 12 years of paper crafting! I have been selling a few things here and there, but I really need to move a lot of stuff. I'm seriously considering having a scrapbook yard sale in the spring. Yup, a tent popped up in my driveway with a bunch of tables kind of scrapbook yard sale. Stay tuned if you happen to be hanging out in the Finger Lakes when the time comes!

All of this cleaning and organizing has made me really want to get photos of my computers and printed so they can go into albums. Here's the problem with traditional and digital scrapbooking. Traditional takes soooooo long and I never feel like I get anywhere. I guess having around 100,000 digital photos will do that. It's been suggested that I stop taking photos by several people. I think they're crazy! I'm too busy traveling to stop taking photos! 

I really do enjoy digital scrapbooking, but I'm still learning and trying to get Photoshop all figured out is time consuming. I just want to get things DONE! And I'm starting to have a hard time remembering where many of my photos were taken. Time to get a move on so I decided to start exploring other options. One included actually printing photos and just putting them in photo albums. I didn't really like that option. And then....

I stumbled onto Project Life. I am not interested in the daily, weekly, or monthly thing. I honestly don't care what I had for dinner on October 3, 2010 nor do I care what the weather was or what clothes I was wearing. It seems like lots of people do care about those things so good for them I say! That aspect just isn't for me. I've already got a zillion photos that need a home.

This brings me to my current project of the week. I started really organizing all of my digital photos. I have them in like 20 million folders on two computers and an external hard drive. Some dated. Most not. It's an incredibly time consuming, but I am making major headway. I've been taking digital photos for 11 years now. Who knew? I sure didn't. While sorting and labeling the photos, I have been uploading all the same folders to Shutterfly for printing! Yay for printing! 

They had a lovely sale a week or so ago where photos were 40% off and the shipping was free because I spent a few dollars. Ok so I printed 1,379 photos. That's barely a dent in what I have. The photos I printed were purposely chosen to bring with me to Crop on the Cape. Why so many? Well, I'm not bringing all of them. I have a weekend crop the following weekend as well. 

So what will I be doing with my mountain of photos? Pocket scrapbooking! Yup, you read that right. What's pocket scrapbooking? It's like Project Life and traditional scrapbooking got together and had a party. You simply take the pocket page protectors and place your photos, filler cards, journaling cards, memorabilia, etc. in the individual pockets. Each page protector has several individual pockets in them. They come in a variety of configurations with different sized pockets for your items to be places vertical or horizontal. 

More about pocket scrapbooking tomorrow!

Long Time No See!

Yeah, I've been really bad at blogging for the last few months. I went away for the week of Thanksgiving. I spent a lovely week in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. My dream Black Friday? It's this little place called Old Forge. There's a tiny place called Inlet down the road a bit. Then there's Raquette Lake. I grew up spending a good chunk of my summer there camping with my grandparents and parents. I have amazing memories of Golden Beach Campground and it's like nothing has really changed. It's a state park that was built by the Civilian Conservation Corp. In all, it took 13 years for the campground to be 100% completed. If you ask me, it was worth all the effort!

While we were in Inlet, our dogs got to be in the dog parade! Maxx had fun meeting the ladies. He’s such a ladies man. Ashley liked visiting with the other small dogs. She's not a big fan of big dogs since one grabbed her. Yup, I clobbered that dog and grabbed her back! Nope, you're not eating my seven-pound Yorkie baby! She's curled up on her blanket sleeping snuggled up to me as I type this. 

I made my Christmas cards at the cabin we rented. The hubs had to work part of the week so I had some free time. It was cold and snowy and I didn't want to go exploring on my own. I didn't want him to miss out. 

We made a big turkey feast on Thanksgiving. We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Without cable at home, we haven't seen it in several years. It's a nice, old tradition! It was actually weird having satellite tv. I discovered I didn't miss much on HGTV....much of the same old same old. 

Then Christmas snuck up on us. There were a number of projects to get done before our families came Christmas weekend. We moved our dining room into the library, painted, put up a chair rail, and a new light fixture. The old dining room became our study which also received a paint job and a new light fixture. We also had to move a whole bunch of furniture. Some disassembly and assembly required. There's still some more work we want to do - judges' panels and crown molding. Oh how fun! :)

It's amazing how small our house became with a house full of people. It's always nice having our families visit us. Then there's the feast I make. It was great having my fancy double oven stove back from my house in South Carolina. I love that thing! 

In January, we celebrated my birthday and watched the temperatures and snow fall. It's been a cold winter. It hasn't been overly snowy where we are, but we have had more snow than last year. The snow blower has been used a few more times than last year. So glad we bought it so the hubs doesn't hurt himself shoveling the 100+ foot long driveway.

More tomorrow!