Oh, how exciting!!

I am so excited, I can hardly stand it!

I have been participating in the "Last Scrapper Standing" contest over at Create My Keepsake. This is an ongoing contest that the winner of the final round receives a Design Team position on their site. Now, I can tell you that I honestly feel that Create My Keepsake is one of the VERY best message boards I have visited, and it is filled with the most amazing and talented scrappy women I have EVER come into contact with. If you have never visited, I HIGHLY encourage you to check out the AMAZING gallery and visit the lively and fun forums. I am seriously inspired every single day by the work on this site.

Anyway, I have been participating in this contest, and am DELIGHTED to share that I have made it to the TOP 10!!!!! I nearly wet myself when I learned this morning that MY NAME was on the list with 9 other PHENOMENAL artists moving on to the next round. I am so honored and amazed, and DELIGHTED!!!

Here is the project that I submitted for this round -- yes it is a bit unusual, but there is a story (detailed below), and the result is one that is very meaningful to me.



The challenge for this round was to use a T-shirt slogan as inspiration to complete an altered art project or a card. I decided to use the slogan "GEEK INSIDE" found HERE as my inspiration. My son loves the T-Shirts at www.thinkgeek.com and any shirts related to computers and gaming. I thought that I would create an altered photo frame for a picture of my "geek". I decided that it would be fun to use the parts from our old computer as embellishments for the frame. As I worked through this idea, I really started an emotional journey which led me to this project.
The only reason that we still had this old IMAC around, is because it holds a LOT of sentimental value. It was the last thing that my father gave to our family before he passed away. This was his gift to my son on his 7th birthday -- and in fact I am quite certain that one of the main reasons that my dad hung on and fought to live for as long as he did was that is was SO important to him to see this gift given to my son. He passed away just a few weeks after my son's birthday. From the time that my son was born, he and papa were BEST friends, and in addition to this computer, he shared with my son an overwhelming love of and obsession with computers and technology. It has been his gift, and is now my son's passion. This computer was used as our family computer up until the end of last year when it finally died. It was really difficult to lose it, as it always reminded me of my father. So I decided what an interesting and meaningful project it would be to preserve this gift as an art project, and memory for us all of my father's gift and legacy to my son. Yes, it is unusual, but it will be treasured. My son helped with this project - he really enjoyed disassembling the computer and keyboard for the parts I used as embellishments, and sat with me through many of the hours I struggled with this to see how it was coming and offer his input - he has never taken an interest in my scrapbooking before, so that was quite a treat for me!


I used Pink Paislee papers. Ribbon is SU, Tiny alpha is Making Memories, chipboard is Basic Grey, transparancies are Club Scrap. I used computer parts and keyboard letters as embellishment, and the cool green strip at the top left area is from inside the keyboard.

The base of the imac is stained green with ink, and then I used reinforcement holes as a mask and inked with stazon for the stripe of dots around the base. I covered a vinyl pocket protector and attached it and put the "WHOLE" story inside so we will always remember WHY this computer is so special to us.


This was a really fun project, and I am so glad to have had this experience. AND I am so excited to work on the NEXT challenge.

You can see the work of the other competitors as follows:

Initial Entries
Challenge 1
Challenge 2

In other news -- I am planning my next STAMP A STACK! I am only doing these about quarterly now - life is JUST TOO BUSY to do more right now, but I LOVE doing them, and having a chance to see my stamping friends! I am really looking forward to planning one for the NEW CATALOG! I will be holding the class on Sunday, August 24th - making 18 cards using new catalog goodies! I can't wait to get my new toys and start planning some fun stuff!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my great day! Hope your week is wonderful!
Hugs,
KP