Balzer Designs

How About a Year-Long Project?

This is a post I wrote for the Label Tulip blog, but I thought I'd post if over here in case anyone was interested in trying out a year-long project.  I do mention my Project Fifty-Two at the end, but there are a million other great ideas out there!

As we creep towards 2009, you might be thinking that now is the good time to get involved in a year-long crafty project.  I have to agree.  Here are some ideas that might interest you...

Project 365: A Photo a Day

As the title suggests, the goal is to take a photo every day and post it online with absolutely no photo editing.  I did this in 2008. Or, rather I tried to do this in 2008.  I did manage to take a photo almost every day, but the printing and keeping track of it kind of fell by the wayside.  But, Creating Keepsakes Magazine has come up with a genius kit-of-the-month to take care of that problem.  I'm truly tempted to try it again using this kit.  It's a two-page spread for every week done with slip-in page protectors.  So smart and so easy and so tempting!

The Diary Project

An artist named Kirsty Hall spent 2007 working on this.  Essentially, she wrote a note on piece of paper, placed it in an envelope, drew on the envelope, and mailed it to herself every single day.  I'm kind of charmed by the idea of sending it out into the universe and getting it back again.

A Life Well Crafted

Kolette and Jason Hall of Colorbök fame are running a year long course through the online classroom, "Big Picture Scrapbooking."  I'll admit that I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but it looks like Jason and Kolette will spend the year inspiring you to take risks and create a better life through crafting.  Intriguing and you can either buy a month-by-month "membership" or the whole year-long shebang.

Project 365: Draw the Line

The link above goes to George G's blog.  He draws something - from a portrait to a doodle - every single day and posts it to his blog.  I'm not a particularly good draw-er, but they say practice makes perfect. 

The Journal Quilt Project

This one has been going on and on for ages.  Basically, you create an 8.5x11" quilt once a week (or once a month).  In addition, you're meant to keep a diary of your thoughts on doing the project.  There's a great book that pulls from the first five years of the project called, Creative Quilting.  It's a huge book full of inspiration!

Project Fifty-Two

Finally, this is my own project for 2009.  The idea is to get a year of your life recorded in some way.  Every week for one year, participants will create something inspired by an event, a thought, or an emotion from that week.  And since I dabble in lots of different things, I wanted to make sure that other people who dabble could participate.  So, what you create doesn't have to be consistent.  You can create an art journal page one week and a quilt the next.  Or you could stay consistent and make fifty-two scrapbook layouts.

Why not try out a year-long project as part of your 2009?!

Curtains, Good News, and a Promise

Three things to share today....

CURTAINS

My brother is a very hip, very trendy guy.  He lives in L.A. and wanted some funky, retro curtains for his place.  He lives in a little bungalow - the entire building is his tiny one-bedroom apartment.  He also wanted the curtains to block out the light as much as humanly possible. So, this is what I made him:

Many months ago, I bought that gorgeous Japanese fabric at my favorite quilt store in NYC, and have been hoarding it for something that I knew would come up.  I  didn't have quite enough to make all the curtains, so I put in a stripe of Michael Miller fabric that seemed to fit (the fabric with the writing on it).  He wanted tab top curtains so that they'd have a more handmade feel.  At first, I disagreed, but seeing these photos he sent me, I really like the way they look.  Also, I couldn't find blackout material at a reasonable price (and in a small quantity), so I used black wool felt on the back.  Not only does it do a great job of blocking out the light, but the curtains insulate the windows too.  Pretty cool.

GOOD NEWS

I got a late night request for a layout from Simple Scrapbooks.  Yay!  I'm a big fan of Simple Scrapbooks' entire approach to scrapbooking.  They're all about a guilt free scrapbook lifestyle.  That sounds good to me!

A PROMISE

I have been taking my Photo-a-Day, but I've been terrible about uploading it to the album on the right.  Eeek.  I'm in the middle of production (with a show opening on Friday) and have a horrible cold, but I promise to get to uploading sometime in the next few weeks.

That's all for now.  Thanks for stopping by!

JLMS and PAD

Here are the other two projects for this month at Just Let Me Scrapbook...

I am so desperately in love with American Crafts at this point.  I love these stickers and the Slick Writer is amazing!  It really works!   The journaling on the layout was done with a Slick Writer on top of the sticker.  It's amazing!  I know that I already said that, but it dries immediately!  I highly recommend it!  I  know that MaryBeth has some of them in stock at JLMS.  And I believe the 30% off sale is still on!  Be sure to tell them Julie sent you!

In other news, I'll bet you think I fell of the Photo-a-Day bandwagon (considering the fact that I haven't posted a photo since February).  Think again!  I finally resized everything for the web and uploaded all my photos!  So check out the album to see what I've been up to.  I'm still embarrassed about taking my camera out in public, so there are a lot of photos from inside my apartment.  Here's my favorite of all the photos I've uploaded (taken with my iphone at my Mom's house):

Have a great day!

Quilt-As-You-Go

Quilt-As-You-Go is a wildly popular quilting technique these days.  As you might suspect from the title, it allows you to quilt as you piece, rather than piecing the entire quilt and then quilting it.  It is a time saver and for someone like me, with a tiny space, it helps me get the bigger quilts done.

I belong to an online art quilt discussion group and someone posted a question about how to enlarge an already completed quilt, binding already on and such.  I haven't done it, but I suggested using Quilt-As-You-Go because I figured it would be seamless.  So, I thought I'd share the instructions I wrote up to explain the basic process:

I really enjoy this technique and am currently using it to finish my Dear Jane quilt.  If you'd like to learn more about Quilt-As-You-Go, I found this book on Amazon:

I don't own the book and I haven't read it. But, the reviews are glowing (which is not true for most of the other quilt-as-you-go books).  And, as the title indicates, one of the things that is so very cool about the Quilt-As-You-Go method, is that you can create a two-sided quilt -- a quilt that works from the back and the front!  That's very cool in my opinion!

In other news, this will probably be my last post for a while as I am going away for a week and I'm not sure if I'll have any internet access.

I'm still planning on doing Photo A Day.  But, I probably won't have a chance to post any of them until I come back.  I hope you play along too!

 

Three

Three things to share today:

1. December 21st layout for my "25 Days Until Christmas" album.

Do you have a family get-together during the holidays with extended family?

2. I'm planning on doing the 365 day photo challenge in 2008.

I'm always complaining that I don't have any photos.  Well, this should fix that.  The assignment is to take one photo every day for a year.

From Photojojo:

People will often say that their whole lives flashed before their eyes after they experienced a traumatic event. Perhaps it’s a bit morbid, but we think that sounds pretty incredible.

When Taylor McKnight started taking a photo a day on January 1st, 2004, he never imagined the project would not only serve as a way to remember a year, but also help him understand what was important to him in his life.

Whether it was his relationships, his career, or his fashion sense, recording a photo a day for a whole year left him with a rich visual history of his life. And it made him a better photographer to boot!

Now that he’s in the middle of doing it for a second time, we asked Taylor to write about it for us. Read on for our tutorial on how and why to create your own daily photographic history.

Why do it?

Taking a photo a day is a big undertaking with big payoffs. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider doing it:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)
• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.
• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

Tips on How to Do It

Here are six tips on how to create your own Project 365:

1. Bring Your Camera Everywhere
   Yes, everywhere. Get in the habit. Grocery stores, restaurants, parties, work, and school. Going to a movie theatre? Snap a pic of the flick with your phone–there are photo-ops everywhere. If you have one of those tiny tiny cameras, you have no excuse not to have it in your pocket all the time. And if you don’t? Camera phones are a great substitute.
2. Make Posting Easy
   You can install blog software like Movable Type or Wordpress on your own site and create an entry for each photo, but for true ease of use, try a photo sharing site. Flickr will let you post a week’s worth of photos in 2 minutes flat, and fotolog and Photoblog.com are geared toward a photo-a-day workflow. Making it fast and easy means you’re much more likely to do it.
3. Vary Your Themes
   Try to capture the day’s events in a single photo. Perform photographic experiments. Take a photo of someone new you meet, something you ate for the first time, or something you just learned how to do. Take a photo of something that made you smile. And don’t forget to take a photo of yourself at least once a month so you can remember how you’ve changed, too.
4. Tell a Story
   Use your blog entry, or your photo description, to explain what’s going on in each day’s photograph. How good did that dinner taste? What made you want to take a photo of that stranger? It’ll help you remember down the road, and it gives friends following along a better appreciation of why you took the photo you did. You don’t need to write a lot, just enough to add some color.
5. Don’t Stop, No Matter What
   This is perhaps the most important tip of all. You will get tired of taking a photo every single day. Some days, you will consider giving up. Don’t. The end result is worth the effort. Remind yourself why you wanted to do it in first place.

   There will be times you’ll think there’s nothing interesting left to take a photo of, and times you’ll think you didn’t do anything exciting enough to take a photo of. There’s always a great photo to be made.

   Get out of the house and take a walk. Or stay inside and look around. Take a photo of something important to you. Take a photo of the inside of your house so you can see how your taste has changed over the years. Take a photo of anything, just don’t stop.

   N.B. It helps if you’ve told your friends about the project and asked them to follow along. Their encouragement will keep you going!

6. Post early, post often
   Plan on going through and posting your photos at least once a week so you don’t get backlogged and feel overwhelmed. Ideally, post every day or two. Again, spend the time up front to make sure it’s quick and easy to post. It’ll make all the difference.

I'm excited about this project! I'm going to do it a little bit differently then is suggested. I plan to print my photo each day and I've got an album ready and waiting with a tiny bit of scratch space to write any comments I want to. I also plan to post most of my photos to an album on this blog. I just don't have the brain power to run a separate photo blog, plus who knows, I may not want to share every single photo.

3. Class at Heart in Hands Scraps You can download instructions for this adorable mini (3" square) transparent album here. Thanks for stopping by!