enJOY it

an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.

friendship bracelets / summer story two.

June 15, 2011

A fantastic photo of brightly colored friendship bracelets – of the old school woven variety – popped up on Pinterest last week and I couldn't get it out of my head. (Here's the photo and here's the blog post it came from, complete with tutorials.) I dug through my craft supply box for the seven colors of embroidery thread I had and immediately made two bracelets and then plans to go pick up more colors.

Talk about a simple pastime that brings back memories. I used to be the queen of friendship bracelet making and now I remember why. It's a simple process that generates quick and pretty results. For me it feels a lot like knitting – only for the summer.

The craziest part was after I tied the first one and hopped in the shower. The water hit the thread and dyed it that dark muted hue and suddenly, I was back in sixth grade and playing in the backyard pool. Memories are so awesome that way.
i love this today.

June 14, 2011
blog hop!

June 14, 2011

My sweet friend, Amy Tan, asked me to join in a blog hop today to introduce her new paper line with American Crafts.

It's the Real Deal. Twenty-four patterned papers, fabric stickers and more. Above is a peek of what you can expect. Check out the American Crafts blog for more information and visit Kelly Purkey's blog for the next stop of the blog hop.

Congrats Amy and American Crafts on such a fun collaboration! I can't wait to see the paper in real life.

xo, elise
currently.

June 13, 2011

making small diet changes after reading Secrets to a Healthy Metabolism.

running faster than I was pre-race.

relieved to be done training.

rediscovering the lost art of friendship bracelet making.

battling summer allergies.

trying to be patient as the military changes our schedule over and over (and over).

enjoying an unexpected flower delivery.

appreciating fresh California produce.

noticing an increase in flexibility after three weeks of Bar Method.

joining Paul in counting down the days (10) until the end of intern year.
BLOG 2.0 workshop RERUN.

June 13, 2011

Here we go! I'm excited to be offering this online class again this summer. All workshop details (plus a few reviews from past students) can be seen right here.

Ready to join the fun and fancy up your TYPEPAD blog? Fantastic! Please use the "add to cart" button below. You will be directed to pay via Paypal. Soon after you submit payment, you will receive a confirmation email with more information. Keep in mind that if you pay with an e-check, your email will come once your check clears (which can take up to a few days).

CLASS IS CLOSED.

thanks! elise
meet steve.

June 12, 2011

He was my best guy friend in high school. And today I have three stories to tell you about Steve.

1) Our junior year, Steve was on the basketball team that made it all the way to, well, I've forgotten how far they made it, but really far in the state championships. To get that far, we had an almost perfect season. Every gameday, I would give Steve a scrap of paper that said something like "good luck. love, elise" on it and he'd wear it in his shoe for the whole game. Once, I forgot to get the paper to him and our team lost. Word spread and soon even the coach was confirming with Steve that he had that piece of paper.

2) I graduated high school and went to college. Steve graduated high school and went to college. I graduated college and went on a European vacation with some girlfriends. Steve did the same. SUPER RANDOMLY, in Amsterdam I heard someone call my name. I turned around and it was Steve! In Amsterdam! Eating french fries with mayonnaise on them! How crazy!

3) We both got back from Europe and went on with our lives. SUPER RANDOMLY, I went to a bar in DC and heard someone call my name. I turned around and sure enough, it was Steve! In DC! Living and working and doing cool stuff. I think we spent most of that catch up talking about how we always meet up in strange places.

So those are my background stories. Now you know that both Steve and I are superstitious and like to appear out of nowhere. But the point of them is to tell you about Steve's plan to run the Timberman 70.3, a half-ironman, in August. If you're curious : that's a 1.2 mile swim followed by a 56 mile bike ride and finished off with a 13.1 mile run.

To me, it sounds a lot like lighting myself on fire and then running a half-marathon. But Steve is braver than me, so to him, it sounds like fun.

Steve is raising money and awareness for Leukemia and Lymphoma research while training for this adventure. You can read more about Steve and his plan here (and then keep reading because rumor has it he's going to share running and racing tips). And if you are so inclined, I would love it if you'd donate to his cause. (For donation instructions, please read the right sidebar of his blog. His full name is Steve Claremon.)

Right now, I am feeling so inspired. Running has messed up my brain a little bit (or maybe it just straightened it out) and suddenly everything seems shiny and awesome. Steve, though, is one of those people that has always been unbelievably inspiring and already was bright and shiny. I don't even need a runner's high to confirm that.

Thanks for letting me share a bit about him and this great plan here.
40 loaves / walnut bread.

June 11, 2011

Bread no. 14 : walnut bread.

Adjustments : halved the recipe, added 1/4 C dried cranberries and subsutuited vingar and milk for buttermilk. I also didn't chop the oats in a food processor because that seems like a lot of work for little reward.

Notes : I've made this a few times. Notably, last Thanksgiving. I always forget how difficult this recipe is compared to other breads. (By this, I mean that you have to dirty a lot of measuring cups.) It's also pretty tricky to get the consistency right – I feel like I end up adding a lot of extra flour to make the dough not too sticky. Added cranberries this time on Paul's recommendation. Good call, Paul.

Review : OH MAN, out of control good. I know I have already said that one of the loaves on 1-13 was best, but that was a lie. THIS BREAD is best. I can't even tell you why it turned out so good this time, but I think it's because I hand kneaded it at the end (for about five minutes). WOW though. SO GREAT.
project 7 of 26 / hand-stamped stationery.

June 10, 2011

I technically started this project last summer when I carved this stamp. Somewhere along the line, the project lost steam and I never got around to making a bunch of cards. Yesterday, I was digging through some craft boxes and found it. This time, I decided to grab some paper before I forgot about it all over again.

The tools for this project are pretty simple. Everything shown above is made by Speedball and was picked up at my local art store. The pink stamp is a piece of soft rubber that I wrote my initials on (backwards so the image comes out the right way) and then carefully carved it out. I used some teal block printing ink and a small brayer.

I squeezed a drop of ink on to a wooden cheese board (that is no longer a cheese board) and thinned it out until the brayer was coated evenly. Then I rolled the brayer over the stamp and turned the stamp upside down on some cardstock. I left the cards out to try overnight – the oil based ink takes a while to set.

For paper, I used a variety of different colors that I had on hand. I knew it would be a hassle to change the ink color so I picked papers that would work with the teal. Most of the paper came from Paper Source A7 cards. Once folded in half, they fit perfectly into 4 bar envelopes. I mixed and matched cardstock and envelope colors to make the sets more interesting.

I am happy to have finally used this stamp and am glad to have some casual stationery on hand now.

This is project 7 of 26.

I am attempting to tackle 26 personal craft projects before I turn 27 on 02.22.12. You can follow my progress here on the blog, on pinterest or on flickr.

See project 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6
around here : food edition.

June 9, 2011
summer minibook update #7.

June 8, 2011

Moving along… lots to include these past few days.

I added letter/number stickers from an office supply store to both sides of the grid transparency to represent how many miles I ran in the half-marathon. I like these letter stickers because no matter what letters you're working with, they are the same size. This was perfect for the transparency because I didn't want anything "extra" to show through on the backside.

I painted a zig-zag pattern on the tabbed card. I used painter's tape and craft paint to get the effect. The journaling is a slightly edited version of text from this blog post. sidenote : I am enjoying pulling blog content from into this book. It's making it easier to get lots of text and stories incorporated.

On the backside of the tabbed card, I adhered a grid of photos that were taken with the ShakeIt app on my iPhone. I put them all together in PSE and printed at 4×6. A thick lululemon clothing tag was used as a "page" that shares the photobooth pictures Vern and I took after the race. I stapled them to green cardstock, trimmed the cardstock to size and adhered it to the back of the tag.

That little red thing is the chip I wore on my shoe to chart my time during the race. It's cute and fit in the book – done and done. The "pre-race" photo on the right is backed by the teal cardstock page.

Before I adhered the photo to the cardstock, I sewed a bunch of denim circles down. I recently cut a pair of old jeans into shorts and wanted to incorporate some of the leftover denim in this book. I freehand cut different sized circles then layered them on top of the paper (some showing the "front" of the material and some showing the "back".) I held them in place and carefully sewed on top of them with my sewing machine.

I used a piece of plastic packaging as a transparency and zig-zag stitched two 2×2 inch photos (adhered back to back) to it. This solution worked well because the photos could "float" on top of the circles on both pages. I like mirroring shapes in book spreads and the circles accomplish that. I added some text to the brown label (discontinued from Paper Source) and wrapped it around the bottom right of the page so it could still be seen while the transparency and photo were on the right side.

Behind the kraft circle paper, I incorporated another 8×6 photo. I really like these big photo spreads. This one is of our window sill plants. I adhered a piece of the plastic tag that came with our big pot of basil on top.

And that's that! Again – loving this project to the stars and back. At the rate I'm going, I'll be adding bigger book rings and additional pages before the end of June. To me, that's great news.

Questions? Holler in the comments. Still need a summer book? Get one here. Want to see more of this album? Go here. Are you working on your own summer book? Add photos to the newly created flickr group!