enJOY it

an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.

  • workspace wednesday.

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    That's not just one but two industrial strength hole punches. You would think I was making Swiss cheese over here or something. But really, I'm just wrapping holiday gifts and vacuuming up the little punched circles.

    Today will be a good day because I have places to go and things to buy. It's holiday time and I have a few more gifts to gather. (Mostly shopping for Paul. The man is a tricky person to buy for. I ended up settling on half handmade – manly stationery by me & this poster – and half mass produced – a pizza peel & Star Trek on DVD.) I will also be making my thrice-weekly stop by the post office to get your shop orders into your hands. I might stop by Anthropologie and buy this book. I will try not to count how many hours there are until next Wednesday when we get the official word on where Paul has been placed for his intern year. Are we going to be west coasters again? Or will I get one more year of use out of all my winter apparel?

    And don't worry, Wedding Wednesday has not been forgotten. It's just that there's very little to report. Unless you would like an update that I still wish this wedding was RIGHT NOW instead of April. Patience is a virtue I know very little about.

  • i love making books.

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    As I was making books for today's update, I realized I had never made something with one of my mixed books. I decided to fill one up this past weekend. I used the exact book from the update and added a few extra pieces of ribbon and some circle and rectangle labels from Paper Source. The only added pages are a calendar page and a few 4×6 mounted back to back photos. I used a black pen throughout the book and staples and a tape runner for the adhesive. That really cool award tag is from Nice Package. The orange frame tag is from Sycamore Street Press.

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    The end. I enjoyed playing with the different sized pages and coming up with things I love to fill them up. Leave a comment below with something you LOVE right now and you'll be entered to win a giveaway for the same (blank) book.

    Colorforest I'll draw a random winner from the comments tonight around 7pm. And if you're interested, this book and five other styles will be in the shop this afternoon at 3pm EST.

  • december album progress.

    AAAAAAAnd moving right along. It's amazing how easy I am finding it to add little photos and pages as the month goes on. It helps that Paul has a new xbox game and therefore we each get "downtime" without annoying each other to bits.

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    First things first, I went back and added a label over the stars on my photo pages from last week. They were freaking me out. I wanted to rip out the whole photo but took a breath and just stuck something on top. "Let it go" is a good mantra to repeat over and over while working on little books.

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    The next few pages feature pieces from CraftLove's holiday tag kit. I am not using it to make gift tags but instead as simple little embellishments that will probably make an appearance throughout the whole book. Into the green envelope, I tucked a large tag from the kit and wrote on it the gifts that I am giving this year. It is something I would like to remember but feel awkward just splashing out there. I am not sure how I will use the rest of the envelopes in the book, but I love the tuck factor.

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    On the back of the envelope, I mounted a photo. It's fuzzy on purpose…the project and tutorial will go live later in the week. You get a little sneak peek here though.

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    Today I am going to work on adding a few photos from the "Thanksgiving After Thanksgiving" party we attended last night and some of the little holiday decorations I have put up around the house. It's strange…we are really not doing anything "Christmas-y" until December 24th this year, but I am still finding little small holiday events to incorporate. Good stuff.

    Reminders :

    + shop update tomorrow at 3pm EST – Look for my filled up mixed book tomorrow.

    + the last day to purchase custom journals and have them by Christmas is December 10, that's Thursday

    + Don't forget to enter the giveaway below.

    + Have a great Monday.

  • last shop update of 09.

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  • Neoncards

  • a cool hotel, cohesive branding and other random thoughts.

    Paul and I have this pipe dream that someday we'll own a winery / paper store. (Okay so he's only 1% aware that next to wine we would sell paper…but maybe he won't really notice?) The man knows wine. And I love to drink wine. And I would LOVE to start with nothing and come up with the whole package. The winery decor, the bottle label, the business cards, the lighting, the menu, the paper shop tacked onto the side… The list goes on and on.

    I get so inspired by good design and a well thought out branding plan. So inspired that one of my big goals for next year (… probably after the wedding and honeymoon and Paul's med school graduation and our likely cross-country move …) is to revamp my shop, and re-organize my brand. I get excited just thinking about it. I dove headfirst without much thought into my current online shop. It started with little envelope sets and then I put together a few books, and then I learned how to letterpress so next came prints. I absolutely love it, but I never stopped to put it all together. So I am excited for what is next. For some time to re-think and re-grow. To expand and make everything a little more cohesive.

    This is all relevant today because I wanted to share some photos from the Hotel Vitale that we stayed at in San Francisco this past weekend. The Vitale is a sister hotel to the Citizen where Paul and I are getting married. In both cases, the hotel chain took existing buildings and turned them into places to stay. Each is completely different but similar in that the same attention to detail is apparent in both places.

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    Everything, from the lobby, to the elevators, to the hallways to the bathrooms, to the bar had a muted color palette and over-arching nature theme. Greens, yellows, blues, and purples mixed together perfectly to create a calming effect. Totally awesome & totally inspiring. I wanted to buy a house and come up with lighting treatments. I wanted to re-charge my online shop. I wanted P to quit the doctor plan and help me buy some grape vines. If it wasn't for the calming colors, I probably would have bounced right off the bed, through the roof and all the way to Home Depot.

    Very cool.

  • smile.

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    Much to do today. Probably so much that when Paul gets home from work he won't find me sitting on the couch in a blanket watching Friends. Our house is decorated for Christmas. My coffee is gone. I have a list. Am out the door.

    Smile. It's Wednesday. It's December. It's my little brother's birthday. Have a good one.

  • starting the holiday book.

    IMG_3828 I am determined to keep up a holiday book this December. And as I mentioned earlier, will be working with the same holiday book (with larger bookrings) that I have been selling in my shop over the last few weeks. These books have 25 pages plus a cover, but I am adding my own pages and photos where necessary. I am looking at this as an opportunity to "collect" holiday memories throughout the season. I think all the pieces together will tell a story without too much text. Below are the thoughts I gathered before December started.

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    The backsides of the pages are a great place to add photos. I took a picture of my red coffee cup, printed it out at home and then cropped down to size. Other found emperma, like the coffee collar just gets punched into place as it's own page.

    IMG_3831 IMG_3832IMG_3833 I like to add labels to the pages to provide a "house" for my written thoughts. It gives me a specific area to fill & I think it grounds
    the text on the page.

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    I added a few photos from our San Francisco trip and wrote on them with white sharpie poster paint. A lot of the photos throughout the book will probably end up being just a 4×6 photo which is part of the reason why I love this size album.

    These are just the first few pages. I hope to fill it from now until January 1. I am not focusing as much on daily entries, but just gathering evidence of what happened this holiday season.

    If you did not get a holiday book, I still have a few left here. Buy one today and it ships for free. If you want to add anything else to your order, I will refund the shipping via paypal on those items as long as they ship with a book.

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    Happy December 1. We are not getting a tree this year, but I am going to get out the rest of our decorations today anyway. I think I'll hang our ornaments on ribbon and string them down the stairs. We'll see how that goes…

  • good bye, november.

    November

    I gave up on taking a photo a day about 100 days ago, but here is still a pretty good summary of my November. This mosiac was made using Big Huge Labs.

  • thanksgiving weekend wrap-up.

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    As mentioned, we spent Thanksgiving Day flying to California. We got in just in time for dinner at Paul’s parents house with my immediate family and some of his extended family. All the traditional food and a bit of an nontraditional drink – pomegranate seeds in champagne – made for a great evening.

    The next morning Paul, my mom and I went shopping to see what sort of sales we could find. And also just for the entertainment of watching other people go nuts. I found seasons of Friends for $8.99 which was worth the trip.

    IMG_3721 Then Paul’s fam and I drove over to San Francisco (it’s about 100 miles from where we live) to wander the city and go to dinner at Gary Danko. This was my first time visiting the restaurant and it was unreal. Below is a peek at our plates:

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    After dinner, we rode a cable car to Union Square to see the huge tree.

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    And finally, Saturday morning, we wandered the farmer’s market at the ferry building before driving back to Sacramento.

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    I need at least three naps to recover from the weekend but today is jam packed. First item on my list is ignoring all the Cyber-Monday sales that keep popping up in my inbox. Second item is working my way through the next 50 items.

    I hope you had a lovely weekend. It’s NEARLY December and I am nearly going nuts with all the projects I want to get done. Keep an eye out for my Thanksgiving travel album. Keep an eye out for a shop update. And please be sure to visit the shops of my November sponsors one last time as tomorrow there will be some new faces over there.

    Happy Monday. Good-bye Fall. Welcome holiday music.