So your photographer is giving you a disc of your wedding photos. COOL! Now begs the question… what do you plan on doing with them? How will you store them? Where will you store them? Good questions. While a simple clear jewel case with a plain CD-R in it can seem like the best way to have your wedding photos delivered… I think there’s a better way.

What if your discs came packaged like this…

And upon untying the bow, opening the cute little brown boxes, and peeling back the crispy tissue paper…. you discover some custom designed cases for your discs? What a novel idea…

They’re labeled and customized with your desired style… and if you have a lot of images, you get several… all labeled with their Volume number….

And instead of keeping them on your cluttered desk where they’ll get mistaken for the disc of pictures you took from Aunt Mildred’s 90th karaoke birthday party… you can neatly place them in your bookshelf next to the other novels. PERFECT!

I’m a big fan of being creative with how you store and use pictures… and, as always, finding a more creative way to do things makes life that much more exciting…

Today I did something I never do. I spoke at a women’s bible study at church. As I told them, I’ll tell you now…. I’m not really the public speaking type of person… it’s way more comfortable to speak from my blog where I don’t have to worry about saying “um” too much or stuttering. But I did it and I’m pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to work Keynote, pair a remote to my laptop, and connect the correct cords to make it project on a screen… all while talking about something (hopefully) remotely relevant to the audience of women.

A couple weeks ago, Christopher and I sat in the clubhouse at Forest Home talking about life and lessons and the challenges of living on the road less traveled… all pretty light a fluffy subjects (not). It’s a wierd season of life for both of us… feels sort of like a staging ground… or a change of tides. Do you ever have those season in your life? So who knows where the wind will blow or what He’s got up his sleeve for the next chapter of the adventure. I suppose I’ll know in all good time… and when I find out, I’ll be sure to keep you posted. But for now, here’s a few pictures from the same afternoon at camp with Christopher… we made a ship at the craft cabin and it’s my new favorite desk decoration! More weddings and fun shoots to share in the coming weeks!

One of my best friends turned 21 this week and she asked me to make her some cards to send to clients. (she’s a super cool photographer from Lubbock, TX) She did have some requests… she said… “I want them to be yellow. And pretty. And OLLLLD. Yeah.” So I spent some time thinking… “If I were Betsy… and I was a greeting card… what would I look like?” This is what I came up with… Enjoy!

In case you find the “how-to” portion interesting….

It was all really quite simple. I found the shades of paper I wanted & cut rectangles, glued them, printed the “note from betsy” cards onto Card Stock and cut them, sewed them with goldenrod needle point thread, and cut the corners off some square doilies and sewed them on as well. I glued the squares onto some cream off white textured square folded notecards, bought some yellow envelopes and BOOM! Betsy Greeting Cards! Many thanks to Paper Source for their awesome selection of paper! Aaand Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!

I’ve mentioned it before… the idea of Cross-training. Athletes cross-train to give their bodies a break from their normal sport… and also to work the brain in a different way. Way back when, in my soccer days, I joined a swim team during the summers to cross-train for the Fall soccer season. Not only did swimming work different muscles than soccer did, but by the time Fall season rolled around, I could run like 10 laps around the field without breathing. Creativity can be very similar to athletics in the sense that it takes the development of creative muscles to be able to turn your creativity into something useful. After a certain amount of time using the same creativity muscles…. I find myself in one of two places– the first being the place of slight laziness, since my muscles are used to that particular activity…. the second being a place of creative dryness. Neither of these places are good to stay in… and it takes a lot of determination to choose the hard road of paving new paths and finding new inspiration.

For me, other art forms like painting, drawing, sculpting, and music inspire new creative juices. When I’m feeling particularly unmotivated… I pull out my art box and create SOMETHING… and I love it!

I spent an evening recently at Laguna Beach’s famous Pageant of the Masters and Festival of the Arts media night. A friend, Ernie Castello, invited Christopher and I to attend for the 2nd year in a row and, let me tell YOU… it was SO COOL! If you get the chance to go to the Pageant of the Masters…. take it! It’ll change the way you see art…. and it will totally fill your creativity cup as well!

The evening began with a preview into the Festival of the Arts, known as California’s Premier Fine Art Show. It was voted “Best Arts Festival” by the Travel Channel this year… and it’s the longest running outdoor fine art show in California! Basically, tons of artists set up outside on this really nice patios area and there’s mini art classes and demonstrations…. you can even talk with the artists themselves! Here’s some shots from the Festival…

The second portion of the evening consisted of a behind the scenes tour of the Pageant and we learned about each step by step process from the backdrop design, to the costuming, to the actual placement of real people into the live works of art. Here’s some shots from behind the scenes…

ps… this dress was hand-painted to look identical to the one in this picture…

For each piece of art being shown in the pageant, the cast is painted to look exactly like their characters look in the original masterpiece.

See if you can pick this guy (above) out in the following masterpiece named “Prince’s Day” by Jan Steen.

Here’s some more shots of the cast being painted…. this guy is going to be one of the characters in the famous “Etruscan Dancers from the Tomb of the Leopards.”

Once they’re painted and costumed up, they’re placed by the stage artists into their backdrops…. very intricately, I might add.

This is the final presentation the audience would see… how cool!!

“Bon-Ton Burlesque Poster”

“Coffee and Donuts”, by Scott Moore.

Many thanks to Ernie for hanging out with us, inviting us, and just being plain awesome.

This night was so rejuvenating for me. I loved soaking in the artsy atmosphere and brushing shoulders with the oldies and newbies of the art and media world. Maybe one day I’ll be half as good at creating as these amazing people…..