Both Ends of the Spectrum

 When it comes to hobbies, cost is not a factor... or is it? It shouldn't be if you really love what you are making. But sometimes you have priorities and have to keep it down. I have hobbies that span the spectrum. Making junk journals from recycled junk mail envelopes is at the lowest end of it, but the most satisfying for me as far as design work goes. It's the least expensive but most rewarding.

 

My biggest expense in making these is the cost of paper to print on. And the glue. I use a lot of glue. I wouldn't use anything else but Aleene's tacky glue for this job. I have a Graphics Fairy subscription for the graphics, an ink tank printer which costs next to nothing for the ink, and a few laces and ribbons from my sewing stash for decoration. Occasionally I add die cuts to embellish the journals and little charms for decoration. Sometimes I sew in fancy fabric swatches to the pages to add interest. It's the one hobby I have where I can incorporate so many of my other hobbies into it and they all come together.

My mid-range hobbies include all my knitting and crocheting. I bought all my yarn when it was on sale and very inexpensive... not at today's prices. I have enough yarn to last the rest of my life and then some. So my cost has already been paid for this hobby. I now occasionally just buy a pattern for a few bucks when needed.

I also occasionally dabble in jewelry making. I don't wear a lot of jewelry but I do love to make beads, bracelets and dangle charms. I have all the jump rings and polymer clay any true artist would ever want so that's an expense that is just pennies to maintain if I need a few supplies here and there. The same goes with sewing, painting and paper sculpting/paper clay. I already have everything I need to make projects. My room looks like a craft store. Jewelry making can get expensive if you want it to.

But without a doubt the most expensive hobby I've ever had is paper card and crafting with Anna Griffin supplies. Ask me if this makes sense... You spend thirty dollars for one die cut set to make maybe three or four cards. You pay twenty to thirty dollars on the "Anna Griffin" paper and embellishments to make them, not to mention adhesive, foam adhesive, stickers, bows... all have to be Anna Griffin to participate in the Anna Griffin groups and her web site to show your creations. You can opt in to her on site classes for about a hundred dollars a year. You used to be able to pay reasonable by the month but now you have to do it all at once by the year. 

She sells boxes of die cuts, paper and embellishments with a theme from around sixty dollars and on up to five hundred dollars for her Create events once a year where you participate in online crafting weekends making items with her products in a classroom setting with hundreds of other people you can interact with at the same time. Can't afford that? No problem. You can pay on time with an app or split your payments for her stuff through HSN, her sponsor.

Without a doubt, this is my most expensive (and not too logical) hobby. It costs a lot but without a doubt the most beautiful cards and paper gift items on the market. Nobody compares to her high quality and gorgeous richness of product. This is definitely an obsession with the beautiful craft that she does.

These cards are so beautiful that people don't throw them away. They are keepers. And as long as I can afford it, I will be making Anna Griffin cards because nothing else on the market even comes close to the beauty and quality of these products. My Anna Griffin obsession is not only beautiful gift making for others but it's a gift I give to myself whenever I can afford to.

It's a love/hate thing. The cost is prohibitive for most of us. I hate the obsession and cost but I love the beauty of the embossed die cuts. So I try to keep it down by being more selective in my purchases and using more of what I already have mixed with the low cost of journaling. In fact I try to combine a little of several hobbies into one - my journals.

Documenting the Family Tree

 On this one I used a composition book, pulled out a lot of pages and made a family history book using ancestry.com where I've stored my family tree for several years now, a software called Family Tree Maker that keeps my records on my computer and with Ancestry up to date and mirrored. 

I also used a paper pack I bought from etsy from a designer and lightened them considerably for my use. I combined those digital papers with my scrapbooking papers (remember I'm trying to use them up) to make this book.

I had to document the five main branches of my family. I blurred out personal info, names and some pictures of the living and pictures I don't have permission to publish. 

Most of the pictures were mine so I didn't blur those out. I used the house and tree pictures to make a smaller half page background and front covers for the documented ancestry trees. I also made little pockets in the pages to hold copies of documents. And I put pictures of the houses of each family in their section.

I think people that live in houses have attachments to those houses so I used houses and trees as my theme with a brown, tan, black and gray color scheme. It looks good with b & w and color photos and gorgeous with sepia and tin type photos too.

This took me a long time to decorate and gather the info but all my family tree has been worked on now for over ten years so I didn't have to gather all that together, just print out the tree diagrams I wanted to use.

I also burned the family .ged file, dna info, all my pictures, documentation, research and all other information on to dvd to fit into the front of the book in case someone else down the line might want to expand on it. Each section has their own family tree pullout so you can match up the names with the place in the tree and see where they fit into the family.

I also backed it up on a zip strip aka thumb drive. I learned a lot being a web designer and developer all those years about backups. 

I also printed extra tabs, papers and left blank pages for someone to add their branch to the book if they should so desire in the future.

I'm not aware that anyone else in my family is even interested in being the next family historian but it's all there in case one comes along down the line. 

I never had an interest in history in school but it's different when you do something personal about your own family. When I started my family tree years ago, I never thought I would trace my maternal grandmother's side back to Denmark in the time of princesses, Queens and Kings. I traced my husband's family back to 16th century Scotland. I never thought I would discover the connection my Van Hoose ancestors had with Daniel Boone's family and how they helped to settle the Appalachian trail. And I never thought I would discover notes on death certificates that gave me insight into their lifestyles and habits, some good and some very bad.

I never thought I would locate pictures of people that looked like me through dna matches and houses still standing I could locate on census records where my grandparents lived way before I was born.

What sparked my fire years ago was when my grandmother died and my uncle found a huge box of photographs in her closet and almost all of the people in the photos were not recognized by anyone still living. Nobody knew who they were.

I thought at the time that it would have been wonderful to hear stories about all those people and know something about them and how they were connected to our family but unfortunately all that information and all those wonderful stories were lost forever. What a shame. So I decided to not let that happen again. Always label the back of your photos people! In three generations or less you will become unknown by your descendants. Who is going to tell all your wonderful life stories? Without documentation, you are just a memory to those closest to you and all your goodness and maybe a little badness will be lost.

I've digitized all my photos and named them in this book. So here's hoping my descendants will spring forth with a good detective or family historian in the future who will want to add to it. 

I never thought I would get this involved with the family history but I can honestly say after working on it all these years that I did my part to keep it alive. I published my first family tree in 2009. This book didn't happen overnight. It's up to them to keep it going.

The Moon and Printer Problems

  Well, I really enjoy making journals out of junk mail envelopes and this is one of the prettiest paper sets I have ever seen so I put my others aside and had to make this one. The blues are incredible and my printer prints like velvet on presentation paper but it really uses the ink. If I'd had scrapbooking paper this pretty I wouldn't have to print my own papers.

But I do like to print my own because there is no waste like leftover scrapbooking papers. But I'm trying to use up my stash so I did have a few blue and gold papers left over from another project so I used those. They are from a pad set a few years ago called Royal Gypsy by DCWV.

And my printer quit right in the middle of printing out some lovely pages I got from Lily J on etsy under the name SecretHelper. The moon is magical, don't you think? Well, I've had my Epson ink tank printer for a little over 4 years and so it turned out that the ink pad container for overflow ink was almost full and my printer stopped dead in its tracks and refused to print another page until it was fixed. But I'm not the only one who has run into this problem. That's why I love youtube. You can find out how to fix or make just about anything on there.

I did some research and then called Epson. They said they get a lot of complaints about this issue so I said, "Why don't you fix it?" She told me there was no reset key which turned out not to be true. Well, as far as she is concerned in selling a new part, yeah, it doesn't come with a reset key but... you have to get an authorized repairman to do it and I'm sure it costs extra but I didn't ask how much because $25 just for the part was already way more than I could fix it for free..

 

So instead of spending $25 and waiting 3 weeks for a new container with new pads (after mailing in my old one) and then having to contact an Epson authorized service repair technician to reset the ink pad counter, I decided to take it apart and clean it myself. I've always been a DIY kind of fix it yourself person.

The messy part is washing all the ink out of the felt pads and drying them out. I squeezed as much water out of mine as I could, twisted them tightly into towels and was surprised at how clean they came. They were practically white again and they did look like new. 

There are youtube videos showing you how. And I downloaded a free trial key from WicReset to reset the counter myself. It worked! I was back in business in less than 24 hours but I did have to bake my clean felt ink pads in the oven at my lowest setting of 170 degrees for several hours to get them dry. You could also set them in the sun or give them a good 48 hours or more to dry. 

But you can buy replacement pads for your model from amazon if you don't want to clean them. I urge you to WEAR RUBBER GLOVES if you do clean them!!! Three days later and I still have black ink under my nails. I was in a hurry. 

I used WicReset and the trial code but when it fills up again it will be much faster and cheaper than Epson to just pay less than 10 bucks for a code. It resets the counter to 80%  based on the number of head cleanings preset. Mine took 4 years to reach 100% so that should give me about 10 months before it needs to be cleaned again.

The trial will get you through an emergency but if you want to coordinate your pad cleanings with your key resets, you might want to then buy a key. Either way you are going to have to check the overflow if the notice is disabled.

 

I really didn't know it had been four years since I bought mine. Time flies. That's probably the longest I've had any printer and I still love this thing. I use it a lot and have only had to refill my tanks about every 18 months. I just topped off the blue ink too. I hated the ink waste in the cartridges on my old printer. If buying a key and cleaning the pads will give me another four years then I think it's worth the 9 bucks. I hope the rest of the printer parts last that long.

I think the best use of my printer is to mix what I print with my scrapbooking papers. It gives a lot of variety to the journal and keeps it from looking too matchy-matchy. You know how sometimes a collection will be too perfect? I really don't want my journals to look pre-printed. I want them to look a little messy and hand made. Anyone can just go buy a journal from a store. These journals that we make are pieces of art. They are one of a kind and that's how I like it.

So I figured the moon messed with me during the eclipse and I probably got off lucky because I'm a moon child. This is my journal paying homage to the beauty of the moon. 

I have so many journals done and yet to be documented... next up is the family tree.