Happy August Diva Chit Chat

Hello Divas!

I have good news regarding my adhesive: it's out of the French customs and on the way to me! After over 1 and a half month of waiting... I was about to contact SB.com to see whether they could replace the package.



Like you, kitbop, my favourite season is summer. Dry and warm and - once upon a time - carefree! But I keep myself normally so busy during this time of the year with music festivals and travel that my creativity takes a serious nosedive. Not this year. This year is staycation galore and my sanity depends on keeping my hands busy. Can't wait to start my Pandemic Summer mini album (a lot of Netflix and food documenting )!

So. Freakin'. Excited. Just hoping nothing goes wrong between Paris and here. I can finally craft again soon!

woohoo sleepingbooty - about time!

Hi Divas!! Since I'm mostly a lurker who just jumped back in to the team challenges after an almost two year hiatus, I thought I would introduce myself.

My name is Melissa and I live in southern California less than two miles (3 km) from Disneyland. I'm 56 years old (how did that happen?!) and divorced with no children. I work full-time (from home still for now) as a system administrator/software developer in the aerospace industry. Since I have no partner, children, or pets, I'm not much of a scrapbooker, but I absolutely love making cards and coloring frame sized images with Copic markers, colored pencils, etc. I have a blog where I post my card creations and I'm active on Instagram as well. I have links for both of those in my signature.

I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you throughout the month!

kitbop I don't envy you all those bugs! So much of N.America seems to be very buggy all summer. That's one of the things I love about the PNW - summer is delightful and no more buggy than any other season. I like that it's just "civic holiday" like those British "bank holidays"? So weird. Hope you have a good day at work.

sleepingbooty argh, I would go crazy waiting for adhesive so long! You poor thing. Crossing my fingers that it arrives very soon and that you ordered a LOT!

Linda I guess you are sort of back to being like your tag - homeschoolmum... That must be a big adjustment, but after reading about how things are in your area (in the news and on one of the NSBR threads) it sounds like you're all better off at home. I love that you already know what kind of photos you plan to take and scrap for back to school.

CoffeeCrafter I remember you from before. I love your cards. I am a card maker too, but I'm in a summer slump. Like everyone else on the planet this year has not panned out as expected. I was supposed to go home to NZ to visit my parents in mid-March, missed the borders closing by a couple of days, thank goodness, or I would've been stuck there for weeks (and would've probably committed some violent crimes against my loved ones). So I channeled some spring energy into crafting lots of cards to sell and to donate, and then into documenting this stupid pandemic.

Now that things are a little looser most of my time is going to selling the collected collections of FIL on Fbk Marketplace - a multi-year Swedish Death Cleaning project. We're working on boxes, baskets, and bowls, and the rest of the maritime collection right now. Still selling the last of the brass and copper and lanterns too. ugh.

Summer is my favorite, although all the seasons have a lot of goodness. But I love the sunshine and love to be warm, even if I bitch about not having AC and my house getting above 82F, at which point I melt onto the floor and moan... I have more garden stuff to do in the summer so that does cut into crafty time, but I have more energy and light in the summer so I guess it balances out.

Hoping to keep up with the virus diaries better and get back to cards this month.

Oh yes, I forgot to say CoffeeCrafter I have a spouse but no offspring, no pets any more either. I don't do traditional scrap pages but I do photobooks for distant family, and some smaller projects. But I'm also super self absorbed, wordy, and a shutterbug so... ;P

Thanks! None of the fires are in my immediate area, thankfully. My heart definitely goes out to all those affected by them though. 

I fear a layout of my everyday would be quite boring -- get up, work, craft, play on the internet, go to bed, repeat. 

You’ll be pleased to know that I can now count the time I spend taking and editing photos for the Great Swedish Death Cleaning Project as organizing/other craft points (according to our fearless leader, grammadee). I did a photo shoot of vintage enamelware bowls today.

Same here!! NOBODY would be interested in the in the minutia of my day to day life...starting with me. ha! 

Hi! So I’m the outsider as I’m not in summer at all! I’m in Melbourne, Australia (as some of you know) which is in the depths of winter. Melbourne itself doesn’t get cold enough for snow, but we do get one or two days in the mountains nearby. Today was one of those days and I’d usually be up there squealing with excitement like a child except Melbourne has just been put into stage four lockdown to try and squash coronavirus. We are only allowed to leave our homes for essential stuff, business have been closed including physical retail that isn’t essential, businesses where people can’t work from home, and a lot of manufacturers have to run at reduced capacity to limit the amount of people. We’re also under an 8pm-5am curfew, and my 9 and 4.5 year old are remote learning... it was all announced over the past few days so I’m a bit weary.

However I now have plenty of time to get my scrapbook projects up to date! I’ve been working on my Week in the Life tonight, then my December daily needs completing, and then I need to figure out what to do with March - now project life.. originally I was going to do a separate album for lockdown but we’ve been under restrictions since March. The lifted briefly in June but then tightened again, so I think it’ll just all be in the one album.

Anyway I’m rambling! Nice to meet those of you I haven’t met before 😊

Ren - Good luck with the stage 4 lock down. It sounds like you have quite a few projects lined for now, I can't wait to see them.


A tropical storm came through this area today. I was scheduled to work in the office but I asked to WFH because I didn't want to get stuck by work if/when the trains went out of service. That happened around 3pm and are still not running. That's the big news. The old news is that work is super busy.

I hope everyone has a great day/evening!

We have a buyer for FIL's vintage ship's wheel and the *12 foot long* wooden lifeboat oar with decorative knot-work on it! My very large mantel/fireplace wall is 12 feet long, the entire width of our living room, but having the oar here reminds me how small this house is, at least in comparison to the in-law's place. I'm excited to get it out the door soon.

August by jo.blackford, on Flickr

That's a peek at my makeshift photo studio (ironing board with fancy lights) that I use for my cards as well. The paper backdrop rolls up out of the way so I can actually see my bookshelves.

I sold a basket, an enamelware pan that might've been used for sterilizing hospital tools, a brass pot for cooking over a fire, and a barometer these past couple of days. Between that and walking 6+ miles today I'm ready for my nap, but I was inspired by some stories on IG this morning that I want to record, and I have old maritime tchotchkes to photograph, so I better get back to work.

One of these days I might even color some artwork for some cards!

kitbop - I'm the same way with keeping up here. I am going to try to pop in every night real quick.  It's much easier to read a handful of posts than a handful of pages.  Yes...it's a mess around here.  A lot of people lost power and tons of down trees so lots of clean up.  We were lucky and didn't lose power or anything severe. I'm glad your city was spared tornadoes.

joblackford - way to go getting that oar out of your house and all that other stuff. I think I would need to sit still for a long while after walking 6 miles. ha!

@theredren - Stage 4 is super strict! I hope it helps get your numbers back down.  


Tonight was the season premier of Big Brother - it's my favorite summer guilty pleasure tv show.  I didn't think it wold be on this year because of Covid but they put a ton of health and safety measures in place, had the potential house guests & crew members quarantine for 2 weeks and moved them in tonight.  

Have a great night/day!