Just Dandy Stencil

Club Scrap's own Tricia Morris has a great new video using Faber-Castell Gelatos and the new Just Dandy stencil to whip up some quick and easy (and beautiufl!) cards! Check it out:

WordPress

As you may know, in addition to this blog, I've got 2 other websites - randomdoorways.com and artisangreetings.com. Up until quite recently, I created and managed those sites using iWeb for the Mac. Well, Apple recently announced that when they release iCloud in the fall, they would no longer support the web-hosting aspect of iWeb.

While I could easily continue to use iWeb and just have the site hosted by another company, it seemed to me that Apple was also saying that they weren't going to put a whole lot of effort into iWeb anymore, either (not that they'd done much with it in the past couple of years anyway!). So, I thought about it for a bit and decided to move both of those sites to WordPress. WordPress was origintally just a blog platform, but it's functionality has grown over the years and many companies run their entire website using WordPress. So, I made the move and as of tonight, both of my other sites are now running on WordPress.

Well, sort of. you see, I now have to re-build the entire sites! Yeah, it will take me a bit of time, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. Not quite as easy to use as iWeb, but still doable. And I'll be able to log-in from any computer and add content or fix stuff, so that's a huge plus over iWeb.

And this blog that you're reading now will officially be my art blog. I'll link to it from my WordPress site and I'll keep my photo galleries of travel photos and art pics on WordPress. Long term, I think it will be a great solution, but it will take me a while to rebuild as much data as I can on the new sites.

That's it, just wanted to let you know what I've been up to lately!

Club Scrap Essentials: Plaid Stamping

Here's a very cool new video by Club Scrap® and the extremely talented Tricia Morris using one of the wood mounted stamps from Mirror, Mirror to easily create a plaid design.

Mixon Match Guest Designer, Julie Heyer!

My dear friend, Julie Heyer, is a Guest designer at Mixon Match - an online store for all your glitter and glimmer needs run by my friend Cheryl Mixon.

Julie created a beautiful art canvas - you have to go and take a look at it! CLICK HERE to go to the Mixon Match website!

Here's a sneak peek of the canvas...

...wait until you see the whole thing - it's gorgeous!!

Reading - Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow

I've been an avid reader since I was a kid. It's funny, because other than a newspaper or the occasional magazine, I don't remember menfolks reading all that much when I was a kid, although my Mom reads regularly now. But for whatever reason, I started reading early and I haven't stopped yet.

Hard covers or paperbacks, new, used, borrowed, or bought with my allowance money, I just really enjoyed all the journeys that I took through all those wonderful books. These days I prefer sci-fi/fantasy, murder mysteries, detective fiction, and thrillers, but I enjoy an adventure story (especially the true ones like Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki) now and again, too.

These days, most of my reading is done via ebook. I started reading ebooks long before they were the "in thing" that they are now. My very first mobile device was a Phillips Velo1 in 1998; it ran on WindowsCE (usually abbreviated WinCE, and it was quite a painful operating system to use!). There weren't many 'Apps' for it, but I did manage to find a book reader and a site that offered some free ebooks in plain text format. Obscure titles, all in the public domain, but I still managed to get some reading pleasure from them.

Within a year or so, I had upgraded to a Palm Pilot clone (called the Handspring Visor), and I continued to read electronically (along with managing my calendar and contact lists and such). Even with that tiny screen, it was so much better than lugging around a paperback or hard cover - especially when traveling (when I usually lugged around 4 or 5 books in my luggage). When I bought my first iPod Touch in 2008, the first App I downloaded was an ebook reader.




I still read occasionally read on my iPhone, although the small screen means you're turning pages every few seconds, but my ereader of choice these days is my iPad 2. and if you think that the iPad is a bit of 'overkill' just to read a book now and then, have no fears, there are lots of choices out there. The most popular is probably the Kindle by Amazon, followed by Barnes & Nobel's Nook and the the Kobo Reader (Kobo recently cut a deal with Borders, so expect to see more of them moving forward). And if you are an Apple fan, you'll be happy to know that all of those ebook readers (and many others, including Apple's own iBooks) are available as free apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Ebook readers make it so easy to carry lots of books with you and read whenever you want. I know that I'm reading more than ever and most of my friend have some type of ebook reader. If you enjoy reading and haven't tried using an ereader yet, do yourself a favor and give it a shot - I think you'll be surprised how much you'll like it.

And you're not limited to books, either. The Kindle offers newspaper and magazine subscriptions, and an App called Zinio on my iPad delivers my esubscription copies of MacWorld, Readers Digest, and National Geographic to my device every month!

So what does the future hold regarding your favorite books and magazines? I'm really not sure, but I know that I'll always be an avid reader, thankfully.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I Love Paper and Digital Scrapbooking

I love paper. There, I said it. I love everything about paper - and I especially love Club Scrap® Paper. It looks awesome, and feels wonderful and I can make so many wonderful things with it.

But as much as I love paper, I also love Digital Scrapbooking. It's a different kind of creativity and just as there are things that I can do with paper that I can do with 'digi,' there are some things that I can only do with my digital tools. So, I do both - I work with paper when that muse inspires me, and I also work with my supply of awesome Club Scrap Digital™ kits and Photoshop on my Mac. It's the best of both worlds and I'm so glad I can do both.

Here are a few of my favorite digital layouts:

Mykonos, Greece (CSD™ Cyprus Digital Kit)

Venice Window (CSD™Solstice Kit)

Block Island, RI (CSD™ Castaway Kiy)

Scenes of Mykonos (CSD™ Simply Avant Kit)

As a matter of full disclosure, I'm a member of the Club Scrap® Digital Artists Team.

Why Random Doorways?

This door is in the Town of Oia on the Island of Santorini, Greece.

I think doors are fascinating. There are so many beautiful ones out there in the world, and I frequently take photos of them. You can see some of the photos I've taken at my website HERE. Doors also conjure in my mind the different paths or 'doorways' that we walk through during our life.

When I finally decided to create a site, I started playing with different names and ‘random doorways’ came to mind (and a quick search found that the URL was still available!). Since that's my main site name, it seemed appropriate to bring that name to my blog, too.

Countdown to Retreat!

Each year, Club Scrap holds a couple of craft retreats - one in August and one in October. It's a long weekend of crafting, pampering, chatting (lots of chatting!) with friends, lots of fun, loads of laughs! I'm going in October this year (just like I did last year) and to keep track of how long it is before I go to Wisconsin, I've added a Countdown Clock on the right side of the screen.

I can't wait to go back to that beautiful place!

Another Club Scrap Project

Last month I made the April Club Stamp Project - the first time I've actually made a project the same month it came out! I was just so excited to get this terrific project - an organizer for ink pads, reinkers and foam applicators. I haven't finished decorating the front of it yet, but I hope to do that very soon (life just always seems to get in the way of the fun stuff!).

I will definitely be making more of these (since I've got more than 12 ink pads) to help me get more organized.

Desk Calendar

This is a photo of a desk calendar that I made for my desk at work. It's from the Club Stamp December 2010 kit, Vogue.




I really like how it came out and it was quite easy to make. Thanks to Kay Williamson from Club Scrap for designing such a great and useful project.


- Posted by Ron using BlogPress from my iPad

Random Doorways is now on Blogger!

After much thought, I've decided to move my blog to Blogger. My main website, Random Doorways, was created using iWeb, and although it's very easy to create And publish a site with iWeb, it means that I can only blog from the computer that houses my site files. That's rather inconvenient, so I made the decision to move my blog to another platform, so that I can blog from just about anywhere (I'm using BlogPress to write this entry - it runs on both my iPhone and my iPad).

Hopefully I'll blog a bit more regularly now that I have other options.


- Posted by Ron using BlogPress from my iPad