February 3, 2017 by Candy Spiegel

Workin’ on the Railroad

pewamo

I have a strange fascination with trains. I love the sound of them, the way the ground shakes as they go by, and even the clicking of the flashing red lights on the crossing signal. I’m probably one of few people who enjoys being stopped for a train. And, it doesn’t matter the size. I love miniature trains. hobby trains and the ones designed for children at the mall. Heck, even a rubber stamp of a train excites me!

I knew I found the perfect man to marry when, for our second date, he took me to a beautiful depot in a neighboring town I hadn’t known existed. Somehow he knew I loved history and trains and planned accordingly! Nearly 13 years later, he continues to humor me by stopping at every depot and/or train we come near.

This trip, obviously a few years ago by my weight, was to purchase a chicken trailer he found on Craigslist. We were in the middle of nowhere and the only town anywhere around was the tiny town of Pewamo. You can see the entire town in the picture above. About the only thing it had was the head of a rails-to-trails office, bathroom and parking lot dedicated to the town’s train history. The building was a replica of the depot that once stood there; you could climb on old railroad equipment; and turn the signal on. Of course, Matt stopped and I was in train heaven!

I carried the photos around for a long time because I wanted just the right thing for the page.

I found it in a die from Mosaic Moments. The “X” from the X & O Set is the perfect touch. It looks like the railroad crossing sign.

I made a video, here, so you can see how I used it.

October 5, 2011 by Candy Spiegel

On the move

I am in the middle of moving from one house to another.

Moving is nothing new to me … I’ve moved 14 times in my lifetime — including 2 cross-country moves … but that doesn’t mean I like it.

This time is more difficult than most because we are drastically downsizing — our new house is less than half the size of our current one. On top of that, we seem to have accumulated much more during the eight years we have lived in this house than I have at any other time in my life. Needless to say, my house is currently filled with boxes for the new house, boxes for a storage shed, boxes for eBay, boxes for charity, boxes for other people and boxes that we don’t know what to do with.

My scrapbook room is partially packed — I have yet to find the right boxes for packing my collection of 12×12 paper, since I don’t want to break anyone’s back when they attempt to move it — but most of the rest has been placed neatly in boxes and is unusable for the next couple of weeks. To prevent myself from going through a crafter’s withdraw, I kept my Copic markers, my basic tool kit, some of my rubber stamps and few sheets of paper accessible. I figure at the least, I should be able to make a card without ribbon, charms, buttons or embossing powder, but at least I’ll be able to color until I get all unpacked and settled in at the new house.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a layout I did about another kind of moving — taking a train ride.

I wanted this page to show the train ride as much as possible, so I played with stripes, checks and other repeating patterns that remind me of train tracks.

The papers are from Webster’s Pages. They are actually part of the Spring Market collection, but I just used portions of the papers that didn’t have jars of peaches and fruit on them. I think they worked well.

The patterned cardstock is from Bo Bunny, the sanded cardstock is from Coredinations and the rest of the cardstock is from American Crafts.

For the title, I used some of the light patterned paper from Webster’s Pages and stamped on it with Hero Arts stamps (the words) and a Studio 490 stamp (the button holes). Then, I did one of my favorite techniques: I stamped Maya Road chipboard letters with a Studio 490 background stamp, then colored it with Distress Ink and then added shine with Diamond Glaze. I used the same technique on the banner (stamp from Technique Tuesday).

The tag was made with another Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 stamp. I stamped on patterned paper, crumbled it a bit and used Distress Ink to help age it. Never be afraid to stamp on softly patterned paper. It gives you a bit more dimension than plain cardstock. I used the same technique on the facing page.

And then I added a few brads and a photo corner (Tim Holtz) to finish it off. Since trains are so masculine and industrial, I thought a bit of metal was crucial to this page.