Maya Road and Me

Pens

Growing up, I was never much for dolls and the such. I always carried around with me a purse and I always had to have pens and a pad of paper at all times. To me, that was the ultimate security blanket. What if I had something profound to sketch or write? My pad of paper and pens would not fail me. If I needed something, I could draw it.

My love of pens and pads of papers has not ceased. I still carry around a little pen pouch of pens and some pads of papers - sometimes it is for me and other times it can entertain my kids while we are out waiting for our food. 

My sister and I loved going to Asia growing up because we could get access to pens years before we found them in the states. 

A couple of years ago, I discovered the site - Jet Pens - and the heavens opened and I could get access to pens I could not find here in the US. Gel pens, writing pens and more. Ahh it was love.

Jet Pens asked me to do a feature using some of my favorite pens from their site and some of our Maya Road products. How could I say no?

So I created this:

This is one of our new Linen Art Journaling books that I decorated with some simple patterned papers and pens from Jet Pens. I even discovered some new techniques along the way.

If you want to read the full story about Maya Road (and see more of the album) - check out their blog post from this week!

 

20 minutes

What can you do in twenty minutes? A lot of times I break my work / play up into 20 minute increments. Like over the Labor Day Holiday, I took my son for a 1.25 mile run. Noah has run a mini race with me before but that was close to two years ago. He didn't, at the time, have a concept of how far 1 mile was and after the first big hill, he requested I get the jogging stroller to take him to the end.

Alas, that didn't happen and he got through it but not without some whining and asking when it would be over.

Yesterday was different. Noah asked to run. He has been building up his cardio with the karate lessons he has taken over the last 9 months. I told him I expected him to relax, try hard and finish. We would take some water breaks, walk breaks but we would get through it. And Noah did it in about 20 minutes.

He said he had fun and asked to run again. I did wear him out though:

We talked about plans for a 5k and I think if I can work with him, we might try one in a couple of months. I am so happy Noah has the passion for running that I do.

Last week, I decided I needed a short 20 minute amount of time for just creating. Not working and worrying about spreadsheets, kits, shipments, containers and the such. So I worked on this:

This is a tank top I had from when I was preggo with Olivia. I decided to spruce it up using our die cut kraft doilies, some bleach like this. It is based on a tutorial from Lil Blue Boo. Lay the die cut kraft doilies out in a plastic tray on a towel. Spritz with the bleach. After a while your shirt will lighten like this:

 

Don't get overly excited and over spray. You can reuse your kraft doilies for other spots on the shirt:

And then I hung the shirt to dry and it looked like this:

I allowed it to dry and then I put in in the wash to get the bleach off and voila a new shirt to layer under for Fall!

Be sure to do this like I did - with safety googles, ventilation (or outdoors), rubber gloves - bleach is not something to mess around with unless you follow all the saftey rules.

A simple 20 minute project to get the creative juices flowing. And it breaks up the work of the day with something I am proud to reuse and wear again!