Last post was Wednesday… no - can’t be that long ago… Feels like it was just yesterday!

Anyways, my absentism is due to three things:

1. Hockey on Friday night - Canucks beat Washington in a 3-2 OT Shootout Victory
2. Weather been all over the map and I’ve been headachy and feelin’ crappy
3. Circle Craft Circle Craft Circle Craft

Many things still to be packed, but a good dent in it now. I have about 300 pieces of rubber to package and about 24 more Kits to assemble. WHEW! Time is marching on… and so am I.

Peace out!

Here’s a quick glimpse into Cricle Craft prep…
PILES and PILES o’ stinky, natural red rubbah. [this represents roughly 1/3 of newly pressed rubber for the Circle Craft show] So good.
Other goodies include stacks of Coin Albums and Kits.

We’re happy to announce that digiWERX digital product line now include digiWERX Stationary!

The first set of Stationary we’re making available to customers is designed for the up coming Festive Holiday season. The Collection, called Holiday Cards and Tags, has been created with elements from our new Cool Winter digiWERX papers, cool icy looking snowflake embellishments, icy frame beads and blue tinged crystal sentiments. Imprintable components in this festive stationary set include:

• 1 - 4×4 Holiday Card
• 2 - 4×4 Holiday Photo Cards
• 1 - 4×8 Holiday Card
• 3 - Rounded Square Holiday Gift Tags
• 1 - Round Holiday Gift Tag

The files are high resolution PNGs and are ready for purchase, downloading and high resolution printing today.

I love new tech toys! This weekend two new toys enter my world, and so far - I’m loving both…

The first new tech toy in my life is the Alpine CDA-9856… a new generation of car audio that syncs, are you ready, right to your iPod! Here are some of its highlights and why I had to have it:

• It controls your iPod right in the car deck, not the iPod like other stereos do - so no fumbling around in the dark for that next song on your playlist!
• It uses Playlists and reads the data right from your iPod. Imagine having coolio Road Trip, Rush Hour and Chill Out Playlists right at your fingertips. So cool!
• It also searches and sorts your iPod music by Album name, artist and song title… so you can choose to listen by song, album or artist - the same way you do with your trusty iPod.
• The thing sounds amazing! We replaced a stock deck in our ‘98 Ford Explorer XLT and the stereo/speaker system in the truck has never sounded better.
• All I need now is an excuse to drive to Whistler and my tunes are ready to rock and roll!

The other tech toy I got today was the new Casio EXILIM Z1000 10.1 MP digital camera.

I’ve been wanting a tiny, chuck-in-my-bag kind of digital camera for a while now and recently the new high megapixel cameras are getting smaller and smaller. So… I checked them out locally at London Drugs and the Casio was the smallest camera with the biggest megapixels and of course that’s the one I wanted. However, here in Vancouver the camera was $479 CAD PLUS taxes [add about 13%] - ouch!
I ended up shopping on eBay for the camera and got a killer deal on a brand new, just out of the box Casio EXILIM for $309 USD [about $350 CAD], no taxes other than GST at the border when importing it from Point Roberts,WA and it arrived today. So cool! Here are some of the high points:

• 10.1 MP
• measures 3.62” (W) x 2.30” (H) x 0.88” (D) - now that is SMALL!
• huge LCD screen viewfinder on the back is 2.8" wide and 2" high - now that is HUGE for an LCD screen on such a small camera
• lots of pre-set point and shoot features
• will need to experiment more, but having fun with it none the less!

All in all a fun tech toy weekend… Hmmm… where did that owner’s manual go?

Whew… Teaching a 6 hour class can take the juice right outta you - in a good way!

Today I taught my now famous ‘Art of Transference’ class in Vancouver at Ruby Dog’s Arthouse… It’s a class where we cover a bunch of different tranferring mediums and receiving surfaces and is basically a technique class. I had 8 great women in attendance and a good [fast paced] time was had by all - I hope.

After the class, Leanne [owner of Ruby Dog] and I were chatting and she posed a question to me…

Would I be interested in sub-letting some space in her store and running ‘brick and mortar’ retail sales from her location on Main Street in Vancouver?

I’m interested, very interested in fact… but want some input from my peeps [both near and far] about this possiblity and if that is something YOU would be interested in having Lazar StudioWERX provide.

Your feedback will help me make some decisions and to make it easy on you, I have built an online survey for any interested parties to complete. Just click on the adjacent link and gimme your feedback!

The first 20 people who complete the survey will get a $15CAD discount coupon emailed to them for use in our online store.

Thanks everyone… I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve got to say.

Had a productive night this evening…

New friend and fellow arty-person Gen was over tonight, helping me sift through the boxes of inventory I am assembling for Circle Craft. We packed 24 Kits [2 types] with all their respective bits and pieces and have concluded that these Kits are pretty darn cool!

Each Kit contains

• a collection of 12×12 paperWERX papers
• textured cardstock
• 15 paperWERX chipboard die-cut tags
• custom hand made die-cut embellishments
• self-adhesive chipboard alphabets
• ribbon and/or charms
• fun labels and journaling spots
• one 1/2 sheet of 5×8 unmounted rubberstamps [all NEW Lazar StudioWERX designs!!]

Total retail value if all pieces in these Kits were purchased individually would run between $35-40. We’re going to be selling the Kits at Circle Craft for between $25-30 depending on what’s inside the ‘magical clear bag of paper goodness’. Cool huh?  For an additional $4.95 you’ll be able to purchase a chipboard binder album [album sold alone without the Kit will be priced at $6.95]

Some Kit’s are ‘loosely’ themed and all of them are color coordinated [to take the guess work out of the selection process]. Themes include: Boys, Girls, Wedding/Romance and Family.

Anyways… I’m pooped and will be working most of the weekend. Will catch up again with you tomorrow!

Just a quick announcement that our NEW digiWERX digital papers, the Cool Winter Collection for the Holiday Season 2006 are now available.

Patterns in this new 6 - 12×12 Collection include a variety of handcarved snowflake shapes, distressed edges and snowflake brush patterns. The collection comes in a light blue, light pink and white color palette.

Use this ‘cool’ collection for winter scrapbook layouts, digital greeting cards, handmade cards and giftwrap, Seasonal and Holiday layouts and cards.

Enjoy!

Here you go… Sneak Peek No. 2!

Polaroid Frames
This sheet is based
on polaroid image transfer borders that are created during the image transfer process and chemical reactions that occur between the polaroid emulsion and paper.

Included in this 8×10 sheet of high quality, natural red rubber are 4 LARGE frames and a solid background that I personally love and have been
anxiously waiting to debut.

A new friend and local Vancouver mixed media artist is ga-ga over these stamps and our new Evidence Stamp sets… the images
below are some examples of the altered scrapbook layouts she’s created
using this cool new sheet. Gen, YOU ROCK!

For more of her great work… visit her blog and the For the Love of Effers Dares blog. Cool stuff girlfriend =)

And some of MY samples:
 

Note use of Evidence Stamps on the adjacent pages… cool huh?

This very cool, set of polaroid frame unmounted stamps will be
available in as an individual
Design Sheet at Circle Craft.  We have lots of this sheet in
stock… and if it doesn’t sell out at Circle Craft, will be available in our online store after November 15.

This sheet will be debuting at Circle Craft 2006 from November 8-12 at Canada
Place Convention Center! Be sure to say hi and visit us at booth number 315…

In the process of packaging stuff for Circle Craft and getting Christmas product ready for sale [can you believe it’s almost 2 months away!!] a co-worker asked me to dig out my old issues of Somerset Studio magazine… specifically the November/December Holiday issues. So I rooted through my PILES of magazines and realized that I haven’t looked at some of these for years, so… I’m auctioning them off on eBay.

If you’re interested… here are the links to the auctions:

• A variety of 12 magazines all paper arts related [non-Somerset]
• 24 Somerset Studio magazine issues dating from 2000
• 4 Belle Armoire issues
• 10 Stampington Inspirations and Stampers Sampler issues
• 10 ARTitude Zine original zine issues
• 16 Expression Art magazine issues

I’ve spent literally $1000s on magazines over the years, and I’m selling these dirt cheap… the Somersets alone are a Buy It Now price of about $1.50 per issue! That’s pretty great savings for some serious inspiration in the form of a gorgeous magazine.

Have a peek… if you’re local, I’d be happy to have you either pick-up the magazine or if I’m in the area, I can drop off.

OK… as promised - well a day later than I promised… the catch up.

Thursday: Poolie Night was fun, competitive and a little silly, but overall I had a good time. Sucks to know that 3 of my players are currently on the ‘injured’ list and are not scoring points for my Pool Team - oh well, it’s the life of the poolie LOL!

Friday: Terry and I went to the Vancouver Canucks Home Opener.
I had been looking forward to the game for a couple of weeks… it’s the first ‘official’ home game of the season and they always make a big deal about it. This game was no different in the splash… and actually was pretty amazing [if you factor out the fact that we lost the game :P]. Here are the highpoints:

• NEW LCD screens ring the arena and display all kinds of cool images from team player names, sponsors and cool effects. It is a little creepy though when they show the EYES of the player across 1/3 of the LCD screen and it feels like they’re looking right at you! Everytime a Canuck player scores, the bring up the eyes of the player on the LCD and their name to the right of the eyes. Well… where we sit, the eyes are directly across from our seats and it’s like a mythical figure is staring, right at us, from across the arena. Creepy and cool at the same time!
• They wore their Vintage uniforms. Love those uniforms, but they never seem to perform well in them. Hmmm…
• the 50/50 was HUGE. I mean monumentally HUGE, unlike any 50/50 in the history of the Canucks. 
  The 50/50 at each game is on average about $20,000+. On opening night, they decided to roll in the unclaimed winnings from last season, all $49,000 of it. [Who would leave the game without checking their tickets is beyond me - either someone was really mad at the outcome of the game, or someonewas  really drunk!] SO… everyone bought tickets for the 50/50 at the game, even we had co-workers giving us money to buy tickets and ended up buying $65 in tickets ourselves.
  All this ticket buying meant only one thing… HUGE jackpot, but no one could have guessed how high it would go. Sellers were estimating about $120,000 but it went above that - the final total announced with 4 minutes left in the game was $155,000+ !!! HOLY CRAP! That could pay of a hefty chunk of someones mortgage, buy a couple of cars, make life a little easier. It sounds like an older couple won the jackpot… good for them! They seemed like nice people and I’m glad some loser drunk guy didn’t get the money LOL…
• Saw some local and not so local celebrities at the game.
  • Local celebrity is a hockey/sports legend Jim Robson.
    Commentator and sports dude extraordinare, Jim retired a few years ago and now attends games regularly as a spectator. Nice to see he’s still involved even if he’s not in the thick of things.
  • Not so Local celebrity was Ioan Gruffudd [pronounced YO-an GRIFFith… he’s Welsh]
    He is the guy who plays Mr. Fantastic in the Fantastic Four movie; they are filming the sequel to FF right now in Vancouver and will be here for another month or so… We saw him in the concourse as we were leaving the game at GM Place; he must have been sitting 3 sections from us. We’ll have to watch for him again at the next game we attend on Oct. 27.
    Can I just say one thing about him… HE is HOT! In the FF movies he’s portrayed as slightly older mid-40’s and slightly greying at the temples. Well, in real-life he’s 33 [birthday day after me on October 6, 1973 I found out] and has no grey! This guy is so good looking… wow. PLUS he’s Welsh, so he has a lovely accent too… nice!
• We went to the Casino afterwards and payed for a few hours. Left with ALL the money we came in with - COOL! That’s a major accomplishment for us in a casino!

Yesterday was supposed to go shopping with the Mom… didn’t happen. Woke up at 5am with a monumental migraine that ended up lasting most of the day. Serious nausea and pain involved… so not much accomplished yesterday at all other than sleeping, taking Advil and watching bad movies on tv.

Today… I get to stand out in the rain and take photos of a new park opening. JOY! I have to figure out how to protect the camera from the weather while being hoisted 50ft into the air [in a cherry picker bucket truck] to take the shots the managers envision me getting… I really don’t get paid enough for some of this stuff LOL! Will post pics later tomorrow about the photo shoot…

Well I’m off to gird my loins and climb in the bucket truck [I confess I am a little scared!] after I don my westcoast raingear… Wish me luck!