books.

are you a big reader?

i'm not.

but i love pictures.  love.  don't know about you but mine are all jumbled around on our external hard drive, my computer, my phone, my camera, through instagram, costco, picasa, kodak gallery, snapfish.  i've been meaning to put together photo albums for years now because what's the point of having digital copies all over the place without easy access to my favorite snapped moments.  but i've never been inspired by any of the products out there.

then i stumbled upon artifact uprising via oh joy and i'm obsessed.  it's a major project to build these books because i'm going to want to treat each picture and then work the layout and etc.  but for a lovely sunday, it might be a project worth endeavoring.

and 10% off with offer code INKEDFINGERS through tomorrow.

photos via artifact uprising blog.

coupons.

via spotted sparrow.

do you coupon?  i don't.  i should though.

anyways.  hubs asked what i wanted for christmas this year and i started rattling off a  lo0o0o0o0ong list of to-dos, rainchecked for post baby.

for example.

sushi.  like i want sushi.  so bad.
wine tasting (anywhere, i don't care).  i want to drink.
start running together.  i want to sweat.
and so on and so forth.

blah blah - all things i want to do right now but can't.  so given what i want, he said he'd give me a coupon book of 10 things i could redeem whenever however.  and we would agree on the 10 things together.  normally i'd think something like this was cheesy.  but crave something and then hold back for 9 months. and then tell me how you feel.

trust.

squares.

i have all these random squares leftover from when i created this board [pre-preggo project.  and yes, everything in my life is now categorized as pre-preggo, whilst-preggo, and eventually post-preggo.  just the way it is.]  i exacto-knifed 48 squares from a thickish matte board to create the frame for each 3x3 picture.  it was hell.

at the end of it all, i was left with 48 square cutouts [and without feeling in my fingies] and didn't want to just throw away my blood, sweat and tears.  so i've kept them for all these months waiting for the perfect project.

lo and behold, i found the answer when i googled something like 'paint project diy squares'.

this was done with paint swatches.  i plan to watercolor each of my squares to get a similar effect.

should kill about 2 hours.  scoresies.

via a beautiful mess.