Magpie Moments, Die Cuts, and a Birthday Gift to You

Last week I blogged about making die cut letters for my friend Monica Ferris. And when Camille asked for more information, I said I’d show you’all.

So here I am with my tools and a technique. And since it was Father’s Day, I had the opportunity to use my die cut lettering for a special project: A Magpie Album.

Magpie is an English scrapbooking term. It takes its name after magpies, birds who pick up this and that and take the odd pieces of garbage home to add to their “stash.” Another way to define this would be “found” pieces, which I’m sure our Camille can address since her “pizza” table is a great example. I think I first discovered the joys of found items when I started with my dollhouse. Now I look at incorporating magpie pieces into my scrapbooking as a super-duper creativity booster. More importantly, those weird pieces of flotsam and jetsam (goods of potential value that have been thrown into the ocean) are the stuff daily life is made of.

A few other reasons this particular album appealed to me—1.) I’ve been thinking more and more about trash and how much we, as a nation, create of it 2.) I love the idea of capturing a moment in time 3.) when we moved to the UK, I realized how where we shop defines our lifestyle and changes over time and 4.) I was prepping an empty instant mashed potato box for recycling and fell in love with the weight of the cardstock. No joke! (Okay, now you are thinking, “This is one seriously WEIRD chick.” Guilty!)

So I cut out the front and back of the mashed potato box. I covered it with a paper bag from a recent run to St. Louis Bread Co. (Panera Bread, for the rest of you, but they started HERE in St. Louis). Then I added to the inside cover pieces of the daily newspaper for June 17, 2007, which was Father’s Day. I tore up my husband’s Father’s Day cards and basically glued down anything that wandered across my path.

I used my QuicKutz to “punch out” the letters of the word “Father.” I have three alphabet sets. Each letter is impressed onto a silver metal “die” which you can see propped up against the “pliers” that provides the “oomph” to punch out the lettering. I also used another alphabet to punch out “DAD” and those letters went on the tabs to the right of the album. With a hole punch, I put holes in envelopes from the cards. I added three pages of cardstock and punched them. Then I struck the whole thingie together on some twine.

What do you think? I still have the inside pages to decorate. But, I’m psyched!

Speaking of psyched—I turn 54 this Thursday. I’m grateful to be here. Life’s been a blast! And much of that joy I owe to people like you, people who have joined me on this super journey. So…I’m offering EACH of YOU a birthday gift—a thank you note and a handpunched set of your three initials. 1.) Send me your name and postal address at savetales@aol.com. 2.) Put Birthday in the subject line. 3.) Tell me what three letters you want. 4.) The offer’s good until June 28.