Suede?

Or not? It's week 26 at Linda's and the challenge, Crumpled Kraft Suede, can be found on page 60 of Compendium of Curiosities II by Tim Holtz. This week, The Funkie Junkie is giving one lucky player a $25 gift certificate.

This is actually one of the tags I did at the Dyan Reaveley classes earlier this month at Whim So Doodle. So since I started it at a Dyan class, I decided to use some of her things AND some Tim things on it as well.

This will be going to my Favorite Youngest Nephew to use as a bookmark. And there will also be one for his younger sister, my Favorite Only Niece!

And a job update for those that are interested!

This past week was a bit more book lernin' along with lots and lots and lots of cleaning. Followed by more cleaning! We have log sheets that any and every time we clean something, it has to be logged. There are 18 of us in Produce. We had to wash and sanitize all of our knives, cutting boards, baskets for the organic produce to go in on the sales floor, everything. Do you think any of the 18 of us remembered to log it? Nope! Sure didn't. So we had to re-wash and re-sanitize Every.Thing in the dept. Bet none of us will forget to log anything again! And now I have a 4 day weekend before hitting the ground running on Wed to get prepped and ready for the big Grand Opening on Thursday. Can't wait!

Doubles

If you've come here (or if I've come to you via you Following me!) for art, today you will be disappointed. I have an egg picture and that's it! Had a couple of the brown egg layers lay double yolk eggs and one of the chocolate egg layers is finally laying! So I have that one pic to share with you today.

I've had quite a few emails asking me how my NEW JOB training is going. And I'm taking the lazy man's way out and blog posting about it! Then instead of typing the same thing over and over, I type it once and send everyone who's emailed me the link!

I did not realize how much about produce I did not know! And it's not so much about the produce itself that I didn't know but more about safe handling procedures. Whole Foods Market (henceforth to be known as WFM) is the world's largest seller of organic and all natural products. Not everything in WFM is organic. There are many conventional items. As more farmers switch to organic farming (defined as produce that has been grown without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or chemical or synthetic fertilizers) and they are approved by WFM's buyers, the amount of organic produce will increase. WFM tries to buy local when and where it can. And Florida is an entity unto itself in the WFM world! We are our own region all by itself. So "local" in FL can mean strawberries in the spring from Plant City or tomatoes in the fall from Immokolee which is down by the Everglades.

The first two days was learning all about the WFM way of doing business. We are Team Members, not employees. We don't use last names. From our Store Team Leader to the dishwashers and maintenence people, first names only. Even the CEO/founder is John. We were given several exercises where we had to problem solve, first verbally then non-verbally. And with each excercise, we changed Teams so we could learn to work together. We all did our safe food handling certification. We each have a card and we have to have it accessable in the store if we are on duty should the Health Inspector ask for it. So if it is not on my person, it has to be in my purse in my locker and not in my car in the parking lot.

We were given a tour of the store with each dept having something that they make (or in Produce's case, an organic banana!) We were each given a T-Shirt to wear on Grand Opening day and on any other day that we want. So if it's Tuesday, I can wear my shirt. I don't just wear it once and stick it in the bottom drawer never to be seen again. We were each given a reuseable WFM shopping bag made completely of recycled water bottles. And in that bag, we got a coffee mug, a water bottle, 365 Brand (WFM's store brand) breakfast bars, Organic Salt & Pepper potato chips, trail mix, Organic bar soap, a WFM "globe" skooshie ball, fruit leather, milk and dark organic chocolate bars, 2 different beef, pork or chicken marinades, gum, recipe cards. There's more, but I don't remember it all! The bag was over half full by the time our tour was over! Then they turned us loose on 3 different food trucks in the parking lot for our dinner. Oh, and one dessert truck with CUPCAKES!!! Even gluten-free cupcakes. There were gluten-free and vegan dinner options from the food trucks as well.

Yesterday was getting our Produce Certification. Yep, ya gotta be Certified to work in any dept in the store! They want you to be educated about what we sell because the typical WFM customer knows what we sell so you are expected to be educated as well. Lots of info! Safe temp handling procedures. Steps to take if I am cutting conventional fruits as opposed to organics. Yep, they are both handled differently! You clean and sanitize one way for conventional and another for organics so as not to disrupt the integrity of the organics. The list is endless!

Next week we will be learing how to properly close down the dept at night. Also we will be trained and certified on operating the pallet jack, baler and juicer. There will be other training as well, but these were the only things we were give "sneak peeks" of.

I'm tired. Or shoud I say, my BRAIN is tired! But it's a "good" tired. It's nice to have some interaction with people again. I had gotten used to being here in my bubble every day. But you need that human contact!

Thanks for listening to me ramble! And here's a couple of pics. I took one of the front and back of my shirt!

 The two in the back are the double yolkers and the one up front is from the chocolate layer. See how much darker it is?

 Front of my shirt.

Back of shirt. Bottom, which is sorta hard to read says Nov 1, 2012

Fruitful love

Challenge 25 at Linda's and this week it's all about Ink Palette-Perfect Pearls. As always, we are based on the book by Tim Holtz. This week our sponsor is Simon Says and they are offering a $25 gift certificate to one lucky player. You can find the challenge on page 53 of Compendium of Curiosities.

I bought myself a couple of Tim's Classic Favorite's stamp sets when I was at Whim So Doodle earlier this week for the Dyan classes, so I HAD to get some ink on them!  

Caged Bird

This caged bird is fixing to break free! Tim has another wonderful post for the 12 Tags of 2012. This one uses his new Distress Stickles DRY Glitter. Yes, Dry! So you can use your alcohol inks and dye it any color you want. It's got small, medium and large pieces of glitter so you get a beautiful effect with whatever you put it on.

I decided that my bird was going to be breaking free from the bonds of it's cage, so it's head, wing and tail have already emerged from the cage and soon it will be free to soar to new heights.

Which is something I'm getting ready to do soon. After 8 years of being home with a few medical setbacks and then the tanked economy, I was recently hired at a new Whole Foods that will be opening on Nov 1 in north Tampa. I will be the melon bar/salad girl. I have orientation next week and hopefully then will find out what my schedule will be for the next few weeks. I'm excited to be rejoining the workforce and Whole Foods looks to be a very forward-thinking corporation. I am looking very forward to spreading my wings and soaring along with my bird.

Dylusions at the Doodle-Day Two

What an inky good day it was! We all started with exactly the same class kit and every one ended up so vastly different! This is gonna be another heavy picture post, so lets just get started!

 Dyan's going thru her book, showing us the different things we will be doing.

 Class kit. Before any ink or paint has been applied.

 Somebody's got inky flingers! And they only get worse! A true Badge of Honor for me! Most of what was on my hands came off when I washed my hair last night. But the stuff under my nails and around my cuticles will be there for a while.

 Painting and inking in process. Spread out so it will dry.

 Tags used to "mop up" the paints and inks on my Kraft Sheet. Nothing goes to waste in Dyan's classes!

 Faux Alcohol Ink technique using Dyan's Spray Inks and Glossy Cardstock.

 Oh yeah, it was inky!! I'm not skeered!

  Ranger apron I won in one of the prize giveaways. Woo hoo!!

 My first finished page. At least I think it's done!

 Front and back covers. It's hard to tell, but the cover is sprayed with Perfect Pearls Mist for a sparkly shine.

 Ink sprayed page with ghosting technique thru a stencil. The tag folds up.

 Paint Dabber technique.

 Faux Alcohol Ink technique.

 Another Spray Ink with ghosting technique thru a stencil.

Kraft Resist cardstock used as a mop up page cleaning inks off my Kraft Sheet. I wasn't real happy with it at first because it didn't completely cover all the brown cardstock. But it's grown on me and I really love it!

All of the pages will have tags and other ephemera on them. There will be lots of space to journal or just leave it blank. Whatever suits my fancy!

Dyan is coming back to teach again at the Doodle. And I will be there!

Dyan at the Doodle-Day One

Today was day one of two for me at Whim So Doodle in St Pete for classes with the fabulous Lady Dyan Reaveley. She is amazing! Love being able to take classes from the one who designs the products.

We made a gigantor double sided tag, 8.5" x 5.5" with a regular 3" x 6" tag attached to it. We also got to do 5 other tags using different techniques on each tag. We were only supposed to do 4, but the class was small and we worked quickly, so we each got to do an additional tag.

Also attending today's class was Jim, The Gentleman Crafter who is also on Dyan's Art Journaling FaceBook page. He is a sweetheart and it was nice to meet him as well as Dyan.

 My brand spanking new Dylusions Art Journal. I had Dyan sign one of the inside pages and it will be the first page I spray ink on!

 Gentleman Jim with his 'stache I made him. Also made one for Dyan with Moustache duct tape!

 Dyan (or is it Lucy?!) 'Splainin' what we will be doing.

 Guess who wasn't paying attention and was up taking pictures of the class?!

 Sue, Jim and Dyan

 Side one of my gigantor tag. Corrinna is on a separate 6 x 3 tag that swings independently of the big tag.

 Side two of the big tag

Big tag and the other 5 tags we created using different techniques.

Amazing

It's time once again for the Compendium of Curiosities II challenge at Linda's. It's week 24 already. And as always, we're basing the challenges on the book by Tim Holtz. This week's challenge is all about Alcohol Ink Resist and can be found on page 59.

Cheryl Mezetti posted a quote the other day and it just spoke to me. "Because when you stop and look around, this life is pretty amazing." I decided to use that as the basis of my tag and it just sorta evolved, as they so often do! I used some GrungeBoard pieces and since I was inspired by Cheryl and she is one of the lead designers for Creative Imaginations, I painted them with Luminarte (formerly known as Twinkling H2O's) for some shimmer. To know how to do the Alcohol Ink Resist, ya gotta go buy the book! I can tell you that is the chicken wire that the Grunge pieces are on.