Well don’t you know that this is perfect for February. Since the first layout I spied of her’s, I have just fallen in love with almost every layout Peppermint has done. She has such a wonderful sense of balance and color combination. It always amazes me the restraint she shows with placing paper and elements. And I love, love how every page tells the complete story and there is plenty of journaling! So the CT has been plying her with questions in hopes that you will have a chance to learn more about this talented artist and be inspired!
Sorry my first question isn’t scrap-related, but I reeeeeally would love to know more about your kitty cats What are their personalities? What do they like doing? Have you found their food weaknesses (what they ALWAYS like)? I just think you have the prettiest kitties – from Lex
The boys, eh? I could go on and on about them (and probably will) so you can feel free to not use this cat stuff – but I want to answer your question, Lex.
They should be the prettiest, they’re extremely high maintenance. Mo (a.k.a. orange cat) is the most perfect cat in the world. Anyone who would like to challenge him for the title would certainly lose – because you just don’t find a cat like Mo twice in a lifetime. Everyone who meets him demands that I put them on the long, long list of people who get to take Mo if something happens to me. Then they root for something to happen to me so they can get their hands on him. If I ever disappear one day, find out who has Mo and there’s your main suspect!
I rescued him from an animal shelter in Indianapolis when I lived down there and that moment ranks very highly on the list of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. At the time I was going through a lot of truly sad animal rescue organizations looking for another cat (at the time we had a gray tabby, Chivus, who has since passed). When I walked into this particular shelter there were two women pulling Mo out of a kennel asking one another “Is this Charlie? It looks sort of like him..” And although I felt bad that they were looking for a lost cat, in my head I was saying over and over “Please don’t be Charlie, please don’t be Charlie,” because it was love at first sight. I just knew I was meant to have him. As soon as they put him back in and walked away, I was all over him like a monkey on a cupcake. And aside from an overnight stay at the vet where he was fixed and decontaminated, we’ve never been apart since. He was about 6 months old at the time, was trapped by local animal enforcement officials, and has a little kink at the end of his tail where it was caught in the trap as it closed. I like to think the reason he’s so perfect is because he’s just happy to have a home. Growing up on the mean streets of downtown Indianapolis is no fun.
Sisko (a.k.a. Cap’n Benjamin Sisko), on the other hand, is a purebred Ragdoll from a breeder about an hour from me, and he … has grown on me. LOL I don’t know any other way to put it. When our other cat passed last year, I didn’t want to get another cat but Mo was not the same after Chivus was gone. He was very listless, needy, lethargic. And I wanted to stack the odds as much in our favor as I could by getting a cat that was really social, non-aggressive, etc. because I’ve had some evil cats in my life. So Sisko came to be when Nicholas and I spotted him on the Interwebs one night, and we waited about 6 weeks for him to “ripen” so we could bring him home at 13 weeks old. The breeder sent us weekly pictures and updates on how he was doing. If adopting Mo can be compared to taking in homeless child, then Sisko is akin to adopting Paris Hilton. He’s a diva, never struggled a day in his life. He was brought up those first few weeks “underfoot” by a prominent breeder who catered to his every whim, in what can only be described as Shangri-La for cats. Her house is like Disneyworld for cats.
It took me a long time to understand that Sisko believes he’s a dog. Now that we’re on the same page, though, the little guy is all up in my heart. He follows us all around like a puppy, he will try to steal food from you, he wants to be NEAR you but not necessarily TOUCHING you, and he doesn’t like to be calmly pet. He likes to be vigorously manhandled. You can’t just stroke Sisko politely – you have to get in there with two hands and work him like a big piece of clay. And at 18lbs, that’s one BIG PIECE OF CLAY.
Mo is the finicky one, however. He will only eat a specific variety of (organic, holistic, grain-free) cat food. Sisko will eat anything you put in front of him – and routinely does. Mo goes on binges where one cat treat is his favorite, and then as soon as you stock up by buying a couple of bags – OH WAIT! He hates them now, they’re the most disgusting treat he’s ever had. Again, Sisko would eat a piece of dryer lint. And has.
As for what they enjoy doing, that’s an easy one. Sleeping. They sleep all day – then right around the time we go to bed they decide it’s time to chase each other around like a couple of wild elephants. Sisko used to enjoy eating power cords, which is a lot of fun for us, but he seems to have settled down on that. Both of them enjoy the game “Let’s stare at the human until she wakes up!” and that’s a fun little pastime for them most mornings. Then once I’m up they steal my side of the bed, Mo burrows under the covers and Sisko just sprawls out diagonally up by my pillow. Other than that, they’re pretty low-key. They don’t do much except bring a smile to my face and joy to my life.
btw, are Mo and Sisko jealous of Tom?
– from Lex
Mo is over the moon for Tom, he’s a big traitor! I rescued him, nursed him to good health, I feed him, brush him, clean his litter box, buy him tasty treats that he promptly rejects – and then he spends the majority of time stepping on me to get to Tom.
Sisko, he likes Tom as much as he likes any of us, I guess. He would probably say he’s “fond” of us if he could talk.
So I want to know how your professional skills influence your scrapping? – from me
Wow, that’s an interesting question. I’m trying to think of what my professional skills are. I estimate construction projects by day for the family business, so everyone in the company is a jack-of-all-trades. I’ve never really thought about it much, but I suppose since most of my job is looking at very linear things (blueprints, schematics, elevation drawings) that seems to carry across as a trend on my scrapbooking pages, too. It’s tough to say whether it’s a direct influence, but yea … I’m definitely a very “line everything up” sort of person.
I have a very practical question. How do you find time to do it all? Work, design, scrap, family? I need some tips! lol – from Brenda
I honestly don’t know where I generate all this time! I read almost 35 books last year, did I tell you that? And at the end of the year I was like “When did I do that?!” Fifteen minutes at a time, I guess! The biggest part of it is that I have such an extremely supportive partner in life and he encourages me to spend time doing what I love. Then he facilitates me taking that time by being an equal partner in our day-to-day life. And by “equal” I mean that he does WAY more than I do. LOL My relationship with Tom is unlike anything I ever expected to find, and the sense of cooperation and trust that we have between us really has a way of clearing out all the noise in life and allowing us to pursue whatever brings us joy. We still have all the minutiae of adult life, but I know that if my life happens to be speeding along at 100MPH this week, he’s there with me catching anything I miss, and vice versa. Sometimes I forget to eat even, and then there he is with a sandwich right when I’m about to collapse. What we have is something I never had in previous relationships, and it has made all the difference for me.
Ok…I am very curious about your designing. What made you start to design? And how do you work, do you start off with an element and then build a kit around that, or the papers or do you just come up with a colorscheme…well…tell me, how do you do? – from Annika
I decided to make a paper pack back in November when my friend Christine was opening up a store to sell templates. I thought it would be fun to have a freebie to give out with her templates. Then I decided to try a couple of elements just so it wasn’t all bare. That was really the extent of it. I never really expected people to download it OR use it. Especially a few of you guys. And then Catrine and I were talking about something unrelated and she said that if I was looking to open a store, we could talk. And about a month later I took her up on it. It wasn’t really something I intended to do, but I’m enjoying it. Still freaks my freak out when I’m browsing a gallery or looking through a GSO thread and I see pages with my stuff on it.
I don’t know that I’ve designed enough things to have any hard and fast rules about my process. What I have is this “Big Big Folder of Random Inspiration” that I’ve been keeping on my computer forever. Little snips of things that I like. Every once in a while on a quiet afternoon I’ll go through and pull a bunch of them onto an Evernote page, sort of like a mood board, and I’ve used this technique for scrapping – and now I’m using it to come up with design ideas.
What is your favorite kind of date night? Are you a night out on the town kind of girl or a curl up on the couch with a good movie kind of girl? – from Brenda
Date nights for us are TOTALLY spent at home, though. We’re both big recluses and honestly, I prefer Tom’s company over just about anyone else in the world. LOL He’s my best friend, and since he goes to school full-time AND works full-time, and I work full-time and have all these extracurricular activities, when we’re together we just shut out the whole world, curl up on the couch and have a movie marathon, or clear out all the shows that have accumulated on the TiVo. If we’re both home, we’re usually within a few feet of one another, even if we’re doing our own things. And we almost always run errands together unless one of us is up against a deadline. A trip to Target is about 200% more fulfilling for me just having Tom there with me. And sometimes that trip to Target is the only free time either of us has that day. He graduates in May, though. So … woo!
Often times you use so few items from a kit. How do you choose? – from me
The items choose me. Truth is about 90% of items hate me. I love them, I want to use them, but they won’t cooperate with me on my page. What normally happens is I go through some products and pull about 25 things I adore and just plop them on my page. Then as I move things around I realize I’ve overshot my goal and I remove items. There’s a few things I can’t pass up, though. Little ticket/label ephemera bits, jewel/sequin/sparkly bits, birds (of course) and anything that’s scattered. And I love flowers .. love ‘em .. wish I had a girl so I could use them more often. Whenever I do AAM pages it’s usually because I saw a flower I couldn’t live without using.
What is your favorite color to work with? And if you only could use one kind of element on your pages what would that be? Flowers, ribbons, buttons…what? – from Annika
Easy! Beige. LOL If I only get ONE – then … oy … buttons! I could put a bunch of buttons together to create all sorts of shapes. So buttons!
Are there other artists in your family? – from me
My sister is a paper scrapper and was a Stampin’ Up consultant. She does great little hybrid crafts that I’m very envious of. My mom is a master seamstress! She makes some of the most amazing things when she finds the time – she’s chronically overextended, though, so I wonder where I get it from? And Nicholas is a wizard with a tub of Legos, let me tell you.
I’ve always loved your journaling. I’ve always loved your everything, truth be told. I admire your pages and designs so much. But ANYway…do you have a process for putting thought to paper? What do you hope to convey through your storytelling? – from Sara
In 2008 I barely journaled on any of my pages at all. This is an area of my scrapbooking that was influenced heavily by {we are} storytellers and I’m grateful to Deanne McDaniel every single time I put a block of text on my page for keeping on me about journaling, journaling, journaling. I’ve always been long-winded and verbose but for some reason I just wasn’t putting that on my pages. I just sent my 2009 pages off to be printed over the weekend and I’m looking forward to their arrival infinitely more than I did my 2008 ones because last year I vowed to make my pages more meaningful and I really think I remained true to that as much as possible. The pages that Nicholas loves the most are the ones where I write to him – he’s always dragging his album out whenever we have company. He loves to read my words in his voice, it warms my heart. So that’s all the reason I need to continue doing it. I don’t have a process really, I just drag a text box out on my page and start typing. Once I “broke the seal” on journaling, though, it became easier and easier.
What other distracting pursuits do you enjoy?
– from me
Distracting pursuits, I have a few! I’m a Reality TV junkie, however I draw the line at any of the strange ones on VH1/MTV. I have to draw the line somewhere and I’m too old for that. (Although I do watch Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew). My TiVo is indispensable, I could not live without it. I’m a big gadget geek, and I love the marvelous Interwebs! I’ve been addicted to the Internet since the pay-per-hour AOL days. I had some really huge AOL bills! I actually took a job with them at one point for the free account.
Are you sure you’re not Miss Mint? LOL – from Danielle
I just don’t know anymore!! I’m so confused!!
And as a corollary to that: Have you ever had moments when you thought perhaps you were? lol – from Lex
I’m pretty sure a quick glance at her sales records would set me straight. LOL
And for your viewing pleasure the CT have lifted several of Peppermint’s layouts.
Lex lifted Reason #5
Laura lifted Fresh Air
Crystal lifted At the Park
Suzanne Lifted Page 5
Annika lifted Inseperable
Sara lifted Us
and I lifted You
Are you feeling inspired! So here’s your chance! Enjoy reading her interview and then hurry on over to find some inspiration in her gallery. Then do your own lift for a chance to win a $10.00 gift certificate to the store. You have until midnight Central Standard Time, February 19th to submit your page (using at least 75% of Catscrap products) by uploading to the CT Spotlight Challenge Gallery.
