I Heart Art: Portland's latest Mixer Match event was last month. This was the first Mixer Match I participated in as a member of the Leadership Council. I helped organize the event with Jen Neitzel and Deenie Wallace. I had a great time and learned so much.
The night of the event, I worked the check in table with my sis. We did this at the last Mixer Match too. I did most of the email correspondence with folks about the event, so it was easy to check people in. It was great matching faces to names and meeting lots of new people.
The event was at the very cool Design Within Reach. This is such the perfect venue for our event and the folks at DWR are so gracious and nice. We had a great spread of food and I made 120 mini cupcakes.
This is most of the Leadership Council. It's such a great group of people and I'm really honored to be apart of this incredible organization. Our next Mixer Match even will be in July. I can't wait!
For my Birthday, my sis took me to see OVO by Cirque du Soleil. This was my 3rd Cirque show, but my first in their yellow and blue tent. We had second row seats and they were incredible! I had no idea what the show was about before seeing it. I just loved everything about it. The talent these folks have is just incredible. There many breath taking moments and overall it was just spectacular.
These ants girls were my favorite. It was great to see them so close up. I could see the small adjusts they made with their feet and also hear the head ant girl call cues to the group. Seeing the girls being flipped back and forth so effortlessly was just extraordinary.
This is the official trailer for the show. Definitely see this production if you get the chance.
Before OVO we went to Interuban for lunch. At the Expo center there were these huge wind chimes. I would love to have one for my house. The entire day was great fun and I'm so glad I got to spend it with my sis.
Record Store Day is quickly becoming one of my favorite holidays. Founded in 2007 as a way for independent record stores and artists to celebrate their love of music. It has grown each year and this year it was huge with over 300 Record Store Day special releases. We bought more vinyl this year than any other.
This year we started early since Music Millennium opened at 8am. When we arrived about 9am, the line to buy music snaked through the entire store. I'd never seen anything like it. People were buying hundreds of dollars of vinyl. It was incredible.
Our second stop was Jackpot which had another very long line.
Our third stop was at CD Game Exchange. I love to look through their dollar bins.
Stop four was at Exhiled.
Then we took a break to refuel.
Our last stop was to Everyday Music. We spent a long time in this huge store.
Voodoo doughnuts are a must after a long hard day of record shopping.
We took our doughnuts to Bushwackers Cider and relaxed with a pint. It was such a fun day. I always enjoy spending time with my mom-in-law and this year, my brother-in-law came too. I can't wait for next year!
It's been almost exactly a month since TEDxConcordiaUPortland's event this year. It's really taken me this long to fully process that extraordinary day. For the entire week after the event, I floated on a TEDx high. So many inspiring people with so many inspiring ideas kept swirling through my brain and the positiveness of it all just felt good. Now the videos have been posted and I've re-watched them all and a few I've seen many times. It's really wonderful to have the talks accessible online to re-hear and re-learn at anytime. I'm so honored and proud that I was on the planning team that created such an amazing event.
I'm a huge fan of The Circus Project. I was at their big performance held at the Portland Art Museum last December and highlighted in the short video that is shown during Jenn Cohen's talk. The aerialist who performed at TEDxConcordiaUPortland was truly extraordinary and received a well deserved standing ovation.
The only other standing ovation of the day went to Governor Barbara Roberts. I was so grateful to hear her speak. She became Oregon's first female Governor when I was a junior in high school. She has always been a big inspiration to me. It was great to hear her talk about how she overcame incredible odds to better the life of her autistic son and then to go on to become Governor.
Goodnight Billygoat's stop motion movie accompanied by live music was another highlight for me. Each minute of video takes about 1 month to create. Their dedication to their art is so incredible.
One of the funnier talks was Colleen Wainwright. I had met her last year at the World Domination Summit and she is such a hoot! She went from a self-proclaimed selfish asshole to raising over 100 thousand dollars for WriteGirl to celebrate her 50th birthday.
Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls is such a great organization. My good friend participated in Ladies Rock Camp and loved it so much that she is going to do it again. It was great hearing more about this organziation and seeing one band perform. The singer has a crazy good voice.
Mark Frohnmayer's talk about the future of the automobile and the crazy cool cars his company is creating definitely got my husband and I thinking. We've always said that the next car we buy will be electric. Now we are thinking about getting a car from Arcimoto, his company located in Eugene, OR.
There were many, many more wonderful talks that occured at our event that you can access here on YouTube. I hope you get the chance to watch them all.
I took this picture at the TEDxConcordiaUPortland rehearsal, the night before the big event. Sitting in this near empty room, surrounded by planning team members finishing up last minute details such as putting name tags on lanyards, I was overwhelmed by all the greatness. Attending meetings or working on projects at my house is one thing, but to realize that I am one part of this incredible event which is so much larger than the sum of its parts is extraordinary.
Photo credit: Armosa Studios
My main contribution was coordinating the gift bags. I took this on, because I thought that was one area that I could do well. I also completed three big projects for the gift bags that you can see here, here, and here.
I was blown away to see this picture up on the two very large projection screens during the event. I tried to take a picture of my picture, but I was too shocked to get my camera out in time. The thank you card activity was a big success and it was fun to collect many of the cards people had filled out at the end of the day.
Eugene Lee is a medical student at my school. I encouraged him to submit a design for the promotional material. The team loved his fish paintings and a mascot was born. Bubba is the orange fish and an example of how the ordinary always has the potential of becoming extraordinary. Eugene's work was used on the posters, programs, t-shirts, and elsewhere.
Kin Trio, Eugene's band, was our house band and played at the beginning and end of each of the 4 sessions. Concordia's Library had an exhibit of Eugene's paintings in their gallery.
Photo credit: Egg Press
A few weeks before the event, the company who was going to print our program covers fell through. I helped arrange for Egg Press (who also donated 100 thank you cards) to letterpress the covers. They generously donated their time and money to us. They are amazing people! The program covers are gorgeous.
I collected thousands and thousands of Acupuncture needle tubes for the stage art installation. The concept sounded really cool, but I had trouble picturing it in my mind's eye.
It's stunningly beautiful in real life. At rehearsal, the lighting guys took the time to coordinated the colors to every speaker's clothing. The end result was spectacular. Note how good it looks in every talk you watch. Crystal Shenk's talk on why she created the Aurora is so moving. Also after hearing her talk, her choice of using Acupuncture needle tubes made perfect sense.
During Joe Smith's rehearsal, it was realized that he needed a garbage can for his talk. Michelle Jones, Organizer Extraordinaire, called out to me and asked if I could get a garbage can. Sure thing! Definitely watch this short talk. It's a very simple idea, but presented in such an entertaining way it has definitely stuck with me. I now Shake and Fold everytime I wash my hands and everyone I know who was at TEDx still does too. Joe's talk was the TED.com talk of the day, today. It's kind of cool to think that people all over the world might see my garbage can.
Photo credit: Armosa Studios
The day of the event, I manned the registration table. After the initial check in, I was able to see every part of this extraordinary event. I left with a sense that I was part of something greater than myself and that is such a magnificent feeling that I will always be grateful for.
This is the last big project I did for the TEDxConcordiaUPortland gift bags! I wanted to contribute something to the gift bags, since I was in charge of coordinating them. After much brainstorming, I settled on making buttons!
I arranged for I Heart Art: Portland (Thank you!!) to sponsor the buttons. At first I was going to borrow their button maker, but I've wanted a button maker for years and this seemed to be the perfect excuse to acquire a new tool. I bought mine from Buttonmakers.net in Seattle. I am super impressed by their service and their site is filled with videos that I found very handy.
With much help from my husband, I made 1800 buttons! Each gift bag will contain 3 different buttons. Bubba is the orange fish. He is the mascot of our event and you will see Bubba in many places around Concordia. He represents how everyone has the potential of becoming extraordinary. I'm really happy with how this project turned out. I'm also glad that I was able to make something for the gift bags.
Our event is just a little over a week a way! You can still buy tickets here. Tickets will be on sale until Monday, March 26th. I do hope you can attend the event. Seeing all of the behind the scenes greatness going on, it's going to be such an incredible day. I can barely contain my excitement!
I'm super excited to share this project that I helped put together for the TEDxConcordiaUPortland event on March 31st, 2012. When the planning team was brainstorming on what we wanted to put in the gift bags, we came up with the idea of having a thank you card in each bag.
We thought this would be a great way for the attendees to participate in the day's event by writing a thank you card to the person who moved them the most that day. It would also be a way to engage the audience and get them conscious of all the greatness around them since they had to focus on the one thing that inspired them the most.
Now it was my job to make this project happen. We definitely wanted to have thank you cards from artists in the community, but asking a small business for 600 cards seemed to be too much of a hardship. So instead, I asked 6 local artists to each donate 100 cards.
Deciding who to ask was hard. There are so many amazing artists in town and my initial list was long. After I sent out a first round of asks, I was really surprised and grateful that so many folks said yes! And the folks that declined were so nice to let me know soon. I'm continually amazed at how wonderful artists in Portland are. Their generosity is inspiring.
This whole project couldn't have happened without the help of these artists. All were so great at staying in touch and letting me know when I could pick up cards. I have to admit when I first took this adventure on, I was a bit worried about pulling this off. What if nobody would donate? What if someone flaked out and we only had 500 cards? It was enough to keep me anxious for a month or two, but slowly all my fears just disappeared after working with these artists. I knew we could make this happen and it would be amazing.
Maria, the owner of Collage, was also a huge help! She generously offered to donate cello bags for many of the cards. This really saved the day, because these bags would help protect the cards from getting squished. I also wanted to include instructions for the attendees, so they would know what to do with the cards.
Figuring out the instructions was the next big task of this project. Besides what to say, I needed to decide what they would look like. I wanted the directions to be cute, but not distract from the actual cards. I also needed something simple to replicate 600 times.
I used my Sizzix Big Kick to create a nice edge to the instructions. It was super easy to cut all 600 out in a few short hours. I originally bought my Big Kick to create my sister's felt flower wedding bouquet and I've used it so much since. It really is a handy tool
I'm so happy with how this turned out! It was important to me to have a handmade touch to these gift bags. I really hope the TEDxConcordiaUPortland attendees enjoy this activity. I can't wait to see who inspires me the most.
At the end of last year, I joined two committees. I decided that since I wasn't going to sell in 2012, volunteering for organizations that I love would be a great way to stay connected to my community. Now I'm on the planning team for TEDxConcordiaUPortland! I'm thrilled to be helping them this year. I attended their inaugural event last year and I was so impressed with everything. From the speakers to the organization of the day, everything exceeded my expectations.
I opted to help with the gift bags this year, because I figured that would be the best place where I could lend a crafty hand. One of my friends works for Tazo Tea and helped me get a donation. They graciously donated enough tea to create a 4 teabag sampler. I broke down all the individual boxes of tea to create the samplers by wrapping them with hemp twine. I liked the minimal packaging and the whole 600 tea samplers were pretty fast to make. I became super adept at tying bows.
Registration for the event is still open! I really hope you get a chance to attend this year. This year's theme is Becoming Extraordinary and our speaker line up is very impressive. There will also be much more goodness in the gift bags.
When my friend, Jen Neitzel, told me that she had created The Maven Circle with Jena Coray of Miss Modish, I was thrilled for her! Jen's face lit up when she talked about all the great ideas they had to help others ignite their spark. I can't think of anyone better to help motivate others to achieve their goals.
About 6 months ago, Jen made an off-the-cuff comment in passing that hit me to my core. It helped me change my outlook on crafting and I made a fresh new blog start at the beginning of 2012.
And now it's February...and I've stalled. I have lots of excuses and some of them are even pretty darn valid, but the fact remains that I haven't done much towards the goals I set up for myself for this year.
I'm hoping that this will change soon. I've signed up for Jen's and Jena's first online class called The Catalyst Course. Just reading about it makes me feel like I can get back on track. I know I will find the motivation and support I need to ignite my spark.
Watch this video to learn more about this course. You can also find more info here. The class starts in March and there is still time to register. I will be blogging about this 6 week class and the changes I make because of it. I can't wait to start!
