MellowButterfly Team Blog

RODNEY “ROD” T. STILWELL
Of Waukesha, died very unexpectedly on Monday, September 22, 2008 at Waukesha Memorial Hospital at the age of 76. Rod was born on November 9, 1931 in Cameron, WI the son of Edward E. and Tunnie M. (Botts) Stilwell. Rod married Barbara Stocks on August 5, 1950. He worked for over 40 years at A.M. Gigous & Sons as an operating engineer and was also actively involved with the Town of Waukesha Fire Department. Rod served the Town of Waukesha on the Fire Department from 1968-1976, Fire Chief 1976-1986, Town Supervisor 1989-1995, Town Chairman 1995-1997 & 1999-2007. Rod was very passionate and proud of his accomplishments while serving the Town of Waukesha, calling it was his “second” career. He was a member of the Fire Chief’s Assoc., Retired Fire Chief’s Assoc. and First Baptist Church of Waukesha. His family was extremely important to him. He loved to spend time with his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, even going to his son and grandson’s drag races. Rod had a love for the outdoors, camping where he was a member of the Wagabonds Camping Club, deer hunting, and animals. He also enjoyed antique collecting, and was an accomplished wood worker, instilling that love in his son Jeff.

Rod will be deeply missed by his loving wife of 58 years , Barb of Waukesha; children, Karen (John) Marx of Racine, Craig (Marybeth) Stilwell of Waukesha, Kristy (Brett) Meyer of Waukesha, Jeffry (Sara) Stilwell of North Prairie; 11 grandchildren; 5 great grandchildren; brother, Edward (Patricia) Stilwell of California; sisters, Earlene (Burt) Pfeifer of Waukesha, Imogene Koebler of Maryland. Rod is additionally survived by nieces, nephews, other family, friends and his buddy, a big black cat “Lucky”. He was preceded in death by his parents, Edward and Tunnie Stilwell and a sister, Yvonne Gigous. Brothers-in-law, Dean Gigous and Roger Koebler.

The funeral service for Rodney will be held on Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 7:00 PM at Cesarz, Charapata & Zinnecker Funeral Home, 237 N. Moreland Blvd., Waukesha, WI 53188 with Rev. Ron Kral officiating. The visitation for Rod will be held on Thursday, September 25th from 3:00 PM until the 7:00 PM service at the funeral home. A private family burial will take place.

In lieu of flowers, memorials in Rodney’s name are appreciated to Town of Waukesha Fire Department, W250 S3567 Center Rd Waukesha, WI 53189-7364 or to H.A.W.S., 701 Northview Rd., Waukesha, WI 53187

The family wishes to express their thanks and gratitude to Rod’s doctors and the staff at Waukesha Memorial Hospital, 4th floor, for their compassion and care.

Cesarz, Charapata & Zinnecker Funeral Home, Cremation and Preplanning Services is serving the family. For further information, please call 542-6609, or for directions, an online obituary or to leave a condolence, please visit www.waukeshasfuneralhome.com.

Today the Faith Sisters are celebrating all of the new designers (including ME, Michelle Batton!) with a blog train collab kit entitled Sisterly Love.

DOWNLOAD EXPIRED

If you make a layout using at least 3 of the items in MY freebie, be sure to come back by September 21 and leave a comment on this blog post with a link to your layout for a chance to win a $5.00 gift certificate to my shoppe here at MellowButterfly!

And be sure to stop by all the other participating designer’s blogs for the other parts of this collaborative kit - but don’t wait, it’s only available for a few days!
Amy Sumrall
Kreative Karma
Lifesong Kreations
Boyersville Scraps
Audra’s Little Scraps
Meredith Cardall
Willro & Co Designs
Julie’s Scraps
Gretchen Tripp
Journeys with Jamie
Eyelet’s Scraps Designs
Debra Ballance
DigiScrapalicious
Eva
Isyndra
Lori Irmel

Look everyone, Cheryl (AKA gonewiththewind) has made the Gallery Standouts over at the finger pointing blog AGAIN! I’m starting to think we’ve got someone famous on the team here lol

Check it out!

Been peeking around and spotted some more layouts using my products that I thought I’d share with you! Enjoy!

6th Birthday by tnchick

River Cross My Heart by gonewiththewind

Brie by cruisengoddess

You are 3 by EmmasMommy

Who Me? by mighttyjomomma

Brady's 1st Birthday by nanasdinky

This is the first in a series of interviews to help you get to know my Creative Team Members better!

Ren’s Blog: Renlish
Ren’s MellowButterfly Gallery: Renilicious

I’ve known you for several years now and met you under your username Renilicious, which I’ve always shortened and called you Ren. I still call you that to this day, even though I now know your real name is Erin. So, does anyone else call you Ren and does it bother you that I do?

EVERYBODY calls me Ren. I’ve been Ren for the past 12 years. It all started when I was in a chatroom and there were three or four Erins, including me, so we all chose different spellings of our name and I ended up with Ren. I started using Ren for everything - on blogs, in chatrooms, in my personal writing. Everyone online whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in real life has always called me Ren and I personally wouldn’t have it any other way. The name became a persona in itself at one point and has probably been the catalyst for some of my more brash and insane moments, but I’m essentially the same person. A rose by any other name, and all that. I’ll answer to both Erin and Ren, though.

How long have you been digiscrapping and how did you get hooked?

I totally and utterly blame you, Michelle. I’ve actually been a fan of scrapbooking for a couple of years, my aunts are avid scrappers themselves and they’ve got a real talent for throwing together the most gorgeous pages - something that isn’t very hard when you’ve got a young family with lots of cute kids. I think kids really lend themselves well to scrapbooking. I didn’t even know digital scrapbooking existed until I stumbled into your website again earlier this year (around April?) and saw some absolutely kick-arse graphics and your own layouts. I went and bought a kit, did a page and was immediately hooked. And then I begged for a spot on your CT. The rest is history - short as it may be.

Who are your usual victims, I mean subjects, in your layouts?

Hehe. I have one particular victim, my gorgeous nephew, Phoenix. He is the baby of my immediate family and I think he’s the most adorable creature in the world. Most of my layouts are based around him at the moment but I am expanding my range of victims to include my mum and sister and friends. I am a photographer at heart so I hope to be able to make lots and lots of scrapped memories to print up.

What kind of post processing do you do to your photos before you scrap them?

I am a great fan of Photoshop. Being a digital manipulator, I really enjoy the creative process in using Photoshop, though with my scrapbooking pictures I generally try to keep it simple and not overprocess them. Apart from a general boost to colours (or going the opposite way and desaturating them) and a mild sharpening up or throwing in an occasional texture and such, I don’t do a lot to my scrapping pictures.

So, I’ve heard much about a certain manbeast and the fact that the two of you are getting married soon. What can you tell us about the big event?

Ah, the manbeast. The love of my life and bane of my existence all rolled into one. The manbeast and I met nearly ten years ago now and we’ve been engaged since 2000. We were really just too lazy to do the whole wedding thing. Last year after going to a couple of our friends’ weddings, I decided it was about time we made it official. The manbeast agreed (he knew what was good for him) and what started of as being a casual “handful of people at a park” thing has turned out to be the “whole kit and kaboodle” wedding with a ceremony and reception. The theme is sort of a mix of medieval meets Australian bush meets Irish settlers meets backyard barbeque. My gown is a mix of gold and cream and the manbeast is wearing a pirate shirt. There may also be kilts involved if the best man has anything to do with it. It’s going to be loads of fun! I’m even doing an extreme bridal shoot (also known as “trash the dress”) a few months after the wedding so I’ll have even more crazy pictures to scrap!

Socks or no socks?

Socks. Definitely, definitely socks. I am cold-blooded.

Other than scrapbooking what hobbies do you enjoy?

I love doing photomanipulations. I can’t draw at all but I can mash photographs together and make completely new and epic scenes that represent some of the more fantastic images floating around in my head. I also make jewelery, though I’ve been buying gemstones more often than actually making anything with them lately. Need to fix that. wink. Lastly, I like to write. Whether it’s just my thoughts and feelings in my blog or something more creative, sometimes I just need to get words out onto paper or a screen. I have stacks of notebooks with ideas for stories and unfinished thoughts.

Have you ever paper scrapped or considered trying some hybrid craft projects?

I tried paper and scissors scrapping a couple of times. I attended a “Creative Memories” workshop (don’t know if you have them in the USA but they’re one of the big party-scheme scrapbooking companies here). I enjoyed it but hated the mess and hated destroying photographs and hated using up all these resources that were hugely expensive to buy in the first place. I have seriously considered doing a hybrid layout though, just as an occasional thing. My aunts have entire rooms devoted to their scrapping obsessions - I’ll leave the real stuff to them and just admire from afar.

Of all the layouts that you have created, which three are your favorites and why?

Argh… only three layouts… That’s hard.

Well, Bindi is definitely one: As annoying as she can be, she’s the most affectionate cat I’ve known since my original baby boy, Tristan, passed away a few years ago. I love the picture of her because it’s such a typically “Bindi” pose - on her back waiting for a belly scratch.

Babyface would be another: Seriously, not my best layout but my absolute favourite picture of my nephew as a little bub. Every time he pulled that face I turned to goo. I also love the elements in the Citrus Punch kit, they’re so adaptable to whatever sort of theme you want.

My Geisha is the third: Finding a real Geisha is a fluke, even though you’ll see loads of young Japanese girls running around looking like them. I was sent a message about this particular girl from a person who found my photograph, knew the young girl and was able to confirm she was indeed a Geisha. That layout, simple as it is, really came together for me and I was pleased I was able to use both my favourite photographs of her.

And the most important question of the day - when do you plan to come visit me in America?

In all seriousness, probably 2010. Hee. Got a big trip planned out.

Anything else you’d like to share with us?

Just a bit more about me; I was born, raised and currently live in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. I am the product of one mother and one father (both of whom I generally get along with pretty well) and am the eldest of two daughters. I have two cats who are practically my kids and they’re little freaks. Dugite is a dark tabby who vomits with monotonous regularity and Bindi is a little mental freak who steals our socks and runs up doorframes.

Yes, that’s right, we’re celebrating the layouts made with my freebie, Let’s Celebrate! And if you haven’t already downloaded this freebie, you better hurry because it’s only free until September 7th!

I’ve been out and about digi-land and here are some of the layouts I spotted using the Let’s Celebrate kit!

By Vania Andrade

By GoneWiththeWind

By Chookie

By Scrapquick

By Scribler

By tnchick

By gtripp

By me!

Not only is MellowButterfly celebrating Labor Day with 15% off all coordinated kits and RAKs by the ‘Fly Girl Team - but I also have a brand new kit to share with you! It’s called September Days and it is full of treasures that children would find in their own backyards and much, much more! This kit was inspired by my team, who asked for more masculine or gender neutral products combined with a variety of realistic elements like brick, sand and wood. So, I’ve combined rich, earthy tones and all the treasures my son could find in our yard to create this extra special kit!

As always, the kit is also available as separates - you can buy just the papers or just the embellishments!

The girls got really creative with this kit and I just know you are going to love their layouts - and guess what! Some of them were gracious enough to turn their layouts into quick pages for you! What’s a quick page? Well, it’s a pre-made layout with holes cut out where you can put your photos. Then you can add your own title and/or journaling and just like magic, you have a gorgeous layout in just minutes!

And without further ado - here are the stunning layouts that my team made this week using the September Days kit!

That’s right - I’m ready to do some tooting about my team today and I’m feeling all Seussical!

NEW ‘FLY GIRLS

That’s right, a new month approaches and we have new creative team members! Please welcome September Guests Mareen (AKA Sternrakete) and Laura (AKA EmmasMommy) to the team - I’m so excited to have them with us and I know you’ll be really inspired by their layouts too!

And, I have two new full-time team members to welcome as well! Last month’s guest, Jen V (AKA Chookie) has agreed to stay with us and my friend Cheryl (AKA gonewiththewind) has joined us as well! Yippee - these are some really talented scrappers and phenomenal ladies!

VERY MERRY BIRTHDAY WISHES

Cheryl (AKA gonewiththewind) celebrated her birthday on August 26 - Happy Birthday Cheryl! And, Laura (AKA EmmasMommy) celebrated her birthday on August 24!

FEATURES

I love to see my team get featured on sites that I frequent - and I get so excited to be able to share their accomplishments - so I thought it’d be great to share those with you all too!

Our very own Cindy, (AKA Scribler) is this weeks feature on Christina Renee Designs’ Authentic Artistry Blog with this gorgeous layout commemorating her Seventh Wedding Anniversay (that just happens to contain one of my products!) Happy Belated Anniversary Cindy!!!

And our newest member, Cheryl, had one of her layouts featured on the Gallery Standouts Blog - Go Cheryl!!!

And last, but not least is me! Yes, that’s right, believe it or not, I’ve entered myself into the designer contest over at Faith Sisters. As part of my application I had to create a freebie for their first birthday celebration - so help yourself to the download (image is linked) and if you like my kit and want to cast your vote for me, all you have to do is register in the Faith Sisters gallery and visit this page and click the “vote” link under my freebie! Easy peasy!

As you may have guessed - or already know, I have a fascination with butterflies. And I also have a thing for surreal art - even hosted an art contest earlier this year aptly titled, The Extraordinary Butterfly.

Anyhow, I was surfing the net today looking for something completely unrelated to either of those subjects (in fact it was genealogy lol) but I came across the most stunning pieces of surreal butterfly art by VLADIMIR KUSH and just had to share them with you!

Butterfly Apple by Vladimir Kush

Departure of the Winged Ship by Vladimir Kush

Fauna in la Mancha by Vladimir Kush

Winged Satellite