Mar 31, 2010

Quick Hello

I have some WOO HOO worthy news! I submitted a few layouts to the Memory Makers Big Book of Scrapbook Ideas call for layouts. I just got an email today that at least one was picked up for publication! My first ever scrapbook publication! I am over the moon excited! I will find out more details over the next week, but the book itself doesn't come out until May 2011! Regardless, I am pretty excited. It was tough for me to come up with submissions because nothing could be shown anywhere else online or anything first. Hopefully, this will be the start of a few more acceptances and not just a one time deal ;)

In other news, if you are a camera toting woman, you should check out this site Epiphanie. They make this super stylish purse looking camera bags. They have dividers and room for your camera, lenses, and even spots for your wallet and keys. This blue one with a green interior is the one I have my eye on. ;) Also they are giving away a Canon 5D Mark II and I really could use a camera upgrade, but REALLY can't afford it.

Be back tomorrow with some Serendipity layouts because it will be April 1st! WOW!

Have a good night!

Mar 29, 2010

Then and Now


This week's ScrapTiffany Challenge is Then and Now. I had a few ideas for this one, ideas that I will probably still work on eventually, but right now I wanted to use a recent photo of Little Miss, so I dug up and baby photo and came up with this layout:


Don't you just love the drool in that baby photo? I am gonna hear about that when she gets older lol!




Go on over to ScrapTiffany and check out the other designers awesome projects. If you take the challenge, email it to Tiffany.

There may still be a little time to enter some layouts into the Sweet Taste of Serendipity Crop. You have until noon your time to get everything loaded and linked. I finished this one this weekend:
 

And my last piece of news today is that this weekend I found out that I will be designing for 3 Scrappy Boys! I started hanging around there after Create My Keepsake closed. The forum is so fun, Heather's kits are fabulous and the rest of the team is SUPER talented. I am beyond thrilled. I will be designing with the May kit and I can NOT wait!!

Have a great week :)

Mar 25, 2010

American Crafts Green Challenge

Just wanted to pop in and say a quick hello. I haven't been sharing much, but I have been accumulating things to share like no one's business! I've been working on Serendipity Scrapbook's April kit and it is a lot of fun. I will share a few peaks soon. Also I will be hosting several challenges in Serendipity's Sweet Taste of Serendipity crop this week. So lots that I can't share yet, but will be back to share very soon.

But today, I have a take on this week's American Craft's Green Challenge (to use 2 or more green AC products). I think green may be my favorite color. Here is my layout:

Supplies Used: American Crafts patterned and solid color paper (green), American Crafts Thickers (green), American Crafts chipboard flowers (green), American Crafts sparkle buttons, American Crafts ribbon, American Crafts mini marks rub ons, Hero Arts gems, Martha Stewart baking twine.

I can't get over how much Little Miss's eyes brighten when she is surrounded by green, so every year when we go pick out the Christmas tree I dress her in green from head to toe. Then after the tree has been chosen we do an impromptu photo shoot in front of the stacks of trees lol!



Thanks for stopping by! 

Mar 22, 2010

Person You Would Most Like to Meet

Well, it is Monday (for a few more hours anyway!!) and the new ScrapTiffany challenge is posted. The challenge is to scrap the person you would most like to meet whether living or not. I thought about this one for a bit. There are people I am interested in, writers, actors, musicians, photographers etc, but I am not really interested in meeting people I admire or whose work follow. If I could actually be friends with them or hang out in their circle that would be cool, but meeting someone just doesnt do it for me. I remember reading a comment by Jack Black about Jack White of the White Stripes. He said something along the lines of, I don't ever want to meet Jack White because there is no way he could be as cool as I imagine him to be. And that is sort of how I feel about anyone famous. So that kind of narrowed it down quite a bit! But the more I thought about it I realized there is someone right in my own family who I never got to meet. My Mom's grandmother. I've seen pictures of her and I've heard stories about her and out of this minimal amount of information I have determined she must have been one of the strongest women ever. And I wish I had the chance to meet her. I don't have any pictures of her (Note to self to ask mom for some copies of the older family photos--no pressure Mom, don't try re-arranging your furniture to get to the old pictures lol) so I went with a photoless layout this time:

I may be a teeny bit addicted to these rolled paper flowers ;) Seriously I cant stop making them!



I used a white gel pen to add some faux stitching around the gray letters to make them stand out more.



Everything on this layout was from the Girl's Loft kit I won on The PaperLife. I think the kit was their February kit. Anyway, go on over to ScrapTiffany (who was interviewed on The PaperLife--do you see how the 6 degrees of separation thing works in scrapbooking too lol!) and check out the other fabulous designs. If you take the challenge, be sure to email it to Tiffany.

Oh, and I foresee more blog posts in my future this week...Serendipity Scrapbooks is hosting a crop this weekend!! It is called Sweet Taste of Serendipity CropWe have a ton of challenges and fun things planned.....and of course there will be prizes, so be sure to stop by.

Mar 17, 2010

Jillibean Soup Sketch

There is a fun sketch posted on the Jillibean Soup blog. Since their new releases are some of my favorite from the last CHA I had plenty of goodies to play with. Here is the sketch:


And here is my take on the sketch:






And here is a layout I did recently with Jillibean goodies. Some pictures from a recent visit to the duck pond where we were very popular:



We are off to the zoo tomorrow so hopefully we'll make some other friends and get some fun pictures. Hope you're having a great week :)

Mar 15, 2010

Manic Monday

Yup, we are a bit nutty here. Getting ready for a visit from Grandma and Grandpa. So this weekend was spent cleaning, doing laundry, more cleaning. Oh and we did get outside a bit. This is the time of the year that we really appreciate living here. Sun, perfect temps, not too hot during the day and cool enough at night to snuggle under blankets. We are very lucky indeed.

Which brings me to the ScrapTiffany challenge of the week. With Saint Patrick's day on Wednesday, we are focusing on LUCK this week. Here is my take on the challenge--my first ever Bind it All mini.












Go on over to ScrapTiffany and check out all the LUCKY designers and their projects.

Speaking of Saint Patrick's day, Little Miss came home the other day from school and told me she HAS to wear green on Wednesday otherwise a leprechaun would tip toe into her room and pinch her. Can I just say that other 4 1/2 year olds make me insane? As if we don't have enough irrational fears in our house. So I had to explain that leprechauns aren't real, just a story. The verdict is still out on who she believes.

So while we are debunking Leprechauns, we whole heartedly believe in the Easter Bunny lol! Anyone getting ready for Easter already? The kids have been doing lots of painting of ceramic eggs and foam stickers. I decorated an Easter bucket with a bunch of goodies from the Easter Jillibean Soup line called Egg Drop Soup (love those little chicks!):

I had no idea how easy those rolled roses were until I finally gave them a try! And a glue gun makes them even easier!


Oh and I was featured as a Spotlight on the GCD Studios blog the other day! Check it out HERE. Alright, off to clean some more, hope you all have a happy week!

Mar 10, 2010

Made it to Monday and now...

Seriously, I need a weekend from my weekend. Little Man started feeling better by Saturday, so Saturday night I went out to a late night crop. Only to return at 11:30pm to said little guy in our bed. He was not a happy camper and no one slept. Sunday it down poured ALL DAY LONG. Sunday night we had a visit from Little Miss. So there went Monday. Tuesday was her allergist appointment. And here we are at Wednesday.

So the ScrapTiffany challenge on Monday was a color challenge. The challenge was to use yellow and black and  to try not to do bumblebees lol! So in our house when I hear those colors I think...


This was such a fun layout to work on because I got to pull out some old baby photos of Little Miss that show her Steelers addiction began VERY young :) Go on over to ScrapTiffany and see the other beautiful yellow and black projects..

I have some other things I've been working on, but we've had almost no sun in a while..seriously it is incredibly strange, but hopefully I will be back tomorrow with more to share :)

Mar 1, 2010

First Monday of March??

WOW, what in the world happened to February? Why is it that 2-3 days fewer in a month makes it seem like the month is over in a blink of an eye? These are just the things I ponder lol!

More importantly, with all that has been going on (birthdays, sickies, Kindergarten registrations) I missed blogging last week. So I am starting this week off right, with lots to share.

First up is this week's ScrapTiffany challenge. This week the challenge is to use buttons. Not a stretch for me, buttons are one of my go to embellishments. I have them in a myriad of colors, sizes and shapes. For this layout, I used buttons in my 2 favorite ways.

I love replacing O's in the title with big buttons.



And I love button borders.



All the papers are Jillibean Soup. I cut their Sprouts journaling spots in half for a fun scallop border and used their large green buttons for the title. I can't get enough of that yellow polka dot patterned paper. Gonna have to go get some more :)

Go on over to ScrapTiffany and see the other fun button projects. They are seriously all fabulous, run ideas. And if you take the button challenge, email it to Tiffany HERE.

And now, since it is March 1st, I can finally share the projects I have been working on for Serendipity Scrapbooks. The March 2010 I Deserve it All kit is being released today and can I just say how over the top GORGEOUS it is. It feautures a ton of Basic Grey Origins and several perfectly coordinated patterned papers exclusive to and designed by Kristen of Serendipity Scrapbooks. The colors and patterns are so rich and exquisite. The kit also includes a bunch of the Origins embellishments, some Coredinations cardstock, wood buttons, Kaiser rubons, yellow Shimmerz and some other fun goodies. Check the kit out here.

Without further ado, here are the projects I have made so far:













And I said, "what I've made so far..." because I seriously have more to create with! Go on over to the gallery and see what the rest of the DT has done---tons of gorgeous projects.

Well, my space is just about 100% moved into our bedroom and I have to say I am liking my new set up. I bought one of these cubes from Target 


(thanks Jenn---now I am officially addicted to these cubes and they are multiplying in our house!) and put it in our closet to keep all my goodies out of reach from little grabby hands.  

And the last bit of big news is that I registered this one for Kindergarten today!


 We found a charter school that we really like. It is a smaller scale than the public school in our neighborhood with a much better student to teacher ratio and a very strong academic program. We are super excited about it, but today I am a bit tired because I got in line at 4:20am and I WASN'T the first person in line!!!!!! OK, I was 4th, so we had no problems getting her registered, but I stood there for 4 HOURS in the cold and dark. And, yes, I grumbled a bit about how she better appreciate it. But you know what, she is so excited. She just ran in to tell me she stopped what she was doing because she had to give me a hug because I got her into the school. So, all in all, totally worth it :)