Sunday, October 17, 2010

Where you'd rather be...

"You'll never leave where you are until you decide where you'd rather be..."

Hmmmm, to be honest I am not sure where I want to be. What I do know is where I did NOT wanted to be. I was no longer thriving and was merely existing and that is absolutely contrary to how I have purposed to live my life. I had become comfortable and was afraid of what change might bring. I am still afraid, but I am ready. Ready to face the next faze of life with my arms wide open to ALL (and I mean all) that life has in store. And so begins the journey of self discovery, reconstruction and healing and the adventure of figuring out where I will end up. Wish me luck!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Yay me!

I am so excited to share some good news with you! I am proud to be designing for Art Inspired Studios! AIS is a wonderful scrapbooking store located in the bay area. The store is packed full of fresh, new product. If you live in the area and want to be inspired I would encourage you to visit this lovely little store.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Punky Sprouts and Echo Park

I am so excited to share with you my very first project as a Punky Sprouts design team member! I used "Punk n' Circumstance" and the "Life is Good" collection from Echo Park which was a park of my August kit for "My Paper Tree House".
I included some of my favorite shots from CHA in this album. I had SO much fun and it is a trip that I don't ever want to forget, so I decided to make a mini with some of my favorite shots.


While making this album I was able to relive all of the fun I had while in Chicago. It made me even more excited about Winter CHA in Los Angeles!!!!!!
Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

A Crayola beauty bomb!


Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with their imagination.

~Robert Fulghum

edit: As I posted this onto my blog the song "Colors", by Kira Willey, started playing on my blog. Kind of trippy!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Big news!


I am excited to announce that I have been asked to join the Punky Sprouts design team! I am beyond thrilled to join this group of talented designer and am looking forward to working with some really fabulous products! There is so much in store in the coming months with Punky Sprouts and I am delighted to be able to be a part of it.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my happy news.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Ginormous post about my week in Chicago!

What a whirlwind trip I had! I spent a week in Chicago working for Punky Sprouts at CHA and had such a great time. I was only able to get into the city for one day, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute! The time I spent at the show was full of crazy, silly adventure and I had the opportunity to deepen friendships with some very special people.This picture is from my very first night in Chicago. We went to dinner at Giordano's, home of the world's most famous stuffed pizza. You should know that pizza is one of my favorite foods in the whole wide world and THIS was the best pizza I have EVER had! We giggled and laughed till we cried throughout the entire meal. I cannot tell you what in the world Sarah and I were laughing at, but we were definitely enjoying ourselves.The look on her face here is absolutely PRICELESS!
Suzy and Arantza, (aka Kiki). These two are trouble, for sure!
These are some pics from the first day of the show.Suzy and I are acting a little silly. What's new, right?I swear she is the one who starts most of the madness! lolThis is me drooling over some of the new October Afternoon releases.
We wrapped up the day with a class taught by Suzy using Bella Blvd. We had more fun than should be allowed and the class was a huge success. Suzy is such a great teacher! She also had some awesome helpers, and I am not just saying that because I was one of them. lol Her best, and by far most popular helper was Norma's husband Damien (pictured below)! He was such a trooper and stepped up to help out in the class and let me tell you, the ladies LOVED it!After the class we to dinner at Gibson's Steakhouse. The food was delicious and the company was even better. There were moments during dinner where we laughed so hard we cried and were literally falling all over each other.

The second day of the show was a little crazy. Shelly, owner of Punky Sprouts, had been rushed to the hospital the evening before during Suzy's class. We knew that she had been feeling very ill all day and that evening was taken to the hospital by ambulance! We were one person down in the booth, but all did our best to fill in for Shelly while she focused on her recovery. These girls were so much fun to hang out with: Sarah de Guzman, Norma Kennedy, Suzy West and Carrie Ferrier. I had such a great time with these very special ladies and know that I have made some life long friends.

Me and Suzy O! She has been an "online" friend for quite some time that I met a few years ago. What a sweet, fun girl she is!Me, Suzy, Laura Funk of Glitz Designs and Stacey McElyea of Shimmerz at the Glitz booth. I LOVED every single one of Glitz's new releases!
Hoopla is a fun birthday line that could be used for either gender using non-traditional "birthday" colors. Love Nest is a soft, romantic collection that I was immediately drawn to.My absolute favorite new release by Glitz was Scarlett. I adore the distressed, vintage inspired images combined with a bold color palette. Swoon...We went back to Gibson's Steakhouse that evening and had another great time. This time the group included Suzy, myself, Andrea Deer, Tina Albertson, Julianna Michaels & Carrie Ferrier. These women are some of the kindest, most genuine people I have ever met and it was a pleasure to be able to spend a bit of time with them.This is a piece of GINORMOUS cake that I believe was bigger than my whole head. It was delicious! Even after we split it up amongst the whole table, we had still barely made a dent in the darn thing! I ended up taking the rest of it back to my hotel and sadly leaving a large portion of it behind when I left Chicago. I wish I had some of that cake now! lol
When I finally made it into the city, I am sad to say that I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked. I was so busy trying to take it all in that I completely neglected my camera. Even if I don't have pictures of everything I did, I still have some very wonderful memories. Here are some shots of some of the highlights.
This is the stunning Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. It is constructed of Georgia pink marble and is one of the largest fountains in the world. The fountain features four sea horses which represent the four states that border Lake Michigan, (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan) while the fountain represents the lake itself. The design of the fountain was based upon the 'Bassin de Latone' at the garden of Versailles. No wonder I thought it was so magnificent. It was a real treat to get to see it at night with it's animated computerized choreography of 820 colored spotlights.This sculpture, located in Millennium Park,is called "Cloud Gate", but is more popularly know as "The Bean". It is pretty stinkin' cool. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high.
The Crown Fountain is another cool attraction in Millennium Park. The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens. As a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where the faces of the mythological beings would open their mouths to allow water to flow out, the images on the towers do the same. It was so fun watching children playing in the water and actually interacting with the art.Some of the beautiful Chicago skyline. The architecture is amazing, but I don't have any detailed photographs, so you are just going to have to believe me. ;-)So those are a few of the highlights. I really loved Chicago and can't wait to go back! I am already looking forward to January and CHA Winter in Los Angeles!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Lots of loveliness going on here!

Hi all! I am so excited to share with you a couple of projects that I made using My Paper Tree House's LOVELY July kit! There is lots of girlie inspiration in this kit, so I was REALLY motivated to scrap some photos of my daughter.

This first one is about what a sensitive soul she truly is. Her feelings are easily hurt and she tends to feel things very deeply, just like her mama. ;-)




Today is actually my (not so) little girl's 12th birthday. I am constantly amazed at what a little lady she is growing up to be. She is kind, polite, generous and I am so proud of my little lady.

I used pop dots under the lady bugs to add more dimension on the page. I love what it adds to the page.
Stay tuned for an upcoming tutorial using the very same fabulous kit later this month!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Palmetto Summer reveal!

Yesterday was reveal day at Citrus Tree Studio for 2 fabulous kits! The first is called"Port Townsend" and is full of Pink Paislee "365 Degrees" goodness.
The second is called "Palmetto Summer" and is the kit that I had the pleasure of working with this month. It too is jam packed with Pink Paislee's "Queen Bee" line and is absolutely drool worthy!
I also got to use a canvas by Canvas Home Basics, our Spotlight Product, with this months kit. These canvases are more of a neutral tone than your typical canvas and have a very organic texture to them.


Here is the project I made with the 8x8 canvas. To begin with, I primed the canvas and painted it with 3 different colors. After that I tore pieces of the patterned paper, inked them, then adhered them to the canvas with gel medium. I added glue to the metal butterfly and the chipboard frame then sprinkled them with glass glitter. Once everything was dry I used some charcoal pencils and oil pastels to add more texture and depth to the canvas. Lastly, I layered some flowers added my photo to the frame and voila'!


This layout is about my not so little, little ones. No, they don't always get along but they really do have each others backs a majority of the time. The journaling reads: "Even though you fight once in awhile, you get along quite well most of the time. I love it when I catch the two of you being kind and helping each other out. It warms my heart and gives me hope for the future."



The color on this top photo is a bit off. For the life of me I couldn't get it right! ugh Anyways, this one was to celebrate my favorite season of the year with some photographs of some of my favorite flowers.



I still have stuff left over from this kit and plan on using up every last bit of it! Thanks for coming by and taking a looksy. :-)

Monday, July 5, 2010

My Utah trip

Hi there! I have been meaning to post this for a bit, but Blogger has been seriously SLOW on uploading photos! grrrrr Anyways, I finally got a few uploaded and wanted to share a bit about my trip.
My mom, sisters, their daughters, me & my kids all packed into one car and drove 13 hours to Utah to visit family. It had been at least 20 years since me and my sisters had been back to Utah, so it was a long over due visit. My mother was raised in Utah for a large portion of her life, and most of her family still lives there. Some of our other relatives from Southern California also made the trip, so we had a bit of a family reunion!
This is a pic of (from l to r) my Aunt Jeanne, Uncle Jimmy and my mom.
This pic pretty much encapsulates much of the visit. We had such a good time and were laughing about something almost constantly!

My son and his cousin Burke hanging out at the skate park.

Peyton (on the right) and her cousins Bailey and Stella.

The beautiful waterfalls at Sundance.


More waterfalls...

Mt. Timpanogas as seen from Sundance.

Bridal Veil Falls


My sisters, their daughters, me and my kids.

Just me and the littles.
Group shot at Bridal Veil bridge.

LOVED downtown Park City!

The kids finishing up on the Alpine Slide at Park City Resort. You have to ride the ski lift to get to the top and slide allllllll the way down!
The girls coming down from the Alpine Coaster, it seemed to be the favorite!

Tanner looking like he is attempting to hitch a ride on the Salt Flats. :-)

I had to see if the Salt Lake REALLY tasted like salt. FYI- it does!!!! lol

The Great Salt Lakes at dusk. ♥

And there you have it, those are some highlights from the trip! I had such a great time and can't wait to go back. I can tell you it won't be another 20 years!!!!

 

blogger templates |