Dots and Stripes

I’ve been playing with Echo Park’s Dots and Stripes line this month for Right at Home Scrapbooking.  The Metropolitan collection is packed with great versatile prints in gray, black, teal, red, navy, and green and is perfect for scrapping my little dude. 

Here are a few peeks at today’s pages:

Meltdown-detail

Toothy Grin detail1

Pop on over to the Right at Home blog to see them in their entirety!

And there is still time to be inspired by this month’s sketch!

RAH July sketch

H2O-Obsession-small

Back from CHA

CHA always leaves me feeling like I need a vacation from vacation but that was especially true this time around.  I got to meet some of the most awesome, fun chicks and spend four days in the crazy heat wave temps of Chicago while we drank, saw the latest scrap products, drank, laughed… and did I mention the drinking??

drink

Meanwhile, back at the Pink Paislee booth I got fawned over and generally completely embarrassed by the attention I got for one of the projects I designed for them as a 2011 Guest Design Team member.  I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and that those projects up in the booth were really MY work.  Thanks to Pink Paislee (and their ROCKING booth chicas!) for making me feel like a supahstah. 

framePhoto courtesy of scrapbookupdate.com

My “wish list” from this show is pretty dang long but here is a quick rundown of my top five six picks (because I just couldn’t narrow down to five!)

1. Everything from Lily Bee, but especially Memorandum.  Lily Bee is back and better than ever with some fun new collections with trendy colors and KILLER tiny alpha sticker sheets that have *8* colors of alphas on them.  This line looks super versatile to me.

lily bee

2. Studio Calico Classic Calico.  I am a fan of Studio Calicos sophisticated but fun prints but this collection really pushes me over the edge for being neutrals done right.  I will need multiples of these paper and tons of the alphas, stickers, and the FabRips too!SC

3. October Afternoon Farmhouse.  This theme seemed to be a popular one for 2011.  I love October Afternoon’s take on it for walking the line between great country (but not TOO country) A-sides and their signature more subdued B-sides.  OA almost always makes my list!

OA

4. My Mind’s Eye Lost and Found 2. I am still hoarding my papers from the first Lost and Found collection so this pick was a no-brainer for me.  I DIED for the yellow and gray Sunshine sub-line in this collection! Must. Own. All. Of. It.

MME

5. Pink Paislee.  Yeah, ALL of it, of course!  But special shout-0uts to the Mistables, Nantucket, and Wood Shop (just say YES to wood alphas!)  As usual it will take a bank loan to pay for how much PP I will be ordering.  :-/

mistables

nantucket

wood

6. Crate Paper Random. These aren’t even my usual colors and I have NO idea what I will do with that pink but I have to have it.  It is fresh and unique and that is hard to come by in scrapbooking products. 

random

And there you have it!  Trust me, I saw about eleventy billion other things that will be joining my stash but these are the first to jump into my shopping cart.

Naturally I had a blast at the show and hanging out with my peeps but I am VERY happy to be home and have July pretty much behind me.  It was a rough month for me, with all the pre-show preparations and what felt like ALL of my assignments due at the same time so I am looking forward to a somewhat more laid back August.  And getting back to blogging because I have missed all your sunshiny “faces”!

Greetings From Chicago!

I am a terrible blogger! I have abandoned you all and somehow July has just flown by. I have been a busy little bee, though, and I can't wait to get you all up to speed.

But first I have to survive the Summer CHA show here in Chicago! I sure am going to have fun this week amidst piles of new scrapbooking products. I already have some favorites but there is nothing like seeing things in person... which is what I will be doing tomorrow.

Have you been checking out the sneaks online? What are you interested in seeing? I'll report back my findings this week. But first things first... party time with the A Cherry on Top girls!

Time to Hit the Books

Duh, the SCRAPbooks! 

Oh, I AM punny this morning, aren’t I!?

Today’s horrible pun is brought to you by the Oxford collection by Basic Grey, which I worked with this month for A Cherry on Top.  Oxford is sharp in that prep school kind of way, but has an infusion of whimsy like the Drama Club got its hands on it! This collection reminds me of a 1950s yearbook with moustaches drawn on all the professors. 

Here’s a look at what I created with Oxford.  For the whole shebang head to my article at ACOT!

Apple of His Eye

Sleep Cheeks

You Da Man

Happy 4th!

We’ve been out of town for the long weekend… visiting family and celebrating the 4th with friends.  I hope everyone out there in blogland has been having a fun holiday (for the Americans!) or restful weekend.  Ours was definitely fun, but not restful!  I feel like I need another weekend just for cleaning up the mess and catching up on sleep.

I have about a zillion parade and fireworks photos on my camera right now but I am going to leave you with crazycakes watching the parade:

Independence Owen

And my delicious berry trifle for dessert tonight (banner is made of mostly October Afternoon Rocket Age):

Trifle2Trifle1

Cheers, everyone!!