Halloween Hanging “Thingy”

How’s that for a technical term?  I am not sure what else to call this so “hanging thingy” stuck!

I had a sudden, wild urge to glitter something the other day and found a wooden “Happy Halloween” cutout at Michaels.  Then I went bananas on it and added paper and all sorts of fun. 


I glittered the wood part with Martha Stewart’s fine glitter and used Pink Paislee Phantom paper behind it.  The bat element and Boo pin are from last year’s Pink Paislee Halloween collection and the gathered tissue around the outer edge is from their Daily Junque line. 

I can’t seem to create anything without at least one accordion flower these days so I hung a double rosette from the larger circle and dangled a Maya Road crystal from the bottom with twine. 

Don’t forget to link up your own Halloween creations at Paper Issues!  There’s still plenty of time to get in the spooky spirit!

Happy Haunting!

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??

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. 

Photo 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.

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!

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!

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.

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.  :-/

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. 

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”!

Bloom Shadowbox Tutorial

It’s time for round two of the May Arts design team submissions and this time I created a shadowbox bursting with ribbon flowers! 

Click here to see the full tutorial!

A Note of Thanks

Last weekend at the NSD crop at ACOT I issued a Fast Scrap Challenge to create a card with the word “note” on it.  I have to admit that although the challenge fit our fun rock star theme I really wanted to just make a thank you card for Rebecca at Pink Paislee and this seemed like a great way to kill two birds with one stone!

I received an awesome prize pack (hello Soiree and Daily Junque!) from Pink Paislee the other day for answering some trivia a few weeks ago at on online chat.  They were more than generous and it really made my week!

So I just “threw together” a little Soiree card as a note of thanks for such a sweet prize:

This is definitely my favorite card right now! I used a quilling tool to create the flowers and Pink Paislee’s awesome printed tissue for the bouquet wrapper. 

I’ll be picking the giveaway winner later tonight so get your comments in!

Happy Tuesday, everyone! 

Hidden Jewels

In an earlier life I was a costume designer. I spent many hours perusing the local fabric stores for luxe prints and thumbing through pattern books for inspiration. Sadly, the economy took its toll on my favorite fabric shop. It was filled with every type of cloth imaginable and had rows upon rows of trims, buttons, notions, and treasures.

I still visit the local "big box" fabric store, however, and there is a distinct benefit to shopping in these types of stores: the crossover of other crafts into the scrapbooking industry and vice versa. Recently, many scrap companies have been branching out into other crafts and hobbies simply for the obvious business strategy of gathering more customers. Makes sense. Look at Making Memories with their Vintage Groove line of jewelry findings, for example.

But scrappers have been doing this for as long as scrapping has existed. It is our very nature to see with "scrap eyes" and find page elements all around us. So when I now visit the fabric store I make a game out of finding non-scrap products to use on my projects. You can really find some hidden treasures if you know where to look!

Here is what I found on my last (short... the baby was not thrilled with the shopping on this day!) trip to the fabric store:

Crocheted doilies near the felt. Use them as is or mist/ink them. You can even use them as masks.

Hemp cord in the jewelry section... good for threading buttons and other fun stuff!

Buttons! You'll find all manner of buttons at a fabric store and you can get just a few. The frames were in the jewelry section and I will put tiny photos or papers in them and then cover them with Diamond Glaze. I like to hang these sorts of things from the binding on mini albums!

The styrofoam balls and pins are for an upcoming project using paper supplies... stay tuned!

Burlap is hot right now. And cheap! Cut it into strips and fray the edges for burlap ribbon/trim or cut blocks for backgrounds. You can mist it, ink it, or even stamp on it.

Basic canvas. I have big ideas for making my own canvas alterables. I have been seeing them everywhere and just *know* I can make my own for a fraction of the price!

And of course you can find eleventy billion different ribbons and trims to use on your projects. I am partial to extremes, apparently: rustic, basic twill... and fancy shmancy upholstery trims.

So, I had some fun, yes? Next time you're in the fabric store looking for cloth take some time to dig through the other aisles and find some hidden jewels. Just don't blame me if you get lost for a few hours. :-)

Mailbox stalking!

I've been following the tracking number of a certain package for a few days now. Tracking numbers are my dirty little secret. I stalk my coveted mail like a kid waiting for Santa. Just one more peek... one more refresh of the screen to see if it is one step closer.

And when this package got here I ripped into it faster than you can say "Pink Paislee warehouse sale". ;-) With a warehouse sale you never quite know what to expect. It is a bit of a gamble to order a box of goodies without knowing exactly what you'll be getting. But Pink Paislee is my absolute favorite manufacturer and they have not created a single thing that I don't like so I figured this was about as safe a gamble as I could come by.

I was NOT disappointed to discover ALL of this!


And I had already taken three sheets of paper out to use when I took this photo! So let's see... that's: 20 sheets of patterned paper, two canvas albums, 7 sheets of alpha stickers, 3 sets of chipboard alphas, 3 6x6 paper pads, 2 tubes of glitter, 2 artisan tapes, 2 packs of artisan letters, 3 flip notes, a pack of brads, a sheet of cork buttons, a pack of stamps, a pack of rub-ons, and a set of canvas tags.

You clearly need your own box of goodies and the price is amazing for all of this! I think there are still a couple of days left to order. Check it out!!

LOOT!

It is probably a little wrong of me to begin my CHA/Chicago blogging with the free stuff I got but we all know that's what you want to see anyway! ;-)

There is no doubt that one of the awesome things about going to the CHA shows is the make and takes and freebies. I'm not one to look a gift horse (or embellishment) in the mouth so I made sure to leave plenty of room in my suitcase for this. Good thing I did!!

Here's the majority of the loot I came home with:

We R Memory Keepers water bottle


Signed book!

Tattered Angels misted mini album

October Afternoon

Mists and paint

My class from Melissa Frances (with binders from WRMK, Ranger Mini Misters, and Zip Dry)

Maya Road bingo chips, chipboard, canvas banner, and acrylic

Echo Park paper

Fancy Pants Designs Christmas ornament

Making Memories vintage groove necklace and tote bag

Jillibean Soup T-shirt

Scotch adhesives

Zutter Distrezz-It-All for $15 at the end of the show!!


And of course my favorite, Pink Paislee!
I was stoked to get to do this make and take necklace when ACOT ordered the new Parisian Anthology collection. I heart my cherry girls for letting me play!!

And I may have picked up a few other goodies along the way that could become RAKS soon so stay tuned! Next up: posts on the fantastic CT gals' shenanigans and what the family got up to in Chi-town!

What a Weekend!

So last weekend was the Extreme Scrapbooking Event (ESE) hosted by The Button Farm in Manchester, NH. They weren't kidding when they said extreme! Picture one hundred women in one room scrapping fantastic mini album kits for two days straight. I was originally a little nervous about shelling out so much dough for one weekend without seeing the projects first, but it was SO worth it! Angela designs the most amazing, detailed kits and everything was very well organized. I highly recommend ESE for some fun and fab albums!

Here is the first one we did... I will be keeping it for myself!

More photos to come as I add pictures to the albums.