I knew this would happen

I knew it, I just knew it....

Grrrr...The very thing that I hoped wouldn't happen did. In a previous post I mentioned that after 10 years of demonstrating for Stampin' Up, I decided to just let it go. I was hesitant to do so because of all the cool things I would miss out on, fun new stamps, paper and accsories that come out in the new catalog (now twice a year).

About this time every year Stampin' Up releases their newest goodies every year and I would wait on pins and needles for my copy of the new catalog to arrive. This was the first year in a long time I wouldn't be getting my complimentary catalog, so I decided to peek on Splitcoaststampers to see if any of the demos over there would have leaked anything about the new catalog.

Well, to my surprise it turns out that Stampin' Up! has finally partnered with Sizzix and will now be offering a line of exclusive Sizzix dies! This is so exciting to me and so dissapointing at the same time. I had been suggesting this for years, almost as long as SU has been marketing to scrapbookers. At first they came out with die cut punch outs which were okay and served their purpose, but I could never understand why they didn't come out with the actual dies for sale.

The very thing I was hoping to be able to demonstrate, never showed up in the catalog...until I decided to end my time as a demonstrator. As you can see there are lots of fun designs to choose from. I think I am in trouble once again...I just love this stuff!!! Stay tuned, I believe the new online catalog goes live on August 11th.

Our Room at the Great Wolf Lodge

I surprised the family for Father's Day with a trip to the newly opened Great Wolf Lodge. It was such a fun place to stay. The kids loved the huge indoor water park, but when we were done playing, the kids cabin inside our room was where they wanted to hang out. Inside their cabin were bunk beds and their own tv set with game console. They were in kid heaven!

Seattle Memorabilia Page

No matter where we go on vacation, we tend to come home with lots of memorabilia: ticket stubs, maps, brochures, etc...I always hang on to it all in hopes to add it to the layout, but this time it seemed to become the layout.

Here's what I've done so far... it doesn't feel "done" though. My husband thinks it's too busy, but I kinda like it...any suggestions?

Cousins at the Beach

Here is a page I made with one of my favorite beach photos. It was taken last year when our family went camping at the beach.

Paper: Best Creation Inc. "California" ; Turquoise glitter paper; Title: My Mind's Eye "bohemia: bungalo at the beach" ; ART glitter used on the word 'Beach' ; caption: velum card stock

Memory book pages for Zander's preschool

Once again I signed myself up as the coordinator for the memory book...and once again, I procrastinated until the last second. Here's how my pages turned out. I had to reproduce these 18 times!!!

I made the "Teacher and me" page with Stampin up paper punches. (The pot are Sizzix die cuts). For the center of the flowers I used those little jewels you can get to add bling to your cell phone.

This is the cover for the albums. I cut out the owl and the tree free hand and then added googly eyes. The list has all the names from his class.

Journalism Portfolio

Today I was having one of those mom days where I felt a little left in the dust. Right now at this point in my life, my career is being a mom. I am completely content with this decision on most days, but it seems lately many of my friends are going back to school, getting or finishing their degrees and finding fulfillment in a new career.

After just recently working over time to finish my daughter's school yearbook, I honestly don't know how working moms do it. I have been a total zombie all week trying to catch up on housework, take care of the kids, run errands and fix meals.

At any rate, back to my point...so I was feeling a tad inadequate and went down to the basement to try and locate my design portfolio in hopes that seeing what I used to do would somehow make me feel better. Well, I didn't find the design portfolio, but I did find my journalism portfolio. Here is a page I did of my most memorable interview ever...with Heather Locklear!

Holy Eyebrows Batman!...clearly I hadn't yet discovered eyebrow waxing yet. LOL!!! So here's the scoop...Heather Locklear, Timothy Busfield, Chloris Leachman and Micheal Beck were in town filming a made for TV movie called "Fade to Black" (this was before her Melrose Place days). I piped up and volunteered myself to interview for this story...as a journalism major this was about as exciting an opportunity as I would get, so I jumped at the chance. Heather was "nice" or should I say polite. She didn't want to be photographed really, but then agreed to let our photographer photograph her from a distance. Fortunately, I was friends with the photographer who used her zoom and got a tight shot anyway!!! I could tell by her non verbals that Heather Locklear wanted the interview to be short and sweet, so I tried to accommodate.

Later that same afternoon, my editor got to interview Timothy Busfield (from "Revenge of the Nerds" and "30-Somthing") and I got to sit in on the interview. Unlike Heather Locklear, Timothy Busfield was so cool and extremely friendly. He sat down with us and just kind of hung out for a while. It was a fun day for sure.

These layouts are pretty basic and just contain clips from the articles I wrote.

White water rafting pages

So here are my rafting pages...




It's always a toss up for me...use fewer photos on the page and have more space to embellish, or use lots of photos and use minimal embellishments. Sometimes I get tired of seeing layouts with just one photo...On one hand, I think it looks nice, it's just not practical. If I were to do one photo layouts on all my pages, it would take me three lifetimes to get everything done...plus that's a lot of pages!!!

Paper: Karen Foster (ripple); Embellishments: Jolee's; Diecut letters (zipeCuts by AccuCut: Recess 1" Font); solid cardstock: Stampin' Up!

Remembering the Flood of 96

Last week, after digging through some old photos, I was actually able to spend some time scrapbooking. I know, hard to believe, but I did get quite a few pages done.

Now these two pages may not be artfully composed or designed using the latest trends in scrapbooking, but they do tell a simple story of an event that most Oregonians can remember...the flood of 96. I felt it was more important to highlight the photos and tell the story of the flood than to come up with great page designs. Plus...did I mention these photos were taken in 1996...um that's like 12 years ago...so I'm just happy to have these pages done!

One day while out collecting sand bags for her back yard, my mom and I took a drive and photographed some of the areas in Portland that were effected by the flooding.

I used a blue velum overlay to convey the feeling of water on my title.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but the top left is of the Willamette River (taken from the east bank) of the sea wall all boarded up. Top right is of stores down town all boarded up and sand bagged. The middle pictures are from the bike path on Marine drive where the Columbia River is just a few feet from the path. The bottom left is an aerial photo of the flooded Willamette Valley and the bottom right is the flooded covered wagons in Oregon City.

Groovy Baby...70's party pages

So first of all, these photos are almost 5 years old...so that's how on top of my scrapbooking I am! I'm glad I waited to do these pages though...how perfect is the Mellow line of paper from Basic Grey?

Okay...I'm a huge Brady Bunch fan, so I had to include them on the invite!

This is the invite I created for said 70's event!

...Now check out my outfit! Far out man!!! My husband totally freaked out my niece with his afro. I think this year we are going to do a Totally 80's party for our 35th birthday.

Dan's Valentine

Book of Love...
Finding just the right card or gift for my husband can sometimes be tricky. Over the years I have found that special handmade cards can serve as both the card and the gift.

This year I decided to try one of the word albums by Bo-Bunny. Once I figured out how I wanted everything layed out, it was a lot of fun to put together.



Papers used: Foofala (Red, black and Cream), K&Company, Stampin' Up!, SEI(Holly Lane: Mistletoe)
Tab Punch:Stampin Up!
Book Plate: 2 peas in a bucket
Label embelishments: EK Sucsess (Inspirables), Me and my Big Ideas (Husband)
Ink (for distressing edges): Stampin' Up! Cranberry Crisp
Adhesive: 3m spray adhesive
Binder rings: Office Depot
Ribbon and key (not sure)

I got my Scrapbooking Mojo back!

After months of birthdays and holidays...and just being a busy SAHM, I finally pulled out my scrapbooking pages again! The urge to scrapbook had been building up, but I've always put it off because it tends to make a royal mess of my dinning room table (yes, there is a table in my scrapbook room, but that's a subject for another day).

Saturday, while looking for Valentine paper at my local scrapbook store, I came across some glittery paper and embellishments from K & Company that is perfect for the fairy pictures I'd been dying to start on. There really isn't that much in the way of pre-made embellishments with fairies (unless you want Tinkerbell...then there's a ton to choose from). So I bought the paper, layed it out on the table and presto change-0...looky what I made:

There is another flower stem in the photo (by her head) that I should photoshop out, but other than that, I think this turned out cute. The banner under the picture says "the fairest flower."

Here is a close up of the embellishemnts I put together. The stars are from Natalie's old ballet tu-tu and I added the glittery flower stickers by K & Company.

Here is another page I got done...I even managed to write a caption too!!!

This tag is from My Mind's Eye (bonjour collection). I added the glitter to the letters and dressed it up with more flowers. I have 3 more pages in the wings, but I need to go get more background paper.

How to get more mileage from your 12x12 cardstock

Many of you already do this, but it's worth mentioning as scrapbooking paper can sometimes be spendy. I don't do this when using regular cardstock (unless it's a large photo), but if I'm using expensive paper, I like to get the most out of my paper. For the above layouts I used lots of glittery paper which sells for about $1 a sheet (12x12). I tend to mount all my photos on coordinating cardstock, so rather than have all the back go to waste, I cut 1/2" to 1" borders out from the edge of the cardstock and use the inside piece for another photo. Here's what I mean:

Here is the glittery green cardstock cut to fit my 5x7 photo.

If I cut waway 1/2 inch, I can then use the middle to mount a 4x6 photo.

You can't even tell the back is cut out!

Here is a look at how many photos you can mount with one piece of 12x12. I have one 8x10, two 5x7 and two 4x6 photos from just one piece. If I didn't cut out the middle, it would have taken two and a half sheets of cardstock.

Here is the back where you can see the cut outs.

Andrea's Wedding Album

So, it appears I'm on a wedding kick. This is my sister Andrea's album. She got married in 2005. I was 8 months pregnant with Hayden and couldn't sit for very long periods of time, so I put this together kind of fast.

Front cover with Jolee's embellishments (just like my other sister's).

I think it was while I was making this album that it dawned on me to print enlargements for scrapbooking too! (the photos of the pages are taken at a slight angle which makes them look uneven, but in real life they are straight.)

I really like how this photo turned out. I don't remember why I mounted it on black though...I'll blame it on those pregnancy hormones!

I'll blame those flowers on my hormones too. I think I was looking for something to fill the space and not feeling too creative...apparently! At the top are 2 drawing that Natalie made for Andrea. The left one is a bride and groom (stick figure style) and the other is a wedding cake.

All the little flower girls dressed up like little fairies.

Here's my handsome little Zander at 2 and a half years old. The shot of my dad with all the grandkids is so sweet.

This is my favorite photo I took of all the wee ones. Natalie is on the left and Zander is on the right...with my nieces in the middle. Hayden was in my huge belly!

I didn't get too many shots of the ceremony because I was in the wedding as a bridesmaid (looking lovely in my maternity bridesmaid dress!) The reception was held at the Hotel where my sister worked at the time.

Toni's Wedding Album

I have not really created anything lately, but I wanted to post something on my blog. This weekend I picked up my sister to go shopping at Ikea, but beforehand we looked through the wedding album I made for her.

In 2002, my youngest sister Toni got married. Her ceremony was short and sweet and the reception was held at my house. I took all the photos seen in her album...the outdoor shots were taken outside the forest behind our house.

I think this is my favorite shot.

Front cover...Jolee's embelishments sure come in handy!

I traced this dress from a die cut I had and added tulle and flowers.

Here is Natalie as a flower girl...she just turned 7 this year. It's so hard to remember her being this little!

Cutting the cake...in my dining room. One of my neighbors made the cake.

My crazy brother was the best man.