Inspired

I've taken a bit of a long break from scrapbooking. There are a number of reasons I guess - paramount being that I wanted time to do other things and it feels like my days are so short lately. I took the remainder of the summer off to try to get in shape - swimming, working out, eating more healthy. That pretty much lasted until bikini season was over. Then I got back into my video games and that pretty much took over all my free time for a while. I've been enjoying more time just hanging out with my husband, and reading books again. Plus, I bought a new computer with Windows Vista and all the programs I used to use for scrapbooking didn't work and I was too lazy to find a solution.

So it was beginning to look like my scrapbooking supplies were going to start accumulating dust permanently. Then a week ago, I was inspired - by someone completely unexpected - my neice.

My neice is nine years old, and while she's always been a go-getter, my interaction with her has mostly been her asking for things from me. Lately though, she's become very giving - with her friends and those less fortunate. She recently heard about St. Jude's Hospital for Children and wanted to do her part to help those children with "chancer". So she gathered up her group of friends and they've been making jewelry and other items to sell to other children at school to raise funds. She even went right up to her principal to ask permission to set up a table at lunchtime with signs.

When she told me about this, I thought it would be a great idea to make some christmas cards with her that she could sell at school as well. And so - last weekend, I brought all my supplies out and we spent a good two days chugging them out. And they were a hit! All 30 cards sold out in just 2 days and she managed to raise $80 altogether. I'm so proud of her.

Anyway - here are some pics of a few of the cards we made:

Saving Time for Me

I made this album for my sister a while back to help her meet her New Year's resolution - which was to spend more time on herself. I don't think she's been following it very well, but anyway - I hope that she looks at it occasionally and realizes that she needs to take a step back sometimes and just enjoy life.

Happy Birthday Sis

So my sister's birthday passed recently, and I was able to take a day off work to spend a long weekend with her & my neice & nephew.

We had a lot of fun, and I took a lot of incriminating photos =P

Anyway - just thought I'd share some of my favorites.

Card I made for my sis:



Yuri's classic puppy face:





Justin & Yuri unfortunately are going through that awkward smile stage where they don't know quite how to act in front of the camera



After 2 years of refusing to wear pigtails or braids or put her hair up in any sort of way, today, she finally succumbed to my pleas. And she's so cute!





My sister's friend Sheila's son Aidan. He's got such an adorable smile.



My sis's friend Ella's son Jack, I love his hair!



Ella, my sis, and Sheila getting ready to drink it up. It was cute, they made her wear a lei all night.



Me & Justin - I'm getting fatter...need to diet.



Birthday cake:

And the drinking begins!

NYCScraps 1-in-48 Class Assignment 1

Okay, I finally got the first assignment finished for Hillary's 1-in-48 class - only 9 days late...yeah, I have no excuse. Life interrupts. Anyway, this first assignment dealt with manipulating text to form different shapes.

This layout is of my neice dressing up to be flower girl on my wedding day. I used the phrase "Princess for a Day" repeatedly to shape the crown accent above the title & embellished with some rhinestones. I've been wanting to use some bling on my layouts & this was the perfect opportunity.

I die-cut the "Yuri" using Witched font on my Silhouette and then sprinkled silver glitter over it. I then stamped some flourishes in 3 different ink colors to make the background more interesting.

Incidentally - the reason why this layout took so long to do - I'd originally started out intending to make my own custom rubons for the title & journaling since I don't have a wide format paper & I wanted to stick to just one sheet of background paper. That didn't work out as I posted earlier, so - I had to figure out how to split up the layout so I could at least print the title on smaller paper.

I think I'm happy with the result, although this layout is simpler than I typically choose to do. I do think that I made the most of the actual point of the assignment, which was to manipulate text to form shapes.

Ingredients:
Paper: Bohemia by My Mind's Eye
Stamps: Flourishes by Autumn Leaves
Rhinestones: Jewels by Doodlebug Design
Fonts: Imprint MT Shadow (Princess for a day), ChocolateBoxDecorated (Princess), Witched (Yuri)

Photography by Henry Chan (reprinted with his permission)

Sidetracked

I had originally planned to get a ton of scrapbooking done this weekend, but...I got sidetracked, decided to spend more quality time with the hubby instead...playing video games =P

Anyway - for one of the assignments for Hillary's 1-in-48 class, I'd wanted to create my own custom rub-on to get text placed on my 12x12 layout without a printer that can print on that size. I'd recently read an article in Scrapbooks, Etc. about how to do it using a transparency, some Matte spray protectant and an inkjet printer. So, I went out an got my supplies and tried it out.

What I discovered was that this technique doesn't work for me for some reason. The ink never dries, and the article had clearly said you should wait for the ink to dry. Also, the matte protectant cause the ink to bead. Maybe I have the wrong type of ink for this, I don't know. In the end, I tried doing the transfer with the beaded, still wet ink, and don't like the results at all. So that's a no go. Now I've got to figure out how I'm going to get this text on there without being able to print directly on the cardstock.

Incidentally, on my way home from Michael's to pick up the supplies, I locked myself out of the car and had to pay an exhorbitant $110 to have the locksmith unlock it (that's the discounted price for paying all in cash!!). So - this will undoubtedly be the most expensive layout I will ever make, and unfortunately, the technique doesn't even work! What a bummer.




Also, thought I'd share a couple things that were really inspiring me this Sunday. This picture is from the sunset yesterday - the golden light just hit our window at the perfect angle for some dramatic lighting, and the sky was such a deep blue. I love sunsets like this!



This paper I picked up at Michael's the other day from K&Co. I don't know how I'm going to use it yet, but I just love the details - each section is great for little inspirations.

Disposable Methods for Acrylic Paints

This week Scrapbook Lifestyle is featuring paint techniques and Johanna Peterson had some great tips on ways to paint using disposable supplies in yesterday's episode:

• Using the plastic casing on items that you buy like tape runners to hold your paint
• Also, using the acetate wrapping on rubons, stickers or other embellishments for paint
• Using the cheap watercolor brushes you can buy at the dollar store & throwing them away afterward

I just thought I'd add to this tip. I use disposable palettes you can get at your local art supply store from Canson - they're coated sheets that are resistant to acrylic and oil paints, and when you're done, you can just tear the top sheet off and throw it away (or part of the sheet). This pad was about $5 for 50 sheets or so.

Digital Methods for Paper Scrappers Online Class

Hillary's teaching another 1-in-48 class, and I finally signed up for one. I've been avoiding them even though I've heard great things about them because there's no way I can actually create a layout in 48 hrs consistently for 2 weeks.

So why now? Because this particular one is going to be focusing on digital techniques for paper scrapping, particularly focusing on using Photoshop. I've got a number of books that I've purchased on using photoshop that I've yet to touch, so I'm hoping that this will jump start me.

I'm pretty psyched too since I've had the good fortune to get to know Hillary in person and she's so amazing & full of great ideas & energy, so I'm sure that the class will be great.

There's still time to sign up at NYCScraps.com in case anyone else is interested as well.

The Postman Brought Me A Gift

I was just thinking today that it's about time I received my Scrapbooks Etc. zine and what do you know, here it is. I love this magazine - it's perfectly aligned with my own scrapbooking style. My favorite designers?

• Leah Fung - her layouts are always so crisp and clean, but with big emphasis on great photos and her mini projects are so inspiring
• Erin Roe - she always does things that are so new & unique, lots of graphic design type stuff and I love that she puts such meaningful journaling on her layouts (Check out her layout on page 71 - so cool!) - also one of my absolute favorites of her layouts is the valentines one on page 129 of the Feb 2006 issue - I'd love to post a pic of it, but I guess that's not allowed right?
• Mellette Berezoski - her layouts show great ways to focus on kids - fun and funky, bright colors or sweet pastels, and I have to say, her daughter is so pretty! I am so jealous =P

Speaking of Erin Roe - I love love love her work, but it doesn't look like she has a blog or anything, or at least, I haven't been able to find it. Does anyone have a link that I don't know of?

Do you have any magazines that you can't live without? Favorite designers? Care to enlighten me?

In the Local News

A shooting happened Tuesday night literally in the condo complex NEXT DOOR to my apartment. Craziness. We were walking home and wondering what all the choppers and police cars were doing out. One person we passed by on the street was saying to a friend on the phone "There are lots of people still walking on the street. I figure if someone starts shooting, I'll just run into the Subway." and we were thinking...are we still in Manhattan?

Anyway - here's a link to the news article and also a video clip of the coverage:
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_157193957.html

On a lighter note, here are some songs that I'm in love with right now. I've had them on repeat all day & also while I'm scrapping. Note that the music videos are actually related to each other - it helps to understand the story if you watch both:

Fly to the Sky - Pi:



Fly to the Sky - Like a Man:

Finishing that layout

I've started this layout 3 times and then taken it apart because I wasn't happy with what it looked like. For some reason, I feel uninspired every time I look at it / these pictures, so I took a break for a while, and this page kit has been sitting on my desk for over a year now. Well, I finally decided to tackle it tonight. So here is my third and last try.

I'm still not super happy with it, but I'm sick of it, and sometimes you just need to cross things off the list. There are pieces of it that I love - like the title block, the patterned paper, the ribbon & embellishments, but I just don't like everything in total...

Let me know what you think & if you have any suggestions.

Thanks!

Thoughts on Publishing

So I've been debating lately whether I want to continue trying to get on design teams and getting published. I really like the fact that I enjoy scrapbooking, and I'd for things to get to the point where it seems more like a job to me than a hobby. I've already got a full-time job that takes up pretty much the entire work week, and I like reserving my weekends for family time, chores, and video games, so I don't think I want to put too much extra pressure on that. But there's this side of me that is competitive, and after watching my friends and others in the industry, it makes me want to get published too.

Maybe I'll try revisiting this in a year or two when I plan to be working from home more and I can devote a little more time to this. For now, I might just stick with the one design team and just keeping it light-hearted and fun.

Anyone have thoughts / advice for me?

Oriental Trading Company Discount

My company owns part of OTC, so we get a 40% discount on all orders. I'm going to be placing an order pretty soon, but if anyone lives near New Brunswick and wants to order with me, please let me know - you can contact me here.

Also - I'd be happy to place an order for someone to have it directly shipped to their house as long as the order total is around $100 (so I don't have to place a bunch of small orders).

Young Martha

This is from then newsletter we received for attending the Martha Stewart Show - did you know that she used to be a model in her younger days? She was actually very pretty in a classic Audrey Hepburn-esque way. She also spent about 5 years as a trader on Wall Street.

June Design Team Submission

Finally got my assignment for this month finished. This month the kit focused on the Cocktail Dress line of patterned papers from Luxe. Since the papers were such bright & fun patterns, I thought they'd be perfect to try with some black / white background layouts. I've been wanting to try a layout like this for some time, but since I'm not really much of a doodler I've been a bit hesitant.



This layout I did of my newest nephew, SunJae. He's the most adorable little thing, and we had a lot of fun that weekend watching him crawl around and get distracted by the various things on the floor, or even just the floor itself. I used my Silhouette again for the title name and then wrote with my Souffle pen on the Bazzill Great Big Brads for the months. I love Souffle - it's hands down the best opaque white pen for dark surfaces, works on pretty much anything.

For the journaling, I printed onto paper strips using my computer. If you don't know how to do this, print your journaling first on regular white paper to make sure that you've got the sizing and placement correct. Then take the paper piece you want to print on and use removable adhesive to attach the piece to white paper, holding it up to the light to make sure your alignment is correct. Then place the combined paper back into your printer and run it through one more time.

Ingredients
Cocktail Dress Luxe Patterned Paper
Bazzill cardstock
Silhouette (Font: Arial Bold)
Creating Keepsakes Font Rubons
Bazzill Great Big Brads
Quickutz tag die
Prima Flowers
Ribbon
Paper clip





For this layout, I wanted to incorporate a bunch of photos from our "photo shoot" this day, so I used a film negative overlay that I bought from Two Peas by Rhona Fharrer and using photoshop, I made multiple copies, placing them next to each other to create a negative strip. I then resized and placed my photos and printed.

The title is a little hard to read - it says "Good Friends & a Great Camera". Unfortunately, the ampersand was too large to place on the left, so I put it on the right instead, so the title doesn't flow as nicely as I would like. I stamped the title using white acrylic paint and unmounted Alphabet stamps from Club Scrap.

I attached some Junkitz Ringz to my main photo mat, and tied some fun ribbons to it to add a bit of interest. Again, I wrote on the Bazzill Great Big Brads to get a subtitle in there.

Ingredients:
Luxe Patterned Paper
Bazzill cardstock
Bazzill Great Big Brads
Club Scrap Unmounted Stamps
Joann Essentials Alphabet Brads
Chipboard
Ribbon
Junkitz Ringz
Rhonna Fharrer Digital Negative Overlay

3 cent prints from York Photo

York Photo is having a promotion through June 11th for up to 100 prints at only 3 cents each. The discount code is YK3PRTS. You can sign up here:

https://www.yorkphoto.com/tafwelcome/p=7221411/t=1180633735134/cobrandOid=1002/otsc=SYE/otsi=TTAF

You also get 20 free prints for signing up for the first time.

Tuesday Update

Sorry I've been so MIA recently. I've been so busy with vacation & then Memorial Day Weekend. Lots of time spent with family. I'm back in civilization, and back to scrapping. I've got some major updates to give, but in the meantime, just wanted to share some of my favorite pictures from my trip to California with my hubby & his family:

Random picture by the Carmel Mission in Monterey Bay - I just really liked the sign & the vines next to it



California's full of the prettiest wildflowers - some of which have weird names like the Sticky Monkey Flower. Not sure what this batch is called, but we took the pictures on the way to look at McWay Cove.





The cove itself was absolutely gorgeous - perfect white sand beach, a running waterfall, and clear aquamarine waters. I really wanted to walk on the sand by the beach, but it's a preserved landmark so look only.



My favorite pictures of the trip were these candids of Rob's dad. He's so funny and wacky - willing to try anything once pretty much. This is him squeezing into the side of a rock to get a picture of us:



This is him trying to squeeze through the locked gate of the Legion of Honor museum in San Fran to get a better look at the Thinker.





Sunset at Carmel Beach:



A random overlook on the coast of California (Route 1) between Big Sur & Monterey (I think - the drive on Route 1 lasted forever, and I dozed in and out, so I wasn't paying too close attention).



This is a really neat picture, although unfortunately, my digital SLR broke for this part of the trip (*cry*) so it's only taken with the point-and-shoot. This is Mirror Lake in Yosemite National Park. That's Rob & his sister sitting on the stone.



Rob & me by Nevada Falls - yes - I hiked - 7 miles too, up 2 waterfalls and back down, and I survived...maybe not in the best condition the next day, but hey - it's definitely a sense of accomplishment. I don't think I'll be trying that again anytime soon though. I was terrified coming back down the side of the falls.



I can't wait to finally get settled back in and start scrapping again. I've got my June design team submission coming up fast, and the elusive Disney album that was started ages ago but never finished, and I've also got to wrap up the album of my neice & nephew for my sister for her birthday in June. One layout at a time....

Hollywood!

Day 1 of vacation was spent walking around Hollywood. This is Tracy's aspiration - to be a producer. Hollywood is honestly a bit cheesy, but it's still fun to walk around and hope to catch a glimpse of someone famous. We didn't see anyone in Hollywood, but ate lunch at the Grand Lux Cafe, where we saw Tony Cox, the elf in Bad Santa at the table behind us.

Some pictures by the Kodak Theatre:







The Grauman Chinese theatre - really I'm wondering what it was that made this theatre so famous, especially compared to the very run-down Grauman Egyptian theatre just down the street.



I thought this caption written by Humphrey Bogart was especially amusing:



A very far off view of the Hollywood sign from the Kodak Theatre - we spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to get closer up for a picture. There aren't any signs or other directions posted anywhere about how to get there. After searching on the internet a bit, we found out that you basically have to drive up through a residential area and then follow a small trail up around the hills to get within about 100 yds of the sign. I guess the residents in the area decided they didn't want too many tourists making that trek all the time.



We didn't feel like following the trail all the way to the top - so we settled for this picture - you can see the famous LA smog graying out the horizon.



This would have been a nice picture of us - but unfortunately, the camera was focused on the background, so we're a bit blurry.



We think the small cluster of white buildings in the background might actually be Tracy's apartment building, so of course, we had to take a picture =)



Today is Tracy's graduation from the USC film school, so we'll be going to that and the reception afterward. Then we're off tomorrow to Monterey. Have a happy Friday everyone!