Vacation Scrapping

Yes I am on vacation in sunny California! Sacramento to be exact. Came out for scrapbook expo to see these girls:


Every year we meet up at Kary's house for Scrapbook Expo for shopping and scrapping and fun times are had by all. I've managed to do a few lo's while here, mostly with this months Tallyscrappers Kit. Add a few papers and you can do tons of stuff with the kit. I also used the kit to do my assignments for A Scrappy Design. She makes adorable journaling tags and buttons and diecuts so go check her out.








Yesterday Kary and I had some adult fun times at the pumpkin patch that is right around the corner from her house:





So today Kary, her boys and I are off to see our friend Leeann up by Calistoga and Napa so I should have some fun pics on Sunday or Monday. And hopefully some more lo's as well. In the meantime here is a lo I did last night of a pic of Kary and I from my trip in February.



Have a great weekend!

Scrappiness Ahead

I'm a bad blogger. I THINK about blogging but then I go and do something else. This computer is so freeeeeaaaaakkkkkking slow that it takes forever just to get thru my emails and message boards and then the last thing I want to do is blog. But alas, the situation will be taken care of in the next month or so because a new computer is in my near future! Aja always says that I hide my lo's from her and since she is all the way in Kentucky now I thought I'd just post all the ones I've done in the past couple of weeks.

I found these pics of when my sister and I went up to KC to World's of Fun with my KC friends about a year after I had moved away. Makes me want to go ride a roller coaster BAD!

Here is my friend Kary & I in Old Sac Town last February. Can't wait to see her again in October! This was for the last Design Experiment Challenge Blog.

I love this picture of my sister. We were in Chicago on vacation during spring break in March 1997. This was almost a year before she passed away. This is also my lo for lo tag over @ Scrapperie that is still going on. Shhhh....

This is for the LO tag that is still going on over at Tallyscrappers. It's a lift off one of Michelle Clements fabulous lo's. Oh how I love her style. A good memory to scrap as well.

My Kitty Autumn that passed in April. Oh how I miss her. Leftovers from my July Scrapperie kit.

My friend Christy and I at her house on Christmas night. We are all about the crazy hat pics. Wait until you see 4th of July!

This was for a challenge where I had to use a circle for my lo and friendship was the topic. Love me some Tally girls!

I've been leading the journaling challenges this past month over at Scrapperie and I wanted to do some art journaling about my fears. Putting them down on paper and getting them out of my head can really be helpful to me. It also helps me see how unwarranted they are. I know I'll always do what I need to do to survive now. I also know I won't have to just survive because now I'm in recovery.

Brandy at Tally's challenged me to do an 8 1/2 x 11 lo. NOT my usual size but I do have a few. Also to use black and no flowers. I accidentally got some flowers in there anyway. I wasn't thinking that pattern was flowers until I was all done. lol Hambly LOVES to lay at my feet when I scrap and always has to be touching one of them. He also gets stepped on a lot because I forget he is there.

This is the current Gutter Girlz challenge. And where was I with this large purple penis on my head you say? Well, I was at the Texas Tally Rally playing Dick Head Hoopla of course! Go see the other girls lo's at Gutter Girlz Challenge Blog


So that's it for now. I've got a couple of others from this weekend but they need to be edited still. I'm off to clean the scrap table and get to work. Hope you all have a great Sunday!

Handprints on my heart.

Last weekend I went to see Wicked, the broadway musical. It was on tour in Tulsa. It was FABULOUS! I'd read the book and had always wondered how on earth did they turn this into a musical? The book is so political, and odd to me. But the musical was divine. I don't recommend, however, having a huge bowl of carby Pad Thai before going to watch the matinee. I was fighting the urge for an afternoon nap during the first half. This was in no way a side affect of the musical but of my overidulgence! So back to the musical. Both leads voices were awesome and the songs so so so cute. I definitely see some scrappy lo's inspired by some song lyrics. One of those songs inparticular is the lyrics from "For Good".

See Aja moved away last weekend. She was actually waiting to leave until after we saw Wicked. I was so sad to hear the news of her departure as we had gotten really close and I loved our late night scrap & chat sessions. I loved discussing our challenges in daily life and our spirituality and spiritual challenges, her sharing her insight from being a Mormon and me from being in AA and how our respective God consciousness helped us overcome or deal with our issues.

You know it's crazy but this simple hobby of scrapping has brought me some of the dearest friends of my life. And all of them so different than me, yet the same in some ways. And the people that say you can't make lasting friends with people online are wrong as well but that is a different blog post.

So while we were watching the show and they were singing "For Good", Aja must have been thinking the same as me, that this song reminded me of our friendship (& the friendship I've have with all my scrappy girls), because she gently layed her head on my shoulder. The words were so true:

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I've been changed for good

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...



So good luck to Aja and her family on the next part of their journey & know that you will be missed & never forgotten!

Inspiring Stories

Recently I spent some time in Austin, Texas for a little scrappy retreat with some fellow Tallyscrappers. I met 28 other fabulous women. I got to know some better than others and am still learning lots about most! When I clicked on today's Gutter Girlz post I was excited to learn more about Staci Compher. She sat at the table behind me & was a total doll but I had NO IDEA what an amazing journey she has been thru. I knew she was well published & that her lo's rawked (so it's only natural that she did too!) but when I read today's interview I was even more amazed. It also just gave me a totally different glimpse into my own mother for Staci's story & my mom's had some similiar situations happen. But you won't read about it here. You can, however, read about it HERE @ the Gutter Girlz Blog.

I've got pics to edit from my trip today & hope to be back with some for you all to see tomorrow.
Ciao!

Rosette Tutorial

So I did this lo a few months ago and have had a lot of people ask how I made my flowers so I've created a tutorial. It's also up at Tallyscrappers on the blog as well.



First you'll need some kind of circle cutter, glue, scissors, and some type of tool to wrap the paper around like a quilling tool or I used my round BG file.


First you'll cut a circle out of your desired paper


Next you'll take your scissors and cut the circle into a spiral


You'll cut the center out so that you have a base to glue the flower onto later.


Now taking your quilling tool and start from the center and roll the paper onto the tool. It's not going to be flat. The top is going to flare out a bit. Also if you want the edges to be rough you'll need to distress before you wrap.


Once wrapped and you determine the size of the flower (tighter wrap means smaller flower. Loser wrap means bigger flower) you'll want to add a dot of glue to the end so the size stays.


Next you'll want to add a generous amount of glue to the center circle you cut out and then add the bottom of the flower to the glue.


And now your flower is finished. You can make any size flower and you can make your base any size as well as in the examples below.



Another way to mix it up is to use a deckle edge scissors or cutter (I used a Martha Stewart deckle edge cutter) or you can even tear your circle into the spiral.


Please excuse my bad photos. No good light in this house at night when I took these. If you decide to try these then I'd love to see them so leave me a link to your finished lo so I can give you some love! Hope to see your creations soon and feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Get in the GUTTER!

It's all about ME! That's the title prompt for today's Gutter Girlz Challenge. The song is You're So Vain by Carly Simon and the tech. is foil. Kinda fitting for me huh? LOL Ok so I admit, sometimes (ok most of the time) I'm pretty self-involved. But who isn't these days? And if I'm not then who is going to worry or take care of me? No one so I best be taking care of myself. You know AA teaches us to think about ourselves less often and to be of service to others but to also learn to take care of ourselves and stop waiting for someone else to save us and to also surrender to God & let Him run the controls. It can be quite confusing at times as I'm sure you can see! lol


If you like ads then head over toh Scrapperie and check out todays Ad Challenge. Scrapperies has been having daily challenges now with some fun inspiration to get your creative juices flowing. This is my example & the girls belong to my cousin and her new husband. It was so cute to see them all dressed up and climbing all over the banister.


Last weeks Ad challenge at Scrapperie.


I'm off to Texas next week and the 4th is upon us. Lots to do, lots to do!

Wreck This Journal Part 1

Usually we spend a lot of time trying to make our art pretty or pleasing to the eye or sending the right message or whatever, so when I saw @starshyne on Twitter talking about her next group project and it was Wrecking This Journal by Keri Smith I just knew I had to play along. Even more so when I discovered several TallyScrapper sisters were interested also. This started a couple of weeks ago but this is my first post. I really need to get busy and do more wrecking for sure. And my idea of wrecking I realize needs to go a bit farther. I was thinking that in the end I would want to keep the book but I think that is not going with the theme of the project so be prepared to see lots more photos of me DESTROYING this book! hehe How often do you get creative license to destroy something? So this is the beginning. Can't wait to see what the end will look like. If you'd like to join it's not to late. Just click on the link up there, sign up, grab a book and start wrecking. It's fun times I swear.
So my fist page I wrecked was sticking my pencil through this page:


I love the look of coffee stains but after my first pouring I wasn't impressed. Of course I thought it needed MORE! I was much happier with the second or third pouring/splatters. Much more visually pleasing. I need to use coffee stains more that's for sure.




Ok this page got me started by the lines but I'm thinking I'm suppose to WRECK this journal, not treat it nicely in any way SO this is just stage one. There will be more tearing. LOTS more tearing!


You spin me round round baby round round like a record baby round round round round.


It is going to take a LOT of fruit to cover these 2 pages in fruit stickers! Her's what we have so far though.


I'm having fun with this page. I've been wanting to do this thing with some canvases for a while now so there will definately be more spilling on this page. I wanted to show you what the first couple of coats looked like though.


I'm thinking now that I stopped that maybe I should have kept going on this continous line until the page was covered. Oh well. There will be much more wrecking before this is all said and done!

I used some hand scrapping tools to scratch up the surface of this page. Thank you Tonic & Tim Holtz! I used my distressor and then my piercing tool.

This page wanted my name written several different ways.


It took a nice dip in the pool on a hot summer day last Thursday. I see more water sports in her future.


Then we layed out and worked on our tan while getting a little makeup in the form of doodling. We were still a bit wet though and really needed to dry first.


The book and me are off to the pool again today. Check back often to see new pics.