Summer Romance Projects

It is HOT!!! Boiling, nasty, scorching 100+ degree hot here in central California. And so needless to say, I am hiding inside. So that allows for some time to spend fiddling with paper. I recently got my hands on the gorgeous and romantic Botanicals Cricut Lite cartridge from Walmart and just love how gorgeous the intricate silhouettes are. Immediately inspired I set out cutting and came up with the following:

I used Gold shimmer and Black Recollections card stock and cut out the Snail image at 4" for a journaling spot. It will probably make a cameo in one of my upcoming projects. The bottom two pieces are a birthday card for my Aunt. The envelope is a standard brown A6 size envelope. I then cut the Vine9 image from Gold and brown card stock in order to fit the height of the envelope and attached it with my ATG gun so that the piece becomes the flap and is lifted to access the card inside. The Card was cut from Basic Grey Capella papers and the Flower4 Image on the front was cut from black and powder blue card stock at approximately 3 1/2". The double sided paper of the car is burgundy inside so I signed it with a gold gel pen and attached the creme colored ribbon like a bookmark using my ATG gun. She liked it.

The other project I have been working on was inspired by a project on the Prima webcasts that was taught by Julie Fey Fan Balzer. Rather than using prima though, I decided to use some more of the Basic Grey Capella papers. And here's what we got:

Basically it is a 12" x 12" piece of black card stock that is folded horizontally and vertically at 4" and 8" to create 9 - 4" x 4" squares. The corner squares are folded diagonally towards the center and the two squares in the center of the edges are folded into a triangle that goes from the center of the square to the two corners. It's probably easier to follow the picture than my description. The patterned papers where cut down 1/4" to allow the black card stock to peek out (3 3/4" x 3 3/4"). One unfolded center edge square has a piece of pattered paper that is 8" long in order to create the flap that secures the box closed. In the Prima project, there was a mini album in the center and the box folded up around it. I haven't decided what to put in the center but it's probably going to be something REALLY good. Like a winning lotto ticket to myself.

In life news, the student is now teaching the masters and my parents have decided to get on the faux farm bandwagon. When I say faux farm I mean having all the charms of a farm (animals, some produce, open space) with minimal work and hardly any of the dependence. We're animal lovers and so we get a real kick out of calling chickens by their first names and chatting with goats about how they slept. Pathetic really but I love my life. Anyways, their faux farm is 3 x the size of mine and has a pond. So after closing escrow two weeks ago we all went over, did some cleaning up and passed congratulations all around. Here is my mom in front of her new faux farm pond:

Stay cool (literally and figuratively)!

Rainbow Bright!

Even though Summer is having some sort of identity crisis here in California, I'm still thirsty for bright colors all around. So lately I've been working some color into my makeup, projects and garden.  I have a lazy girls garden with plenty of perennials and drought resistant plants. Some of my favorites are lavender and lantanas. The best thing about lantanas is that butterflies LOVE them and, just like a female power singer, you can't keep them down. So there has been an abundance of flowers all around while I pick my nose.

My sister and I made appointments at MAC to get our makeup done recently and had a blast with all the crazy colors those girls expertly laid on. My sister got sea blue and champagne eyes and soft pink lips. I got lime green eyes and spiced red lips. Totally out of character for both of us but fun, nonetheless. Behold, the looks:

The one thing I made out with from the makeover was some MAC lustre drops. It looks like a bottle of stickles glitter glue but has a soft pink liquid inside. You squeeze out just a drop and either mix it in with your foundation or apply directly to the tops of your cheeks and right underneath your brows for a gorgeous natural sheen on your skin that looks healthy and refreshed. I've been wearing it every day!

As for working color into my projects I've been having a ball breaking out of my mold on my Aunt and Uncle's wedding gift album. The first set of pages is from their trips to Hawaii. With sunsets, ocean and jungle in mind I created the following 2-page layout:

I used the Life's A Beach Cricut cartridge to cut the bamboo and birds of paradise and inked the edges with red chalk ink. I also incorporated a postcard that I obtained on my own trip to Hawaii.

Now my Aunt and Uncle have the two biggest, cutest orange Garfield cats. These two kitties regularly get haircuts so that they sport a lion's many, leg warmers, and a tufted lion tail. Long story short, it's the cutest thing on the planet. I also managed to get my hands on some of the new Cricut Lite cartridges from my local Walmart and snapped up the Meow cartridge featuring tons of cute kitties. So I had to have them make a cameo somewhere in the album. Hence the following orange cats that have nothing to do with the picture:

The 12 x 12 paper and greet matt are glittered as are the K & Company 3-d flowers.

The last page isn't a far cry from my usual style but I can do what I want! Just kidding. I really wanted to use the Mariposa papers by DCWV and this paper was perfect for this gorgeous picture of my Aunt.

I used some butterfly die cuts from K & Company Blossomwood collection and attached them with pop dots. The dress form is from Webster's Pages Postcards From Paris collection. The light blue pearls are by Prima, and the photo border is a Martha Stewart punch.

There's a few more projects that I will be sharing later and will be using the Cindy Loo cartridge and the Botanicals cartridge. I've been trying my hand a making little boxes lately so stay tuned!

All in the Family

In the past couple weeks since the concert I have been taking it nice and easy in preparation for some doctor visits (nothing serious but I might have some good news coming soon!) and have been trying to complete a couple of projects. My darling Uncle Bill will be getting married this October to a wonderful lady named Ying. She is an amazing chef and overall wonderful person who I am proud and excited to call my Aunt. They definitely don't need any of the typical nonsense wedding gifts and I can't afford to write them any sort of check that I feel they deserve so I decided to make them an album for their wedding and to really let loose. I am trying different styles and techniques that I've never used before. I'm even daring to go simple. They have such cool, eclectic, urban, traveled style that I wanted to really move away from the total glitter explosion that I'm used to.  I will be sharing my progress as soon as I can take some pictures. In the meantime I wanted to catch up on my most recent projects and highlight some techniques I used.

This page is a part of my on-going Disney album and features one of those Disney trips that we saved coins in coffee cans for. We had cashed in bottles and cans, got a coupon motel from the truck stop penny saver, ate packed snacks rather than park food and milked that trip for all it was worth. The one highlight was the splurge on my princess cone hat and my little sister's Daisy Duck hat with a bill that squeaked. Something I wanted to try out was using a simple 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper as a background. I also utilized some DCWV glitter paper to cut out the "Wishes" title with my cricut. This layout is true to my heavily glittered style but I really loved the pops of bright color. The pink tasseled border is by far my favorite piece in the layout and is part of the new gorgeous line of Jolee's Boutique embellishments and borders at Michael's.

This page is actually slightly older as can be told by the papers I used. They are from Webster's Pages and are absolutely beautiful. One thing I love about Webster's Pages is that they are so great to detail cut with a pen knife. For this layout I took two different 12 x 12 designs and used my x-acto knife to cut out the intricate pieces that frame the page and then layered one piece on top of the other using pop dots. I then tucked the Prima butterfly vine behind the top layer and secured it with some glue. I used K & Company Que Serra Serra grand adhesion butterfly stickers to add more dimension and then accented parts of it with Stickles (note the dark spots on the raspberries). The lettering is also from Webster's Pages. The photo matt is a scrap I had with punched corners.

This next page is another example of my Webster's pages hand cut and layering technique. I used a lot of die cut pieces from K & Company Que Sera Sera and a Prima bouquet. I love the Art Deco images of the flappers for this one and the peeks of gilt.  While not scrapping, I have been reading The White Queen by Philippa Gregory. Now I LOVE historical fiction and I LOVED The Other Boleyn Girl (also by Philippa Gregory) but I'm getting sick of every woman in historical fiction having some sort of magic powers, sight, or some other witchy qualities. Philippa Gregory is amazing with making history breathe and pulse but as soon as the heroine starts touting her descendence from a French water goddess, it ventures into tacky land. However, I am so excited that she is taking on the women of the War of the Roses and am looking forward to learning much from her in the upcoming books in this series. Her books are also fairly spicy without being raunchy.  I am only halfway through and am dragging through the magic spell this and that portions. But if that doesn't bore you then this is a worthwhile read. 

Well, until next time!

Ukranian Gospel, Shopping, and a Birthday

Well this was a really busy extended weekend. First and foremost my Dad sang in a reunion concert with all his friends that have been singing Ukrainian Gospel music for about 40 years.  It was really neat to finally meet all these people and to get to know their kids who are not kids at all, they're my age. The concert was beautiful and everyone sounded great. This is a picture of my dad in the orange shirt practicing

Here are some of the singers and their families:

Overall, it was an amazing experience to get in touch with my culture and make a ton of great friends.

Now, being from a Slavic background, it is entirely likely that we'll stay latched onto a bottle for a majority of our natural lives. And I'm not talking baby formula here. My younger sister, who is much more introverted than I am, turned 21 yesterday and we have yet to see if this is going to be the beginning of a downward spiral but so far so good. Per her request, we chowed down on Italian (our Mom's heritage). And after much prodding she agreed to order a token 21st birthday cocktail which she ended up splitting with the whole table. Not a very promising drunk. I got her a bunch of gorgeous Stila and MAC makeup, shoes, a dress, a jacket, and jewelry. She deserves it. She also made out with some Juicy Couture perfume from her boyfriend. And it wouldn't have been a family dinner if the evening didn't involve us causing a scene with our loud blabber, lame jokes with the server (who ordered the check? hardy har!), and failed attempts at constructive criticism all around. Happy Birthday Jenny!

AND I received a challenge: A zip-a-dee-do-da (splash mountain) banner for my Mom's Disney themed desk at work. In the meantime I am continuing my work on my Venice Album:

I used the new elegant cakes cartridge to highlight this photo of me in front of the Rialto bridge in Venice. I attacked the cut pieces with platinum stickles and glimmer misted the layout with some Tattered Angels Coffee Shop glimmer mist. Unfortunately I forgot to block the photo when I sprayed it so I have a speckled face now. I used my ATG gun to adhere the ribbon which I found in the dollar bin at Michael's. I folded the ribbon over and adhered the underside in order to create the pleated effect. The photo matt is from DCWV Happily Ever After matt stack. I feel like I was able to achieve my usual fussy look without all the fussy materials (prima flowers, bling, layers of distressed paper, etc.). Probably due to the intricacy of the Elegant Cakes cartridge shape. Hope to feature more projects on that soon!

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

This made me laugh so hard and went perfectly with my enjoyment of Gone With the Wind that I described in my last post so I had to share. Enjoy!

Mother's Day in Disneyland!

Well I just got back from a family trip to Disneyland for Mother's Day. Because there's no place my mother would rather be than Disneyland. As a family we make the 7 hour drive about 2-4 times a year to the happiest place on earth and never get sick of the place. This time was no exception. From lounging by a pirate ship pool, to the food and wine festival, shopping and eating; it's far more than kiddie rides to us. The main purpose of our trip was to experience the Disney Mother's Day buffet. As far as buffets go, it's pretty decadent. Piles of crab, shrimp, berries, cheesecake, crepes, cheeses, cured meats, mimosas, piano players, chandeliers ands 15ft floral arrangements at every turn:

We got fairly sick from eating too much and I managed to escape the penance of my gluttony by taking a 3 hour nap.  We were due to travel home the next day, so after we managed to recover a bit we headed out for our last night in the parks.

All in all, it was a wonderful Disney trip. I even managed to learn that Disney has it's own breed of rose.  We saw them in the park and they were absolutely Gorgeous! Take a peek for yourself:

So in honor of my Mother and her love for Disney, we used the Disney rose as inspiration for the present we bought her from the parks:

Isn't it just perfect?! And she loved it!

So my book for the trip has been Gone With the Wind. I am enraptured with Scarlett O'Hara. She absolutely fascinates me. I can't help but love her brand of common sense at the pointlessness of tradition and how she is going to knock the world on its rear with her own success and independence. It will definitely go on my top ten book list, which I will definitely be sharing. One particular snippet from the book just made me laugh outright. It takes place after Scarlett married the mild and pliable Frank Kennedy during the reconstruction period of Atlanta post-Civil war. Scarlett isn't entirely honest with Frank about her ambitions to become financially independent after the Civil war. She plays into his expectation for a sweet, docile, air-headed wife until he puts a ring on it. Then Scarlett immediately begins to take hold of Frank's business interests. Frank is reluctant to think that Scarlett has any sort of mental or physical capability to deal with his business. But Margaret Mitchell writes "Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment at discovering that a woman has a brain." Classic! What a pesky thing is a woman's brain to a man.

National Scrapbook Day Challenges!!!

Okay, so some of you may not know this but today is National Scrapbook Day! That means that today people all over the country are having parties, contests and excuses to create. I decided to participate is a couple of challenges this year and will be posting up pictures of what I create throughout the day.

First up is the scrapbook.com general challenge which was to create a page on why you scrapbook. Here is the link to the challenge: Scrapbook.com NSD 2010 Challenge
And here is my entry: