Banner Class

Remember all of that glitter happiness from the last post? Well, I’ve been hard at work creating some fun, new Halloween classes. The first one is ready to go and was posted on The Scrapbook Oasis blog last night. This is going to be a super fun class filled with TONS of glitter. hee hee What a great, simple way to start of decorating for the holiday. Here are some sneak peaks:

Man, I love those skeletons! So cute. Be sure to sign up quickly as I’m sure this one will sell out fast. You can sign up online here.

I’m in Glitter Heaven!

Man, I love this time of year. School is about to start again. The seasons are about to change. Cooler weather is coming. But the best part is that I get to break out all of my glitter bottles!

Yes, it’s that time of year again… Time for me to start creating holiday projects loaded with lots of glittery goodness. I absolutely adore Halloween. It’s so much more to me than just a day to dress up. It’s the symbol of the changing of the seasons… the start of the season of gratefulness… the time when we start to remember all of the other people in our life and our world. I can’t wait for it to get here.

But as a designer, NOW is the time to start creating yummy projects for the holidays. I have so many things running through my head that I’m not sure exactly what will actually get done. Here’s a peak at what I’ve started:

This is a yummy Halloween banner that is almost finished. I will also be creating a mixed media haunted house. I have some great needle felting ideas, but I’m just not sure that I will be able to get them all done this year. We’ll see. For now, I’m off to finish the banner.

Here’s to Good Friends…

Here we are… marking the end of Happy Hour. LOL! What a great night we had over at Hyland’s Island (Jackie Hyland’s home). What happens on the islands, stays on the island. Ha! It was a wonderful evening of food, giggles and “vintage” white elephant gifts. SO fun.

Oh… and do they not have the cutest pup ever??

Been working on my Silver Bella swaps. Almost have my Fat Book pages done. I have the front designed and have been sewing my little heart out. Still working on the design for the back, but I have some ideas.

Also been super busy at work. Gotta a fun class coming up… 12 layouts and 6 cards in one class. More info on the class will be posted on the store blog this week. I’ll also post it here. Save the date – September 11th…

“An Intellectual Tortoise Racing with Your Bullet Train…”

To the smartest man, best father, and most incredible companion in the whole world… Happy, happy birthday, my love. I could not imagine my life without you in it.

It has finally slowed down a bit…

It seems like my life has been running out of control for a while now. I can’t seem to get the time I need to do the things that I love. But, it’s getting better.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was blessed with the opportunity to teach a fun new technique class at The Scrapbook Oasis. It was so much fun to share my new love of needle felting with a group of outgoing ladies. I was amazed at the fun and beautiful designs that each student came up with.

In other news, CHA Summer was a lot of fun – definitely a lot smaller than the winter show, but I kind of liked the more intimate atmosphere. However, Florida in the summer SUCKS! Holy cow! It was so stinkin’ hot! Thank goodness we were in the air conditioned convention center the majority of the time.

I’ve been working on some new class ideas. I should have a layout class coming up soon – 12 layouts in one class. Should be lots of fun. Also been working on a needle felted embellishments class. Still working out the details on that one, but keep your eyes out on the Oasis’s blog. I’m hoping that the layout class will happen here in a just a few weeks.

Also been working on my Silver Bella swaps. Holy monkey, I sure did sign up for a lot of swaps. Ha! I love it though. It’s nice to have some directed projects going. I have 5 of my feltie ornaments mostly completed. I finished the Owl Banner swap and will be mailing that out this week. Still percolating ideas for the rest of the swaps, but I definitely need to get on some of that embroidery stuff because it takes me a long time to do that stuff.

One last update… The “itty bitty kitty,” as we call her, is not so itty bitty anymore. She’s still a raging pain in the neck – chewing on everything in sight – but as adorable as can be. Gotta love that face and those much too alert golden eyes…

Birthday Wishes

Sending out birthday love to my brother, Dan, today. Hope your day is filled with much fun and laughter! Love you.

Hero Arts has Giveaways

Be sure the check out the Hero Arts blog this week. They are having giveaways and launching a new website all week long. AND… next week they will be starting their CHA sneak peaks!

I love this time before CHA when all of my favorite companies are releasing sneak peaks of their wares. It’s like Christmas to me!

Update

I’ve been a busy crafter lately. It seems that I have my hands in a lot of different pies… just the way this big girl likes it. LOL!

First, I went up to Berkeley to have a little “Me” time and take a class at a great little store, Castle in the Air. What a cute little store – filled to the brim with lovely little, hard to find goodies. I could have spent a small fortune in this store! Thank goodness I was so busy with my class that I didn’t have too much time to shop. The bad news… they have an online store! Ugh… there goes my pocket book! Anyway, here’s a little glimpse at the lovely I made in class:

Isn’t it just the cutest thing ever? I still have not decided what to do with it, but, rest assured, it will find a special place in my home – far from all pet’s jaws!

Speaking of pet jaws… Check this out:

I posted a photo of this on my Facebook page and someone commented that it looked like… well, doggy yuckies! LOL! It’s not, I assure you. This is what is left of the witches head that I had started this week. Check out the eyes! It’s kind of funny. Really… at this point, all I can do is laugh. Trixie decided that the witch was really ugly and she needed to be chewed to pieces. LOL! Oh well…

So, I thought I would share my latest “Sunday Morning Journal Notes” with you…

These are from the Sunday morning services. This has been so incredibly therapeutic for me, I can’t even tell you. I know that it looks like I’m not paying attention to the message that is being taught, but really it has been helpful for me. Not only do I hear the message in church better, but it has helped me to spend some time thinking about the message after as well. Love that! Of course, the weekly devotion time is not going quite as well…

This is from a couple of weeks ago. For some reason, I just can’t seem to get myself into daily devotion time. I will keep trying, though, because I know that is key in my spiritual life.

Lastly… but certainly not least(ly)… SILVER BELLA! Sign ups have started for all of the swaps! Not only am I hosting 2 incredible swaps, but I have signed up for another 5! That’s 7 swaps. The good news is that I have TONS of time to work on these. And since I was called for jury duty tomorrow (UGH!!), looks like I’ll have some time to get started on them.

Anyway, two of the swaps involve embroidery. I have done some embroidery over the years, but I most certainly would not call myself a master of it. So, I decided to work on a little piece to get myself familiar with some of the stitches again. Here’s what I have so far:

I cannot tell you how much fun I have had with this! I have always loved stitching, but I guess I forget how much I really enjoy it. I’m looking forward to the two swaps involving stitching. I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes…

Shopping Adventures

Last week, my dear friend Cheryl and I headed up to LA for some fun shopping adventures in the Garment District. I’ve never really been there… maybe once a very, very long time ago. What a very dangerous place for a fabric/trim lover to be, let me tell you! I’ve never seen so many fabric stores in once place… EVER!

Well, we stumbled onto two absolute treasures. Of course, I don’t remember the name of either place, but I’ll definitely be visiting there again! The first store was filled from floor to ceiling with every kind of trim you would ever want to get your hands on! Holy smokes! I could have spent an entire week in this place and still not seen everything they had to offer!

The second place was a fabric store that had nothing but “remnants” and they sold by the pound. Of course, their idea of what a remnant is and what my idea of a remnant are two totally different things. They had boxes upon boxes filled with yards of fabric. A lot of them were duds, but if you were willing to dig a little, there were some treasures to be found. I found some great pieces of linen for embroidery, velvet, tapestry, upholstery… amazing stuff!

Well, I only have photos of the trims, but it’s worth drooling over…

And today, I received a package from Pink Paislee. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this! Last week, they posted on their blog that they were having a warehouse sale. However, because they share their warehouse space with another company, they are not allowed to let the public in. So, they put together boxes of goodies to ship out. According to the post, it was to be $150 worth of product for $45 plus shipping.

Now, I’ve been to a few warehouse sales in my time. They are always filled with SUPER old product that you really don’t want to buy, but feel obligated to because you made the trip down to the warehouse. (You know you’re giggling because you’ve done it, too… hee hee) So, I was a little leery about buying a box of product sight unseen. Well, let me tell you, it was worth every single penny! Check this out:

I’ve added it up… $159.28 worth of product! I would have had to pay $172.42 (with tax) to get all of this from my LSS. Here’s what I got:

Over 50 Papers
1 Topsiders chipboard
2 Ribbon Cards
7 Alpha Stickers
8 Rub On Packs
1 Enchanting Sticker Book
2 Boxes Chipboard Shapes (from Winter CHA new lines)
2 Packs Epoxy Brads (From Winter CHA new lines)
2 Clear Stamp Sets

AMAZING… plus I got one sheet of paper from a new line to be released at CHA Summer.

So cool!

One last thing… Tattered Angels, the makers of Glimmer Mist, will be changing their packaging. You can read all about it on their blog here. But I wanted to let you all know that Glimmer Mist is the same great product with a Fabulous NEW Look!

A New Class

I am so excited to announce that I will be teaching a class at The Scrapbook Oasis. As you know, I’ve been playing around with needle felting now for about a month. When I first learned how to do this, I immediately had a vision for a mixed media scrapbook filled with fun techniques.

This class is an amazing mix of technique, photos, color and texture. I had so much fun making it and I know that everyone who signs up for the class will as well. We’ll be working with needle felting, watercolors, paint, crayons, canvas, fabric and many more fun supplies. Everything you need to make this book will be supplied in class, with the exception of your basic tools. It’s a screaming deal.

AND… Karen has made sign ups so easy. You can now sign up for the class online! How fantastic is that? Check that out at thescrapbookoasis.com/shop. Look under the Upcoming Classes section. So cool! Here’s a sneak peak of the class:

I’d also like to thank Donna Downey for her book Fabric Scrapbooking book. The cover for this album was made based on one of the projects in her book. It’s fantastic!