1000 Words

Yay! I love the month of September. I love my birthday, the weather, just everything! I always think of September as the real start of the year, I guess because of my birthday, I’m not sure. (Did I mention my birthday? LOL Maybe I should see how many times I can use that word in this post, hmmm?) Speaking of which, why is it that some people see their birthday as a negative? I LOVE mine! It means I’ve been alive for another year, and it presents all kinds of opportunities to learn more and do more and be more. What’s not to love about that? I know that sometimes people focus on the number, but for me, it’s all about options and choices. Here’s to a fresh start!

Speaking of fresh starts, sometime in August, I guess I signed up for an online scrapbooking class with Shimelle.com. I have no recollection of doing so, but I guess I did. LOL Yet another fine moment of insanity, I guess. And just when I was relaxing into a mode of reading and doing other things. ha! The class is called “Learn Something New Every day” and it requires an album page a day. I was pondering this a bit earlier, and trying to figure out how I was going to do this, when it occurred to me (you know I can be slow sometimes), that I could do a digital album, perhaps. Hmmmm. After all, I DID take Adobe Illustrator, and I have all these new Graphic Design skills, right? I’ll make at least some of them digital, I think. I don’t know if I’ll share them here or not, I guess it depends on the day and what I learned and whether I want to share it with the world or not. Sorry. Sometimes, things are just for me. I do have this vague recollection about being curious about the class, and looking into it and thinking it was a good idea, but I wonder when I signed up. LOL! Whatever. It will be great. She says you can just do your journaling each day and catch up when you can, so perhaps I’ll do that on the days when I just can’t get to creating.

About that creating. We had a sad moment this past weekend, followed by intense relief. My iMac started acting strangely. Like it was possessed! It wouldn’t go to sleep. Then, it decided that it liked being asleep and would not wake up. Then when I did a hard reboot (which you NEVER have to do with a mac) it would give a gray screen. Well, Steven’s iphone lost a button, (apparently a known problem, so they replaced the phone immediately), so we had to go to the Apple store. While there, we mentioned my problem and they said “bring it in, now. right away.” So we went back home, packed it up, and brought it in. Turns out my hard drive failed. But you know what? It’s all good. (This is the intense relief part!) Steven, being the brilliant husband that he is (I’m serious!), bought me the 3 year warranty. I’m getting a new hard drive and all it cost us was the gas to bring the iMac to the Apple store! Go me. Not only that, they are putting a LARGER hard drive into it (it used to be 320 gb and now will be 500!), AND, when we get it home, we connect it to the network, and my Apple Time Capsule (thank you, brilliant husband!), and say “restore from Time Capsule” and my new hard drive will magically look exactly like my old hard drive, except this one will work. LOL I don’t think you could ever get me to go back to a PC. I’m definitely a Mac. There was a guy wearing an “I’m a Mac” tee shirt at the store, I told Steven I want one. Seriously.

I guess that’s about it. That’s more than I’ve blogged in a month, huh? Speaking of months, it’s September, and my birthday is Friday. Oh, sorry.

Make it a great day!

It’s been forever since I finished the India Wedding album for Megan and Sean. You might not even remember this….

My friend Mary Ann’s daughter got married in India to the most wonderful guy, in August of 2007. I offered to scrapbook the photos for Mary Ann. Well, it turned into a very large album, and she’s decided to give it to Megan and Sean next month for their anniversary party. I took photos, but they really are not as lovely as the actual pages.

I learned a lot while making this album. Our weddings are boring. LOL Plain white, with an accent color. And one day. What’s up with that? The Hindu weddings last DAYS! The bride takes DAYS to get ready, and the colors. Well, the colors. Wow. SO many bright, brilliant wonderful colors. You’ll see. I’ll start posting a few here and a few there. I can’t possibly post all of them at once, there are 60 or so! But today, I’m going to post just a couple today. These are from the 7 steps ceremony. One photo is of the poem. I hand calligraphied it, as a special page. I really love all of the pages in this album, but this one had a lot of meaning as I was working with all of the photos and figuring out what went where as far as colors.

Here’s another one. These are really in no particular order, unfortunately. As I’m writing this and working with these photos again, I’m thinking I need to figure out how to create photo albums here on my new blog. LOL I have no clue. That would certainly make this sharing much easier.

Stay tuned. I’ll figure that out and share more soon!

Not much new going on, the weather is nice, work is really *really* busy. (Did I mention that work is busy?)

Anyhow, for something scrapbook-related, I was scanning some blogs this morning and came across a great giveaway and a beautiful new paper line. Here is a link to the giveaway.

The company is Marks Paper Company. I’ve never seen their stuff before but it is truly yummy! Since I’m on tight spending probation and not allowing myself to buy anything new, I’d be delighted to win this giveaway, which is for the entire paper line! Yes… how cool would that be?

Anyhow, I guess you all can sign up to win too, on the link that I posted in the second paragraph.

-Take care and have a lovely weekend.

My friend Martha always finds the coolest stuff. I’m not sure how she finds it, probably from different groups she’s in. Anyhow, this time, she’s outdone herself. I could spend days on this little dazzler just cruising around and playing with all the pretty colors.

You have to go here and take a look: Color Scheme Designer. Just last night, I was thinking about color schemes for something. I wish I could remember what it was, because this site would make it possible to figure out exactly what I want for colors! For now, I guess I’ll just bookmark it and hope I remember what I was thinking of.

She also found this site. How cool is that? You upload an image and a color palette is suggested for you. Imagine if you had a focal painting for a room and wanted to be sure the room looked great. You could use this tool! I love it! I’ll be bookmarking this for sure.

Last night was my monthly Stampin’ Up card making club. We made three really cute cards. I need to scan them this weekend so you can see. I was the hostess this month, so I’ll be getting some free products soon. Yay! I am waiting for Maureen to figure out the party total so I know what I can get. I know that I am for sure getting the Stampin’ Up table top cutter. I’ve been denying that for too long, and I certainly do enough cutting to justify it. Yay! It’s going to be like Christmas, I can’t wait.

I am hard at work on one of my final projects for this quarter’s Graphic Design class. I’ll be so glad when this particular class is over. I guess I need more feedback than an instructor who decides to let the class take its own course. hmmmm.

For next quarter, I’m actually taking TWO classes, but they should both be much easier, even together, than this quarter’s single class. I’m taking a web design class, as well as a class in Adobe Illustrator, finally. I am also waitlisted for a single day class on Adobe InDesign. One saturday. We’ll see if I get in. I’m number 3 on the waitlist. (chewing nails, I really want to be in it!)

-Take care and make it a great day!

My friend Lori m does the most beautiful diecut work. She is currently running a giveaway for a darling diecut overlay. You have to be one of the first 5 people to post, so rush on over!

Lori m’s blog

Enjoy!

-Take care and HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY!

It seems like more and more lately, I've been making items for friends. This time, it was a gift for a co-worker of Steven who has just had his first child, a little girl, named Isabella. When I went on the 4 day retreat at the end of February, I took along the stuff to make this album. I love how it came out. There isn't a lot of complication in it, but there IS a lot of traditional pink! It was really fun to make. I did a lot of sewing on a lot of the pages, and I created a few handmade pieces including a page overlay made with my BossKut Gazelle, and a crocheted flower.

On the i is for Isabella page, I used some gorgeous Martha Stewart glitter. Isn't it wonderful? SO fine and so shiny. I used a Stampin' Up self-adhesive letter that I covered with the glitter and I cut the rest of the letters with my BossKut Gazelle.

I also used some Stampin' Up Fleurettes in the album… okay, I used a lot of them. They were very cute! Like this page, for instance, isn't it cute? The lace at the top of the page is from the February SEI kit. I was SO enamored with this beautiful paper when the kit arrived! I just love it. I'm using it extremely sparingly… I'm not sure why, because, as we all know, they'll make more. LOL But, I'm trying to use what I have, and this is a good step toward that. The cardstock in this album is all Stampin' Up, by the way. I really like their new textured cardstock a lot, and it cuts beautifully on the Gazelle.

I added a hand crocheted flower that I made to a page as well. Once I saw the Stampin' Up ones, I remembered how much I loved to crochet as a kid, and I decided to see if I could make one. I think it came out great!

One last page I'll talk about is this one. I created this overlay specifically for Isabella's album, using my BossKut Gazelle. I ended up cutting several for friends at the crop and also turned it in for a Wedding swap on the Yahoo! Wishblade group that I am on. I put centers in the flowers with Stickles in Diamond that I later colored with a green glitter pen. I also filled in the flowers with a Copic marker as well as the leaves and stems. I really love how this page turned out! If you look in the album, where all of the pages are, you can go to another page and see where I used the flower and stem cutout from this page on a different page, in a different way. Love it!

In case you are wondering, there is a kit by Stampin' Up called "Rock a Bye". It comes in either girl or boy. You get mostly enough paper, cardstock, stickers, and other embellishments to make an album similar to this one. I added a few more papers and other embellishments to round it all out. Overall, I love how it all came together. If you want to see more of it, you can look in the photo album, as all of the pages are there! Don't even remind me that it has a lot of PINK, I am aware, and I have to say, it was fun and relaxing to work with my favorite color for 20 pages! I had a blast!

-Take care and enjoy the lovely weekend!

Although I love being in the mountains for 4 days, it is always good to come home. I don’t quite want to admit that I’m happy to be home, but I will admit that I’m already sitting on my own bed, curled up with my laptop, catching up on things.

I got a *LOT* done this weekend. Holy cow. I made a baby boy album for a shower gift (shhhh, it’s not for a couple of months!). I also made a beautiful baby girl album for another friend whose baby was just born a week or so ago. I’ll post photos of that one soon, I haven’t taken them yet. Additionally, I created a mini album of Christmas portraits for Mary Ann and another little cute album for her that I’ll send along just for fun. I used my BossKut Gazelle a LOT, and we all had fun with the new sewing machine, which totally ROCKED! It was a great time. Many wine coolers, lots of good friends, a lot of chocolate, and some rain thrown in.

As usual, I wandered around a couple of times taking photos. Last year there was a red adirondack chair on the deck. This year it was here instead. I thought this looked like such a nice setting. Ann and I sat out in this area last night in the dark, watching the clouds and the stars. It was a bit cool, but very beautiful and interesting. There was a storm coming in and the tops of the trees were very gusty, but not so much down where we were. Very cool.

Here’s a photo I took yesterday. This is the view off the deck. I’m not sure if you can see it in this shot, but counted 5 ranges of hills back. So cool. It is such a beautiful view, and the air is so clear. It’s always amazing to think that when we are there we are less than an hour away from home. I would love to live up there. Truly.

Here’s almost the same view from today. I went ahead and made it black and white, because it just has more life to it this way. It looks SO cold, doesn’t it? It really wasn’t that cold, honest.

I am involved in a swap on one of my Yahoo! groups. It is a wedding swap, and I had created this beautiful overlay for the baby album. I decided to change it up a bit to make it into a wedding overlay. Of course, the bride who is getting this had a purple wedding, so it isn’t in traditional white… but I think it is still lovely. Once it was cut, we decorated it with stickles and filled it in glossy accents. It was beautiful!

October is a big month in our house. There’s a lot that happens in October and we seem to spend the entire month celebrating or preparing to celebrate one thing or another.

First, we have Josh’s birthday. It is October 30th. Only, we won’t be celebrating Josh’s birthday this year because we’ve decided that we are too young to be the parents of a 15 year old son. Josh always loves to remind us for months about how his birthday is coming soon (he starts in July) and how he wants to go to La Fondue in Saratoga for dinner. Maybe he’s realizing how expensive that dinner is and he’s giving us time to save up. I’m not sure. Whatever the reason, October is Josh’s birthday month. Fifteen. sigh. It seems like only yesterday that… oh wait, wrong post.

Second is Halloween! Most people just take their kids trick or treating and call Halloween done. Um, we don’t appear to be "most people." It all started with some silly tombstones from Target and a package of fake spider webs. Now it is a full blown huge decorating scheme that rivals Christmas. Well almost. Our front yard will be completely decorated in a huge Halloween theme. Several years ago (way sooner than expected), Josh decided that he no longer wanted to go out trick or treating and would rather hand out candy. So, that’s his job on Halloween!

Anyhow, this year, I decided I wanted to capture our decorating. (Oh yes, Steven, if you are reading this, dear one, we need to get the decorations out!) So, I designed this little mini album. Isn’t it darling? I love how it turned out. I designed and cut out the wordbook on my new BossKut Gazelle. I cut out both the chipboard and the papers. I used some self-adhesive jewels to decorate and also some ribbon. I don’t know if I’m done yet, I might add a bit more embellishing, but I wanted to share. I used my Bind-it-all (do I use that on every project?) and a fabulous 3/8 inch wire that Martha sent me. (I love Itty Bitty Scrap Shack!) I really think this is a darling book. If Josh was still interested in dressing in a costume, I would totally be using this to show off his costume. Since he doesn’t, I have decided that this is the year that I’m going to finally scrapbook our decorations. This wordbook is not huge, it’s about 4 inches tall, so it’s just the right size to put just a few photos into.

If you love this book and want one, you’ll need to have a cutter that cuts chipboard, and you’ll need to join the Yahoo! Wishblade group to obtain a copy of the file, as this is one of my design files for October.

Alternatively, if you want one and you do not have a cutter, if you leave me a comment, I will pick a winner from all of the comments that are left between now and Sunday, October 5th at 5pm. I will randomly select the winner. What you will win is just the chipboard album, bound with the bind-it-all. You will need to add your own papers and embellishments.

-Take care and good luck!

I came across this game in a group I'm on and thought I would share it here. The game you want to pick is "Scrapbook Paige" at this site.

It reminds me of a treasure hunt. I thought it was fun and relaxing. A nice way to waste a few minutes, if you know what I mean…   Enjoy!

-Take care and make time to have some fun.

I am probably the only one. I'm sure it's just me. Up until last weekend? I loathed rub-ons. Not the look of them, they are beautiful. I loathed the fact that every time I spent good money on rub-ons, I would waste it because I would mess up the rub-on every single time. Sometimes, it would happen as I was starting, others in the middle, other times right after I triumphantly lifted the backing up, thinking "Yes! I did it this time!" only to accidentally mess it up at the last possible second. Anyhow, I have always said "I don't do rub-ons." whenever anyone suggests that I add some to a layout. Well, all that has CHANGED!!!!!

My friend Maureen sells Stampin' Up. You can visit her site here. Everyone has always told me to have Maureen help me with my rub-on allergy, so last Saturday, I did. 
The results were amazing! I don't have the page I did scanned or photographed yet (it's part of the India album–soon! honest, soon!), but here is the tool that I learned to use, which changed my life. LOL 

I love it! It has two ends, one is small and one is large. Basically, this is like an over-sized ball point pen with no ink. You don't have to worry about rubbing hard or rubbing gently, you just roll this all over the rub-on and it comes off perfectly. Gotta love a tool that works just like it needs to!

I won't be around much today. I'll be up in San Francisco. I'll try to post tomorrow with some photos from the sail. Wish me luck! The bay is going to be pretty cold!

-Take care and make it a great day!