Happy Tuesday!

I had a fantastic time this past weekend at the Scrap Retreat House. It's a new scrap retreat house located in the French Valley area of Riverside, California. It was the grand opening weekend, and Christine and her husband have done everything in the house top notch! The house was beautiful, the scrapbooking tools were plentiful, and the accommodations were GREAT!

The best part of the weekend was the company I shared. We laughed until our sides ached. I didn't get much sleep and I only got two pages done the whole weekend, but I had a great time chatting and sharing stories. Thanks, ladies!!

Here's one of the layouts I made this weekend. I used goodies from the March kit from A Million Memories. I started with a piece of corrugated cardboard, tore it, then painted it with blue and green paint. I "borrowed" some dry wall tape from my husband's tool closet (sshhhhhhhhhhhhh, don't tell him), and I used that as a mask to get the little grid design on the cardboard. I then sprayed over the paint with several colors of Glimmer Mist to add some sparkle. I thought the rough and tumble cardboard would provide a nice contrast to the hand stitching, flowers, pearls and bling . . . a little masculine mixed with feminine . . .


One last thing to share for today . . . Graphic 45 has a great new ning site! Here's the link: Graphic 45. All you Graphic 45 fans can upload your own Graphic 45 projects and chat with other Graphic 45 fans and the Design Team members. Come check it out. We'd love to have you!!

Week of Cards at Graphic 45!

It's the Week of Cards over at the Graphic 45 blog. Pop on over and check out all the BEAUTIFUL cards made by the Design Team and some very talented Graphic 45 fans! Here are a couple of cards that I made:




I used Coffee Shimmerz on the black patterned paper to give it an antique look, and I used Gold Glimmer Blingz on the Prima flower to give it that old gilded look and make it pop. And speaking of Shimmerz, they just came out with some beautiful new colors! Ooh la la!!

And now I must run and continue packing for the scrap retreat I'm going to this weekend. I've never been good at packing for crops because I always like to have everything at my fingertips when I scrap, and therefore I end up bringing tons of stuff. I figure that I'll end up packing everything but the kitchen sink (but only because I know they'll have a kitchen sink there).

Enjoy the rest of your week!!!

Holy Guacamole!!

I think I just pulled a muscle . . . or a gasket . . . or something! I found out that I made the Graphic 45 Design Team! I knew that they were going to announce the new team members today, so I popped on over to the Graphic 45 blog (for like the 30th time today!) and I saw my name on the list!

I LOVE Graphic 45 papers, and I'm thrilled and extremely honored to be on the team! I'm sharing this honor with some VERY talented ladies (both the existing and the new G45 team members). Here are the rest of the newest Graphic 45 DT members:

Candy Rosenberg
Nancy Burke
Natasha Pryma
Sasha Holloway
Susan Lui

Thanks for letting me share the good news!

Playing with Shimmerz

I'm having a ball playing with the beautiful, sparkly Shimmerz paints! The wheels are turning in my head with different ideas about how I can use these wonderful paints on different things. Here's a layout I just finished. I couldn't resist making another clothes line with the cute little dresses cut from the Graphic 45 "Playtimes Past" paper collection.


I painted the little dresses with Shimmerz paints (Celery, December Sky and Royal Red) to give them a little sparkle. Here's a close-up:


I'm also thrilled to share a pub toot! I started submitting my work at the end of last year, and the first of my layouts that was picked up for publication has come out in print. It's on the page 72 of the March/April issue of Memory Makers:


It was exciting to see my layout in print for the first time. I'll have some other layouts in the magazines in the upcoming months too.

Lastly, here are a couple sneak peaks of the layout class I'll be teaching at Millie Papercrafts scrapbooking store on Sunday, March 22nd. If you're in the neighborhood . . .



That's all for today! Thanks for stopping by!!!!