A girl and her shoes . . .

You might have seen the paper shoes that I posted on my blog a little while back.  I made some of these shoes for the Lily Bee booth at CHA . . . one pair for each new paper collection:  This and That, Happily Lost, and Picket Fence.  After all, a girl can never have too many pairs of shoes, right?

This & That:

Picket Fence:

I used the fabulous new Shimmerz Coloringz and Shimmeringz to color the red lace and the blue flowers on this one. 

And last but not least, Happily Lost:

Now if only these were my size . . .

Have a great day!!

Catchin' Up . . .

Ahhhhhhh . . . sweet Friday.

Here's a Prima layout I did a while back.   The picture of my girls was taken at Claire's boutique.  For those of you who don't have a Claire's in your city, it's a chain of stores that sells thrinkets geared towards young girls -- costume jewelry, headbands, lip gloss, nail polish, hair clips, little stuffed animals, etc.  My girls LOVE Claire's and whenever we go to the mall they beg to go there.  When my parents are with us, they always give the girls a little spending money and let them pick out a thing or two.  Because Claire's is a big favorite of their's, I really wanted to take pictures of my girls shopping and do a layout.  But I quickly found out that Claires does NOT allow photography in their store, even if I'm only taking pictures of my children and not close-ups of their products.  I've actually been busted twice!  Shame on me.  I guess they are afraid that people might try and copy their products.  I did manage to get a couple pictures of my girls before I was told "no photos please," and I scrapped this page of them.  Hey, I figure it's good advertising for the store, right? 

I altered the Prima felt strip by first painting it with acrylic paint, then I coated it with Doodlebug's Lily White glitter (my "go to" glitter these days).

Have a fabulous weekend!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello everyone!  I decided to lighten and brighten up my blog a bit and go with a subtle background. Even though I loved my previous turquoise damask patterned background, I think a plain background is less distracting and it's easier on the eyes. What do you think? I also widened the margins and added another column so that everything isn't so cluttered. Simple is sometimes better when it comes to blog design, right?  I think it's also about time I update my blog header, so I'll be playing around with that soon. 

For Valentine's Day, I made a little project for the Lily Bee blog.  I used papers from Lily Bee's new This & That line to alter a Valentine candy box.

I made the paper ruffle and painted the edges with Fire Engine Red Shimmerz.  I sprinkled red glitter over the Shimmerz paint for good measure.  I added black Stickles to the beautiful damask pattern on the black and white Lily Bee paper.

Hungry? How about a little peak inside . . .

They look good enough to eat, don't they?  Not so fast!   I made these scrumptious looking chocolates out of Fimo polymer clay (the beads are the giveaway).

But here's the BEST part.  My jester husband saw the finished project and decided to play a little joke.  When I was in the other room, he snuck into my scrap room and found my Fimo clay.  He made his own little piece of "chocolate", complete with a "bite" taken out of it (he used the handle of a fork to make the teeth marks).  Then he replaced one of the the chocolates in my candy box with the one he made.  So imagine my surprise when I opened up the box to photograph it and saw a half eaten chocolate!! 

Funny man, that hubby of mine!   I think I'll keep it this way.

I hope you have a wonderful, chocolate-filled Valentine's Day!!

Mess, Mess, Mess . . . plus the CK Special Issue winner

Mess, mess, mess . . . the last couple of days have been all about cleaning up messes:

1.  My daughter, Danielle, got a frozen chocolate custard cup at school yesterday.  She didn't have time to eat it at lunchtime, so she decided to put it in her backpack and save it for later.  Say whaaaaaat??  I don't think she thought that one through.  You can only imagine the mess it made when the top came off and the chocolate custard spilled all over the inside of her backpack.   And since she had a playdate after school, I didn't find her little mess until the evening, by which time the chocolate had solidified in every nook and cranny.   Eesh.

2.  Our sweet cat had an upset tummy yesterday.  (Hairballs??  I'm not sure.  I'm new to this whole cat thing, so I'd appreciate any words of wisdom from any of you experienced cat mommies).  I'll spare you the gory details, but one of the spots was on my very cluttered desk.  He likes to sleep on top of the printer while I'm working on the computer, and it's right near a stack of papers, stapler, remote control, etc.  Not fun cleaning all that up, noooooooooo.

3  A container of Italian dressing jumped out of the refrigerator and spilled all over the floor.   Salad, anyone?

I'm hoping today is a mess-free day.  And I'm hoping that my sweet cat who's sitting here next to me on top of the computer isn't planning on leaving me any more "presents".

Sorry for the delay in announcing the WINNER of the Creating Keepsake's new special issue,  Scrapbooking Tips &; Tricks, Texture.  Without further ado, the random number generator site chose number 10, which is . . . .drumroll  . . . .

Renee!!  Congrats!  Renee, please email your address.

Turning to scrappy stuff, here are the results of a fun little page swap the Prima Design Team members did a little while back (but I never got around to posting it).  We swapped pictures of ourselves and scrapped each other.  I scrapped pictures of the very talented Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.  Julie has a beautiful and colorful artsy style, so I created this page of her "Julie style":

Here is the fabulous layout that Julie created with pictures of me:

I love it, Julie!   It was so much fun participating in this little swap.  Give it a try with one of your scrappy friends!

Back From CHA

I'm back from CHA and I had a blast!   It was fun to connect with so many wonderful friends and to make some new ones too.  I tell ya, the scrapbooking community is such a warm and wonderful group of people.  I'm thrilled to be part of it!  And of course there were LOTS of fabulous new scrapbooking products to see.  Trends I noticed:  circus themed papers and embellishments (I'm using some of them right now!), mustaches (huh??), more flowers and vintage-themed papers (love it all!), trinkets galore, banners (yep, they're still very in apparently), and lots of altered dress forms.  I saw many "must haves" that I can't wait to get my hands on.  Though I don't think I can see myself adding mustaches to my scrapbook pages.  Unless I can get my hubby to grow a mustache.  Hmmmmmmm.  

Here is one of the layouts I made for the Prima booth.  This is from the new Celebrate line.  I crocheted around the edge and added some Prima lace, then I created a little patchwork background.

As I mentioned above, altered dress forms were very popular at CHA.  I spotted them in several different booths.  Prima had several life-sized dress forms adorned with all the beautiful new papers and flowers.  GORGEOUS!!  I didn't know that altered dress forms were going to be so popular when I made this one for the Prima booth:

I used the new Prima laces to make the skirt.  I ADORE the new Prima flowers, lace and trinkets:

I have a lot more to share in the coming weeks!

It's giveaway time again . . .

Creating Keepsake's newest special issue is out, and it's a definite "must have" . . . Scrapbooking Tips & Tricks, Texture:

This special issue is full of ideas for adding texture to your pages to make them really stand out.   Ideas include faux stitching, layering, things to do with trims, and adding texture to your titles.   Here's a little peak at a layout I did for the magazine.  I made a 3D-shadow box pages using layers of paper popped up with dimensional adhesive:

You can purchase a copy of the issue HERE.  Use coupon code TEXTDT and you can get free shipping on orders of $25 or more (expires on March 31, 2011).

And once again the wonderful people at Creating Keepsakes are allowing me to giveaway a copy of this issue to one blog reader.  If you'd like to throw your hat into the ring, just leave a comment here before Sunday at Midnight, and I'll draw a random name next week.