HUH?!

Two weeks?! Two weeks since I blogged? Where did the time go? It's not like I've been sitting on my tush and not doing anything! Let's see ...

• Finished DS' "new" bedroom - paint, new bedding, new curtains and blinds, and a closet build-out. He's thrilled - extra pillows to lounge on and the tv/DVD in there. A teenager's dream; he can hide out whenever he wants to.
  
• Started to clean out the "now" spare room so that it can be transformed into my scrap/craft room.
  
• Got the gutters replaced on the house - good thing, considering the downpour of rain we had yesterday (which, thank you very much, I got stuck in!).
• My brother's birthday came and went - Hi "little" brother! (he he he - he's 6'2" or something and towers over me).
• Found out my Uncle (from Ireland) might be coming to the US in October to receive a civil engineering award. Apparently this award has never been given to anyone outside the US, so it's quite an honor. I'm hoping to catch up with Ron ... keeping my fingers crossed.
• Finalized plans for my girls weekend (this weekend - yay!). It's only a few days, but will be a nice break ... the boys will be away, too, catching a baseball game.

I'm sure there are many other highlights - just none come to me right now LOL.

In my "free" time, I've been scrapping away - I think I've done TEN pages in just under two weeks? Phew!

Kate Teague has a new kit at Two Peas, coming June 2nd, called Sunny Days. The papers have already been released - but the full kit has so many fun items. My "Super Fun in the Sun" page has a few things from the kit, like the rope border, the words, and also the photo corners - yeah, I can be such a tease, huh? LOL The page was also my take on the digital "lift the Pea above you" challenge - it's been great to see how the pages have morphed over the past couple of weeks.

Credits: Sunny Days - Coming June 2, Kate Teague; Best of Vol. 2, also Kate Teague; Page Clipping Masks #1, Vinnie Pearce. Journaling font is My Type of Font.

Over on The Pub message board (also at Two Peas), I played their scraplift challenge, too, and got to 'lift Melanie, the Two Peas community educator. Mel has a really cute Easter page, which I turned around into something for Spring. The photo is one I took of my azaleas, in the front yard. Once again, I turned to a lot of Kate Teague's kits for inspiration here.

Credits: Happy Spring and Playful, both Kate Teague; Tons of Scallops {Template Kit}, Crystal Wilkerson; Back 2 School freebie, Shannon Freeman. Journaling font is Honey Script.

Crystal's newest kit, Sweet Vintage Charm, has some beautiful damask-style papers, postage stamp letters, and frames that have a vintage but updated feel. There's also buttons, stitched elements ... so much to play with. I've created three pages with this kit, it's so versatile. In the first, I really wanted to highlight the photo ... in the second, I decided to do a vintage layout (duh, with a "vintage" kit! LOL) ... and the third combines this new kit with one of Crystal's 365-challenge monthly kits, the February one - see how everything works so well together?

Credits: Sweet Vintage Charm, Crystal Wilkerson; Page Clipping Masks, Set #1, Vinnie Pearce; fonts used are Impact, Al Serenade, and Calibri.

Credits: Photo Vignette, Sande Krieger; Sweet Vintage Charm and Doodled Quote #1 (recolored), Crystal Wilkerson.

Credits: The 365 Challenge {February} Kit, Sweet Vintage Charm, Handwritten {Family} Words, Inked Edges Template #1 (modified) - all Crystal Wilkerson; Playful, Kate Teague. Journaling font is Calibri.

And now for something a little different in the style department ... from the designers at Two Peas, to the designers at Pixel Canvas. Remember I mentioned that Heather is designing for them now (in addition to Get Digi With It)? These pages were both created for the weekly scraplifts (can you tell I like these kinds of challenges?! LOL) - the first for 5/15, and the second for last Friday, 5/22. The first page uses a lot of elements from Heather's Brief Elegance pack, which is full of soft blues and greys.

Credits: Brief Elegance, HeatherT; She's a Doll (embellishment pack), Vinnie Pearce; Press Lines #7 - Laughter, Pais-lee-Press. Journaling font is My Type of Font.

Credits: Page Clipping Masks #1, Distressed Photo Masks #2, Romance Me (add-on), all Vinnie Pearce; Random Spills, Five Angels; Brief Elegance, HeatherT; Happy Day, Natali Designs.

Phew! ROFL Okay, I think I MORE than made up for no posts in a while. I probably won't post again until next week, once I get back from my girls weekend - if I survive! LOL Kidding. Hopefully I'll return home with lots of pics to scrap and stories to tell.

June is cruise month at Making Memories For You - all challenges and games will earn "points" towards a RAK at the end of the month. We'll even be doing on day excursions while in our various ports of call. Sounds like fun ...

Is it the weekend yet?

Nope, just hump day - Wednesday. I guess I'm eager for the weekend to get here 'cause I've got Friday off and that means three days of "fun" to be had. Actually, Friday will be filled with a few appointments in the morning, and then house improvements and construction-type things in the afternoon: I have to finish painting upstairs and get DS moved into the "new" bedroom, and contractors will (hopefully) stop by in the afternoon to install new gutters and downspouts. Actually, the same contractor is stopping by today to give me a quote for new siding and fascia boards - we noticed the siding is lifting from the edges around the side of the house. This wouldn't be such a big deal if the bees and occasional wasp weren't making a new home under the edges! We've sprayed a few times, but the bees, particularly, are pretty insistent on getting under the siding - they pace back 'n' forth trying to find a spot we haven't sprayed.

Can't wait to see how the bedroom looks when I'm done - even got DS some new bedding for the room. We ended up going with a gold/mustard color. It's a KILZ color called Fire Glow; the contrast with the [now] white trim is good, too. I should have taken pics when I started ... oh well.

The digi designers that I work for will have new kits out soon, so be on the lookout for them at Two Peas, Get Digi With It, and Pixel Canvas. I was playing around, again with some photo masks that I picked up from Pixel Canvas (by Vinnie Pearce), and pulled old photos (from summer 2005!) of DS at the water park, his first trip to a water park. I'd scrapped these before ... but by the time I added Vinnie's photo mask, and then pops of color with items from Kate Teague ... well, I had a whole new page. It's quite different in "feel" from the one I did 11 months ago, and although I used the same photos, it takes a little bit of looking to see that this is actually the case.

Credits: Page Clipping Masks Set #1, Vinnie Pearce (Pixel Canvas); Film Fun and Playful, Kate Teague (Two Peas); title font is a freebie from Kate Teague's blog; font is Island Style (also Two Peas)

Uniquely Different

I was looking through some of my latest scrapbook pages and realized - my style is that I have no style! LOL I see that question come up every now and again on message boards: What's your digi style and if you paper scrapped, is your digi any different? I guess, deep down, I'm a clean-lines kinda gal. However, just look at these two pages that I did yesterday - they are about as different as they could possibly be: one graphic/grunge/pop ... and the other still graphic, but more stylized.

Credits: Photo Mask Set #1, Vinnie Pearce (Pixel Canvas); staple (misc.); felt heart
(Digital Design Essentials); wordart and glitter frame, Natali Designs (Scrabook Graphics).

Credits: Inked Edge Template, Crystal Wilkerson (Two Peas); everything else from
Playful, Kate Teague (Two Peas); font for '&' and 'smile', freebie from Kate Teague.

Do you like the font I used for "smile" in the title in the second layout? Kate Teague is offering this as a freebie on her blog at the moment if you purchase $10 of her products - and Kate has some great, fun things available at Two Peas in a Bucket.

Ssssshhh...

Okay, don't say a word - I'm "supposed" to be working ... but don't really want to. Our first day of sun in almost a week (darn rain!), and half the office not here, including my boss - and all I want to do is scrap! Sad, huh, when WORK gets in the way of play!

Well, I managed to put together a page this morning, nonetheless. It's for the Friday Scraplift challenge at Pixel Canvas. I used Heather's "Cowslip" kit (and this one is a full 180 degrees from my black background page! LOL), Distressed Photo Mask from Vinnie Pearce (both Pixel Canvas), and wordart - modified - from Natali Design's Playing with Wordart Vol 4 (Scrapbookgraphics). The page is a RAK for a coworker ... she hasn't seen it yet ...

More pages ... and more!

Things don't seem to be slowing down too much at work - one project completed, one underway ... and an audit around the corner. So very busy, and a steep learning curve ... but I wouldn't have it any other way.

In my last post I mentioned how busy I am ... and I made a decision: I need ME time. Not dinner out with the boys, not even walking the dog ... just me. Pure, selfish, me time. I decided to go back to Curves and although it might "only" be 30-45 minutes 3-4 days per week, there are no interruptions from home, no cell phone calls, no employees looking for information ... aaaahh, nice. Just me, the exercise machines, music and fun staff.

When I do get home, I'm busy with my CT assignments for HeatherT, Kate Teague and Crystal Wilkerson. With things stepping up at work, and my desire to find "me" time, I ended up stepping down from my CT responsibilities at Scrap it Sassy - thanks, Deborah, for your understanding and the opportunity!

Heather's just started selling kits a Pixel Canvas - she's a busy lady now 'cause she's still got kits at Get Digi With It, too! The first kit Heather has at P.C. is "Cowslip" and I decided to take a dramatic step here and do a totally black background (something I read on a blog post by Erica Hernandez @ Scrapbooks Etc.). The second page is from a collab kit, of which Heather is one of five or six designers. I love how this one came out - kinda looks like a magazine ad!

I've been a fan of Kate's kits for a long time and was lucky enough to have a kinda guest CT spot with her earlier this year, working on kits. And only a week or so ago, she asked if I would be interested in her CT team - of course, I jumped at the chance! This first page is with Kate's Fruit Salad kit, available at Two Peas in a Bucket. I wasn't sure how to make this work, at first, since it's got some cooking elements in it - but I guess anything is possible with a little imagination: a school spring carnival is a far cry from a kitchen! LOL The second page is from Kate's newest kit, Playful. There's a LOT going on in the background here, but considering how DS and his cousin are always on the go, I thought it was appropriate.



Lastly, I have a few pages from Crystal Wilkerson - Crystal puts out monthly "365" challenge kits at Two Peas, as well as templates and other items. Here are some pages from her May kit ... and the first page is actually from a challenge on her blog - I've got a link to her blog (and to Heather's and Kate's) on the right-hand side of this page. The last page - Dublin - also includes a few elements from Crystal's March and April 365 kits.