More Cards! Lily Bee!

Happy Friday! This is the week of cards! I'm actually going to send some out, because what fun is making cards if they are not used? Never mind I really dislike going to the post office...

These first two cards were made using a Silhouette. I created the chevrons using the accompanying program, and it was pretty darn easy. Backed them up with some patterned paper, used some letter stickers, and presto: two cards made.

patterned paper: Lily Bee Design Double Dutch 6x6 Tiny Tablet

patterned paper: Lily Bee Design Buttercup 6x6 Tiny Tablet / stickers: Buttercup ABC Cardstock

This other one took a little more work, but I really love how it turned out. Bright colors with a nice deep navy patterned background. I think I'm going to make them in various color schemes with various sentiments. The banner is actually a stamp from the Double Dutch set. Love it!

clear stamps: Memorandum, Buttercup, Double Dutch / ink: Colorbox Picante, Citrine, Razzberry, Blue Jean ; Jenni Bowlin Lemon Drops

Hey, thanks for dropping by. Hope you have a fantastic weekend!

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Kites

I love everything about kites. The way they look, the shapes, colors, I even love flying them. My dad taught me how to make kites when I was seven, and I've been hooked ever since. Which is why I love that my kids love kites too. So whenever the weather is good, and we have some free time, we head out to Venice beach, and fly kites.

I created this layout for Lily Bee, and it uses the new collections Buttercup and Double Dutch. I cut out the kites with an x-acto knife and layered the papers underneath.

While cutting, I was wishing for a Silhouette... Sigh. But anyway, they were pretty simple, and didn't take a lot of time. The shadows created by the cutouts is so different from layering the patterned paper on top. Love that.

I finished the layout with a few handstitched tails, a handstitched title, and printed journaling using one of the Index Journaling Cards. Pretty simple. I like simple!

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Moving Right Along...

I'm just going to jump right back in here, and ignore the fact that I haven't posted in over 5 months...

A few things going on right now.

1. Lawn Fawn! Love them. Love Kelly and Mike (the owners), love their stamps (super high quality polymer), love their designs (cute cute cute!). So when Kelly asked me to join the team, I only had one answer in mind, "Heck yeah!" I got the new stamps the other day, and spent most of the day smelling them. Is that weird? New stamps smell so good. And now Lawn Fawn has patterned paper! Amazing! I created these layouts using Lawn Fawn stamps a while back. (You can click on the projects to get a bigger view.)

This one uses the super popular Say Cheese set. I stamped those polaroid frames, cut them out, and then I cut the windows out. The photos are behind the frame, and the frames are popped up.
As seen in the October 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright creative crafts group. posted with prior permission from the publisher.

This was a year in review mini-album. The months and the teeny camera are from the Say Cheese, Too set. As seen in the Seasons special issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright creative crafts group. posted with prior permission from the publisher. 

I made little flaps for the journaling: just a simple caption for each photo.

2. I'm going to Barcelona later this week with my hubby. He's going for work, and I'm tagging along. We won't be there for long, but I haven't been to Spain in over a decade. Cannot wait to get back, and embarrass myself by speaking Spanish like I actually know how.

3. Lily Bee has a sketch challenge right now. Katja did the sketch, and it's super cute. Plus, as with all Lily Bee challenges, there's a prize involved in the form of NEW Lily Bee products. So worth the effort!

4. Speaking of Lily Bee, I worked the booth at CHA ( a few weeks ago) and met so many nice people. It was also so much fun to see some of my friends who I only see at these events. Email, Facebook, Twitter and all that social network stuff is nice. But nothing is as good as face to face time. Alas, I had to be sent away on day three because I was so sick! Here are some of my projects I did for Lily Bee. (I'll post the Jillibean and Lawn Fawn stuff as soon as they show up on the companies' blogs.)

Featuring Buttercup. Love those colors!

Featuring Victoria Park, perfect for boy pages too! 

Yes, I did cut those little windows out with a X-acto knife. I'm sucker for stuff that takes hours and hours to do. Ha!

By the way, if you've been to Barcelona, and have any suggestions for what I should do, where I should eat, please fill me in! I realize I should have been doing some research for this, but uh, I haven't.

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New Lily Bee!

If you are here for the Technique Tuesday Studio AE Blog Hop, please click here.

I'm so super excited to share this. Kristen has been working hard to create new Lily Bee goodies, and she's sharing the first line today on the Lily Bee blog: Memorandum! I was bugging her for an office-y line because I cannot get enough office inspired stuff. Can't wait to get my hands on these.

The patterned papers:

My fave!

The matching Stationery papers:

The yellow! Can't wait.

The brand new diecut cardstock Index Journaling Cards:

How fab are these?

The diecut Mixed Stickers:

Those circle stickers are so fun!

The Tiny Alphas:

The Stamps:

I practically begged Kristen to create some numbers in circles stamps. And she kindly obliged me! Yeah!

Don't you love it all? You want it all? Go by the Lily Bee blog, and leave a comment to win the entire new Memorandum line!

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Phew!

We are in Los Angeles! We arrived yesterday, after a looong flight. A flight not entirely without incidents. At our hotel (in Philly) yesterday morning, my middlest thought it would be the best to be spun around in the office chair after he had consumed a strawberry frappuccino. His brothers spun him around and around, and he giggled and giggled. Then he got off, and mentioned that he wasn't feeling too good. Uh, no surprise there, buddy! (See where I'm going with this story?) We catch a cab to the airport, and as soon as we get there (a 20 minute ride), middlest tumbles out of the car, and wants me to rush him to a bathroom because he's about to barf. We barely enter the terminal, when he turns to me, and throws up. All over me. Then he just keeps going. I drag him to a trash can but he's chosen to barf all over the floor and himself instead. Some people come over to offer paper towels and a seltzer. Thank you City of Brotherly Love! I was just thankful this happened before we checked in our luggage. So I pulled out some clean clothing for him and for me, dragged him to the bathroom, told him to wash his hands, face, hair, anything that was covered in yuckyness. Then I tried to clean myself up as good as possible. But for the rest of the flight, my hair smelled barfy.  The only saving grace for me was sitting in first class by myself while Bryan hung out with the kids in the back.

Yes, he's an awesome husband! Yes, middlest barfed again. Yes, first class can be very relaxing, especially in a 6 hour flight.

But all is well that ends well. We had some In-N-Out (by then that barfy kid was no longer barfy, of course!) drove to our new house, which is not as terrible as I feared (hubby rented the house, I have never seen it until last night). The kids love the house, the yard, the street.

Our plans for the rest of the week include exploring our new surroundings and relaxing. We'll go see movies, buy some warm weather clothing, and eat out. Maybe meet some neighbors, drive the kids past their new school, hit the beach. We might go hiking, and meet up some scrappy friends.

I don't have any photos to share yet, and I'll make sure to post some this weekend.

I'll leave you with a layout that I haven't shared here. I created this one for Lily Bee's CHA booth. I love this layout. Not only does it have tiny photos (which is my favorite thing to scrap with right now), but it also features photos of food! I don't know if you've noticed (har har), but I love food. I love buying, prepping, cooking, and eating food. And I love the This & That line of papers. The colors and patterns are fab, and it's a really easy to use line. This layout uses my favorite go to scrappy design, the grid. And this week's Lily Bee challenge is to scrap using a grid!

Alrighty. Off to get our new adventure started. We are happy, excited, and scared. But a little scared is good! It makes me feel alive. I'll report back later this week with some photos.

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Ohmigosh

I'm so stressed out. But it's all my own doing. I've known about my move since, uh, last November. And did I start de-cluttering then? Or a month ago? Or last week? Or today? Uh, yeah. I've said it before, I'll admit to it, I'm a major procrastinator! I deal with big stresses by taking naps. But I don't think that's an option this time.

So you won't be seeing much posting from me the next week or two. More like two. We move next week, and then we'll have to hole up in a hotel for a week or so until our furniture shows up. Not conducive to anything that takes effort. But my children tell me that it would be good for going to the beach and Legoland. Since next week is their Spring Break, I'm going to agree with their wise assessment and do their bidding.

However, I thought I'd share a layout before my crazy cross-country trip. This is quite appropriate because it's about the food my husband and I ate when we drove from here to Los Angeles back in February. Usually we eat a lot of McD's and junk like that. But this time, we made a point of doing a little interwebbing before hitting each city, and finding a good local place to nosh at. We also got lucky, and drove past places we love, like Taco Cabana (brings back sweet memories of college) and Rudy's (love me some Texas bbq).

A few things about this layout. One, the road-esque washi tape is actually plain tape stamped with a journaling stamp. The title made up of tags ("YUM") is actually punched out of an October Afternoon paper. And the B&W paper at the bottom is my favorite Lily Bee from this season's release (Teacup from the This & That line).

OK. I reeeeally need to go pack. No more naps! I'll do that at the beach next week. It better not be raining in LA when I get there.

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Flowers & Cranes

I made a card! Yes, that is a crazy thing indeed. But even crazier is that I have nine flowers on that card. NINE! Nuts. I never use flowers. Usually. I made it for Lily Bee, and there is a little accompanying tutorial on the blog.

On a much much much more important note, my friend Melanie linked on her a blog a beautiful project involving making paper cranes to "wish for continued strength, peace and eternal hope to our friends in Japan." If you are like me, and you have been thinking about what's going on Japan pretty much non-stop, and you've donated money, and you have no idea what else you can do, this is a hands-on project you can participate in. You can read more about it here.

Every little bit of love helps.

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Lily Bee Design Team Call!

It's happening. NOW! I can't say enough good things about this company, the people running it, the team. Kristen, the owner, and her family are honest, fun, talented, and kind people. The design team are honest, fun, talented, and kind people. REALLY! I've only been on the team for a few months, but I've enjoyed every moment. And I don't have to tell you about the products, right? Surely, you seen it and read about it all over the interwebs. So yeah, enough of my yapping. Click here to check it out. Good luck!

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Incredibly Random Monday

Happy Valentine's Day!

I finally uploaded all the photos from my cell phone and from my (terrible) point-and-shoot. Phew. I usually do it everyday (if I took photos that day), but lately I've been slacking off. But I did find some great photos I had forgotten about. So bear with me for I'm sharing some of my faves with you. (Beware people pictured here in this post, I did NOT photoshop anything due to acute laziness. But y'all look really cute, so it's all good!)

Here we go.

My oldest at his monthly ballroom dancing and manners class. Here, he's doing a cha cha. The boys have to wear suit and tie. The cutest thing ever.

CK peoples. First day of CHA. Can you tell by how well-rested and non-wrinkled we are?

With Wendy Smedley at her book signing. She's got a great new book for beginner scrapbookers. Wendy signed mine: "From your #1 fan!" Go me!

My normally crappy camera took this very cool photo. But I'm going to credit my mad photog skillz instead. Because see what happened when Suzy tried to do the same thing, below. (Suzy Plantamura and Kim Watson.)

Yea, it was totally my amazing talent as a photographer, and not a freak accident. Yup. (Laura Vegas and me.)

A recipe I have to share because it was so ridiculously easy and yummy, and everyone loved it.

And one layout. Because this is supposed to be a scrapbooking blog. Ha!

For the Lily Bee blog, featuring that awesome new line Stationery. And because you are going to ask, that border punch is from Martha Stewart Crafts. That Martha, good recipes AND good punches.

Thanks for hanging out, and indulging me on this very random Monday. Now, I await for the moving company to come and give us an estimate. You know the kind of day I'm going to have, in which I wait anywhere between 9AM and 5PM. And if I happen to go pick up my child for 15 minutes, they will show up then and blame me for not waiting around. You know what I'm talking about. Uh-huh.

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CHA, Day Two. I'm dead tired.

Seriously, could I be more tired? Oh yeah, I forgot about those early days (months!) with a new baby. But still. I'm tired. The problem being that I'm wired from house hunting, time zone changes, and non-stop CHA stimulation, so I can't sleep at night (therefore I'm blogging at 1:50 AM). But I can't sleep past 7 in the morning, which is a weird thing for me. I normally like to sleep in.

So CHA today. Alas, I didn't get a chance to walk the aisles as I hoped. But I'm going to do it tomorrow. Really. Because tomorrow is my last day at the convention. It's time for me to go home to my family. I miss them dearly.

I took (or had people take) more photos today. All with my iPhone, so the color is bad and the photos are blurry. But I did it!

That's Kristen Young's sister Amy, prepping for Lily Bee Make & Takes. Kristen's whole family is so creative!

Finally met Susan Opel! She's so nice.

Pre-celebrated Suzy Plantamura and Nicole Harper's birthdays.

The CK Dream Team working hard on Make & Takes at October Afternoon. See the looks of concentration?

The best part of my day! I turned around, and Sande was there. She had told me she wasn't going to be there, and changed her mind last second. I love that woman! Made me happy.

Lucy Edson and Kerry Lynn Yeary doing Make & Takes at Lily Bee. They were good sports. I actually "made" them pose for me.

Part of Lily Bee booth. It was cute cute cute!

Picket Fence line. So pretty!

CKers: the Dream Team with the Editorial Team. From left: Me (bad posture, I know!), Laura Vegas, Nicole Harper, Kim Jackson, Kim Watson, Joannie McBride, Lara Penrod, Jennafer Martin (in the cardboard cutout), Stacy Cohen, Piradee Talvanna, and Suzy Plantamura. We had the best dinner together. Laughed, laughed, and laughed. But we did some work beforehand. Really.

Oh, don't forget Lily Bee is giving away the new stuff on their blog!

And that's it for today. I'm going to hop in bed, and hopefully fall asleep soon.

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I'm At CHA + Lily Bee

This is my second CHA, but I had forgotten how tiring it is to be on my feet all day. I wore really comfy shoes, and my feet are still killing me! What's up with that? Plus my legs are sore. I feel like I should have started an exercise program a few months ago. Built up those leg muscles, gotten my stamina up. Oh well. Next time.

Did I take photos? Three. Yeah, only three. What kind of scrapbooker am I! I know. Sorry. Everyone else had cameras, so I'm hoping they'll email me some.

Just for fun, here are the three I took. Actually, the three that someone else took with my iPhone. (Brace yourself for me, non-Photoshopped.)

At the Lily Bee booth with the Big Picture Classes gals. From the left, Stacy Julian (BPC), moi, Kaycee Rehn (BPC), Wendy Smedley (BPC), and Kristen Young (owner/designer of Lily Bee.)

Lily Bee booth, with Stacy Cohen (in pink), Piradee Talvanna (talking to someone with a fab red bag, alas not me), and Kim Watson hiding in the back.

At Basic Grey. I walked by that booth so many times. Poor Kelly. From the left: Laura Vegas, Kim Watson, me, and Kelly Goree. Their new stuff is fab, as usual.

The Lily Bee booth was so cute. I'll have to take photos tomorrow. Also tomorrow, I'm going to actually walk the floor in an organized manner. Today, I walked past the same six booths about ten times. I would be going one way, and I'd run into someone I knew or who I wanted to meet. They would then take me along elsewhere, and I would get sidetracked. That happened again and again. Tomorrow, better planning on my part.

Speaking of Lily Bee, the full product reveal started today. Go by and leave a comment for a chance to win some new stuff. On the last day of CHA (February 2), Lily Bee is going to give away its entire Winter 2011 release. Yup. The whole thing. We'll be picking two winners. One from the blog, and one from Facebook. Click here to follow Lily Bee.

I'm going to bed! But not before I share my CHA layout using Lily Bee's Happily Lost.

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