Queen Mary Wedding

In October 2010 we headed to Long Beach for a wedding of two friends on board The Queen Mary. I have to admit, it was a pretty cool place for a wedding! As a bonus we got the self-guided tour of the ship. I finally got to see more of the ship, such as the engines and propeller. (I didn't get to see these on my previous tour way back in 2005 when I was in Long Beach for the Society of Women Engineers Conference.)

A little story about this layout now. The recent stamp releases of Waltzingmouse Stamps and Lawn Fawn played a part in the concept of this layout. Waltzingmouse Stamps recently released the Way Out West background set and Lawn Fawn released their Say Cheese! set. Inspired by the wood paneling of The Queen Mary (did you know that it served as an advertisement for all the different types/vaneers of wood paneling?), I used the woodgrain stamp from Way Out West to create my paneled floor. Then as a lucky winner of the Say Cheese! set, (Thanks, Kelly Marie & Lawn Fawn!), I knew these pictures would be perfect for my first project with the polaroid set. For this wedding came at a time when Instagram (developed by another friend) came out and we were all using our phones to snap photos with the various filters. Conveniently the photos from Instagram are already cropped down to squares even!

So I think this layout was just begging to be made when all these pieces came together so nicely. I hope you like it! :) I was going for a scene layout I guess: I wanted it to look like the invite, room key and pictures were just laying on the paneled floor. Does that come through? If you can imagine, I was "randomly dropping" the polaroids on the page until I got a configuration that I liked. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Lake Tahoe

It's only, what, two days to go in the month of March? Well, here's my first project using my March Counterfeit Kit. Unfortunately March got a little busy and I didn't get as much time to play with this kit as February, but I'm still very happy to be participating in the Counterfeit Kit Challenge!

I don't know if I would have put these papers together otherwise. And it was nice to have the kit on hand to use for this layout. It was going to be a two-pager but then I just liked this one and didn't want to add much in the green space to make it correspond to another so it stayed like this. I feel these pictures summarize the fun on our Labor Day weekend trip nicely too.

Everything came from my kit except the ribbons.

I'll be scheduling some other layouts for the rest of the week. Hope you come back! And as always, thanks for visiting!

Just had to share...

I don't think I've ever spent so much time on a custom piece of cardstock! But when you have a vision for something, you do whatever it takes, right? And yes, I think there's a patterned paper somewhere that is this kind of concept, but making it myself is cooler! So here's my wood floor inspired custom work with the help of the latest Waltzingmouse Stamps Way Out West background stamp set.

Now I set my sights on what goes on this little wooden floor. A hint is that in includes the Lawn Fawn Say Cheese! stamp set...

I'll have a layout (maybe even this one) to post Tuesday!

Hoover Dam

I'm on Spring Break! Woot!

I took yesterday to do a little shopping, but today is all about being at my craft desk. (And while I don't want to admit it, Monday and Tuesday will be homework days.) But back to the happiness of finally getting another layout finished, right?

This one is about the Hoover Dam trip I took with my two best friends. It's a part of the Las Vegas trip that we took in August 2010. As engineers, we had to make this detour to see this great engineering feat. For the layout I went a little crazy with circles, I'll admit, but I think it makes it fun, and the pictures included in here were all about fun too. We took the obligatory Arizona/Nevada pic and then did you know there are moose at the dam too? :)

Thanks for stopping by! Now back to my craft day. I'll have more to post throughout the week.

Yes, I'm alive...

It's been a little while since my last blog post, yes. I did just want to drop in a quick moment to say that I am still alive. And I have a little card to show that I haven't put on the old blog yet, so thought this would be the perfect time to do so.

The past few weeks have been interesting in my job life, but that should be settling down here pretty soon. With that settling, it should give me a bit more time, which is hopefully some craft time, since I won't be worrying about it as much anymore. Of course, school is always bound to pick up. This week I have a midterm to study for so even though I have a little time right now and my craft desk is calling my name, I'm going to be a good student and keep to the books tonight. (Hence, this side track into at least a blog post.)

So the card I have to share today was one I submitted to the recent Paper Crafts Go-To Sketches call. Unfortunately the sketch that I chose was also one of the most popular so it had a lot of competition. But I got out my cute little Critters in the Burbs stamps from Lawn Fawn for this one. I also used some patterned tape that is all the rage in the scrapping world, a find from the Michael's $1 bins. I think it came out cute, don't you think?

In other news, I did head over to the Scrapbook Expo that was held in Pleasanton on Saturday. I forgot about the possibility of paying for parking, so it was a little high to get in plus parking, but I made the best of it since I'd already made the trip in the rain. Loved looking at all the papers and embellishments. I tried to get a few pieces that would be fun to use for a little something different and also as possible Counterfeit Kit pieces. And thank goodness for those exhibitors that took credit card, cause most of my cash went to my ticket and parking! The one that didn't...well, they didn't get my business...

But of course the best part about Saturday was seeing one of my favorite crafters!! Ren-Yi was in town due to a wedding and we met up at a local In-N-Out Burger for lunch and the mall. It was way too short a visit but good all the same. She has the photos or I would post them now. We talked crafts when we had a free moment of course. So glad that we were able to meet up. :)

So, thanks for sticking with me on this little hiatus. I sure can't wait for summer when it will be just working and crafting like the good old days in Peoria. This whole student thing is just cramping my crafting style!

March Counterfeit Challenge - The Kit!

I just finished putting together my March Counterfeit Kit! The challenge was to go off of the popular Studio Calico "Into the Woods" kit this month. I have a friend that gets the Studio Calico kit so it will be fun to make pages with her but with my counterfeit kit. And for that I tried to match the papers and style of the original kit as much as possible.

I don't think I would have figured to put some of this together on my own, but hey, if I learned anything last month, just go with it. I even think the pages that I finished last month were some of my better ones too. Although who can pass on an opportunity to scrap a pic of Hannah the pirate?

So I have the main kit done. We'll see if I want to do some of the add on kits too. :) Yay for another month of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge! Do you think you can handle the challenge? It definitely is a great way to shop your scrapbook stash and find papers that you might never have put together or known you had into a fun kit.

Thanks for stopping by...