My Birthday Crop

We had a belated birthday crop for me yesterday. The Drama Queens out did themselves, especially Michelle who baked this beautiful cake. It was delicious! Drama Queen Kathie was paying me back for my "tattoo" prank and gave me a lovely birthday card with a very tattoo-faced person on it and brought me a delicious "possom pie" (it was really lemon meringue).

Inbetween all the fun, I just about finished my 9 pages for the recipe swap.

I made a pull-out recipe, a handmade paper apron, and traced a Basic Grey chipboard vine shape onto grungeboard and stamped, inked, bent and outlined it. I was hoping to distract the girls with the pretty embellishments to make up for my "easy" recipe!

And the night before the crop, I finished up the "Drama Queen" book party favors I had started in Hot Springs. I had fun making the interactive pages, layering charms, hanging pages onto the binding with charm holders (for your cell phone), making the UTEE "Drama Queen" embellishments with the stamp I found in Hot Springs, and making lots of grungeboard flowers!

Here are a few of the pages...

And here's a closer view of the UTEE "Drama Queen" embellishment. I made a bunch of these when we were in Hot Springs.

Hot Springs...

Spent four great days in Hot Springs, Arkansas, scrapbooking with Leah, Joy, Chandra, Sandra and Hayley from ACharmingplace.

We always have a great time together.

I did manage to actually do a little scrapbooking too. I got started on my pages for Michelle's recipe swap and even finished a few books I will use as party favors for my birthday crop next month.

More ATC Cards

The girls from ACharmingPlace were doing another friendship swap, but this time on ATC cards. I made 22 of them, but unlike my mermaid ATC cards where I used a lot of stamping techniques, this time I decided to make them more scrapbook-like and interactive. Here's one of my favorite ones, simply because it's interactive (one of my favorite things) AND because I recycled the product packing from my Basic Grey Rub-on Roller and used it as the pull-out tag information. Do you see the big pink bling on it? That is where the "hanging hole" was on the packaging. I also used one of Tim Holtz's ATC Stamps and a skeleton grungeboard element on this one. The little flower charms are from ACharmingplace.

Here's a slideshow of the other ATCs for this swap.

MERMAID ATC SWAP

I joined Valerie's, Mermaid ATC swap (even though I'm not crazy about mermaids!)

I made 11 of them, all of them a little different. It was so much fun inking, stamping, spritzing, crumpling, sewing and using beeswax on cardstock, coffee filters, tissue paper, mica and anything else I could get my hands on!

This ATC happened to fit the theme for the monthly challenge on the Ranger Yahoo Group, so I posted it. They are so nice over there, I should participate and contribute more often. One of the ladies on the group asked how I made the ATC, so I will post the steps here too.

For the background paper, I used the direct to paper technique to apply milled lavendar, tattered rose and dried marigold distress inks to my white cardstock.

I sprayed the inked paper with water using my mini mister and then swished (like that technical term?!) my paper through a puddle on my craft mat (the puddle consisted of milled lavender ink directly on the mat, spritzed with water and a "z" scribble of goldenrod stickles) until fully covered.

I dried the paper with the heat gun until damp. I then crumpled it up into a small ball and re-opened it, smoothed it out, and then sprayed it with a mini mister of water that I had added a couple of dips (using the wet tubing from the bottle) of sunflower sparkle perfect pearls, covering it completely. I used the heat gun to dry it. After attaching it to my ATC chipboard,I added a very thin layer of glossy accents over the top using my finger. I typed "Believe in" onto typing paper and highlighted the words with glossy accents. I attached the shells with glossy accents too. I dangled a "Love" charm from a fishing leader.

Here's a slideshow of the other ATCs for this swap.

We’re attempting to restart stamp club at Scrapbook U, a little less structured this time. Tonight was our first meeting and everyone brought different stamping projects to work on.

I decided to give Tim Holtz’s February Technique Challenge a try. It was fun using the grunge, crackle paint and distress inks!

The Real Deal...

Once upon a time, my room looked like this...

But here's the real deal...real life...the worse it has ever been (this one's for you Audrey)...

The result of taking classes, cropping, prepping and teaching scrapbook classes since the weekend after Thanksgiving. Throw in Joey coming home and having to clear a spot on the floor for his airbed (which is why everything is on the table), a family birthday dinner for Raquel, and then buying a Christmas tree which means moving all my class prep stuff from the dining room back to my scraproom (Joey’s gone so now that stuff is on the floor), and this is the result! I can't believe I posted this...but hey, it's the real deal!

Audrey, still want me to come over and help you organize your scrapbook room???

Heading to Seattle...

Heading to Seattle tomorrow to scrap with some of the ACP (ACharmingPlace.com) girls. We always have so much fun when we are together! I always like to bring a little project for everyone to do, so this time it will be acrylic books.

Here's a picture of me drilling holes in all the acrylic books I had made at Tap Plastic. I felt so professional using Jose's BIG drill press!