A very busy weekend!

It has been a very busy, nonstop, but very fun weekend! On Friday I drove all the way to My Daughter's Wish (that's about a 120 mile roundtrip, and you know how driving is not my favorite thing!) to take Tim Holtz's Assemblage of Flight class.

Here are my pieces. Later, I will pop off the back of the pocketwatch and add a little more dimension. My favorite tip from this class was when Tim told us how to make "super glue dots". As you can see from the picture of the pocketwatch, the wings look a bit out of place but that's because they are "flexible" because of the "super glue dots". (The wings are attached with glue dots but super glue was added on top of that!)








On Saturday, I drove back out there again for his Industrial Grunge class. I've wanted to take that class for a long time. It was so much fun! Although, in retrospect, it could have been more fun for my friend Laurie who saved me a seat next to her. I was so involved in the class and "in the zone" that I wasn't my normal social self! I will have to make that up to her! I will post pictures of the things I did in that class as soon as I find them!








And in between all the fun from the Friday and Saturday classes, I was cleaning, shopping, wrapping and prepping for the family BBQ on Sunday for my baby boy's 20th birthday!

I can't believe he's already 20...how did he go from one to 20 so quickly?!

I did it...

After 23 years of working as a legal assistant for Sue, I’ve decided to retire. (not sure how long that link will work—out with the old and in with the new!)

Today was my "retirement" luncheon at A Bellagio and about 20 of my former co-workers and attorneys from those past 23 years were there. Mark (the attorney that both Sue and I worked for before she started her own practice) even drove down from Sacramento to celebrate with us - that was just the sweetest!

A few of my favorite lines from Sue’s "retirement" speech for me:

"Christine has been my right-hand man for 23 years and I have needed her! Especially since I’m left-handed AND dyslexic!"

"...we’ve been together so long it’s like we’re an old married couple."

"I blame the reason for Christine’s early retirement on one thing, and one thing alone! SCRAPBOOKING!!!"

I especially loved Sue's personal note to me, which began: "Christine, this is probably your last chance to decipher my handwriting..."

I will definitely miss everyone, but now I will be able to devote more time to the things I REALLY love to do...creating and teaching!




Left to right/front to back:
Ted and Sue
Maria, me (the retired one), and Matthew

Photo Walk and Adobe Digital Crop

Here's a picture I took on Friday when I went on the "photo walk" in downtown San Jose with Michelle and her husband Dave.

Dave graciously let us (well, me lol) follow him around and take pictures, while Michelle asked him what settings we should have our cameras on for the particular situation. I did actually learn something from this process! I am not able to repeat it verbally, but a few more of the knobs on my camera make more sense to me. This setting was for stopping the droplets of water!

And here's a very tired looking picture of me, the digibear (every time you finish a layout, you ring the bell and get to keep the bear until the next person completes a layout), one of my digital layouts and the Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet that I won.

I was operating on about 4 hours of sleep that day, and planned on leaving early, not staying for the entire 9am-9pm crop.

And here's Veronica, Michelle and I at the end of the day of the Adobe Digital Crop. Surprisingly, the three of us stayed from start (7:30 for breakfast) to finish! It was a lot of fun!

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.