Christmas in Santa Fe

I was kidding myself when I said I might post photos during my trip.  I was also kidding myself when I thought I would take a lot of photos.  Thankfully we have a professional photographer in the family so I anxiously await my brother Jeff Warner's photos of our big, chaotic family Christmas.  However here's a couple of my shots that came out OK.

My nephews-TROUBLE

The kidlets, posing for the pro photographer

Santa Fe Plaza Lights

St. Francis Cathedral-downtown Santa Fe

Oh Christmas Tree (and a ridiculous amount of presents)

Snowball Fight!

MJ's first fake nails-Hello Kitty

American Crafts Chap

My favorite line of the moment is American Crafts Chap.  It's versatile, got great colors and loads of embellishments to round out the cool papers.  My only problem is that the only place I can find that carries it is Two Peas in a Bucket and they sell out pretty quickly. Thankfully they just re-stocked and I stocked up on multi-sheets of paper. This is my first layout with it, my nephew, filthy after 3 days of camping.

It's A Summer Thing

Oh how I wish it was summer right now.  The weather in beautiful Southern California has been rainy, cold and miserable.  We've actually had to turn the heat on for the past week, yes I know, poor us.  But some of us are made for warmer temperatures and don't do so well in cold.  My best solution to cold crappy weather is to scrap (and daydream) about warm, summer beach days.  My niece gives me the best photo ops, a shot of her snapped at the beach this past summer, dancing away. I was having a hard time with the Cosmo Cricket's Salt Air collection before this layout.  I don't know what it was but everything I used it in came out looking crappy, very pleased with this one though. The text on the bottom reads, "McKinley always dances as if everybody is watching."  A little star she is.

Waves cut out with my Silhouette

The Jurassic Kook

I leave near a town called Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California. About 4 years ago a statue was erected of a surfer that was dubbed the Cardiff Kook because of it's ridiculous pose, the real name of the statue is "Magic Carpet Ride."  It's a running joke and people dress it up almost weekly.  Every once in awhile a very elaborate makeover is done.  This photo is of what was called Jurassic Kook with a pterydactyl grabbing the Kook by it's shoulder and a prehistoric scene around it.  There were even "dinosaur eggs" left all around the area.  It was awesomely amazing and took a lot of work by whomever pulled this one off in the dead of night.  I used and old SEI line for this one, Madera Island. I don't usually use a fully solid paper in layouts because I think it's too boring, this is no exception.  But I love all the other elements.

Jurassic Kook-SEI Madera Island

The other all time prank on the Kook is the Shark Attack, check it out:

I finally did it

I was finally able to find the time to take part in a challenge before the deadline.  But then I realized I may have done it wrong.  I did Basic Grey's Weekly Challenge which was to use the cover of their Summer 2011 catalog as inspiration for a layout.  The problem is that I didn't use BasicGrey product for it, whoops.  I am not sure if that is a requirement for their challenges or not. Anyway here is the cover:

And here is my interpretation using American Crafts Margarita collection. I did it very literally. I realized as I uploaded that there is no title to this layout but I don't know that it really needs it.

Hiatus

I took a week long hiatus from here but that week certainly didn't feel like a break.  I'm pretty sure I drank my way through the long weekend but I also got to see a dear old friend I hadn't seen in a year and buy waaaay too many pairs of shoes with the great Black Friday deals going on (it 2 pairs of Jeffrey Campbells in one day too many?) I then returned to absolute mayhem at work on Monday.  I work for an online retailer so this time of year is nuts for us. I haven't had time to do my usual trolling of my favorite blogs for ideas but I've added some more inspiration layouts to my Pinterest to refer to when I have more time.  Here are a couple layouts I hadn't gotten around to posting yet.

The Fourth-BasicGrey Offbeat

Lap Kitty-BasicGrey Mellow

Cheers-Crate Paper Random

Cute-Crate Paper Neighborhood

Crazy Daisy-BasicGrey Indie Bloom

Love Being An Auntie

Children are the topic and inspiration for many scrappers pages.  I don't have any children of my own (and I don't want any but that's a topic for another day) so my nieces and nephews are my go to kiddos.  I adore them and spoil them and thoroughly enjoy being their cool auntie. This page is me with my two gorgeous nieces, McKinley and Callia.

The idea for this page came from here.

 

Karate Cuties-Felt Embellishments

My niece and nephew are currently taking karate classes and these photos were taken on the day they tested for their yellow belt.  I have to say my niece's "karate face" is hilarious, my nephew definitely seems a a bit more "disciplined" when it comes to this sport.  I used this sketch from the Sketchy Thursdays blog but not in time to actually submit it, one of these days I will actually have the time to take part in the challenges I want to.

This was also my first attempt at truly making my own embellishments.  I've always loved felt and LOVE Basic Grey's felt flowers.  To make this ones I cut shapes out of cardstock with my Silhouette and used them as a template to trace on the felt.  I stitched the buttons onto the felt.  A good first attempt I think but I'd like to get more detailed next time.  I'd also like to find a thinner felt and maybe try it out with foam as well.

The Jackpot

I am not a fashion blogger nor would I ever try to do that so this will be one of my few posts about "fashion"...or rather shopping.  Like any living breathing female I have a problem with shopping, some (my husband) might call it severe.  If I won the lottery the material things I would buy would be shoes, scrapbooking stuff and bikinis (in that order).  I am a sucker for a good bikini and spend the better part of my summer in one. I also prefer to vacation in places that include a beach and 90 degree weather. One of my (and most girls) very favorite bikini lines is L*Space. The fit is just phenomenal and unlike most bikinis they somehow seem to make my undesireable areas look better.  L*Space bikinis, however, are very expensive, running about $120-$140.  I usually stock up whenever they're on Haute Look and will occasionally splurge like I might have to do for everything below.  BUT I am lucky enough to live in Southern California where warehouse sales from all my favorite brands abound.  Yesterday my girlfriend Jane and I drove up to Irvine for, you guessed it, an L*Space one.  L*Space is all sold as separates with an amazing mix and match thing going on.  Each piece was only $10.  So for $130 I got all this (plus a coverup not shown):

Yes I hang my bikinis, so what?

Despite just scoring 6 new bikinis for the price of one I still want more, sick right?  So I trolled around the L*Space website looking at all the new styles that just hit stores and put together my favorites.  Husband face and I have plane tickets booked to Costa Rica in April so I need one for each day of our 2 week vacation (that's logical, right?).   I think the Desert Heat print is my new favorite, the Twister top is, for me, the most flattering style of L*Space top, I'll pair this top with plain navy bottoms.

My pick: Twister Top in Desert Heat, Taboo Bottom in blue iris

Fringe is on my wishlist this year:

All solid: Dolly Bandeau and Foxy Tab Bottom in dark teal

The Riviera collection, coral and taupe mix beautifully together.

Beverly Bandeau in taupe and Deja Vu bottom in riviera

L*Space also has this awesome new mix & match feature on their site that allows you to pick and choose and see how different tops and bottoms look together, genius!

If you really want to know how obsessed I am I actually have Pinterest boards for both shoes and bikinis.

My fave bikini/beach/photo blogs:
Goldfish Kiss-beaches, bikinis, how tos and great style
Bikini Bird-keeping an eye on all bikini fashion for you
Acacia Swimwear-keep up with the happenings around the brand and their enviable lifestyle
San Diego Songbird-not a bikini blog, but ramblings from a fellow San Diegan beach lover
Sun-Believable-awesome photos
North Hawai'i-Photos from one of my favorite places

My Attempt at Chaos

This layout, using Basic Grey's Marjolaine line, is a bit more "chaotic" and less linear than how I usually do things.  I'm attempting to branch outside my comfort zone a bit and move away from my lines, boxes and strips.  That is very hard for me because I am an organized and clutter free sort of person. But I see all these other amazing layouts out there that have so much more going on and I really admire them. I hope to gradually work towards an amazingly chaotic layout.  I think my favorite part of this layout is the title, different fonts, same color.

And in the best news in a long time I have convinced my husband to allow me to turn our guest room in our 2 bedroom condo into a true craft room.  This is something I've been daydreaming about for the past 2 years.  Our extra room currently serves as an office/guest room.  However we don't have guests all that often so the futon/sofa bed sits unused most of the year.  So I get to sell that bad boy and our current desk on Craigs List and get a much larger desk and storage cabinet and bam, crafting oasis. 

My Furry Little Monster

I just got the We R Memory Keepers Friends Furever line (most of it anyway) and while it's no Max & Whiskers it's definitely fun to work with. If you haven't figured it out already I'm obsessed with my cat, I think he's the cutest most awesome little wannabe tiger on earth. I suspect that he also might be part Egyptian Mau, a purebred cat that the royals had in ancient Egypt (they even mummified them).  I may or may not watch too much Cats 101 on Animal Planet.  We don't have kids so our cat is our spoiled little child.  I take a lot of photos of him and because he's so damn handsome he ends up in a lot of my layouts. One of my co-workers tells me I'm going to be one of those crazy old cat ladies living in a trailer with my best friend (because she loves cats as much as I do) and 16 cats.  Not sure what happened to my husband in that story

I  ♥ Cats, why yes I do

I'm obsessed with paper strips right now for some reason, I use them all the time

Holy Crap, that's a lot of layouts

Quite an exciting weekend for me!

Team Platinum-Yay for bottled blondes-American Crafts Garden Cafe

My favorite photo of 2011-Basic Grey Out of Print

In my opinion Ollie really is too cute for words-We R Memory Keepers Friends Furever

A little bit of a departure from my normal layouts but I'm loving the trees

Friends on Memorial Day-Crate Paper Farmhouse

Scraplifting

I can't quite put a finger on how I feel about scrap-lifting.  I do it occasionally but then I don't feel very good about it because I feel like the work isn't really mine.  I draw inspiration from many different artists and elements out there and admire a lot of them.  But I don't love blatantly copying a page from the artists I admire. I keep a board on my Pinterest of inspirational pages and I'll often go to those when I need help starting a page but I usually only use one element.  However these 2 pages are blatant lifts.

This one here from Donna Jazz (I even used the same collection):

This one is a Kimberly Neddo lift: