The San Luis Obispo Chapter

It was short and sweet. I got to live in beautiful San Luis Obispo for a couple of months. I would have taken more pictures an appreciated it more if I had know that it would be so short lived.

These Hands

For the past twenty years these hands have tended babies, washed dishes, driven the carpool, made crafts with the Girl Scout troop, made heart-shaped lunch sandwiches, brushed knots out of hair and folded countless loads of laundry. They are the hands of a housewife, mother, Girl Scout leader and parent club president. Now I am reclaiming them. They might do the dishes if I am in the mood, but probably not! (Ha ha ha). These are my hands. May 18, 2008.

The Beautiful Life

Woo hoo, I've lost 80 lbs since I made that last layout! Life is beautiful!

Before I Was Fat

Journaling: "These photos were taken in the spring of 1987. I was 22 years old and had just come back from living a year in the Philippines. This was my lowest weight of my adult life. A few short months later I was married and pregant with my daughter, and just kept on gaining weight from there. Now at the age 43 I am at the heaviest weight I have ever been and will use these photos as inspiration and motivation for what I can be. While I can never regain my youth, I can certainly take control of my figure and regain my life!"

Sister Time

My Space photos shoot

Everyone knows how to take a good "My Space" photo. On Thanksgiving my sisters and I took some "My Space" photos of our own. Notice the arm raised in the corner of the photo, this is because I am taking my own photo. That's what makes a good "My Space" photo, LOL.


"If you're never done these things you should, these things are fun and fun is good!"
Dr. Suess

New Scrapbook Layouts to Share

Title: All Smiles

August Book Club Kit

These pictures were taken this summer when we went on our impromptu overnight trip to San Francisco. I just can't get enough of those Foof-A-La buttons! I use them every chance I get. They help draw they eye to the title word "all", which might otherwise be camouflaged. I used white colored Making Memories chipboard letters to accent the white teeth in the smiles. I used part of a chipboard question mark and bracket to create an arrow and my text is printed on velum adhered under a printed overlay.

Title: Venetian

July Book Club Kit

This picture was taken at the Venetian hotel after dinner with my family last summer. This kit featured a Hambly Studio printed overlay, which I used in the bottom left corner (it's the black decorated circle). I used the fun new technique we learned from Tim Holtz on ink blending to cover the chipboard in the title and on the flourish. And as I can't seem to help doing, I used my sewing machine to sew all over this layout, LOL.

Title: Fly Baby Fly

September Book Club Kit

I took this picture this summer of my daughter. The layout is about giving my daughter wings to grow up and leave me (boo hoo) LOL. The bird in the lower corner is a printed overlay. The title was created with chipboard letters. The "L" is the chipboard square with the letter removed from the middle. Each letter was painted and then adhered to each other. I used a rub-on under the "L" and page pebbles to draw the eye to the title.

Title: The Gap

I took this picture of my daughter at one of her summer jobs this year. The text says "Harper has discovered that working at your favorite store is not as much fun as shopping at your favorite store." The floral background is an actual piece of fabric. The title words are Heidi Swapp Ghost Letters that I swiped some black paint on the back of for definition. The journaling was created with an old style label maker.

Title: I Wish
I took this picture of my daughter this summer as well. I used a child's writing pad from Dollar Tree to journal on. Also used Prima flowers & buttons. The flourish is a chipboard piece that I pained light yellow and coated with ultra fine glitter.

Tim Holtz - the Rockstar of Scrapbooking

My Sister & I with Tim Holtz after our class at Memory Trends

The tagbook of sample techniques that Tim taught.

This piraty tag involves using the paint dauber, distress ink and stiching with wire.

This tag features Tim' s newest product, Grungeboard.

This technique involved scratching up a photo with Tim's scratcher tool, and stamping the blackbirds across the tag. The best part was that he gave us everything we used in this class, the paints, inks, stamps and tools! This was by far the best class we took at the show.

San Francisco Layouts

I finally got my San Francisco layouts photographed and uploaded. Took me long enough, LOL. I printed my journaling on velum and mounted it behind squares of clear acrylic. I had fun using the Heidi Swap clear butterflies as embellishments.

Day trip to San Francisco

Haight Street photo collage created in Picasa

Before
After adding color saturation and grain

Before

After slight color saturation.

Chinatown photo collage created in Picasa

Before

After cropping, adding color saturation and some contrast

Before

After punching up the color a bit

Before

After cropping, a little color saturation and vignette feature

Book Club

Today's challenge from the Two Peas website is to blog about the following: "If your local scrapbook store had a monthly club would you join it and why"....... Well my LSS DOES have a monthly club, and I DID join it. They call it 'Book Club'. It costs $30 for a three month membership and you have to renew every three months. Then we get together once a month and we get to show off the pages and projects we have completed that month. After everyone has had a chance to show & tell, we get a new kit (valued at $10) and a new technique or challenge. Then we have the whole next month to make something with that kit and technique or challenge to show off at next month's book club. The store even has a wall to display our book club layouts! I really enjoy book club as it's the only time I get to show off my scrapbook work (aside from online). This month's kit has a patriotic theme. I'll post some pictures as soon as I get something done worth showing, which is usually the day before it's due, LOL.
nancy

Happy Independence Day

Photo Shoot Fun

Before

After adding some contrast and color saturation and vignette feature.

Before

After removing some color saturation and vignette feature.

Before

After adding some brightness, contrast and vignette feature.

Harper and I took some new pictures yesterday. Living in Bakersfield, it's not too hard to find a farm field to use for background, LOL. I played around with them in my new favorite photo editing program, Picnik, which is available to use for free online. I am so in love with their "vignette" feature, which darkens the edges of the whole photo. I think I used it on all my photos, LOL. Harper was a good sport, climbing through the weeds for the sake of my 'art'!

Weeds

Well here it is, the day of my scrapbooking club and I still hadn't made the layout from the kit that I put together for the month. So I figured I'd better get my rear in gear and get something done. Our technique for the month was hand dyed paper. I made the yellow paper that is behind the title "weeds". And since these darned sunflowers are in bloom all over the back yard I figured I'd use a pic of them, as they go well with the yellow paper I made. So with just hours to go I put this layout together. I think it turned out ok. We'll see what the girls at scrapbook club think tonight. Wish me luck!

Layouts of the Week

Here's what I've been working on this week. On the Watchin' Birds layout I used chipboard painted brown/black and then brushed with two coats of platinum colored Stickles. The photo in the BFF layout is Harper and her new college best friend Lynzie. The flourish was created by cutting it out of a patterned paper with an exacto knife, and the center "F" was covered in paper that I printed with my computer printer. Enjoy & leave a nice commment, LOL.