Hello Again.

My blogging break was longer than expected, but I’m glad to be back!  I’m recovered from a trip to Paris and lots of other usual busy things from life.  Today, I have a birthday card to share that I made for one of friends.

I used this yummy Stampin’ Up Darling Dots hostess stamp set. I used the SU markers to ink up the individual parts of the cupcakes to match the color combo from the Flamingo DS paper line.

As for Paris, it was beautiful, and I had a wonderful time. I got to see the Eiffel Tower by day and night, go on a boat ride on the Seine River, visit the Moulin Rouge, admire the pretty flowers, have gelato shaped like a flower, and even visit a Le Temple du Scrap! The trip was amazing and I can’t wait to visit again some day. I was also especially excited to be able to practice my photography skills with my D70 camera. Here are some of my favorite shots:

A Birthday Card and Pink Paislee

Hi all! Here’s a quick card I made over the weekend. This one is with the Upsy Daisy stamp set. I used an In Color combo: Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, and Pacific Point. I wanted to add a little texture to the panel with the stamped image so I used a stipple brush to tap Kiwi Kiss on it. I love using the stipple brush because it adds such a subtle flair. And, for some extra dimension, I cut out a few flowers and stuck them on with dimensionals. I made this card for my MIL, so I hope she likes it!

And some exciting news for me, I won this scrapbooking kit from Pink Paislee! They had a blog hop last week with this prize up for grabs and I won it from Mara-May’s blog. I couldn’t believe I won, but very happy that I did!

I won’t have internet access starting tomorrow until the end of next week so I’ll be taking a short blogging break. See you when I get back!

Another Weekend…

Well, another weekend has come and gone. It was both productive and relaxing for me, so I’m happy about that. I read a lot of New Moon and am almost done. After I saw Twilight, I was hooked! I also caught up with the newest season of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” on my Tivo (I don’t know why, but I’m addicted to that show!) and got some crafting done. It was a good weekend.

And here are some layouts I wanted to share. These aren’t the layouts that I made this weekend, but I haven’t gotten the chance to share these on my blog yet, so here goes:

Here’s to a great start of a new week!

March Stamp-a-palooza

Last night was March Stamp-a-palooza with my local stamping buddies. It was hosted at Nickey’s, who led us through a super cute water bottle project.

Here are all of the goodies I came home with:

Another fun night of stamping and catching up!

That’s all for now…I can’t believe it’s April already!

Punch Storage

I’m so excited about my new punch storage! I bought the Bygel Racks at Ikea and DH installed them for me. The best thing about these racks is that they are super cheap at $1.99 each! I got the 21 3/4″ ones, but they also have a 39 1/4″ one for $2.99 each. I considered the 39″ one, but I wasn’t sure how sturdy it was going to be since the punches have some weight to them and collectively, I wasn’t sure how good the rack would hold up.

I used to store my punches in the plastic drawer below, but I love having them out for me to see and grab when I need to use!

Celine Navarro Class Layouts

Back in January, I took a scrapbooking class at the Scrapbook Oasis from one of my favorite scrapbookers, Celine Navarro. Lucky SoCal, she was in town for CHA! We made these layouts:

And I got to take a picture with her. I was thrilled to be able to take a class from Celine, since she lives all the way across the world from me, in Europe. I jumped at the opportunity to learn from her and am so glad I did because her class was awesome!

Lucy Folch Class

Last fall (I told you I was behind on posting!), I took an online scrapbooking class from Lucy Folch at ScrapInStyle. Lucy has an amazing scrapbooking style and I am always floored at her layouts. She is one of my scrapbooking idols!

For her class, we made this adorable layout:

I got to play with gesso, mold paper with water, make flower yo-yos, and get messy with paint! I scrapped my niece because I thought this picture of her was fitting to the theme of the layout. Even though she is only a toddler, she has moments that I can mistake her for a teenager.

I was really happy that I got to learn a bunch of new techniques from Lucy’s class. I don’t think I would have ever thought of her techniques on my my own. If you get the chance, you should definitely check out Lucy’s stuff…it’s amazing!