Halloween Tees

I signed up for Amy Tan's The Good Life class as a birthday present to myself. I might do a review of the class later but by far, the best lesson was Week 1 when she taught her Reverse Applique technique. I've already made three shirts!

I decided to start small, literally and made this little skeleton tee for Urijah John.

This was the template I used. I figured I'd never get it even on both sides, so I just drew half of it folded it in half and cut it out.

And it made a perfectly even mini skeleton as a template!

I used some woodgrain fabric (a fab find from Ikea!) and orange DMC floss to outline.
And then I decided to make a matching one for Grandma!

When we were down at the beach house this past weekend, I managed to get a quick photo of the two of them. It's blurry because he can't sit still! He's a constant blur of motion, my favorite little 2 year old.

I made a third shirt for myself, with a different design. It's something I'll be sharing here in a few posts :) Be sure to check back and thanks for stopping by!

xxbesos

Thank You Tags

Morning! Just wanted to quickly share the thank you tags I made this year =)

I have some very lovely friends and family, who for my birthday gave me some awesome gifts. As a thank you, I created these tags to send out.

They were quick easy and simple. I loved this typewriter (stamp from House of Three Daily Junque set) and wanted to make it blue! After that, I added some tape, and sprinkled some Mister Huey on each. Viola!

xxbesos

My Friend James

I've been digging into my China pics lately. Just scrapping a few here in there with no particular rhyme or reason.

These had me inspired the other day.

Mainly because in just a little over a month, I get to go visit this guy and several other of my old London roomies!!

I could not be more excited :)

So in honor of my upcoming trip, I thought I'd scrap these photos.

This is so quintessentially James. He's clever & quiet, well spoken, the smartest person I know. And above all else, fun!

And able to have a good time.

And make us all laugh.

And deliver perfectly a funny photo.

As to the page, I stamped a Studio Calico background stamp and embossed with white powder. Then just dug into my brad collection for brown, blue and orange brads. I thought the colors would go well with these photos, pulling the blues from his clothes and the orange from the background in the one (btw, check out the clearly confused Chinese guy in the background ^).

I also used a stamp set from Kelly Panacci (go buy it, seriously!) to embellish and a few bits of AC Amy Tangerine tape!

Again, I can't stress how excited I am to see him and my sweets Becky and Tom! It's D.C. or bust for me, come November 18 =)

xxbesos

Mister Huey!

I got me some new Mister Huey's! Aren't they sooo purdy :)

xxbesos

If only you knew...

Soooo I'm really bad at blogging.

But a big fan of sharing!

The blog will go on, even with all of my little hiatuses.

But I have been scrapbooking! And I'm happy to share a page today :)

It features some truly beautiful product, the Crate Paper Random line. I LOVE this line!

It's just so pretty. It's the colors that do it, they're so vibrant and rich.

I'm calling this a hybrid page. But not because I printed the journaling.

It's a travel page, using photos from my day touring the Forbidden Palace. And part of the journaling is about that day...

But I couldn't stop looking at this cheeky grin on my face, and thinking if only you knew what was coming for you, when this whole Mountbatten adventure was over.

If only you knew...

"Look at you, with your silly grin and wantonly carefree attitude.

If only you knew...

If only you knew you were about to embark on some heavy times. Some very low points and then extreme hard times.

If only you knew you were about to lose a very important person in your life, so slowly and so wretchedly to cancer.

If only you knew you'd slip so far down into sadness and darkness that it was hard to think of the world as anything but gray and black.

If only you knew you'd try endlessly and fruitlessly to find work, a job, a career, a purpose.

If only you knew you'd become an Aunt and the world would burst forth anew.

If only you knew the low times don't last forever, if you have the willpower to make things changes.

If only you knew you'd get a job that would start you on your dream career, the one that let's you travel.

If only you knew that with time and patience and a little help from God, that any situation, however low or bad can somehow become your ideal, your dream."

xxbesos

Little Wild Goose Pagoda

I have a China page to share today.

It's one of those "sacrificial" layouts that I used to get some creativity going.

It's not my favorite, but it's another layout to add to my scrapbook and more photos actually scrapped so I'm very happy about that.

I loved the designs for Shimelle's June 2011 prompt for 4x6 photo love. But wasn't sure that I had 6 vertical photos of one "theme".

Then I printed me China photos...and was excited to see that I had just enough!

I had to do some tweaking, that photo of me in the middle was originally a landscape shot. But with the help of PSE, I cropped it down to a usable vertical image.

I added some stamped cardstock and patterned paper rectangles to the top and bottom of each photo, distressing the edges for some texture.

And added my journaling in strips.

"On a pretty fall day during the middle of our Chinese adventure, we walked out to see the Little Goose Pagoda inside of the Xi'an History Museum."

"Little? Hardly! It was flight after flight up and each one got narrower and shorter. Here is Patrick bent half way over as we found that his 6'3" frame wasn't exactly suited to China."

xxbesos