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Hi everyone,
I hope you have a safe and happy Halloween!
This is my little nephew Jason looking as cute as ever, trick or treating last year at my house. Layout featured in the Fall 07 issue of the Canadian Scrapbooker.
Supplies:
Patterned paper: Chaterbox, Mustard Moon, Making Memories.
Rub ons: Heidi Swapp and Melissa Frances
Chipboard: Heidi Swapp
Cardstock: World Win
in the office today. Thanks for the kind words about my Silver Bella projects. For those who asked, yes,I will post pictures of the entire projects once I'm home from Silver Bella.
In the meantime, here is a Melissa Frances project that was recently published in Holiday Cards & More Vol. 2 published by Paper Crafts magazine. This project features one of the adorable Melissa Frances Sentiment boxes. A Sentiment box is a tiny little crayon-sized box (with artwork on the cover) and a fold out cardstock weight accordion insert stored inside it. The box also comes with a die-cut sticker sheet and three buttons. At $2 MSRP, it's a great little bargain and an adorable project, especially for Christmas. Let me know if you have any questions!
in Toronto. I flew out to the city Friday morning. My mom who is out here visiting family, picked me up from the airport and then she and my aunt and I spent a good portion of the day on Saturday at the Creative Festival. It was a lot of fun. (I bought some really fun Stampin' Up! stamps and embellishments. I'll have to post photos of them once I'm back home).
Sunday evening I left family and headed out to Melissa Frances's house. I will be here all week as we are working on designing product. Fun, fun, fun!
Here's another little peek of a collage for the vendor faire at Silver Bella. This is from the 'Friends' collage.
I don't know about you, but my excitement revel is gettin' higher and higher each day. Silver Bella is one of the highlights of my year, and to think, it's just around the corner. I'm trying to finish up lots of 'stuff' around the studio as I leave on Friday for head office and just have a few days in between coming home from there and leaving for Silver Bella, so I'm trying to get all my artwork done. I'm seriously having SO much fun. It's been eons since I've sat down for several days in a row to do mixed media art. It's been a welcome break.
Here is a little sneak peek at several of the collages I will be bringing with me to the show. Feel free to let me know if you're hoping to see anything in a specific color pallet. I can always try to pull something together before the show. I'll be showing more peeks in the coming days, I hope you enjoy!
Seriously, I am so excited. My couches are going to be delivered this evening!!!! It's been about a 12 week wait since ordering them, so we can't wait. It will be too late/dark to take photos tonight, but I will have to post some within the next few days.
As to any other news, well, been having fun creating. I've done some Silver Bella vendor night projects which has been really fun. It's been good to break out the paints, gesso, vintage wallpaper and german glass glitter. I've also made some cards, scrapbooked and tried to clean my studio. It's a never ending battle, I tell ya. This week I received my shipment of Melissa Frances CHA Summer products. So about 100 pounds and 3 large boxes full of product had to somehow go into the room. It's been challenging to try to find space.
Here's one of the cards I made this week. Supply list:
Patterned Paper: Daisy D's and Melissa Frances
Cardstock: World Win Papers
Stamp: Savvy Stamps
Ink: Used some markers to color the stamp
Buttons: Vintage
Ribbon: May Arts
Crochet lace: craft store
PS - I noticed after I downloaded and edited the photo that the edge of the card and the edge of the photo line up (which I really don't like. I would have preferred to have the card offset to the right of the photo). I hate it when I don't notice stuff like that when I'm taking the photo. GRRRR....
Finally just want to continue my trend of posting about music that I'm really enjoying. I have been a fan of contemporary Christin recording artist Michael W Smith for years. I love his music and lyrics. While I like/enjoy his regular studio albums, it's his Christmas albums that are hands down my favorites. I play them all Christmas season and I actually walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of one of his original compositions "All is Well" from his first Christmas album. (I tried to find it on youtube, to link it for you, but I can't find anything more than a 30 second snippet of it anywhere on the net, sorry). Yep, to say that I am a fan of this man's incredible song writing ability is an understatement. (While his voice is fine, he's no Josh Grobin, if you know what I mean!) Anyways, his new holiday album came out in early October and I finally received my copy from the mail the other day. I don't know if I'm majorly hormonal or what, but I actually started crying at point while listening to it as I found it SO beautiful. Here's a link to the new album from his website. Right now you can listen to the whole album, but it sounds like it will be taken down sometime soon, so if you want to listen I'd head on over sooner rather than later. My pick from the album is track #7 Sing Noel, Sing Hallelujah, It is so lush and the lyrics are perfect for Christmas. I have little doubt that in our household, this album will be played a TON over the coming years. Anyways if you're looking for a holiday album, one that has lyrics celebrating the religious tradition of the season, I would really recommend 'It's a Wonderful Christmas'.
I don't know about where you live, but here in Vancouver it's really starting to feel like fall. This morning I was out raking the yard as it's full of the most beautiful red, orange and brown maple leaves. There is also the unmistakable scent of wood burning fireplaces on the wind which never ceases to bring a smile to my face. Yes indeed, it's fall and I'm lovin' it!
I had an exciting and busy weekend. Canada's Crop for the Kids took place across the country Fri-Sunday. We at Melissa Frances sponsored classes at three of the event locations, Vancouver (taught by me) and Toronto and London which were both taught by one of our girls from head office named Sally. The Vancouver class went well and it is our hope that this event raised a lot of money for the Children's Hospitals across Canada. One of the highlights of my weekend was being able to spend some time with Joanna Bolick. Some of you will recognize her name as one of the Garden Girls at Two Peas in a Bucket, as a Featured guest in the Melissa Frances newsletter some months back, or as someone frequently published in scrapbooking magazines. You might not also be aware that she is a talented photographer with her own business as well. It was an absolute delight that first of all Joanna agreed, and second of all, Rick (my hubby) agreed to do a mini photo shoot. (Trying to get a photo for our Christmas card!) Joanna was extremely personable and made the shoot so easy that at the end of the day Rick told me that he hadn't minded the experience. (Coming from a man who quite dislikes posing for photos, that is HUGE!) So a BIG thank you goes out to her! It was a treat to get an email from her directing me to her blog to see a few peeks from the shoot. You can see them here in her post from Oct. 15th.
After the photo shoot, Rick went into work and Joanna and I played tourist in Vancouver. She has never been here before, so I got to play tour guide and show her some of the sites of my fair city. Truthfully, while Rick and I go into town for our football games, it's been many a year since I've driven down town and probably the same amount of time since I've been to a few of the sites Joanna and I visited. It was great to reacquaint myself with the city. We even stopped at an antique store that I have always wanted to go into, but never have, lol! We toped the night off at dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the City, Cloud 9. It's a revolving restaurant with gorgeous views of Vancouver and the surrounding area. We had perfect weather for it. (For those of you who are local, it will mean something for me to say that it was clear enough that we could see Mt. Baker from the restaurant...for October, that's AMAZING!)
Om Sunday Rick and I ran a bunch of errands after church including going to pick something up that we were going to buy from craigslist, only to have the lady forget that we were coming and not be at home. She has since called, apologized and offered to deliver the items later this week. We'll try to work something out with her. To finish the weekend off in style, Rick said to me at 6:40 PM, Carolyn let's go see a movie. So I quickly looked online to see what was playing and we headed off to watch 3:10 to Yuma. We knew it would be well acted with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in it, and it was. While violent, it was very well done and it had a positive message about standing up for and doing the right thing no matter what everyone else does.
Anyways, that's a round up of my weekend. I hope that each of you also had a great weekend. What is your favorite thing about fall?
I have a favor to ask from one of you oh-so-fabulous readers. I had the Sept 07 issue of Better Homes and Gardens as there was a home in it which I loved and I was going to try some of the paint colors featured in the article in my home. However, I have lost the issue and I think it may have been recycled. Unfortunately after going to my local magazine sellers and contacting the magazine to purchase a back issue (they didn't have any available) I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to be able to get/find the issue without some help. So,I was wondering if anyone has a September 2007 Better Homes and Gardens magazine (see cover at right) and they would consider either:
A) Color Photocopying an article and mailing it to me.
OR
B) mailing me the issue..
I would be happy to either pay for the issue/mailing or send scrapbooking goodies in exchange.
You can let me know in the comments field and I'll follow up with an email.
Thanks!
I think I may have spoken too soon on Monday when I said that I thought I had successfully fought off a cold...looks like I'm on the losing end of the battle as each day I have steadily been feeling worse. Ugh. I'm trying to get lots of rest to fight it off, but I don't know if it's working...In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend, so I'm crossing my fingers that I'll start to feel better.
One of the bright spots in my week has been some pleasant interactions I've had with designers whose work I've admired. It's always nice to discover that those whose blogs, or work you've enjoyed are as kind as you imagined. I wanted to share with you one particular artist who has such a distinct look that I can pick her work out anywhere. Her cleaver use of vintage ephemera, color and traditional scrapbook products is SO inspiring. And....she has her first book, The Art of Personal Imagery: Expressing your life through collage coming out on October 11th. I absolutely can't wait to purchase it. So, I invite you to visit Corey Moortgat. She is so generous with sharing images of her artwork on her blog (and she also shows her simply charming studio space). Enjoy her site, if you're like me, you'll spend hours devouring her artwork!
October. I must have been more out of it than I thought yesterday as I didn't even realize that the calendar rolled over into October! This year has just flown by.
I have some great Fall decorations, but I don't think I'll be taking them out this year as we're in the middle of redecorating and so the house is a bit of a mess. I can't put anything on my mantel as the paint had to cure for 30 days before setting anything down on it. We're very excited that sometime in the next two weeks our couches should be delivered. We received the call that the furniture is in, but the slipcovers were going to be another 10-12 business days, so we're patiently waiting for them to arrive before having everything delivered together. I'm waiting to pick the new paint color for the room until the couches are in as the color of the brown upholstery and white slipcovers will impact how a wall color will look...
To get you in the mood for Halloween/fall here's a super cute little song from another group I recently discovered. They are called The Puppini Sisters. They are such a throwback to the 1940s. Remember what I said about loving harmonies? This group's harmonies are so fun. I'm hoping to get their album in my stocking for Christmas!
