I won!

I am the First Place Winner in the Maya Road Summer of Fun Recipe Card Contest! I can't believe it and am so excited. You can see the announcement in their latest newsletter here. (Scroll down about halfway.) I submitted the "Journey Case and Album" I designed and taught as a class this summer using Maya Road's chipboard case and album. The prize includes having the project and instructions on their website and receiving $150 of their products! I can't wait to see what fun stuff they send me.

Happy Fall Y'all

Today is the first day of fall and I'm loving it. A storm blew into Texas last night, knocking the temps down to the 70's from the 90's, and it actually almost feels like fall for a change!

And speaking of fall, I've finally finished my hanging for an online "Black Hat Society Hangie Danglie" Swap. The only parameters were to include a witch, a hat and something dangling. My piece went to Robin and I hope she doesn't see it here before receiving it.

The background was made by glueing napkins to a heavy cardboard base (cut from an oversize box of Wheat Thins! - I love to recycle things destined for the trash). I toned it down a bit with some gesso and green ink. The witch and pumpkin were cut from a scrapbook paper and I added Stickles dots on the dress and a hat cut from black sparkly paper. The "be witchy" tickets are from an image CD covered with glossy accents. The teeny little black cat is a piece of Halloween confetti and the edges are sprinkled with gold glitter.

The store

So what do you do after a wedding? You rush home to continue helping to set up a new store!

We are in full swing now as the opening is just over two weeks away! Yikes! Just thought I'd give you some sneak peeks at what I am playing with every day.

boxes, boxes and more boxes

Glimmer Mists

ooh, buttons!

inks

yummy Copic markers!

More wedding photos

the vows

the cake, made by John's sister and mom - notice the silver leaf on two of the layers! It was as yummy as it looks.

The Wedding!

It's over - the long-awaited wedding was this past weekend and it was beautiful. It was held at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas outside of Santa Fe, NM, and was untraditional yet very New Mexican. The ceremony was held in a meadow a short walk down a path from the open patio reception site. The entire wedding party as well as all the guests followed a small Mariachi band down to the ceremony. Dana (the bride, my daughter), the grandmothers, the groom's mother and I were driven down. We avoided the rain that threatened all weekend, but it was cold and very windy. The poor bridesmaids and flower girls who were dressed in spaghetti-strap sundresses were frozen!

Here are a few of the many, many photos we took. I can't wait to see the professional ones - the photographer told me she took more than 2,000! The very best part was being together with all our children and our families and friends. And then to think that we will have another one in about eight months!

the bouquets

Dana and I before she got dressed

zipping up the dress

getting some formal photos before the ceremony

the bridesmaids (minus one of the groom's sisters that I cut off on the right!)

my four girls

the guests assembling for the procession

my son on the left - doesn't he look like Secret Service?

maid of honor (Kelly), Dana and me behind the huge tree before the walk down the "aisle"

lining up for the walk down the aisle

(For some reason, Blogger won't let me add any more photos, so I will add them to another post.)

Bye!

Sorry my posts have been sporadic - I've started working on entering product into inventory and pricing for the new store and working long days. And, can you believe, we leave on Thursday morning for our daughter's wedding on Saturday! Let's hope for sunny skies since it will be an outside wedding. I'll share pics and some stories next week when I return.

Christmas Tag Shoebox Swap

This month's project at our local stamp club was a "shoebox swap" making Christmas tags to add to our holiday wrappings. Everyone designed a small, simple tag and brought enough supplies for everyone to make two tags. The idea was to keep them simple as we figured they'd end up in the Christmas trash. After seeing all the darling tags everyone made, we all decided they were too cute for that! I'm thinking I might add one of the duplicates to a special gift, but I'm keeping the others and maybe stringing them together into a cute little garland.

One of our generous members also brought these cute little wooden "totes" to decorate to hold our tags. She even kitted and cut the supplies for us so this went together super fast. Just perfect for keeping track of these tags for another 4 months before we need them!

Unbelievable!

At last weekend's Creative Escape held in Chandler, AZ, teachers and past teachers designed and created lamps that were part of a raffle to raise funds for the Leukemia Society. But two special lamps, made by Heidi Swapp and Tim Holtz, were auctioned off. The photo below (courtesy of Scrap Scene) shows the lamps - can you guess whose is whose? Now, here is the unbelievable part. Heidi's lamp went for over $8,000 and Tim's for over $29,000!! Isn't that incredible? Who has that kind of money for a lamp even if it was made by the awesome Tim?! I admit, they're both pretty cool, though.

Altered Clothing Tags

What do you do with the hang tags on clothing you purchase? Throw them away? No! I save any unusually shaped or interesting tags - they can be altered and reused!

I participated in a local challenge where we had to use at least one clothing tag and alter it into something else. These were the two tags I decided to use. The Carole Little tag came from a dress (several years ago!) and is a very sturdy chipboard. I don't even remember what the silver tag came from but I saved it knowing that it would be fun to use sometime.


About the same time as the deadline fo this challenge, one of my daughters announced her engagement. So, I wanted to make a little something for her to say congratulations. This was the result.

I painted the black tag, added a scrap of music (appropriately named) from a hymnal and a copy of a recent photo of the couple. The heart and date were stamped and the tag was edged with silver Krylon leafing pen.

The little silver tag was recessed, so I stamped the love stamp, inked it green and cut it to fit in the tag. Then I filled the recess with Glossy Accents and added the silver heart brad while it was wet.

I added the ribbon that is imprinted "congratulations" and glued a magnet to the back so they can hang it on their frig. It was a fun little project and saved these items from the landfill - a green project in more ways than one!