Chichi Labamba

Yes Chichi, There Is A Santa Clause

I know that it's Christmas time because it's December Tim Holtz does his 12 Tags of Christmas.  I squealed with glee (the emotion, not the TV show).

 

Love 'ya Becky and Sue!

And as a faithful Tim Holtz fan, I always leave comments after each tag is shown in the hopes of getting some Tim Holtz goodies in my Christmas stocking.  This plate is also near my Christmas stocking:

 
And on Day 10, it happened!  I was chosen to win a prize!  What is it you ask?  I have no idea, but I'll be grateful for whatever it is (have you seen the plate yet?).

In what has been a difficult week for a lot of my family, it's nice to see a rainbow at the end of it.  A crafty, painted, glittered rainbow.

Thanks Tim!

Where have you been?

I've been MIA for the last week or so.  Fortunately, it's nothing bad this time (other than I haven't had time to work on my Simple 365 Project or finish A Week in the Life). 

I've been working!

After 13 months of unemployment, I finally got a job in the scrapbooking industry.  Granted, it's only a temp job and I'm on my feet 12+ hours a day, but it's a fun job.  I get to demonstrate Cricut Expressions at Costco.  Since I've been taking pictures, it's funny to see the progression of the samples I have been making.

Let's start with basic shapes....

 
Maybe I should make a couple of layouts....

Now let's make a tiarra!

And we'll need a castle to go with that.  I had first made a pink one, but I gave it away.

I made the second castle blue just to change it up.  The layouts and the castle will be on display at the La Mesa Costco until Sunday.  I am off for the next few days to take care of family business as well as a few tasks/errands/chores/emergencies.  Thank you for your patience and I'll get the week 18 layout up as soon as I can. 
  

There's a Gypsy in my future....

I love to cut paper with scissors.  I find it very enjoyable.  So as a long list of cutting machines and die cutters have come along, I have been reluctant to purchase one, until now.  Last night at my monthly Pink Pineapple Scrapbook Club meeting, our fearless leader Elena brought a surprise special guest.  Jim Colby is the vice president of product development for Provo Craft and he came with a Gypsy to demo.  Keep in mind that the only place a Gypsy has been shown is CHA in Orlando last month.  We were a very lucky group to get to see one in person.

Eighty percent of our group owns a Cricut Expression and were very excited to get a preview of the Gypsy.  Me not so much (at first) since I didn't own one.  But once I heard Jim talk about what a Gypsy can do, I not only became excited, I am now on a mission to get a Cricut AND a Gypsy as quickly as possible!

The Gypsy will allow you to "weld" your images.  What does that mean?  If you want to print out "Happy Birthday" using your Cricut and a favorite font, you will no longer have 13 separate letters to glue down.  You can join the letters to have one continuous cut.  That alone is worth the investment to me!  Oh, to be able to create titles for my layouts and my minis and NOT have to glue every flippin' letter down one by one is fantastic!

The Gypsy also allows you to create on the run.  Preload your carts and work on a layout using the screen.  Resize , weld, rotate and combine your images while away from your machine.  Connect your Gypsy to your Cricut (or to anybody's Cricut for that matter) and voila! There's so many other features I can't possibly talk about them here. 

Now the Gypsy is not available in stores yet.  Your first chance to purchase one will be on September 24th at HSN where it will featured as the "Today's Special".   This is more exciting than the time Big Lots carried Thickers!

Thank you Jim and Elena for the super cool Gypsy sneak peak!  And a extra special thanks to Jim for putting up with a bunch of scrappers having a good time!

More cards from CHA featuring Eyelet Outlet Brads

Here's some more cards from CHA that I made for the Eyelet Outlet booth.

I want to use these bats with the new Eerie paper from Basic Grey.

And these spiders too.

These ornaments can be used lots of different ways.

These binkie brads are just too cute!

This card is perfect for fall (which is just around the corner!)

These are just two types of brads, but they look like four.  Pretty cool.

Now go forth and make cards, lots of them! 

Cards from CHA featuring Eyelet Outlet Brads

Now that CHA is over, I can show the cards I made for the Eyelet Outlet booth featuring the brand new brads and eyelets that premiered at the show.  It was hard not to give out sneak peaks.

Super cute penguin!

 

I admit I wasn't sure what to do with mushrooms, but it came out cute thanks to my Imaginisce stamp.

Love the momies to be.  So cute!

A bit of a Partridge Family influence no?

Now I want a hot air ballon ride just so I can use these brads in a layout.

More cards to follow tomorrow.  Bye!

Kits 2 Remember

While I'm very comfortable making mini albums and using my Bind-it-All, I had never forayed into acrylic  mini albums.  While at the Scrapbook Expo in San Diego, I picked up this kit from Kits 2 Remember.  Here are all the pieces for the kit

The instructions were pretty easy and were included with the kit.  The instructions are also available on line at their website.  I of course had to add a little extra to the album so I customized the tags, Glimmer Misted the flowers, Stickled the brads and used two kinds of paint to edge the acrylic panels.  Here's the finished acrylic mini

 

 

 

I just added some of my ribbon to the ones included in the kit as well as some Wordfetti.  This was a great way to start experimenting with acrylics for scrapbooking.  Kits2Remember also carries supplies to make your own custom mini-albums.  Now that I have my first one done I'm really looking forward to making my next acrylic mini-album!

New Stickles!

It's a busy week folks.  The boys go back to school on Monday so we're going to the beach almost everyday until then.  ComicCon starts tonight, and I have to finish my BoBunny submissions by Friday.  But I had to drop everything for this because it's so exciting!

If you've read my posts on Two Peas in a Bucket or on Scrapbook.com, you'll see I chime in whenever a Stickles thread appears.  Ranger has announced their new Stickles for Summer CHA.  Look at what's coming

 

They look so pretty!  I can just imagine using them for all sorts of cool projects.  And they will look so good with the Stickles I already have.  Here's a picture of my personal Stickles collection

Oh Santa, if you're reading this, I need a better camera so I can photograph my Stickle detailing.   And I promise that this year I won't start my letter to you with "Dear Santa, I can explain...." 

Sincerely, a really really good girl!