come play on studio calico's playground

just to clarify my self portrait challenge for jennifer :)

1. take a self portrait and link me--get one entry,
2. be creative in your portrait angles and get another entry,
3. do a layout with the self portrait you took and get another entry.

so there's a possibility of 3 chances to win the fabulous TAFFETA add on.

VERY IMPORTANT! these must be linked BEFORE midnight may 2nd, and i MUST be able to get ahold of you through your link, or you must check my blog at midnight and give me a way to contact you. if i can't contact the winner within 24 hours, i'll have to draw a new name. wouldn't that be sad? so please make sure i can get a hold of you. you're welcome to email me through my profile page on the lower right sidebar if you're worried i won't be able to find you...



ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall in love.

the may studio calico kit is available now and i can not urge you strongly enough to run over there and snag this kit for yourself. i keep saying i liked the kit when i first saw it on line. i liked it when it came to my door. i liked it when i put together my first layout. and then i struggled with it. then something magical happened and i absolutely fell in love with this kit. things just started falling together and the pages kept coming and coming. it's got the most unusual mix of patterns and textures, but they work together so well. it's like my mom's log cabin quilt that i featured in my "the stories" layout. it's a gorgeous collection of elements and i love it.

we got to pick one SC member to lift this month. i chose the lovely and talented brooke clark (kili'smom) as my muse for this venture. brooke's got an amazing design sense, i'm always drawn to her layouts and i've figured out it's because her designs are so solid. she's great at making tight clusters that portray movement. i chose her layout called "k [hearts] v," a page about the relationship between her daughter and their dog. such a sweet page. i took the spot she used for 3 photos and cropped one photo to fit. i loved her use of little strips and stitched Xs on the borders of the paper, had to try that too! and the whole reason i wanted to try this layout in the beginning was because of the coffee stain stamp that comes in the double dutch add on kit. i wanted to find a page with lots of circles. brooke gave me the perfect answer, her use of circles in the title and cluster of elements and then the MM paper full of circles. it was perfect. thanks brooke for giving me such a fun design to play with!

here's brooke's layout:


i loved the idea of teacups and the stain stamp, i used versamark to make the stains subtle, and loved how it made it's own patterned paper. i played with the photo, ran it through the wind filter to show even more movement. i was pleased with how it turned out.


this layout is for my mom. she spent months putting this quilt together. she used scraps of fabric that she's saved since the very beginning of our family. she sewed a lot of our clothes growing up; taught all of us girls to sew; and with every piece of clothing sewn, her scrap bag grew a bit bigger. it's really special to hear her talk about how much this quilt means to her.


love accidents. i'd initially cut out the half circles to use as they are here, but put the two back together and you get a really cool look i think. love the haphazardness of this. the only thing i'd change is where the rub on is. it should be down by annie's feet instead of up by her head. oh well.
{removed for publication}

i had a totally different plan for this canvas, but when i saw the sassafras numbers, this kind of made itself. i love the "billiard room" feel of the numbers and all clustered together just looks cool. i was going to use gesso for my original idea, so i just stuck the numbers into it instead and roughed it up a bit. i love how it turned out. now i need to decide where to put it. the numbers actually match a lot of the colors in my house, so it's got a lot of possible homes. it was really fun to create. i like getting messy. :)


already have a layout called this, but oh well. i'd wanted to go to toontown after i'd seen a family picture from some old friends taken there. it looked intriguing. it was. we were tired and it was the end of a less than stellar experience, but i'm really glad i was insistent that we stop in.


my favorite layout of the month because the waves were a huge surprise. i didn't know what to do with that punch. but crinkle up the strips and pop dot them, and now i love that punch. i love this because it's a conversation between myself and my husband, i don't often scrap those, and it really captures how our family feels about the water. there's just something about it that calls to us. living in landlocked denver, we don't get much beach time, so when we went to california in march, we spent as much time as we could there. and loved it. and this is the result. i love how simple it is, yet how much texture i was able to add. i'm into texture now.