congratulating the new simple stories team!

well, it's finally here, the announcement of the new simple stories team! i've been in the business for a while now, i've seen the ups and downs of design teams. i may be a little cynical about the whole thing once in a while, but there is nothing like getting that email, asking you to be a part of a team you really love. and i'll tell you, i've been on few teams that are as delightful as simple stories. the owners amber and kevin are so very kind. they are so very generous. they are so very appreciative of all we do. it's been a fun team to be a part of. the past team all voted yes to staying on for another year because of how we are treated. top that off with fun and innovative products and life for the following ladies is going to be great for the 2012-13 term! welcome to the newest members of simple stories! i'm happy to see so many awesome ladies joining us.

{2012 Simple Stories Design Team}

{Layouts/Cards}

Jill Cornell

Tonja Dirk

Guiseppa Gubler

Kim Holmes

Donna Jannuzzi

Rebecca Keppel

Allison Landy

Shellye McDaniel

Emily Pitts

Melissa Phillips

Liz Qualman

Kay Rogers

Ashley Stephens

{Altered Art/Mixed Media}

Emily Lanham

Kellie Rabideau

Wendy Morris

{International}

Gail Lindner

Cari Locken

Yuki Shimada

Natasja Cats-Verbeek

{Special Projects}

Layle Koncar

now i'm off to congratulate everyone! 

blogging at simple stories today

cards either work or they don't in my world. this one worked and it makes me very happy to just look at it :) directions for putting this together using the new lines from simple stories are over on their blog today. i'm doing a double duty post today. smart, yes?

have a lovely day!

p.s. i'm sore today. but it's not as bad as i'd expected. yay me. i am going to keep doing this. i was so good for so long. i will be that again.

p.p.s. if you like cards, you're going to want to subscribe to the new youtube channel from scrapbook and cards today! there'll be a new card demonstrated every other week by the fabulous lynn gaharay. her nails make me want to get a manicure. according to lynn, the best kind is called a gel manicure, it lasts for 2 weeks! imagine no chipping for 2 weeks!

and if you have not already, please stop by SCT's facebook page and like them. they are less than 200 away from the 10K mark and will be doing a great giveaway once they hit that!

sharing simple stories

i've got clearance to share my simple stories layouts now! here's 1/3 of what i've been working on this month, the other 2/3 is maya road (which i need to share, but am not sure what i can and can't post yet, will check on that and post again) and cocoa daisy (which i can share sneaks of and will do later today, just need to take photos). it's been a busy scrappy month, but i am so happy with how every layout turned out, it's OK. my mojo is back and it's a happy thing for me!

these two layouts are from the FABULOUS line:

inspired by this

inspired by this

these two are from the AWESOME line:

inspired by this

inspired by this

i used my inspo board on pinterest a LOT and went back to my graphic inspired roots. it was fun. i was smiling a lot these last few weeks :)

simple stories also has a new way to document, MIX AND MATCH, THIS AND THAT, and ODDS AND ENDS smaller albums with smaller page protectors and sheets of paper to match. i haven't seen it yet, but it looks like such a fun idea! to see more, check out this link.

the simple stories booth at CHA is 2783, if you're going to be in CA!

also!!!!! in case you missed it last week during the blog hop, there's a design team call for simple stories, they are an awesome company to work for, so generous and grateful for all we do. check it out here:

watch for more CHA from Maya Road coming soon!

hopping with simple stories

welcome to my stop on the simple stories blog hop! we've teamed up the design team with some lucky facebook fans to inspire you with our creations using simple stories. if you've been following along the hop, you're here from cindy's blog. if you're starting here, make sure you hit all the other blogs before mine, especially the simple stories blog (wink, wink. some exciting announcements about CHA releases and well, some other cool news...).

make sure you leave a comment on ALL the blogs of our guest blog hoppers, the one with the most comments will win a collection pack of her choice! AND one commenter from that blog will also win a collection pack as well! don't worry, there's one more chance to win if you comment on the simple stories blog as well! here's the complete schedule:

1. Simple Stories 
2. Martha Saenz
3. Simple Stories design team member,  Kim Holmes 
4. Amanda Albright
5. Cindy Pittman 
6. Simple Stories design team member,  Emily Pitts  (you are here) 
7. Sara O’Shea 
8. Simple Stories design team member,  Allison Landy 
9. Kate Blue 
10. Simple Stories design team member, Wendy Morris 
11. Naomi Armenta
12. Michelle Brekke
13. Simple Stories design team member, Liz Qualman

i made two tags for my stop, same quote, same design, different looks. i used the Year.o.graphy line, i love how flexible this line has been, you don't necessarily have to do month/year based projects with it. i hope you enjoy the rest of the hop, i know i'm excited to see what everyone else has done.

 

have a great weekend!

with a station break, brought to you by cocoa daisy

after almost two months of not really scrapping, except for duties required by work, i crawled back on the horse and am happy to report i still enjoy the ride! tonight is cocoa daisy's november reveal party for bed and breakfast! it doesn't look like i did much, but since we've got the online crop coming up (november 11-13, you don't have to be a subscriber to join in on the fun, you just have to register on our message boards so you can post to the threads and the gallery. apparently these crops are a riotously grand time!) we only had to put two layouts in the gallery. we're making more stuff for the crop, so don't worry, i'll post more as time goes on.

this layout cracks me up because the story showed up out of the blue and i knew i had to scrap it for posterity's sake. and i love this pic of my sweetie. he looks so sneaky :)

uses bed & breakfast and homespun plum 

and this layout, well i'm rather proud of how i made it work. lots of amy tangerine in this month's kits and i wanted to use the stitched heart paper, but was struggling with the non-movability of the heart. i like to place my own embellishments, i like dimensionality. but this finally worked and i love how it turned out. 

uses bed & breakfast and some twine from the twinery

 

reveal works a bit differently at cocoa daisy than it did at SC, you can check out the kits this afternoon, 4 PM EST (2 PM here in denver) and see what the DT did with them, then at 9 PM EST, subscribers have  access to the store so they get first dibs. the kits go on sale to the general public at midnight on the first on november.

i'll be back with more september stories, but thought some of you may enjoy some scrappy sneaks. i've also posted a tutorial on the simple stories blog today, so go check that out!

updating on #7

i said i hoped i'd be sore from the bench jumping i did on friday. well folks, i am. all over. and it makes me kind of happy to be this sore. it shows i did something.

and because i want this post to look pretty, here are the projects i put together for the simple stories booth at CHA this month. i made a couple of cards and a framed piece of art as well, i'll save those for another post. this first layout uses the happy day line. and no, that's not my boy, it's my friend's boy andrew. i don't have great baby pictures, that was before i started scrapbooking and i just didn't know how to take photos. but melissa has graciously supplied me with all i'll ever need, since she's a great photographer AND has twins who love me. i misted the background with clay mister huey, from the new memoir line, i love how very subtle it is. and the journaling spot is a stamp from the unity collaboration simples stories did. i stamped! i used mustard zing, i think it turned out well.

this layout i tried to channel my inner steph howell to make a fabulous bow. i think i did ok :) again, this is a photo of my friends' twins, using the baby steps line, so cute. it's not too themey and you can use it for either a boy or a girl. i even made a none baby project with it which i'll share later. the ribbon is may arts and it's gorgeous!

have a blessed sabbath day!

be my thrill

last fall, i was driving to e's school to play the piano for 7th grade choir, listening to KUNC, one of my local NPR stations that plays diverse music (and has a fabulous logo) when i heard this really fun song. i didn't have the luxury of waiting to see who it was singing said song, so i jotted down what i could of the lyrics and ran into the school (on my feet, not with my car, do not worry).

when i got back home (i am one of the few who do not have a smart phone. i know if i had one, i could have done this next bit of fact finding immediately, but i can't yet commit to spending $80 a month at minimum on a plan. i am very frugal. note: i did not call myself cheap.), i googled the lyrics and that is how i found the weepies. it was one of those angels-singing-in-heaven-clouds-parting-to-let-a-celestial-beam-of-light-through kind of moments. the song was called be my thrill and it's a hodgepodge of rhyming deliciousness. i am quite picky with my rhyme. tom jones can not do it. billy joel and sting can. frank sinatra can usually pull it off, but he's had a few epic fails. did i mention tom jones can not do rhyme? just making sure. i do not like rhyming for the sake of rhyming. i do like rhyming that is intellectual and makes you smile at how very clever it is. and the weepies succeed beautifully in that area. 

last week was the pledge drive for KCPR. i am an evergreen partner which means money comes out of my account every month, i don't have to think about sending in a check when my membership is up, and i can feel good about the fact that i support what i listen to everyday. unfortunately it doesn't mean i don't have to listen to the pledge drive. long have i wished NPR could have an alternate channel for those of us who are already members. but alas, that is not the case. 

back to last week. they were doing 20 minutes sweepstakes for a pair of tickets to los lobos/los lonely boys at chautauqua boulder in august. i had entered the australia 10 day vacation w/o luck, but figured what the heck, why not try to win tickets. i'd been lucky many years in the past, winning tickets to a jazz concert when we were in college. so i called, said i was an evergreen partner and wanted to enter the drawing. 

the 20 minutes passed, i figured i hadn't won, so i went to the chautauqua site to see how much tickets were. los lobos/los lonely boys were quickly forgotten when, filing through the list of concerts i saw the above picture. 

be still my heart.

so i bought tickets for kelly and me. and i'm so excited.

fast forward to this week. i got a message from KCRP. i'm the winner of the los lobos/los lonely boys concert tickets. yah. life is grand.

and to make your day, i have some sneaks for you from the july studio calico kit. mind the gap (cool name huh?) goes on sale monday the 27th. i ordered two add ons, pint and flat.

here's a list of supplies that i used (or would work well) with this kit: 

• powder ZING
• apricot ZING
• blush ZING
• chestnut ZING
• versamark ink
• heat embossing tool
• stazOn ink in black
• foam tabs circles
• mister huey in calico white
• blender tool and foam pad

this one is a two pager, so i'll share a sneak of each side. 

uses the mind the gap, flat, and pint

and i'll share two of this one because one was already in the sneak slide show, and i just want to be nice. i used mister huey on a blender pad to make my journaling spot a little more obvious. it took forever to dry, but i love how it dulled the paper just enough to journal on it.

uses only the pint add on

and this one is about my friend's twins. they love me. and they had to move, which broke my heart, but i'm not going to hold that against my friend or her husband because i like them too and would like to maintain open communications with them so i can see the kids when we go to utah on occasion.

uses mind the gap, pint, and flat

another thing to share:

today is the release day for scrapbook and cards today's summer issue. can i tell you how excited i am!?!?!?! i don't have my hard copy yet, but the online issue is fabulous! download here. and did you know you can view it on mobile devices now? all for free? yay!

and finally, i'm hosting the simple stories blog today. you should go check it out, here's a sneak of my project: