moving on, it's a good thing.

first off, i don't know that there is ONE good way of handling changes. we all have our own ways of dealing. so for those of you who saw this first layout in the SC reveal and were shocked, i'm sorry it came as a surprise. i was under the impression that my leaving SC would have already been announced when i made this layout. it was intended to be a happy celebratory page, a way for me to look back and see all the many many many good things that have happened in the last four years. i have had a delightful time being a part of the SC community, first as a subscriber and then for the last nearly 3 years as a member of the wonderful design team. it was a dream come true for me, i adore the girls i got to work with so closely. i'm so grateful for the lasting friendships that i have because of SC. it has been a good four years. my reasons for leaving are varied, mainly, i needed a change and this was a good time to do it. God has a way of making things work for our good--it's our job to align what we think is good to what He knows is that. He's been giving me ample opportunity this summer to listen and grow close to Him. my leaving is all a part of the process. so if you're sad and shocked that i'm not going to be around SC as much, please don't be. know that it is a good thing and i'm happy. :) i'm not disappearing, not at all. i'm simply moving on to new things. exciting things. more on that later. 

featuring the glee club, pep squad, debate team, and home ec. see my last post for the inspiration piece.

this layout prominently features a photo from the lauterbrünnen valley in the swiss alps. it's the place where tolkien had to have pulled inspiration from for his lord of the rings books. it's that magical.

features pep squad, debate team

and this is what we ate nearly every day. bread and nutella. i hand cut the large title then exacto knifed the smaller subtitle. holy hard. but it looks kind of cool. 

featuring glee club 

thank you everyone who's ever been a part of SC, you've made a huge impact on me and i hope my leaving will not mean we will become strangers.

now, on to my news:

PART 1:
i'm moving to cocoa daisy! i'm thrilled to be working with christine and ronda. why from one kit club to another, you ask? well, the two are very different in my point of view, each offers a slightly different take on the concept. i'm excited to see what a new take on it will do to my creativity. and ronda and i live 5 minutes from each other, so it's rather convenient when we want to play with paper together, don't you think? i'm kind of giddy about that fact. i asked for a break and was graciously given a month off from designing, i'll start that up again come the november kit, but as of now, i'm sporting the fancy title of social media director. since i'm online a lot, i figured it would be a good fit.

PART 2:
i'm freelancing for scrapbooks, ETC! i am writing a new column that will be out in the feb '12 issue. this new opportunity means i'm using my degree in english! and yes, i do know how to capitalize when necessary. i've loved working with michelle rubin, the editor. she's a bit like me, and i find that funny. we've had fun working through concepts and ideas, and the column continues to morph. i like that she's a go-with-the-flow kind of girl.

i'll explain more later. i promise.

yah.

P.S. i'm still writing the trends column for scrapbook and cards today. luckily both magazines were good with it. :)

with great delight and pleasure

that's the definition of glee. try finding a fun quote that has the word glee in it nowadays and all google comes up with are references to the TV show. so i went the the definition.

studio calico's september kit, glee club and add ons, will go on sale saturday night at midnight EST, unless you're a subscriber, then you can  start ordering at noon EST. this kit was inspired by these pictures, gorgeous stuff huh? pretty fall colors and a slightly vintage feel. love the alphabets in the kits, happy to see so much amy tangerine featured.

there has been talk on the member boards about too much chevron, but since i've been playing with the kit and a couple add ons, i have to admit, i really like the chevron papers. i could have used them on every page, but refrained :)

here's my sneaks for this month, enjoy!

it's a two pager using pep squad and debate team

i used them all (well all the ones i ordered) on this one: glee club, pep squad, debate team, and home ec.  this one was a hard one to do, pretty emotional... i used the inspiration picture from some artwork via  zoe de las casas. i needed some whimsical cheeriness on this page :)

found this from zoe de las casas via eatdrinkchic.com and yes, i've repinned it to the dt inspiration board on pinterest. :) because i'm nice like that.

and finally, see? i liked the chevrons :)

uses all glee club, and lots of hand cutting/exacto knifing.

check out the other sneaks on the site, i know a lot of the girls had fun with this kit too.

a winner and boardwalk from studio calico

my randomly selected blog blitz winner for the bottle of mister huey shine is:

 Marti's World said...

Love, love, love!

July 27, 2011 10:35 PM

marti, please email me at emilygpitts dot gmail dot com and we'll get your bottle of mist to you very soon!  congratulations!

and moving on...

what fun i had with the august studio calico kit boardwalk! i got two add ons, boogie board and tide pool and loved loved loved how well each on complimented the main. the soft greens and aquas were so beautiful, but i didn't really pull them out as much as the red from boogie board. funny how that happens. here's a list of store products that i used this month:

• AC circle foam tabs
• pewter metallic zing
• rouge zing
• piglet mister huey
• bluegrass mister huey

and here are my layouts. this first one used the bluegrass to mist the pink paislee alpha from the tide pool add on. i got that add on because of the BG flowers that stack. i fell in love with the alpha though. it takes the mist SO well and i love all the fun little details that show up when you do mist. i thought i wouldn't like the font, but it grew on me. this layout makes me happy, i love how the circles balanced each other.

 i made this card while driving to utah to pick up my kids from grandpa and grandma's house. we've been doing this for four or five years now, every summer mom goes to CHA, the kids stay with my parents and they love it. they get to see aunties and uncles and cousins. and sometimes, grandma pitts is visiting aunt heather so they get a double grandma dose. i'm so blessed to have a good family on both sides. saturday was my parents' 41st wedding anniversary so i packed the leftovers from the kit and made a couple of cards on the way over. no stitching on the sewing machine, but i loved how they turned out.

made this one in the car too. rather proud of my clever use of the tin pin.

this one, i adore. first the sassafras sunshine broadcast papers make me soooooo happy. second, my son is adorable. he always knows how to make me laugh. and finally, love the stickers in the boogie board add on. i usually find it hard to use stickers, but these were amazing!

i loved this paper from basic grey and wanted to use a large swatch of it. it's hard to get a picture of you running. that's all i'm going to say about that. the title is a song by a ska band, the toasters, i found it very appropriate for my life right now. the quote i found on pinterest and it didn't quite fit around the flower so i used the ellipsis and then hid the rest of it under the flower. it's ok to do things like that :)

and there you have it, my august kit work, in one neat and tidy little post. :)

blog blitzing for SC

so glad you joined me on the SC blog blitz today, if you haven't already been, go check out the other team members' and CHA guest designers' blogs, they each have their projects and a little goodie to giveaway in celebration of SC's three wildly successful new releases. you can access their blogs by going to the SC blog, using the links on my left side bar, plus click on their names to get to lisa's and geralyn's blogs.

happily, i remembered to snap a few shots of my booth layout and mini album before heading out to chicago last week. good thing because we had a blog hop planned for when we came back! i forgot to do that last show... so here's my layout for you, i got to play with the gorgeous memoir line and i used mister huey in custard (from memoir) and calico shine (from the classics collection) along with the butterfly masks to create my background. i loved those masks, i usually just use punched shapes, but i can see the benefit of having vinyl masks now. they were so easy to use! add some of the great chipboard tags and buttons, a bunch of pleated strips, and a stamp, and i was able to create one of my most favorite layouts ever! i won't tell you how many pieces of paper went towards creating the perfect balance of mists before i got my background :) let's just say my masks got a lot of use. and i'm almost out of custard...

here's a couple of close ups for you, i embossed the title because it had to be white. it was very easy, much to my joy. just press lightly so the ink doesn't slide.

my garden journal didn't get a good photo apparently, this is the before shot... the after is very similar, but looks so much better. :) inside i added pictures and notes on the progression of my garden. i just wrote and wrote, not worrying about balance and design, it was very fun to do!

the whole team is giving away a new product and i've select the mister huey calico shine (check out the entire catalog of new products here) as my giveaway. leave me a comment and i'll enter you into the drawing. comments close thursday morning at 7 MST and i'll pick a winner to post that day. 

(under the boardwalk) i'll be sneaking some sneaks

on three out of my five projects, i used hearts. i liked the look once, so i kept adding them to things :) funny huh?

the august kit is absolutely amazing, i think i may be one of my new favorites. the colors are gorgeous and there's some really fun new products to play with, including the exclusive papers from SC and crate and the mist•a•bles from pink paislee (love them, they take mister huey SO well!). i got the main kit plus two addons, boogie board (because it was bright and happy and that red paper w/ polka dots spoke really loudly to me, can you tell? it's a great compliment to the greens and aquas in the main. AND it has twine!) and tide pool (because of the BG flowers, but then i fell in love with the PP mist•a•bles alphabet and the BG pp named batik. i think this add on is a must have.) and now for the sneaks! don't forget, the kit goes on sale this coming wednesday. please check out the site for more sneaks.

uses the main and boogie board. note heart.

uses the main plus boogie board. note heart.

uses the main's exclusive crate papers as well as boogie board. note heart.

uses the third add on, tide pool, as well as mister huey in piglet. note NO heart.

uses the main, boogie board, and tide pool, as well as mister huey in bluegrass. note NO heart, but used that red paper again! see how useful boogie board was?

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:

challenging you

here's my challenge as part of the studio calico NSD celebrations, you're getting a heads up a bit early so you can plan for any cropping parties you'll be participating in tomorrow :)

don't forget to check the SC blog for a list of all challenges and chat times. and here's to a fabulous weekend!

a stop on the hop before the shop

and it's not even dr. seuss' birthday! :) but it is the blog hop celebrating the arrival of studio calico's newest lines, countryside and state fair, to the studio calico shop. in deference to other retailers, studio calico holds off on selling their own lines for a couple of months, and now, those months have passed. so you can now order directly from studio calico!

you should have come to my blog via dear davinie's blog. here's my contribution to the party. i love how the state fair line blends with other manufacturing products, it really opens up the possibilities, don't you think? i used the veneer hearts, sprayed with hotdog (love this color way more than i thought i would, it's a nice rich orangey red), as well as the guess your weight and the banners from best in show (yes, i know, i am using banners lately...). Each line of journaling is anchored with the die-cut circles from the countryside line. Titling courtesy of the Chipboard Alpha stickers in Tan.

we've been given the OK to put together a little prize package, just for stopping bye, so if you'd like to leave a comment, i'll pick one winner of the following products i used on my layout:

now it's time to head over to the lovely jen jockish's blog. she's got another fabulous layout and prize package as well. have fun hopping and then shopping for all the new products! and since you're filling up your cart for a fun mid-month spree, you should know the following: ZING! is back in stock. there are only a couple of documentary products left in the shop. once they are gone, they are gone. my favorite journaling cards are one of the two... and the AC foam dots are back in stock. i love those.

comments will be closed and i'll draw a winner on monday, april 18th at 10 a.m. MDT

introducing state fair from studio calico

i got to work with the new STUDIO CALICO state fair line for the CHA show this upcoming weekend. it's a very happy and bright collection, one that when i pulled it out of the bag, i wasn't sure i was going to be able to do anything fabulous with. i pushed paper for quite a few hours, questioning my abilities as a designer, but then i started cutting and punching with this 3-in-1 punch (as much as i've been using it lately, i may be making my fiskars' all aflutter butterfly punch jealous) and when i was done, i had two layouts i absolutely love, one for the booth at CHA and one for today's blog hop. it's kind of like a magic trick, not sure how, but studio calico always nails it with their designs, making my pages so pretty and lovely. 

for this layout, i worked with bits of the papers tickets please, guess your weight, sideshow, and step right up. i also used the label stickers in blue and the state fair line, as well as the new cardstock alpha stickers called addy in green. but my favorite part of this layout ended up being the red rub-on alphabet. so i'm giving a set away, in red! and just because i can, i'm adding the green graph rub-on butterflies. they make me happy too. check out all the great new products (including the 10 new matching mister hueys!) in the online catalog.

for my CHA booth layout, i got to feature the days of week rub-ons. i scattered them down the side of the page, using the same color blue swiss dot bazzill as the blue rubs, the tone on tone is sooooooo pretty! i also used some wooden buttons and added eyelets to each one (a bit tricky, but with the crop-a-dile, i was able to get the hang of it quickly.) i then just scattered stars, circles, and bits of paper throughout for a casual look.

please leave a comment and make sure you head over to jen's blog to see her layout and what she's chosen as 
her giveaway. tell her i said hi! if you get lost, you can always head over to the studio calico blog for links, or i've got everyone listed on the left side of my blog as well.
have fun on the rest of the hop!

the giveaways close on wednesday, jan 26th at 12:00 am EST. make sure you check out and ENTER every single one!


ETA 1/26: my giveaway is closed now. the winner is jamie long. congrats!