happy to see my friend shine

thanks for stopping by my part of the art of layers blog hop!

i met ronda two years ago (has it really been only two years, maybe it was three years?) through her blog. i had first heard mention of her through summer fullerton, who had a memory maker's issue with a picture of the recent masters, of which ronda was one. summer asked if i knew her because we lived in the same city. i meant to contact her somehow and find out if where she lived. a while later, i learned from an online message board that she had recently lost her dear sister chrissi and i commented on her blog that i thought we lived pretty close because our fences looked the same, maybe we could meet and she could tell me stories about chrissi. there was a 50/50 chance she would think i was a weirdo and not write back, but i got lucky and she agreed we should meet up at a nearby starbucks for tea. we instantly clicked, each decided the other was OK, exchanged phone numbers, and well, we've talked nearly every day since. turns out i was right, we live about mile apart as the crow flies, about 5 minutes drive. she's such a blessing in my life and i can't believe it took so long to find her :)

because we live so close, i often head over to scrap in ronda's awesome scraproom. i got to see a great deal of the process behind the writing of her book and i will tell you she poured her whole heart and soul into it. i'm so proud of her! and i'm happy to be a part of this hop celebrating her and this fabulous book. so many fun techniques to get an extra layer or two onto your scrapbook pages. the ideas are accessible and presented with great detail.

here's a bit about the book:

“Basic scrapbooking has you place photos and embellishments on cardstock or patterned paper - easy and...well, basic. The next step for most scrapbookers is layering. But trying to get that rich, interesting layered look can be very intimidating. Where do you even start? "Art of Layers" teaches scrapbookers and beginning mixed media artists just how easy it is to get to that layered look in any papercrafting project. Author Ronda Palazzari teaches readers 50+ techniques that will serve as tools to pull out whenever a layered look is desired. The chapters allow the reader to build their skills, from paper techniques they won't be afraid to try adding fabric, embellishments, and stamping to finally giving spray inks, paints and gesso a try.”

you can purchase Art of Layers from a number of vendors, including amazon.com, ronda has a list on the side of her blog. but i'd like to suggest buying it from cocoa daisy, a long time home of ronda's :)

i get to share with you a piece of ronda's artwork from the book, representing both our friendship and the chapter on stamps. you could try and guess the technique, but i think it would be better to get out there and buy this book! you'll love it! 

here's the hop list, please stop by each blog, leave a comment for a chance to win your own copy of this wonderful book. we'll each be giving one away! comments will be closed sunday night at 6 MST. have fun taking a peek inside ronda's book :)

Ronda Palazzari (you should have come from here)

Emily Pitts (you are here)

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

Lisa Pace

Nathalie Kalbach

Kelly Purkey

Dina Wakley

Amy Tangerine

Lisa Dickinson

Birgit Koopsen

Ali Edwards

Comments are now closed, the randomly selected winner is Holly Preslar! Congrats to you Holly and to the rest of you, please head out and pick up Ronda's awesome book :)

happy birthday kimber!

i'm honored and a bit thrilled to be participating in a blog hop for kimber mcgray's 40th birthday. without getting too sappy, i'll just say i love kimber. there was this one time when i was crying and she got all momma bear on me and well, i really needed that. and i will love her forever because of it. there. moving on.

you should be here from the lovely melissa phillips' blog.

i love it when my birthday is on a saturday. i think you would too mrs. mcgray, lots of time to party. :) hope you have a lovely day and an even lovelier year. this means we would have been in the same high school graduating class if we'd lived by each other. i am sure we would have been BFFs. 

head on to katrina's blog now. if at any time you get lost, you can always head back to the jillibean soup blog for a master list of hoppers.

finding myself via maya road

i still can't quite believe my luck on this one. there's so much to this story and i've been trying to figure out just how to share it all in a cohesive manner. here goes :)

last july, i was leaving CHA, the show floor was closed and tear-down was well under way. i hadn't had a chance to stop by maya road and really talk with caroline much during the show, anyone's who's been to CHA knows that the maya road booth is always busy. it's something i always try to do, chat with caroline at the show. caroline and i have gone from casual acquaintances (due to the proximity of the october afternoon booth where i was working 4 years ago to the maya road booth) to facebook friends a couple of years ago (funny story there, will share in a minute), to actual friends.

i thought this might be one of my last shows and just wanted to stop and share with her how much i enjoyed actually seeing her every six months. i told her of my decision to not renew a contract i  had coming up, and that i probably wouldn't be in CA. that's when she asked me if i'd like to try out for her design team. hello out the blue question!

here's that funny story:
a couple of years ago, there had been a lovely mini album shared on facebook, i messaged caroline saying how lovely it was and that she had an amazing design team. i mentioned that i'd never be on her team because a: i couldn't put that many products together, and b: i was so not a mini album person. i freak out at the thought. that was the last we discussed it.

until that day in late july.

i have always loved when i'd get a pack of maya road products in a kit. i think these little clouds and suns were some of my all time favorites.

i was even inspired to make a MINI mini album because of maya road chipboard (yes, i said i freaked out a at the thought, but once i get an idea, i do enjoy the process and the completed project).

see completed album here

and while i don't consider myself a user of mists (it just doesn't sound right to say a mister :), i do use them a lot to recolor things or in small doses, like how i masked this journaling block on this layout:

i like hydrangea blue maya mist. a lot.

but you'll notice, i don't use a lot product, by any manufacturer. so when caroline asked me that question, i think i said yes because i was in shock :)

however, i did try out, caroline coaching the whole way by reminding me to just be myself when i was creating, don't try to use the maya road products like i think someone else might. here's what i came up with:

the beginning of my love affair with chevrons, which really are just a bunch of ric-rac, which if you know me, you know i have loved that stuff for a long time...

notice, this is a mini album. 

here's what it sort of looks like inside. i stamped all the different things we were up to in september on the canvas pages.

i decided to not analyze what exactly caroline sees in me as a designer, i'm just going to love this new journey i'm on. i'm still pinching myself that i'm a part of this amazing company. 

in my post from a few days ago, i shared that i'd been struggling (don't worry, it's all good, i promise) and that while trying to figure this thing out, my creativity had suffered. i've been creating the whole time, and i've been proud of what i've made, but it's been a lot harder to tell my stories. i might have even mentioned that i didn't have any more stories to tell. well, in creating for maya road's booth this last month, being able to use any paper i wanted, be it brand new releases or OLD OLD OLD stuff, i found that spark of creativity again. it was fun to just play. i had to still use maya road products, but that was easy because i could make it mine. i could emboss, paint, or spray the chipboard. i could make the flowers and ribbons any color i wanted with mists. i could just play. 

so thank you caroline for seeing something in me and helping me get past the hopeless place i was in. i am really glad i stopped by the booth that day. and someday i might stop freaking out about making a mini album.

stay tuned next week for my CHA booth work, which included an assignment to make a mini album... and my take on working a booth that is ALWAYS busy.

friends, fieldtrips, and why i love my husband

this past friday, i went to olde town arvada for a little friday photo fieldtrip with ronda. steph homburg and little AJ were supposed to join us, but little AJ got little sleep the night before. that meant mom got little sleep as well. we missed you steph, but totally understand the baby sleep thing. steph was here for the week, karl had a conference/class, and since some of steph's dearest friends live here, she thought she'd come along. tthe fact that her dad lives in denver kind of swayed the decision too :) we got to spend thursday cropping with her, it was fun to see her again. but it was even more fun holding this little boy, knowing all his mom and dad went through to get him here!



so anyway, fieldtrip photo fridays started because i want to fall in love with colorado, i want to have things that i LOVE about living here. i want to know where to take friends and family when they come to visit. so i grabbed ronda the last friday in august and said, "we're going to explore lafayette." and we did just that, but we also stopped along the way and took photos of things i've always wanted to stop and take photos of but never felt like i could justify the stop. like this:
and then we went exploring some of the shops along public street and got a few more inspirational ideas like this:


and these:

and humorous stuff that just made me smile, like this:
i mean petunia pickle bottom, how cute is that name? i'm a bit past their target market, but i can still appreciate good design when i see it.

pardon my digression...

back to olde town arvada's friday photo fieldtrip. we were going to hit at least all of grandview avenue, if not more. we decided to start at the east end of the street and work our way west, making sure we stopped at penzey's because i was low on salsa seasoning, hot and sweet curries, and paprika. not sure what ronda was low on, but i know she had a list too.

east end of the street. a yummy candle store called nature's gifts, where ronda got a gift for a friend and i got a metal sign that says "keep it simple." next stop: cute little paint-your-own-pottery place called into the fire. the owner kathy explained the process to us, and since we try really hard to have an agenda that caters to flexibility, we decided to stop and paint our own butter dishes. i'll show you a picture when i get mine back :) but here's some pictures of the wonderful place, how tempting are those shelves full of colorful glaze?


ronda, being cheeky.
my initial design that i was going to paint on my butter dish. i thought better of it and went with a more typographic theme.
it took us a bit longer than planned, although we try not to have time constraints, i had the city inspector coming to sign off on our basement. so we rushed through penzey's, got what we needed and headed home, in a traffic jam. :) missed the inspector by seconds, he pulled out of my street as i was getting ready to pull in. oh well.

and lastly, this is why i love my husband. he's found this very cool place called reSource, it's very close to his new job in boulder and he and a couple of his buddies go there on their friday lunch breaks to explore. he told me about this cool old sink one week. the next week he told me that cool old sink now had a pedestal. he said he wanted to take me there, he thought of me the whole time he was there, how much i would love it. they have old doors, old radiators, old lockers, old bathroom sinks, and even some fairly new stuff (that's another blog post). so this past saturday morning, after a lovely sleep in, he suggested we head out there. well after a bit of washing up, this is what we now have sitting in our back yard. :) it's a standard american pedestal, forged in 1928. it's missing the cold handle, i must begin searching for a replacement online. but really, how cool is that? how cool is it that my husband thinks of me when he goes to a reclamation yard? he said he knows i'm into the reusing thing. for some reason that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

with paint all over me

today i finished the second coat of primer in the basement. last october 3rd, kelly went to town hall and purchased a permit to finish our basement. he planned on being done in a month.







(pregnant pause)






you might look at your calendar and note that october 3rd is just 2 weeks away. we are coming to the end, it's been a long road, of which kelly has done the majority of the work. he's a very good man. he knows how to all these amazing things, like finishing basements. he's had help with the electrical, HVAC, drywalling, and mud/taping, but the rest he's done on his own. i haven't been much help up until now. i know how to paint and i'm pretty good at it. so i get to prime and paint. yesterday my friend linda came over for a couple of hours and helped me get the first coat on. today i finished the 2nd coat and am going to paint the ceiling tonight. i LOVE fast drying paint! tomorrow is the add color day. we're going with toasty grey. it's more toasty than grey, it's a creamy light brown, we have it throughout the house already, so we decided to continue the look. better for resale. not that we're thinking about selling, but moving as much as we have, we think that way. annie would love to paint the whole room aqua or orange, but i think i may paint my exercise area aqua or green, to add interest. i'll take pictures when it's all done. the carpet should be here end of next week, early the following. i'm SO excited to have this room done. kelly's reward for doing all that work is a large flat screen and surround sound system. he has yet to settle on which particular tv/system he wants. we're really looking forward to having a place the kids can hang out with friends, that was the impetus.

but that's not what prompted me to write this. i had a couple of really neat experiences today in between painting and i just need to record how grateful i am for friends. for friends who come to read my blog and leave comments, i say thank you. for friends that are willing to forgive and rebuild a relationship, i say thank you. for friends who share their reasons behind their choices, i say thank you. for friends who conspire with me and follow me on my wild hairs, i say thank you. for friends who get me, i say thank you. for friends who share their work with me and expect me to do the same, i say thank you. for friends who i didn't think would want to be friends with me, but they insisted, i say thank you. for friends who let me worry about them, i say thank you. for friends who share ideas, links, thoughts that reminded them of me, i say thank you. for friends who are always there, even when they are so busy they can hardly think, i say thank you. for friends who believe in me, i say thank you. i'll stop now :) i am just really blessed to have such good friends.