A new person to adore

I was able to take one of Donna Downey's classes while at CHA, as well as talk with her at her booth for a bit and let me tell you, she is so incredibly REAL. Her talent knows no boundaries, but I was amazed by how funny and down to Earth she was. As you probably know Donna creates for Prima and she announced that her Prima products will be featured in turquoise packaging, so it will be easier to find her great creations.  The other medium that Donna is incredibly talented in is fabric. Her fabric projects are just awesome. Even the skirt she is wearing in the photo is one she made. Super cute!!

She is such a doll!

Pieces of her class, can't wait to finish this album.

Fabulous goodies in her booth. The heart canvas is actually covered with tags and then painted!

See the spool in the right corner? Wait till you see it unfold in the last picture!!

If I had an apron this cute, I would wear it everyday.

This album was all fabric and super cool!!

I REALLY want to make one of these spool fabric albums.

Super L-O-N-G post

I figure for the next few days, my posts will be kind of on the long side, but I promise they will be packed with more pictures and less of me talking. This morning I wanted to feature one of my favorite designer lines that was debuted at CHA, Melody Ross for GCD. Melody was Chatterbox back in the day from my understanding and then she had some rough times personally, causing her to kind of disappear in the scrap world. Well, let me tell you, she is back and in incredible form. Her new lines with GCD are so much fun, I love everything about them. The one drawback I will be honest with you is they are kind of expensive in my opinion. A pack of 15 buttons for $9.00 is too pricey for me, so I am sure there are others who feel the same. Her papers are average price and some of her embellishments are reasonable. So, my advice, stock up on the papers and less expensive embellies and then hope that you can grab the others on sale.

This has one of my favorite sayings ever on it, "Creative people are seldom tidy." LOVE it!

More CHA

I am going to break this up over a few days. Hoping that Miss Tabitha will share some of her photos with me. As many as I took, I still didn't take enough. Here is the first booth we went to on Sunday morning,  7Gypsies. I loved their booth, it was beautiful.

(I am SOOO excited about this tray!!)

How about some Theresa Collins? Her lines are always so elegant and her booth was a total reflection of her signature style. We also really enjoyed that she was doing mini book make and takes with a new line each day.

For tomorrow, how about some pictures of the uber-talented Donna Downey and some of the loot I gathered while there?

CHA! CHA! CHA!

WOW, WOW, and WOW!!! I seriously cannot tell you how incredible this experience was. Thank you to my favorite girls in the world for making it that much more amazing, (you know who you are!). I will post more (so many more) photos very soon, but as we got home really late last night, (thank you, LA traffic!), I am still digesting everything. But I have to be completely honest, this is the highlight of my trip. Please ignore the horrible picture of me, but it is a moment I will never forget.

I didn't realize until this morning, I looked like that, but seriously, who could look good standing next to her? I will go on record now as saying that Elizabeth Kartchner is an incredible woman. She is beautiful and genuine, not to mention talented and so very, very nice. The complete package.

Okay, enough fan gushing. I will be back later with more. But first, I should change out of my jammies.

Ms. Productive

Not sure if it is withdrawls, a new scrap space, or sheer focus, but Friday has been a good day productively. I completed the cute pink elephant shaped card I featured in an earlier post, I made another birthday card that I will add to a package tomorrow, and I created a layout based on the sketch posted on the Memory Maker's Forum in the first week of the LO challenge. And all this before 3:00 pm! Of course, I haven't really got dressed for the day and I haven't started dinner or emptied the dishwasher, but who is keeping track of those things?

In addition to all of that, I have used only things from my stash for all three projects!!! It is such a great feeling to throw away the empty packaging of another goodie I have finally used.

Such wonder...

I absolutely LOVED these photos of my niece. Every once in a while, photography kismet happens to me and this is one of those moments. She is eight months old and is like a sponge, trying to take in everything around her. I lovingly nicknamed her the "Hoot Owl" while home for Christmas, because if there was someone sitting behind her, she would do the swivel position she is in here in the two outside photos. She wanted to make sure that if they, (me, in this case), did something interesting, she was watching. 


With the light coming through the windows and picking up on that soft baby fuzz on her head, she is highlighted much like the little angel she is.

Seems things are coming in doubles

Grandma always said it should be in threes, but here lately I have been creating two layouts at a time. Now the other night, I created, (I use that term lightly here), one but it was so horrible, I refuse to post it. I was going to take a break from layouts, but was drawn back by some fabulous sketches and work out there. There is this one, New Love.

This is my sister in law, Samantha and my niece, Cadence, obviously when she was born. I immediately fell in love with this photo, its tenderness and the love that just radiates from it. When I saw this incredible layout from Robin Latish Shakoor in this month's issue of ScrapStreet magazine, I had to lift it. Robin's layout is beautiful!