Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Journaling prompt --- A favorite item of clothing

Do you remember a favorite item of clothing from your childhood?

I have a phenomenal memory so I can recall lots of clothes and shoes that I loved as a child. In kindergarten, I had a pair of cowboy boots that I loved. I wore them on picture day with a pair of khaki pants so I could "look like JR" (yes, from Dallas!). I had a t-shirt in 3rd grade that was aqua and white that said "I love rock n' roll" on the front. In 5th grade, I had a pink sweatshirt with scottie dogs on it... and I think it was Swatch or Esprit or some other very 80's brand.

But these shoes are right up there in my memory:


They were house shoes with Snow White heads on the front. Oh, how I loved those shoes! They were pink and fuzzy, and the Snow White head smelled soooo good like plastic baby dolls. I remember wearing them until they got holes in the bottoms and in the toe where my big toe poked through. Just looking at these pictures brings back great memories of that Christmas and how it felt to be a little 3-year-old girl!

So think about your favorite clothing item from your childhood and make a scrapbook page about it. Don't have a picture of you in the item? That's OK. You can always include a picture of you from that same time period, or you can just not use a picture at all and focus on the journaling itself.  Either way, it will be a great page to have fun with!

I would love to see your work so upload your page to your blog, Photobucket, or some other gallery and send me the link!

Huge giveaway from Simple Scrapper!

The Simple Scrapper is having a fantastic giveaway on her blog. She is giving away a 1 year subscription to Simple Pages / Simple Projects (a $96 value)!

Simple Pages/Simple Projects is a wonderful product designed for busy scrapbookers. Each collection (released monthly) includes instructions for a project, .PSD templates that can be used as templates or as sketches, and a sheet of "story starters." While you can purchase each collection individually or as a 6-month subscription, Simple Scrapper is giving away all 12 collections!

Besides the great giveaway, the Simple Scrapper website has all sorts of wonderful tips about things such as digital photography, organization, and time management. So go check them out and tell them I sent you, then enter this giveaway for yourself!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Big blog giveaway!

Jamie, the lovely lady over at My Tiny Little Corner of the World, is having a huge giveaway on her blog!

She is giving away 84 sheets of paper from 7Gypsies and GCD Studios! And she just *might* throw in some Ranger and Prima goods as well!

Just go to her blog (which, besides the giveaway, has tons of great tutorials on making cards, ATCs, and other paper goodies), become a blog follower, post back on your blog/website, and leave a comment. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Here's the link: http://mytinylittlecorneroftheworld.blogspot.com

Good luck!

Monday, January 17, 2011

New Cosmo Cricket collections... and a favor to ask my dear readers!

I adore Cosmo Cricket. The people behind Cosmo Cricket (Julie, Eric, and Lindsay) are so sweet and lovely. Their collections are always so retro and fun and cute as can be. Well, they have outdone themselves this time with their new collections debuting at CHA in a couple of weeks. Just look at these!
"Social Club"




"Upcycle" (my personal favorite!)

"Salt Air"

Aren't those just the cutest? So go here to see all of the pictures of the papers and other goodies up close!

Now for the favor to ask all of you....

The same lovely people at Cosmo Cricket are doing something really cool. They are giving away these collections to some lucky people and one of the ways involves you! While winning this stuff would be great, this would be even better:

"And, the final way to win is to be nominated by your friends and family as one awesome person who would make a great addition to our design team. The top 10 people nominated will be featured here on our blog for you to vote on again. The winner of that vote will become the newest addition to our team for at least 6 months and they will also receive tons of Cosmo Cricket goodies including the new lines."

That's where you come in! You know you want me to be on the Cosmo Cricket design team. You know that it would be just too cool for school. Think of how popular you would be if you could say to your friends, "Hey! My friend Lorrie is on the Cosmo Cricket design team!" You would be making folks jealous left and right. So go on over to their blog and leave them a comment nominating ME! Or go to their Facebook page and nominate ME! Or go to Twitter and nominate ME! Or go to your email and send them a message nominating ME! OR DO ALL OF THE ABOVE!!!  Only the top 10 nominees are in the running so vote early and vote often!

(Seriously though, it would be an awesome opportunity so I would be so honored if you would nominate me.)

Hugs and smooches to y'all!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

CHA Winter 2011

The CHA Winter 2011 Conference and Trade Show is coming up!

CHA is where the newest crafting products and lines are debuted. Just thinking about all of that crafty goodness in one place makes me giddy!

You'll be giddy too when you look at some of the CHA sneak peeks. The wonderful Nancy Nally, publisher and editor of Scrapbook Update, has gathered a list of some of the many companies and the lines they will be debuting at CHA. You can see them here. Thanks, Nancy!

After looking at all of the sneak peeks, I can see some definite trends for the new lines:
  • Vintage/retro - Lots of papers and embellishments that look straight out of the 1920's-1950's (with a couple of 70's thrown in!)
  • Circus/carnival (mostly vintage/retro) - Just as long as we don't have to see lots of clowns. Clowns eat people.
  • Pastel/muted colors
All of the new lines are wonderful. I can honestly say that I didn't see a dud in the bunch (and believe me, I have seen some duds in past CHA releases!). However, these are the things that stood out to me:

GCD Studios: Melody Ross "Soul Food" -- OK, this one comes with a disclaimer... I love everything that Melody Ross does. She could poop in a bag, put a little vintage bird on it, and I would buy it. Seriously. But even if I didn't have an overwhelming "scrap crush" on her, I would still love this collection. The colors and the retro ladies take me back to the late 70's, sitting in Calico Corner and looking at sewing pattern books with my mom. (That's a true story -- Calico Corner was our local fabric store & I loved going in there as a kid, just looking at patterns!)


Echo Park Paper: "For the Record" -- Love love love this line. I would buy it for that vintage typewriter alone.
Sassafras: "Paper Crush" -- Sassafras Lass (I can't help it... that used to be their name and I will always call them that!) can do no wrong in my book. Their papers and embellishments just make me happy. Love the border strips on the edge of the papers. Love the 2-sided paper (but it makes it hard to choose what side I want to use). And the little chubby cannon firing hearts made me say SQUEE!

Webster's Pages: "Spring Market" -- Oh. My. Goodness. This collection makes me want to plant a garden and make homemade jam. No lie. And the fabric flowers? Shut up. I am dying over here.

So what are your favorites? See anything that you will just have to buy when it hits the stores? What collections make you want to run the other way?

Monday, January 10, 2011

How you like me now?

I've been playing around with this page lately and learning how to make my own blog elements. I made all of the little sidebar titles (like Archives, Blogroll, Links, etc.) and I made my header! I also learned how to add a signature line to my posts and added a blog button so that people can share my site.

Yep, I am a total dork.

So what do you think of the new layout and new elements?

First design team layout is up!

My very first layout for Better Living through Scrapbooking is up! It's a "mid-week inspiration" for the first January challenge about New Year's resolutions. I loved this challenge because it made me break out of my comfort zone -- I used paint (on something besides chipboard!) and I even did a little hand-sewing! I really like the results and I hope you do too.

And if you ever have any questions about a product or technique I have used, please feel free to leave a comment on the site or ask me here in my comments!

Friday, January 7, 2011

I did it!

It is "official" so I can now announce:

I have been chosen as a design team member for  
Better Living through Scrapbooking!

I am so excited to be a part of this site! Better Living is still a fairly new site so I feel like I am getting in on the ground floor of something big. I can't wait to challenge myself to try new things and share them with the readers!

So what led me to this wonderful experience? (Warning: long story to follow!)

I decided at the end of 2010 that my one little word for 2011 was "brave". Too often, I have let opportunities pass me by because I was afraid of something -- afraid of success, afraid of failure, afraid of even trying. That little voice in the back of my head saying, "What if you aren't good enough?" was often a bit too loud and it kept me from pursuing my dreams.

I have had several scrapbooking goals for several years now, namely to be on a design team and to have my work published in a magazine. However, though my friends and family have always complimented my work, I never thought it was "good enough" to be put out in public. I gathered up all of my courage and applied to one design team last year and was not chosen. I was devastated. My worst fears were confirmed. I wasn't "good enough."

In the last couple of months of 2010, I was getting quite depressed. I had no job (despite sending out numerous resumes and applications) and I was stuck in a rut. Then a wonderful thing happened: I took an online class called "Inspiration Everywhere" from the wonderfully talented Jessica Sprague. In this class, we made an art journal. Now that may not sound like a big deal, but for me it was. I sometimes have a hard time thinking "outside the box". I am a rule follower and don't want to rock the boat. I never considered myself an artist, so why would I need an art journal? Hesitantly, I bought my supplies and went to work.

Almost as soon as I began to work on it, I began to feel free. There were no rules. There was no plan to follow. I could use whatever materials I wanted. I could draw or write anything. No one was going to judge my efforts; it was all for me. So what if I "messed up"? I could rip it out and start over! It was there and then that I decided I liked this feeling of freedom. It was then that I felt brave.

The best part of the art journal was one of the first things that I put in it. On the dedication page, I dedicated my book to my inner artist. Up until that point, I never even knew I had an inner artist. I then found a sticker (from the lovely folks at 7Gypsies) with a quote from someone named Brian Andreas that said, "For a long time, she flew only when she thought no one else was watching." Wow. Just wow. My life in a nutshell.

After playing with my art journal and jumping headfirst out of my comfort zone, I decided that my goal for 2011 was to be brave. I would make no resolutions about losing weight or cleaning house more or any of the many other resolutions I had made in the past. I resolved to be brave. If I could stand up and be brave, everything else would fall into place. After all, it was my fear that kept me from succeeding at my resolutions before.

So I did it. I applied for a job that I knew would be difficult to get. The little voice said, "You aren't qualified for that," but I did it anyway. Guess what? I got the job (more on that later!).

I then gathered my best scrapbook layouts to submit to a design team call. The little voice said, "These are not as good as everyone else's layouts. Why would they choose you?" Guess what? I sent in my application and I was chosen.

I then made a few things for a call for magazine publication. The little voice said, "Do you really think these are good enough to put in a magazine?" Guess what? I sent them in anyway. I don't know if I'll be chosen or not, but at least I tried. That was more than I have done before.

Most of us, especially women, have feelings if inadequacy. We never think that we are "enough" and we let fear of rejection or ridicule control us. If you are one of the scared girls, the not-good-enough girls, the sidelines girls, stand up and be counted. Stand up and be brave. You can do it. You never know how it may change your life.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

My word for 2011: brave

Free page sketches

I love using page sketches. While I can often come up with a layout on my own, sometimes I need a little creative kick in the pants. That's where sketches come in.

I recently found this website and the sketches are FANTASTIC! The artist's name is Allison Davis and she shares not only free sketches, but also variations on those sketches. Last year, she did "Sketch Week" each week (that must have been hard!), but now she is changing to "Sketch Month"; however, all of her previous designs will still be available in her archives. Allison also has another sketch site called "Sketch Support" and it features lots of card sketches as well as layout designs.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention some other sketch sites that I enjoy:
Page Maps
4X6 Photo Sketch Blog
Get It Scrapped!
Scrapbooks Etc.

So get out there and scraplift something!
 
Images by Freepik