Book Tutorial

Some of you might remember this little "She Art" that I did of the two girls.

Well, I sure hoped the girls liked it because I turned that She Art into a book. One for each of them!

Here's how it's done...
1) Take a digital photo of the She Art canvas (or you could scan it);

2) Resize the image in Photoshop to fit the cover of the sketch books

3) Print them out on plain printer paper.

4) Cover the sketch book with two coats of white gesso.

5) Add a coat of paint to match the background of the She Art printout. Notice that it's not necessary to paint the middle of the front cover.

6) Cut around the printed she art cover design

7) Adhere the cutout design to the book cover using modge podge

8) Use other colors of paint around the edge of the printout to blend it into the painted cover.
9) Add rub-ons and stamps.

10) Continue the painted design around the spine and back of the book.
11) Cover everything with a thin coat of modge podge to protect it.

12) Attach a ribbon bookmark to the top of the spine.

That's it! That's all you need to do to make a fun gift book!
Thanks for stopping by!

Good President's Morning!

It's kit club day! The brains behind the group is Beth. Every month the members take turn putting together a little kit for the other members to play with each month. We create a project using at least two of the items and share on our blogs. This month it was Mara's turn to send the kit. I know Mara from a scrapping MB that we were on together a long time ago. That site isn't in business anymore, but we still managed to keep in touch through our blogs and our love of running. We almost met once at the Surf City Half-Marathon in Huntington Beach. We must have been within 50 yards of each other, but there were thousands and thousands of people between us, lol!

Here is the February kit from Mara. Look at all the BRIGHT colors! This is sure to cheer up the ladies in snow country...

I had only one card planned, but my plan kept growing and growing. Here is all I had left when I finished playing with all the goodies!

And here is what I created with the kit:

This first card is the one that popped into my mind when I saw the kit. I needed to use all the beautiful colors to create a bright and colorful card. The stamped tree is from Unity.

Mara included some adorable stamped images from PSA Essentials. I knew that I wanted to create a card using one of them as a focal point.

Mara also sent some die cut tags. I'm a BIG fan of tags and happily proceeded to add another one of those cute PSA stamps to a gift tag. The stamp on this one is from PTI.

Now some mixed media madness! LOL! All those bright colors went together so well that I created a paint blend background with all the brightest papers and paint. I used the cute buttons, brads, and bling that Mara sent as the center of the flowers. The sentiment on this one is another stamp from Unity.

BUT I'm not DONE! Mara introduced me to baker's twine, and she sent three colors of the twine in the kit. I've also developed a love of baker's twine. I may never go back to ribbon! Here is a card I made for a challenge at Scrappin' Mojo. I used the baker's twine for the kit to wrap around the bottom of the card. It adds a perfect touch!

Lastly, here is another challenge card from Scrappin' Mojo that I made this weekend. Mara sent a lot of bling with her kit that I used on the center of all these little flowers. It's the perfect sparkly touch to an otherwise dreary looking card.

That's it for this month's kit... I think... I do have one more stamped image left. I'm saving it and the rest of the goodies for a rainy day (hmmm.. from the looks of those clouds that might be today, hahaha).

If you'd like to see what the rest of the group did with the kit, head on over to their blogs. Be sure to tell them I sent you ;oD

Mara
Mary
Beth

Have a GREAT holiday Monday, everyone!!!

Puppy and Plumbing

We completely missed Jena's birthday yesterday. Yep, the puppy is now 2yrs old! We had a good excuse... a pipe burst under the slab in the master bathroom. I noticed one of the tiles in the bathroom was warmer than the others. The following evening, 6 tiles in the bathroom were warmer than the others. We shut the hot water off and the next day I called the plumber. So, after 2 full 50+ hour weeks, I'm dealing with plumbers and insurance AND still trying to finish my software release by the 7pm deadline. Whew! I'm sure glad those two weeks are over with!

Anyway on to Jena-girl's birthday post! Jena has really gotten to be part of the family. She thinks she's just another one of the kids.

She even helps me with folding the laundry.

I must say that she's a sweetie, and she puts up with a lot...

We love you Big Girl!

A Herd of Holiday Happenings

I've been a negligent blogger. I missed posting about a few special happenings in the last few weeks. Firstly, the bulbs that I got for Christmas are blooming! I know that's not a big event, but we must find joy wherever we can... {grin}

And speaking of flowers... Happy Valentine's Day everyone! My wonderful hubby of 27 years, gave me TWO bunches of tulips. He said that he couldn't decide which ones to get me, so he got them both.

Here are the pretty pink ones. Oh, also notice the new pictures that I put up in the entry way.

I think these are my favorites... the white ones! They are so big and beautiful!

I also missed mentioning the birthday of my best-est friend, Mary. Happy Birthday, Mary! I hope you enjoyed your day!

I make Mary a new rolodex card on her birthday every year. This is the card for this year. LOOK! It's us in She Art style, lol!

It was also my niece's 10th birthday. I can't believe that the youngest of the cousins is now 10! They are all in double-digits now!

It was also my brother's and SIL's birthday. My brother is the youngest of the cousins of my generation, and he just turned 50yrs! Now I'm feeling old {sigh}. BUT I still had some people at his party convinced that I was the younger sibling... Take that, Randy!

Saving the best for last... It was Jim's 60th birthday! Happy Birthday, Honey. You're not getting older, your getting better!

That was an "all over the place" post. Thanks for stopping by!
I hope that everyone has a wonderful "Day of LOVE"!

Typography 101

I'm taking a typography class with Chris's friend, Thalita. It's an on online class. She's in Costa Rica, I'm in the US... isn't the internet a GREAT thing? It makes the world so much smaller.

I've always been interested in typography. I tried to take a class at the local community college, but it's always full. When I found this class taught by Cathy Z, I signed up! The first week she gave us 10 tips for creating and placing type. This week we are supposed to use what we learned and create a scrapbook layout.

Here is my homework assignment. It's a layout of Cheryl's birthday:

Here is my challenge assignment... a layout from the Disneyland 5K:

Look! TWO layouts this year! I've already doubled the number of layouts that I finished last year! YAHOO!

Disneyland 5K - take two

Here are a few more photos from the Disneyland 5K.

If Cheryl was one step more forward, this would have been a picture of all three of us:

There's my girl!

And look! I have proof that I beat Chris! I need to bask in the glory now, because I know it will never happen again, hahaha!

That's all for the Disneyland 5K... now we are looking forward to the Brea 8K!

Disneyland Neverland 5K

Welcome to the "Happiest Place on Earth"!!! We are planning 12 races in 2012, and this is our FIRST! It's Friday and tonight is the Neverland 5K through Disneyland and California Adventure (this is probably the only time when you will ever see Chris wearing a Tinkerbell shirt).
I took half day off work. Cheryl got home from school about 2pm. As soon as Chris got back from class. we left for the park.

We spent about 5 hours in the park and went on a few rides.


We stayed until the park closed. It was very peaceful being in the park while no one else was around.


We had time to head back to the Mickey and Friends parking structure before the race. We got suited up!

And one of us got in a power nap.

We went back to the park... and it was one BIG PARTY! There were costumed characters walking around, floats, music, and fireworks! I added a short video below of the starting festivities and the race.




We started in wave #3. We stayed together, passed everyone in our wave, and passed all the walkers from wave #2. We finished in 28:08... that's a new PR for Cheryl.

This was Cheryl's second race ever. She had a great time and can't wait for the next race in February!

Poor Jena-girl, got left out. Since we all ran last night, no one feels like taking her running this morning.

We didn't get home until almost midnight and it was 1am before all the showers were done. We all slept in and had a late starting weekend. I hope you are having a great weekend everyone!

Inspiration, Sketches and Family Fun!

I had a very fun week last week. First, last Sunday night, we went to Hollywood to see:


Jim got tickets for the whole family for Christmas. It was at the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Blvd. That's the same theater where they hold the Academy Awards. It's a BEAUTIFUL old theater! We had great seats, right down in the orchestra section.

It was amazing! It's so hard to describe what it was like... it was a sensory overload and made my mind open to all different kinds of possibilities. I saw things that I wouldn't have thought were possible. It was very entertaining, a wonderful show, and a great evening! I'm telling all the guys at work that they need to take their wives/girlfriends for Valentine's day.

Only a few days later, I went with my mom and dad to see Cat's at the OC Performing Arts Center. It was a GREAT show! I didn't know what it was about and was a little confused in the opening scenes. With the space ship taking off, I didn't know whether it was going to take place on another planet, or if the Cats were aliens. On top of that I thought they were saying the cats were "angelical" or "evangelical"... turns out they are just "jellical," hahaha! I still don't know what the deal was with the space ship, but they are on Earth and the Cats are cats. It was my dad's first Broadway play, and my mom's second. They both really enjoyed the show. (Not as much as Jacob's shows, of course)

From great works flows great inspiration! Here is my start on a couple of new She Art girls. This first one features Scarlett, the female lead in Iris:

This second one is inspired by Cats... Hmmm... This one needs work. The cat needs a more cat like pose. The background needs more interesting content too. BTW, did you know that the play Cats is inspired by a book by T.S. Eliot?

I hope everyone has a great week and stays dry!

Family-Time...

If you are a follower, you saw my card post from yesterday. So what is the rest of the family doing, you might ask...

Well, Jim is spending his free time learning Spanish to get ready for his and Chris's trip to Costa Rica. He's using Rosetta Stone and Cheryl's old laptop to teach himself.

Cheryl and Jena went running today. Here is what the aftermath looks like, hahaha. And here's exciting news! Cheryl's girls are in a tournament this weekend and tied both of their games today!

Chris is doing this and that... He's playing with his new graphics design tablet and teaching himself new techniques in Photoshop. He's also brushing up on his Spanish. Oh, and he's taking care of some miscellaneous details... like mending his jammies.

You can see the spot in the lower part of the picture where I've already mended his pants once. The spot in the upper part of the picture is where he mended it...

Well, hey, it works... no more hole, lol! Don't worry about Chris... I ordered him a new pair of jammie bottoms from Old Navy this weekend. If your looking for a deal... men's flannel jammies are on sale for $5.92.

It's a lazy weekend at our house... AND it's a long weekend for us! 3-days off, YAHOO!!! Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King, Jr!