Friday FWF

I finished another Christmas card to share with Unity Friday FWF! If I keep this up, I might finish all my Christmas cards by Thanksgiving! YAHOO!!!


This is the snowman from the Unity Itty Bitty collection reminds me of a snow globe. I accented the snow globe effect by mounting the snowman on the inside of the card covered by a clear acrylic window. My friend Mara has me hooked on baker's twine... I may never go back to ribbon again... {grin}

Don't Pass Me....I'm not in your Age Group

I still laugh when I think of the T-shirt worn by another runner saying, "Don't Pass Me....I'm not in your Age Group!" Hahaha... I passed him...

In fact, I passed more people than I thought I would, finished 3rd in my age group and came home with an award! I feel so slow running with the people at work... I'm almost always the last one back. So... reality check... I'm slow when compared to men and women in their 20's and 30's, but do pretty darn well against the other "more mature" ladies in my age group. I finished in 24:42... not my best time, but an okay time for a rainy Sunday. That's why there are no pictures of this race. No one wanted to get their cameras wet.

As for Chris... he forgot his timing chip, so he has no idea what his finish time was. But, I know he was faster than me.

Next week is Thanksgiving. Time to start thinking "Turkey Trot."
Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

The Nutting Girls!

I had the day off Friday, so Cheryl and I went down to Carlsbad to take a class by Julie Nutting. Julie is the author of "Collage Couture: Techniques for Creating Fashionable Art."

You know how I'm so into the "She Art" girls right now... well Julie has her own type of art girl... I'll call them Nutting Girls!

Here we are with Julie Nutting.

I wanted to share how we make the backgrounds. It's different than the backgrounds for She Art girls. Julie uses only paint with brushes, stamps and stencils. In the following steps, Cheryl's background is on the left, and mine is on the right.

We started with a coat of paint... most of the ladies used a royal blue. I used teal, Cheryl used light blue, and the lady next to me used green. Then we stenciled patterns with a doily and added texture with white paint.

Next, we add a glaze of color over everything. Cheryl used pink. Me? well, I had a problem with glazing... mine is more spotted than glazed. Julie had issues with mine... she likes her backgrounds more muted so that it won't distract from the girl... okay, I admit, I had issues with my background at this point too.

Now we redo the doily stenciling, add stamps and cover all with more white for texture... in my case, make that LOTS of white to cover up my mess, lol!

Even though all the ladies did their own thing, we all ended up with very similar looking backgrounds. I guess if everyone works in layers with the same 6 paint colors, everyone will eventually look the same.

Everyone added hair to their girl to make it look like them. I'm not delusional, I know that girl doesn't look like me, but she has my hair, lol!

When we got home, I did a little more work on the girls. I think it's from being in the She Art class, but I like my girls with words on them. I found a journal spot that I added to Cheryl's girl.

My girl got a nice sentiment stamp to break up the plain center of the doily. I also changed the huge white flower for a nicer smaller flower.

So what do you think of them? Cheryl likes them better than She Art girls. I think my style is going to fall somewhere in between the She Art and the Nutting girls.

Crafty Saturday!

I made another card! It's a two card week, and I got a start on my Christmas cards, YAHOO!!!

I made this card for a couple of challenges:

VSN Jingle Bell Rock - used brads and bling
Scrappin' Mojo November card sketch

The challenges are motivating me! I actually started my Christmas cards before Thanksgiving!

And wait until you see what else we did today :oD
Stay tuned...

Friday FWF

It's Friday... and time for Unity Friends with Flair! And here is the card that I did for the Unity November sketch challenge. I got the doll stamp from the "Get It While You Can Bin." The rest of the stamps are from the July KOM.

Here is the sketch:

Thanks for stopping by! Have a GREAT weekend!

12 in 2012!!!

What does that cartoon to do with today's post? Well, (1) running with my coworkers is giving me speed envy, and (2) I can't make a blog post without at least one picture, lol... Anyway, my friend, Jill, is encouraging runners to join the challenge: 12 half-marathons in 2012!
We (yes, I did say "WE") have decided to take up the challenge... sort of...

Chris used to run in high school on track and cross country. He decided to just run on his own in college and not run with the college team. He thought that running when, where, and how long he wanted, instead of pushed by coach and team would be more appealing to him. But, he found that he lacks motivation and misses racing.

Cheryl is a Senior at Cal Poly Pomona, but she won't graduate this year because she can't get the classes that she needs. She wants to get back into shape so that she can try out for the Cal Poly soccer team next summer. Athletes get priority registration!

So I'm running with two kids who haven't run since last Spring. I think it's best for us to start slow... start with 5K's and work our way up to a half-marathon! Here is our schedule so far for 2012:

January - Neverland 5K(1/27) - this is a night run
February - either China Town Firecracker 5K (2/12) or Timberwolf 5K (2/18)
March - Coaster Run 10K (3/25)
April - still looking... can't find a local 10K in April yet
May - OC Half-Marathon (5/6)
June - Rock and Roll San Diego Half-Marathon (6/3)

That is as far as we have planned... If all goes well Cheryl will make the soccer team and will probably stop racing in June. So that will leave Chris and me to finish out the rest of the year.

Unity Friday - FWF

This month's Unity Kit Challenge started with a wonderful poem about Fall. I took from the poem an inspiration of fall colors. I started with the little tree from one of the first KOMs and started adding colored "leaves." So how did blue leaves end up in my Fall colors? Well, they matched my PP... that's artistic license :oD I added a big drops of Diamond Glaze to give it some shine; and I have a gift card holder to send someone a special pick-me-up.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween... and time for the annual Halloween Bash at my brother's and SIL's house.

Since, Jim had to get up early the following morning for work, he decided to stay home and hand out candy. He reported a total number of 3 trick or treaters! Oh, well, more candy for us!

Chris and Cheryl went out walking with the kids... not Trick or Treating. At 18yrs and 21yrs, they've decided that they're too old for that. BUT They are not too old to dress up! My mom isn't either :oD

I found Waldo!

Here's the whole BOO Crew!

Here are a couple of the CUTEST witches I ever did see!

Here are some girls... dressed up as.... uh, girls....

Here are a couple of photos that Chris took during Trick or Treating...


I hope everyone had a SAFE and FUN Halloween!!!

Happy Fall Y'all!!!

I know some of the country is buried under snow, but here, our Halloween-eve is bright sunny and warm. In fact, it's a great day for the BEACH!

... and for throwing sticks...

... and for catching sticks...

... and for digging holes...

Jena is so proud of herself when she saves a stick from the waves!

We hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween!

Friends with Flair - She Art Girl

I put this up for the Unity Friday share. I love using Unity stamps for background patterns in mixed media art. This month Unity release a new Mixed Media Stamp kit just for me! Well, me along with the thousands of other Unity mixed media fans :oD

Here is my share for the day:

The thing about mixed media is that sometimes the stamps get buried under layers of paint or other stamps. Here are the Unity stamp sets that I used:

I really love the "It's All About Today" stamp. It goes perfectly with the quote, "She made Today Count."

Jena the flying frisbee catching dog!

The kids and I went running this morning in the Arroyo. It's been a while since we've been down there. Since we weren't sure what it would be like, we left Jena at home... poor Jena... she was so sad... It's a good thing we left her home because part of the trail was flooded. We tried to find our way around on a different trail, but we got lost and had to turn back.

After we got home, Cheryl went to her little girl's game, and Chris and I took Jena to play frisbee. Jena is a champion frisbee player!

Here is Jena in action!!!

BTW, Cheryl's girls TIED 0-0 today!!! YAHOO!!! This is the first game that they didn't lose! Hopefully, they are on a roll!