Been under the weather, but thought I’d share a link with you. The scrapbook layout below was featured on the Memory Works blog on Wednesday. It’s still up, so you can see it here. Â Meanwhile, the layout is sized to fit in the FANTASTIC new album being released this spring by Memory Works. You can see that album and other sneak peaks from the new Simple Stories line here.
Enjoy your weekend!
Cheers!
Okay, so we’re halfway through January, but I think New Year greetings are like thank you notes: as long as you get ‘em sent within a month of the event, it’s all good. 
It’s hard to believe over a month has passed since my last post, but here we are. Since that last post, my husband and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary, our son turned 11, we celebrated Christmas, I turned 40, we learned to ski and snowshoe, celebrated the new year hiking The Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and spent MLK Jr. Day touring Civil War battlefields in Virginia. Whew! You can see why I’m a bit behind.
I’ve been actively pursuing both my creative outlets and my academics. I have much to show for the former, but am still topic-less in the latter. (Confession: frustration is hitting critical levels!) However, rather than dwelling on what I haven’t done, I thought I’d show you a couple of projects I have done.
This first one is for an ongoing challenge that one of my co-designers, Rosann Elliott, at Memory Works came up with. The challenge is called “Focus: Me” and it’s all about getting those of us who create for others and are often behind the cameras to create a project for ourselves that puts us in the picture. On the 12th of each month (not sure why the 12th, but the 12th it is) we are to take a photo of ourselves (or have one taken) and then journal about that moment. I’m turning it into a mini-album with 6×8 pages. So here’s my page for January:
The next project was in response to my 40th birthday party. My wonderful husband threw a surprise party for me, and it really was a surprise! Since my birthday is a couple of days after Christmas, we never have many of our friends around. However, Brian managed to get a full house, and we had a great time. Here’s a sampling of the thank-you notes I sent:
I hope you’ve had a great start to 2012!
Enjoy!
So I was having a little fun playing with some techniques on this one. The black and white polka dot and flower papers are from the Echo Park For the Record collection. The type-set paper is from the Lille collection by 7 Gypsies. I used Martha Stewart’s Loops punch for the loopy embellishment, which is punched from American Crafts cardstock. “Be Merry” and the background paper for the sentiment are from Simple Stories Christmas collection. The sentiment and dove are both stamps by Recollection. I heat embossed the dove using gold embossing powder. I then played around with my Distress Inks to see what kind of texture I could create for the background. I have to say, a day without inky fingers is a day wasted IMHO.
Hope you enjoy!
Blessings!
