Exciting News to Share!

I was asked by my good friend, Shazza to join the Design Team at ARTastic!  ARTastic is a great monthly challenge blog that provides inspiration from a piece of artwork and combines it with Diva Demands for extra bonus points.  My duties begin September 1st and since ARTastic is an Australian-based blog, it is already September 1st, and therefore my duties begin today!!!

September's inspiration comes from Frida Kahlo's "Self Portrait with Monkey." 

Diva Demands are: 

• 1) A photo of you or family member with your/their pet(s) = 1 pt,
• 2) Shades of brown and orange on your LO = 2 pts,
• 3) A single tropical flower or plant = 3 pts.

Here's my interpretation of the inspiration piece:

I chose for my subject this month my mother-in-law, Arvis and her beloved dog, Coco!  They have a great relationship, what can I say!!!

Find you way over to ARTastic and join in on the challenge!

Temple's New Paint Job!

Charles, Temple and I worked this weekend on painting Temple's bedroom.  Temple's new comforter set was a bright green, so Temple and I were off to Home Depot with the pillow sham so she could choose a paint color.  I tried everything I could think of to persuade Temple to choose a green shade that wasn't so deep, but she wasn't having it!  She chose a paint color which was very close to the green background in the sham.  I grabbed a can of faux paint because I knew I needed to do something to tone that bright green down.

Temple pulled her weight in painting her room, and together the three of us knocked out the painting in about 3 hours.  Boy oh boy was the paint green, green, green!  Temple thought it was beautiful!

I shouldn't have worried--the color is fabulous!  It's a perfect backdrop for the new comforter set and her room.  I did faux above the border and Temple just absolutely loved it--she kept saying that the faux was "gorgeous!!!"  Check out the slide show below.

ARTastic August Challenge

This month's ARTastic inspiration is the painting "Sunset" by Claude Monet.  I think this is a wonderfully, serene piece.  The Diva Demands were to include a Sun or Sunset (1pt), shades of blue and green (2pts), and include a silhouette (3pts) for a total of 6 extra points!

I managed to meet the demand criteria with my PPs of blue and green, my black butterfly and my red sun way down on my layout to imitate sunset!  I'm not sure what I did wrong with my picture but it is a bit blurry (so it's not your screen!!!)

ARTastic's challenge wraps up on Tuesday, so you still have time to join in on the fun!

Happy Scrapping!

What's Happening Wednesday!

I am again inspired by the wonderful creations out there in Blogland!

I visited Amy and found this awesome LO she did for her DT duties at Dirty Scraps

You have to go and visit her blog to read her insightful journaling about people who you think are your friends.

Next, I visited Alicia who created a lovely card from this sketch from Chi Chi MemoriesI just love the pinkness of it!  And the digi image is adorable!

I've been a fan of Julie Fey-Fan Balzer for some time now.  She is a mixed media artist from my hometown, NYC and her creations are truly a mixture of all of the crafts that she loves to do.  She created these two birthday cards for her husband and brother.

Her watercolors (a bit showcased here) are awesome, but to get a better idea of what this talented lady can do, you really must visit her blog.

Have a Blessed and Scrappy day!

Back 2 School!

Monday was the first day back to school for Temple.  This was no hardship for her because our girl simply loves school!  Of course I got pictures, and I decided to use another sketch from Creative Scrappers.  So this LO is based on Sketch #117 created by the very talented July Gaceta whose work I admire!

I really like the sketches offered by Creative Scrappers and the LOs created by their DT are wonderful!  You should go and check them out!

Happy Scrapping!

Hello Saturday!

Good Morning!
I have a busy Saturday planned for today but before all of my running around begins, I wanted to share with you a LO I did of my sister-in-law, Kathy and her daughter, Kayla.  This was one of the pics I took when we were at the Japanese restaurant for our family barbecue dinner turned Hibachi dinner when my brother-in-law's family was visiting a couple of weeks ago.

Kathy and Kayla have a very close relationship, which I think is great considering that Kayla is 15 and most teenagers at that age can be a handful!  I hope (pray!!!) that this will be the same for Temple and me!

I'm off to run my errands--have a wonderful, scrappy day!

Family Visit

Charles' brother, Brian and his family, wife, Kathy, daughter Kayla and son, Hunter were in town for their annual visit with my mother-in-law and us.  The tradition has been to have a family barbeque but we did something a little different this year, we had Hibachi at our local Japanese restaurant.  We started out the day at the beach which was going along fine until the heavens decided to open up and it poured torrential rain down on us!!!

We regrouped later that evening for our family dinner!  I posted a slideshow in my sidebar of our day!

Hunter is such an adorable boy and he has such a great love of the ocean that I had to do this digi of his day at the Beach, because the water is where he spent his day!

Have a great Saturday and Happy Scrapping!

A Few LOs!

Hello All!  I know it's been a while but I have been experiencing some serious computer problems--I am just not computer literate and Charles who doesn't know much more than I was the one who got my laptop to work now.  I really have to take it in to Best Buy for a Geek Squad checkup.  My problem though is when is there a good time to do it???

I have a few LOs to share with you that I've done over the past week:

It was time to do a new LO of me--it's been a while.  I think it's easy for a lot of us scrappers to overlook scrapping ourselves, even though we know the importance of the scrapper to document the scrapper.

Here's one of (of course) Temple that I did based on sketch #115 by Aphra Bolyer posted on Creative Scrappers last week.  I really liked the design of the sketch and I had these pictures of Temple from our vacation that I thought would work well with it.

And finally, here is a LO that I did of my DH.  I think for every hundred or so LOs that I do of Temple ;D, I only do one of Charles--shame on me!

I mean his story needs to be told as well!!!  Here are a couple of close ups:

Thanks for looking and Happy Scrapping!

What's Happening Wednesday!

It's that time again to share some wonderful bloggers with you!  Let's start with Lyn who creates the most beautiful cards from the Dark Side!

Taj is an awesome scrapper!  Her LOs are always filled with gorgeous details:

And then there's Ms EssenseVibez who can rock a digi LO like nobody's business!
Make sure you go and spend some time with these talented Ladies and draw inspiration from their art!

Happy Scrapping!

School Days!

I've been meaning to post these school layouts of Temple for some time now.  I can finally put these LOs in Temple's scrapbook!

I must admit school pictures look far better now than when I was a kid!  And thank goodness because these pictures cost a fortune, and the school photographers know that the parents will pay just to have the pics of their little cuties!  And here are the pics to prove that we parents are complete suckers!!!

I love this picture of Temple on the pony!  I can't believe it's been 3 years since Pre-K!  Where does the time go?

Would you believe the outline of the fairy is one of Temple's Silly Bandz!!!  I layed the Silly Bandz on white cardstock and then got out my trusty Glimmer Mists and sprayed until I was satisfied with the results.  I then cut out the shape!

I created this LO for the ARTastic June Challenge which I totally missed!

This was the Inspiration Piece by Michaelangelo--The Card Sharpes.

Diva Demand for an extra 6 bonus points was:

Playing Card/s = 1pt
Shades of brown = 2pts
Feather/s = 3pts

And here is my interpretation of the piece:

I didn't have any regular playing cards in the house but Temple had some of her Disney cards left and fortunately one of the them was the Queen of Hearts with Tinker Bell!  I put glue on the flourish and then sprinkled glitter on it to make it stand out.

I used my Cricut with my Ashlyn's Alphabet cartridge to cut out the title and hearts.

I hope you all have a great Sunday!