Published!

I have had my first layout ever published in a scrapbooking magazine! Check out the June issue of Scrapbook News and Review!

Pieces of Pages

GUESS WHAT???? My family is coming to visit me tomorrow!!!! They'll be here (in shifts) for 2 weeks and I am very excited to see, for example, this sweet thing:

I love these pictures of Chloe -- she is so playful and fun! I busted out my new Basic Grey Kioshi collection for this layout as well as the next one.

In these next two layouts I used Crate Paper's Prudence collection and embellished them with handmade and Prima flowers and Jenni Bowlin buttons.

For this last page I used scraps from Basic Grey's Periphery collection for my "why I scrapbook" layout:

That's it for now. I suspect that I won't be blogging much when visiters are around!

7 Years of Married Bliss

We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary last week with a low key dinner out at Terra, a nice little place here in Albuquerque. We usually take a trip for our anniversary (especially since it lands on/near Memorial Day weekend) but this year we are saving up for a trip to Hawaii in the fall/late summer.

So we spent our long weekend (ok, it didn't feel very long because I worked every day) at home and went to a picnic with our friends from Faith Church.

Who is that handsome man in the distance, running like a gazelle? ;D

LOST

"The show didn't so much answer the long-dangling mysteries as it did ignore them altogether." -- Jace Kacibm the Daily Beast

SA: Cape of Good Hope

I never figured out what's so hopeful about the Cape, but I enjoyed seeing it anyway. We drove south out of Cape Town (with Matt, Allen, Vien and myself in the dinkiest car this side of a Tata Nano) down the West coast of the peninsula, crossed over to the east coast, and continued south until we ran out of land.

The first thing we saw was the rocky coastline studded with multi-million Rand homes. This is where the west coast rich live, and since the rich are almost entirely white, so are these cities. Most of the homes are protected by walls topped with electrified fences, but as ugly as that is, the beauty of the coast still overwhelms.





Our first scheduled stop was the famous Boulders penguin colony in Simon's Town. The penguins there are content to live essentially on main street, and though an official viewing area is offered (and charged for), we saw many wandering around on the open beach (and in the road) nearby. They were no less cute than you would expect.






Do you see how small this car is?


Baboons! That's the sign that greets you as you drive down the peninsula. We thought the local roads authority was being a bit dramatic; they were not. Those monkeys were everywhere!




We made it through the baboons, but it was getting late before we arrived at the Cape. We had spent a long day in the car (did I mention how small it was?), and I was relieved to arrive at the most south-western point in Africa. Wait, what? I had to travel all that way before I learned Cape Point isn't even the tip of the continent. Let that be a lesson: it's all in the marketing. That info, perhaps in combination with the large pot of mussels and cream I had for lunch, probably caused the scowl below.



The Cape has seen many uses, as the various relics left on its shores can attest, but its beauty has been marred only slightly. Between the jet lag, overwhelming views, baboons, ridiculous car, and South African accents around me, I wouldn't have been surprised to wake from a bad-seafood induced dream.

Butterfly Crafts Guest Designer

I am so excited to announce that I was chosen by Butterfly Crafts to be their May Guest Designer! http://butterfly-crafts.blogspot.com/2010/05/meet-our-may-gd-krystle.html

As part of my guest designer duties, I was asked to create a layout for their May Written Challenge, which asks you to use the following in your layout: Yellow, Red, Bees, Buttons, Brown, Glitter, Pearls, Banner, Ink, Stamping, and any Nikki Sivils product.

I used yellow in the Queen Bee ribbon pleat and patterned paper by Pink Paislee, the Scattered Straw Distress Ink by Ranger, and my handmade stick pins. I used red in my stamped title using a Martha Stewart burgundy brush tipped pen, put burgundy stickles on the edge of my subtitle die cut, and in my handmade stick pins. For brown I used Espresso dimensional pearls by Ranger and Vintage Photo Distress Ink. There is a cute bee on the Queen Bee label by Pink Paislee that I stitched around. I used four burlap buttons by Nikki Sivils for both the button and the Nikki Sivils requirements. The inks I used are the Scattered Straw and Vintage Photo Distress Inks, Versamagic Olive dew drop ink pad, and Martha Stewart burgundy brush tipped pen and stamped the flourish (which I also stitched) with Autum Leaves stamps and stamped the title with American Crafts alpha stamps. You can see glitter in the vanilla Smooch Spritz that I used on my handmade flowers and burgundy stickles. I put pearls in the middle of my handmade paper roses and used dimensional pearls on my borders. And I made a stiched banner with rounded pieces of pattered paper.

You can see my creation and the other design team members' layouts here: http://butterfly-crafts.blogspot.com/2010/05/may-written-challenge.html and enter yourself for a chance to win a huge prize from Nikki Sivils!

Happy NSD!

I know, most of you don't know or care, but it is National Scrapbooking Day! In honor of NSD, I will share some of my recent layouts and point to you a great blog hop going on today.

This first layout shows all of the new furniture that we bought for our house and features a silly haiku that I made up.

This layout showcases our lovely home! I used Crate Paper's Prudence collection on both of these layouts. Here I tried hand cutting the decorative flowers on one of the papers to create a border and played with some BG Kioshi buttons that matched this collection pretty well!

Last but not least, check out this blog hop (if you do, please note in the comments on the scrapstreet blog that I sent you and we both will be eligible for a prize):

Welcome to ScrapStreet's NSD Blog Hop! If you are just stopping in, why don't you join us at the beginning on the ScrapStreet blog. Also, check out the Challenge forum for several NSD challenges! :) And while you are there leave some love in the gallery! :)

Springtime

I am feeling spring-y today so I wanted to share a couple pastel layouts that I just completed.

This first one depicts our plane ride home from our trip to Europe a couple years ago. It is a one-pager because it is going to be the last page in one of my albums. I don't know how well you can see it but I used embossed cardstock for the background, hand stiched around the patterened paper and made a flower using a white napkin that I ripped up and misted.

For this next layout I broke in to some of my new Fancy Pants and Kioshi papers to create this monochromatic layout. I also tried hand-cutting the flowers and the "mesh" piece of patterend paper.

SA: Cape Town

My trip to South Africa was mostly spent in Cape Town. I landed in Johannesburg, spent a jet-lagged night in Pretoria at Matt's dorm and flew out early the next day. Cape Town, as far as I can tell, is the top tourist destination in South Africa, being near the coast, near mountains, near wine country, near the Cape of Good Hope and just generally a pleasant place to be. Unlike some traveller destinations however, it appears that Cape Town is a functioning city that happens to get a lot of tourists. That was definitely the feel around our hotel.



The waterfront was also bustling with tourists and people who actually work. It looked to be a functioning harbour; there were numerous dry-docked boats and many in the harbour being or waiting to be unloaded. There were also seals.

(front to back: Vien, Matt and Allen)

I was impressed by the city. Few others combine the energy for tourism with real business (though truly, only for a business elite, which I'll remark on later). The mountains so close to the city heart also reminded me of home, although an ocean of sand can't compete with the Atlantic.