Can you feel it? It's SPRING!

Hello Spring!
Materials: My Little Shoebox papers & alphas, Bazzill swiss dotted paper- Fuschia, K & Co pink netting,
Liquid Pearls in pink

OMG NYC just had the most beautiful springlike day and I didn't know what to do with myself! I ran up, I ran down, I ran all around- Lola was happy but soon realized I had gone bananas and put me ON POINT in the middle of the park with a huge SHRIEK so we went home and watched Elmo for a while. I feel a HUGE weight lifting- GOOD BYE WINTER! Little dance little dance...

How much do I love the orange glitter alphas? MUCH dude MUCH!

Here's a new My Little Shoebox page. I got my prize package from 2 Peas with papers, stamps and alphas stickers from Farmer's Market and Home Tweet Home lines. I also bought some Green papers because I really wanted that woodgrain pattern- it's so mod! I feel so free with these papers! They are so colorful and playful that it just dissapates all the obnoxious angst I usually go through when thinking up a page. OFFICIAL MLS fan!!!!
Here are some close ups:

Luscious flowers! Bend up the petals and WHAM! instant texture.

Had "fun" cutting those itty bitty scallops- will need to practice.

Started with red pen but it disappeared into the orange paper so I had to go over it with red marker.

Now about this machine stitching technique:

Left to right: Yellow zig zag stitch- front of stitch followed by Yellow/pink zig zag stitch- back of stitch usually never seen since it's on the inside of your clothes.

Here's what I did:
1. Roughly traced circle and scallop border onto onion skin paper to give general idea of their location.
2. Glued template to the back of the scallop die cut paper
3. Put pink thread in bobbin at bottom of machine and canary yellow in spool on top of machine to get two-tone effect.
4. Using the rough sketch on the onion paper as a guide, I stitched a swirl shape onto the MLS die cut paper using a zig zag stitch so that the BACK of the zig zag stitch (usually hidden in the interior of your clothing) showed on the FRONT of the paper BINGO - instant 2 tone effect!
5. Turned paper over and giggled hysterically at the COOLIO effect.
7. Switched bottom bobbin to canary yellow string.
8. Swirled the FRONT of the zig zag stitch onto the spaces left by previous swirl.

Hope that makes sense- it's just a fun little tweak on the usual.
*Thank you Mary from the Scrapbook.com forum for helping me with proper sewing terminology for this itty bitty tute!

Here's the page again in larger format (and away from all my blogger template madness):

Required Miss Lola shot:

MuChOs SmOoChEs!
M.

Summer- MISS IT SO MUCH!!!

Lots of bad news from around the world these days. There's much to worry over. Here in New York the snow is making me miss summer very badly so I decided to scrap a page about a good day in July.

July Memories- Studio Calico Kit challenge page 1/24/11
Materials: Sassafras/Studio Calico exclusive paper, Crate Paper- slipcover (flowers and red border)
Cosmo Cricket mini alphas- yellow, Uniball gel pen- black, pop dots

Poor Miss Lola has had RSV for 7 days now so we've been stuck inside. She's got a huge case of cabin fever that I broke last night by going to Michael's. I bought 10 new 12x12 cases- it's organization and purging time! But let's tell the truth- there will be VERY LITTLE purging going on. I got Miss Lola a new ball and some crayons she promptly chomped- oh well.

This page is a 360 change from what I was making a few days ago but the truth is that the grungy/moody style has very few admirers- at least the way I do it. It's good to change things up and try to look at the bright side of life- especially when you have a sick baby and 6 feet of ice encrusted snow to deal with.

Quick peek at the layering of flowers.

I did 5 hours of fussy cutting for this page. It was so WORTH it! I love looking at this page up on the wall. Crate Paper is KILLING ME with their new collections by the way- cannot WAIT for those to hit the stores! The boy centered toy collection is calling my name!

February's True XOXO Girls challenge page! click here to go there.

I have some FUN news! Ty's page was mentioned on Practical Scrappers.com. This page will be up for lifting on TRUE XOXO GIRLS starting February 6th. Please go to the site and add your page to the current January challenge- a great box of goodies awaits the winner.

We spent a lot of time hunched over to help Miss Thing walk back in July 2010-
 good thing she picked it up quickly.

MuChOs SmOoChEs!
M.