Cut It Up challenge time!

Hi all!

I hope y'all had a wonderful Turkey day and stuffed yourselves silly!  I know I did - on both counts!  We headed to the in-laws for lunch and then a friend's house afterward for a bit.  So shopping for me as I think all of the stores should stay closed on Thanksgiving!  Plus it ruins the insanity of Black Friday - I liked it better when it ALL started at 4am on Friday.  I was a faithful participant for ages but now it seems lacking.  I can't go out anyway this year as Kevin cannot watch Pezza and I am not bringing her out in that.  She is not a good shopping companion on a normal trip!  The only thing I am planning to do is take advantage of the 50% of entire purchase from noon - 10pm at Michaels.  I have been wanting to add to my acrylic paint stash and those little tubes can run as much as $10+!

Little Miss Pezza Lou Who turned 7 this month (and we all lived to tell about it!)  I decided to go the digital route for her party invitations - easier to mass produce!  I used the It's Your Big Day collection from Sweet Shoppe and put these together:

Then it came time to make her Thank Yous which fit in perfectly to our next challenge over on the Cut It Up challenge blog.

This time I did a hybrid - part digi and part paper layers.  I removed a couple layers on the digi invite and then printed them all out.  I cut them out, Inked the edges and mounted them on turquoise cardstock (I did the same thing with the invites too.)  Next I designed the "Thanks" in MTC and I cut the shadow layer from white and the Thanks layer in pink using my Black Cat cutter.  I inked my edges, adhered them to the card fronts and then added 3 little Pezablings in the bottom right corner.

Prizes up for grabs for the current CIU challenge - $5 gift certificate to Digital Delights by Louby Lou!  So come join us - work on your Christmas thank yous and be ahead of the game!  Don't forget to stop by the CIU Blog to see what the rest of the design team has created!

Beach Girl LO for the CMC Challenge

Hi y'all!

I knew it had been awhile since I blogged but a month?  Wow!  Apparently it's been BUSY around my house! I mentioned our little foster kitty family, The Breads, were really struggling as all the foster babies do.  Well that was grueling to say the least.  However, I am happy to report with loads of love and attention and lots of careful eye med administration they have not only ALL pulled through but NONE of them are blind!

Pezza the Cat Whisperer

We have been talking about needing to adopt a buddy for Bubba so we are seeing how him and the little boy, Bun do together...

Little Bun-ny was the sickest by far but he has bounced back and while he may not be able to see perfectly he CAN see.  Plus he's a boy and I really like the boy cats.  They are very different than the girl cats - girls are prissy and stand off-ish and boys are more lovey and dopey and silly.

Of course they all love Kevin as usual!  Doesn't he look THRILLED???

We took a trip to Myrtle Beach over Memorial Day weekend - HEAVEN!

Hollyn LOVES it at the beach as much as I do

We stayed at Ocean Lakes and I was in LOVE.  This place is awesome!  HUGE with loads of amenities right on the beach.  A combination of RV sites, RV rentals and individually owned little beach houses.  I spent my high school years living right on the beach in San Diego and I did not really miss it much until we spent the week in Myrtle.

Of COURSE I wanted to move there.  Kevin reminded me I want to move every place we go.......Since Pez and I get up long before hubby is interested in getting up I made my coffee and we went and walked on the beach.  We played in the ocean, swam in the pool, biked around the resort, saw a Pirate Show (similar to medieval times dinner shows), went to Ripley's Aquarium and got to pet rays and sharks, a fantastic trip!

The downside of Myrtle Beach is the drive.  Made even worse by towing a 28' travel trailer IN THE RAIN.  We will skip the part about how ugly it was backing in to the site and hooking up in the DARK and RAIN...  BUT I did make good use of the drive by finally going in and organizing all of my pictures so I can get them printed and scrapped.  I got them weeded out, grouped and even did the journaling.  Those are my big 3 road blocks to getting any scrapping done and with that out of the way I can move forward!

We went to Myrtle for the first time last year for Kevin's brother's wedding but only stayed briefly.  I told Kevin I wanted to come back for a longer stay.  Today's project is a layout of pics from LAST year's MB trip for the new coloring challenge my buddy Suzanne just posted on the CMC Classroom site:

color ANY IMAGE with

Any Colors that Inspire Thoughts of Summer

We want to see you use YOUR COPICS, ProMarkers, other alcohol markers or Colored Pencils!!

Our fabulous Sponsor for this Challenge is:

Milk Coffee Digi Designs

1 lucky winner (chosen at random) will win a $15 Gift Certificate to

spend at Milk Coffee Designs

I was really inspired by the colors of the beach cottages at Myrtle and used them to do this layout of LAST year's pics:

As always I used a Page Maps sketch - from May 2012 I think - it was a 2 page 8 1/2 x 11 but I just extended it to 12 x 12.

I chose this cute little mermaid from Milk Coffee Digis and colored her up with my colored pencils.  If you would like to learn to color with pencils OR improve your coloring with pencils check out my classes over on the CMC Classroom website!

My die cuts are from several different Designs on Cloud 9 SVG file set and cut using Make the Cut software and my Black Cat cutter.  I designed the title piece using Make the Cut software, a font on my computer, a dingbat font from Lettering Delight for the shell, and a sun from one of the Designs on Cloud 9 files.

 I hope you'll join us for the coloring challenge!