Santa was here!

And the gifts were awesome, tons of scrapbooking supplies, Diana got a popcorn maker and a few goodies to go with it (she looooves popcorn), and I got......an Amy Butler scrapbooking bag!!!!! In Pink and with goodies inside!!!!!!

We had a blast at Julia´s last night, the food was incredible and we got gifts from her and she and her mom loved the gifts we gave them.

It was an awesome Christmas and not because of the gifts, we spent the time having fun, trying to not get so stressed about the season and really and focusing in the future and present, the best gift this Christmas for me was knowing I´m in love with someone that is in love with me.

¡¡¡Feliz Navidad!!!

Merry Christmas everybody!!

In a while we´ll be getting ready to go with our friend Julia and her family to spend Christmas eve with them and then tomorrow just stay here and eat yummy food and relax and enjoy what Santa brought us.

I finished my final gifts really late last night, this is a mini accordion album for Julia and her boyfriend Jorge so they can put special pictures of them during 2009. I used DCWV Pocket full of Posies and Old World, and some cut and paste vintage images from K&Company.

And this is for Julia´s mom Nina (her name is also Julia but no one calls her that) so I made this for her to put on her dresser or wherever she could need it, she loves those colors and owls and this paper Urban Rhapsody from K&Co. have owls and birds and vintage stuff and colors.

Hope you have an awesome time with your family and friends that you eat yummy, stay warm, drive safely and Santa brings you all the things you wanted.

I leave you with my favorite performers of the season dancing one of my favorite Christmas song.

The process to a layout

Have you ever wondered, just how do scrapbookers start doing their thing at least at home? I do and a lot. For example what does Toni do before creating awesome cards or how does Sarah prepares to do her super cute layouts? (just to mention a couple)?

Since today I´m going to be scrapping and already have half my chores done, I´ll show you what I do (don´t expect anything super exciting lol) just the plain, regular, easy going scrapbooker.

Ok first of all I clean my work area wich is my desk right next to my pc, I always do this first cause I have cats and fur travels and far and they always lay here so that goes first.

Then I pick up what I´m going to work on, this time was a layout for this week´s challenge on Get your scrap on!, so I picked my picture and started searching for papers.

Then I tell the kitty to please give me the chair back, he usually does, I need my chair empty to rest my knees because you must know I need to work standing up, otherwise it just doesn´t look ok.

(What do you mean is YOUR chair, I don´t see your name on it)

By this time I´m getting a bit thirsty so I grab my favorite drink, Diet Coke with lots of ice, you must have something nice to drink so inspiration flows lol.

Then some inspiration from magazines, I´m not that creative I need all the help I can get, this time I was checking out Scrapbooks etc.

Then I turn on the tv to watch something truly inspirational.

Oh yes nothing inspires more than Leonidas yelling "This is Sparta!" I love watching this movie because of the movement and art, the hot guys in very little clothing have nothing to do with it.

And then playing and cutting, trimming and punching finally voilá I´ve got a layout all done!

So hope you like what I do to scrap and at least had fun. I would love to know how do you prepare yourself to scrap or stamp or make cards.

Create and conquer

This past couple of weeks I put my ALBM album aside and worked on a banner I saw featured on TvWeekly, and I had a ton of fun, it was easy and fast to make and I took some pics today so you could see it, is going to hang over my door in my scraproom and it´s super springy I´ll have to do one for halloween and Christmas now.

(the pretty kitty in the back is not included in the banner)

(is kind of a long banner, excuse the mess in the back)

I´m so happy and proud of myself today I started conquering one of my biggest fears: lizards; I am terrified of lizards, big or small, green or blue, vicious or tamed, caged or free they simply FREAK ME OUT!! But today leaving home to go to work I greeted our neighbors who love animals and have a wide variety of them, including 4 dogs, 1 ferret, 1 rabbit and now also a green lizard and they wanted to show it to me, oh yes you know it I started to freak out and they were trying to get me to get close to it and I politely refused and then it occur to me, why was I so afraid? So I got close and gently rubbed Rene´s (green lizard) back with my finger, its been over 12 hours and I can still describe in detail exactly how it felt to touch it, I felt so good about myself maybe next week I allow them to place it on my hand, is a small step for manking but a huuuge step for me.

Tomorrow we have craft meeting and who knows what could happen there, fun times for sure, I also worked on a card today I´ll take a pic tomorrow and also work on my ALBM album, have a great weekend everybody and hope you all create a lot!

Tool time!

This is in my opinion the the best toolbox out there, of course I am biased since is my toolbox but you can ask anybody I talk about it and take it to any crop big or small, is like my pacifier, if I have it I know everything is going to be ok and I have anything I could possibly need and I´ll give you a sample of this:


This is the top layer, also known as the pentahouse of the toolbox, I carry there inkpad for inking, eraser, set of brushes; the red is in the bathroom soaked cause I forgot to rinse glue and well I´m rambling never mind, also letter opener that works as a bone folder (cause I don´t have one!!!) fine tip markers in blue, red and black and fine tip sharpie, mechanical pencil and you can´t see it but white ink marker.

Then comes the inner removable tray tha hols twezers, waterbrushe, sandpaper, crochet hooks, sequins, glue and of course my rounder corner punch.

And the bottom part that has my Fiskateer scissors, I´m #1337 just in case you were wondering, Fiskars finger tip craft knife, tacky glue, glue dots, glue lines, staples, stapler, Olfa circle cutter blade, embossing pens, sharpener, rounder corner scissors etc.

Is a simple Truper toolbox completey see trough so I can see what I have there all the time and this has made the difference when I craft because I know exactly where everything is and I don´t loose time looking for anything and when I go to crops is super easy to carry around and doesn´t take that much space.

2Peas Blogger Challenge:
Do you have any spring projects you excited about?

Well the "A little bit me" book has me really excited and I blogged about it here yesterday so you can take an early look.

So how do you guys carry your tools an stuff to crops and other places??

10 things that make me happy.....

Sarah from 2paws designs and several other bloggers had this challenge and I really wanted to do it too, but kept forgetting so here are mine:

10.Watching movies I love (like 300 or Love Actually)
9.Buying stuff for crafts, scrapbooking, stamping, knitting doesn´t matter
8. Kisses and hugs
7. Having a good hair day
6. Having a day off
5. Scrapbooking
4. Reading blogs
3. Eating and making cupcakes
2. Trying on clothes that didn´t fit and fit now
1. Cuddling with a kittie

When I went to Walmart today I found this, gotta love the little surprises Walmart offers once in a while, this just made my weekend I taste it and images of Sex and the City pop in my head ahh memories!

Also rented some videos, The DaVinci Code, Crash and A Night at the museum, seen all but could totally see them again and get inspired with them, maybe tomorrow I watch Nightmare before Christmas. Also tody we have daylight savings so we loose and hour wich makes tomorrow the shortest day but I´ll continue crafting.

Have a great sunday everybody, and hope the weather is great wherever you are!!

My confession book....

This weekend was very productive craftwise, because thats mostly what I did and it feels awesome, clicking on links today I somehow arrived at Shimelle website and loved the projects and faster that I´m saying it I started making the I have to confess book, it was fun and I had a blast making it, it calls for 6x4 pictures but I decided to use wallet size to have extra space and I love how it looks it took me all afternoon but thats cause I stopped to eat lunch and recharge the mojo.

I´m double happy cause I only used things that I had in my stash nothing new or bought for the project, all of the stuff I used was pretty old and it feels good to see it looking nice in an album, there are several pages so I made a little slide so the post is not huge and also you can see them and read the journaling on My flickr page My confession book.

2Peas Challenge:
Describe one of your birthdays as a young child

The one I remember the most was when I was 5 since my birthday is ver close to Halloween (oct 28) my mom made me a Halloween birthday and I dressed up as a black cat and I remember it was a lot of fun, here in Mexico you get of course a piñata and the food for parties is typically a little tamale, some spaguetti a little roll filled with cheese and a slice of cake and is a total delicacy that your cake frosting touches the tamale and you eat the salty tamale with frosting, I still do it when I can lol.

Hope everybody has a great week and the weather gets warmer where is really cold and cooler where is really hot, take care and be safe.

Waterfall cards and sweets

Well haven´t been all that crafty lately I know bad Lida lol, but really wanted to try the Waterfall card from Splitcoast Stampers and I am hooked, I made one at the office with my nephews stamps thats why the very rustic look and with elements I had there (not too many) and I loved how easy it was and how cool it looks.

Yes rustic indeed, no eyelets there or nice stamp but it was just as much fun.

Then I made this one at home, stamped the flowers and painted them with watercolors, double the fun.

Then finally this one that I really love, stamped the images and color them with markers and did some doodling around the edges and loved the colors and background and all.

So I plan to make some more cause its really fast and funt to make them.

This is how the Lollipop Heart Rice Krispie treat turned out, look good and were pretty yummy.

And a picture of our leftover mix turned into regular rice krispie treats, really really yummy.

And a very artistic close up, look you can even see the calories lol.

The 2 Peas Challenge is: Where do you see yourself in a year...

And honestly I rather not say, this last couple of years have been a rollercoaster of events and the plans I have made for the year or the future get on hold because of several situations, so as long as I´m on planet earth, healthy, happy and with the one that loves me everything will be fine.

Cardmaking

I hardly ever make cards, simple reason Mexico doesn´t have the culture of sending cards, I remember being very young and buying cards for my loved ones and then see them thrown away, so I stoped. Then with my boyfriends and stuff the same thing, so that thought me no cardmaking.

However since getting the Crafters Companion, cardmaking is really starting to grow on me, so I´ve been making cards, now I´m not really good at it and I struggle a bit but I´m really liking it.

Made with the Big Shot dies, paisley and the cat embossing die and brown, red and beige cardstock, I like it I think it looks cute.

This I made it with Prima Hybrid paintables, then I colored with water colors and added some glitter and stamped the word "Thank you". I like it too, coloring was fun.

This is the "I love you Bobby" card that I made for Diana´s date with Det. Bobby Goren, no not really but since she said about the date for Valentine´s we´ve been teasing her about it all the time, and when I made this card well I had to give it to her so she can use on her date, the little hearts are felt and I used the wild dashes textures of the Big Shot.

So thats my cardmaking, I might continue it, I have a new magazine about cardmaking so I´ll cardlift some that I like.

The challenge in 2peas is what that I have seen of CHA reviews do I want, and honestly I haven´t seen anything yet, but I do want a lot of things, for starters the Crop a Dile Big Bite and I want inkpads and alcohol inks and paper and bazzill cardstock and and, well you get the idea.

A girl and a sewing basket

So this is the story of a girl (a girl in her 30s) with a dream, her dream was to revamp this little sewing basket that her dgf had, but the mean gf would say no, cause she liked it the way it was, old and ugly looking, the satin that covered it in rags, the flowers that adorned her falling to pieces; no sorry I don´t have a picture but take my word it looked ugly.

So she waited, and waited, and looked at the sewing basket and thought of ideas on how to change it, plans and colors and textures and decorations etc, but would not touch it cause she didn´t have permision to do it and well it wasn´t hers.

Until one day 4 years later that she said "That is it! I don´t care if you don´t want me to change it, I´m doing it anyway, its too pretty to end up looking like this"

And the girl took off the satin that covered it, unstitched piece by piece the flowers that were falling apart, keeping all the pieces to recreate her looks, she thought that pink and black would be a great combination and since it was for dgf and she loved cats she thought a cute cat was the perfect decoration for it.

So she cut and glued and stitched to her heart content, and spray painted black the sewing basket to give her a nice shine back, and covered it in pink felt, added some black beads for some bling and hand stitiched a little cat to go on top as a handle.

She also respected the design and added a pin cushion with some hearts that hangs to the outside when you need it and finished the look with pink and black pins, when she presented to dgf she was so happy she felt bad she waited so long to have this done to the sewing basket.

And the girl was happy, cause her project turned out real pretty and cause she got her way, but mostly cause her dream came true, she revamp that ugly looking basket and gave it a cool new look to be used for years to come.

If only now she could get her hands on more sewing baskets to revamp, cause she has a sort of addiction to it now and wants to keep doing it, but thats another dream altogether.