AMY ALBARRÁN

 I love, love, love, love, love  getting mail. I especially love getting pretty mail. I was excited when I ordered a couple of Project Life grab bags from Studio Calico Friday.  They delivered yesterday afternoon in beautiful packaging.  This was the quickest I've ever had anything deliver from Studio Calico.   I felt like it was Christmas and I got "JUST WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED!" I shouldn't have to buy any more journaling cards. But you and I both know that I will.

I was expecting more than just cards. But I am very happy. They are all beautiful and will fit perfectly into my SC Handbook. I've fallen completely in love with the geometric "here's the story..." 4x6 card. I love it so much so, that it has solved my problem of not having a title page for my SC Handbook. The colors are soft and feminine. If I'm going to use this in my title page, then I MUST change the cover now, don't I?  I love the colors I originally used but the font I used turned my A into more of an H.

I undid all my heard work previously used to sew the original line art design.  I spent about 30 minutes digging in my empbroidery floss box looking for the colors that matched the card. I then spent the evening recreating the line art design. I am so pleased with how it turned out. You too can create your own line art designs using the craft.tutsplus.com tutorial, found here, for inspiration.

Below is the original cover design and the new design with  close up detail.

 

My friend’s birthday is today and she is 4 days overdue. We are anxiously waiting her baby girl’s arrival. We loving call the baby Rockstar and threw Mommy a baby shower last month. While I wait for the baby, and pout I did not win the baby pool, I will share a few pictures of the decorations from the party. My Friend Maria made the amazing diaper cake. I ordered the amazing vanilla bean cupcakes from my friend, Tammy’, bakery/cakery. Hill Country Cakery makes some amazing cookies too!

 

 

I'm notorious for constant website updating. For years I have not committed to a web design and liked it. With the most recent theme change, I think I've found something I actually like. I just need to put a touch of color. I found a color scheme I am in love with thanks to JustJaimee.com. I love to visit her blog for color inspiration. I look forward to customizing my page. This time I am trying to post as I go. Wsh me luck.

The Jellybean has a new found interest in my vintage Fisher Price Little People collection. I have a thrift store schoolhouse and the ferris wheel from my childhood. He begged to play with the ferris wheel that I keep on the top of my bookshelf. I made him pinky swear to follow a long list of rules before I let him play with it. (Does that make me a bad aunt?)

He was playing with the few little people I have in my collection and asked why I didnt have one that looked like him. My heart melted. I wanted nothing more than than to grant his every wish of having a Little Person that looks like him. He curled up on my lap and we scrolled through pages of Etsy and Ebay pages and found one! I marked it as my favorite on Etsy and promised to place the order Friday morning when I got to the office. That bought me some time to try to find one locally.

The next morning I did the obligitory Craigslist search and found a Fisher Price Airport from the 80s! I spoke with the seller and discovered that she is a HUGE collector who not only had the airport, she had the figure I was searching for too! And to top it off, she threw in TWO little boy figures, an adult figure, a mini bus and a merry-go-round for free! After picking everything up, I went home feeling like I just robbed a bank.

The Jellybean was so excited when I gave him the figure that he sat it next to him at lunch and served it an over sized home fry. It was the cutest thing how he bit the fry in half when I was not looking and then quickly pointed out the Little Person was full.

After lunch I surprised Jellybean with the remainder of the Craigslist jackpot. He was completely surprised. He would have been happy and grateful just to have the little guy that looked like him; now he had his very own airport to go with it. A Little People village was quickly assembled in the living room on the coffee table. My nephew spent the afternoon in his own world. It was so refreshing to see the imagination of a child breathing new life into vintage toys. In this digital age of ipads and video games, it is comforting to know that the best playstation is still a child's imagination.

On my recent trip to NYC, I took way too many pictures to put in a single scrapbook page or Project Life entry. I was inspired by Kristina Nicolai-White's You Tube video on matchbook style mini books that she slipped into her PL album. I decided a mini book is perfect for documenting the memories from my trip. I modified how the album is stitched together and how the binding is done on the spine. (Sorry no tutorial on that.) I love how the cover turned out and I am having fun working on the pages.

I painted the outside using my new watercolors that my Brother-In-Law gave me for Christmas. I used a splatter technique and a spray bottle to get the funky colors that remind me of the colors I saw in Times Square. I added my favorite Amy Tangerine Thickers for the album title. (I'm seriously addicted. I bought 4 packs of the Thickers. I plan on using them throughout my PL album as one of my standard fonts.)

The pages are not coming along as quickly as I imagined. I am discovering some of the pictures need to be reprinted. But it has been fun so far. Enjoy the sneek peek and look for a post with all the pages to go up soon.

Last night Z and I surprised the kiddos with a dinner date and HOCKEY! Jellybean is a super fan and cheered the entire game. The dad of the birthday party in the row in front of us gave Jellybean and Z's kiddos a free hockey puck. That was so very nice.

I took a hundred pictures at the game. I had to immediately scrap one picture that captured my nephew's team spirit exactly. I hate that his hands are out of frame but it was too perfect not to scrap for his 4x6 scrapbook.