Birthday Card for My Co-worker

My co-worker's birthday was on Mother's Day this year. While I didn't see her that day, I knew that I would see her on Monday and so decided to try my hand at another card. Because she absolutely LOVES purses and sunglasses, I decided to pull out my Forever Young cartridge (the one I had no intentions of buying) and this was the result. What you probably can't see in the picture is that the red paper used for the lettering, the flower, and the bottom mat is quite shiny. I later learned that acetate would have worked perfectly for the lenses of the glasses, and now that I think about it, I could have applied black paint to a transparency too! Either would have worked just as well.
Thanks for looking!

Mocha Mom's Crop and My Latest Layout

On Sunday, I attended a Mocha Mom's crop in Chandler hosted by the chapter that one of my favorite sorors is a member of. Had a wonderful time and won some great goodies.

The layout below is one that I started well over two years ago. I kid you not. The pictures were down, the journaling was done, and all that was left to do was to add the title and some embellishments. The pictures are of my son and goddaughter and were taken during early 2007. With the busyness of life, the layout got put away. I did pull it out once or twice during the last two years, but for some reason it never got completed.

If you've every packed for a crop before, then you know how hard it is to decide what to take so that you're not trying to lug your entire scrap room with you. As I was searching for paper for some other pictures, I came across not only this incomplete layout, but also two others. For most of them, the paper was already there and it was simply a matter of adding some embellies to the folders. So I did the smart thing and said, these are already put together, I'll take these! Glad I did...it took me approximately three hours just to get this one layout completed.

I started cutting flowers for the page with my Cricut, but then messed up and didn't have any more of the matching paper. Thanks to Cara, my soror and CTMH consultant, I was able to add the flowers you see there. She had them in her stash at the crop. They come in white and she suggested that I ink them to match my layout, which I did. When I came home I added some Stickles to the flowers to help them stand out.

Even when you think you've got it exactly the way you want it, you usually find something to be unhappy about. It never fails, as soon as I scan my layouts and view them on my computer I find some whopping mistake or see that there are a lot of things crooked.

This time, I saw a spot where I intended to put a flower but guess I had forgotten to. Will I fix it? I doubt it. I kind of tend to leave things as they are and move on. I consider it all part of learning the design process and paying attention to details. Guess I missed this one, but me and my layout will live happily ever after!

See...I really should have put something on that corner where the lavender paper meets the patterned paper.

Still overall...not too bad for three hours work!