Updates...

I'm terrible at them. Ever since I was a 15 year old blogger [When I was heavy into graphic designing and whatnot] I failed to update continuously. Haha. Which is probably why I can't keep many followers.

Anyways, today my mom and I FINALLY turned an old door into a desk, and I love it! We re-purposed the door, and the glass mat I have on it. I like the glass because it's a good painter's palette, easy-clean sorta non-stick surface, and cutting mat all in one! And it's a good size, it doesn't fit the whole desk because the desk [or door] is reallyyyy long. I decided instead of taking pictures with my camera and forgetting about them as I do often, I'd take a picture with my iPhone and put them up on here. The desk is already a mess and it's only been done for 2 and a half hours, but I was so excited I decided to scrapbook. [pictures of the page I made too].
I'm sure one day when my mom and I continue on our carpenter-ing journey to make a storage system for underneath my desk, and over/around my window, I'll take better pictures with my better camera. But for now, my iPhone is quick and easy [that's why I love it].
I plan to scrap every day this week and use up all of the scraps on my desk. That'll be a goal of mine. Start a week with a new set of stufff [or a new set from all of my old stuff, plenty of untouched things in my scrap-stash] and then throughout the week continue to use up what's left from my first project. :) I don't know if that makes sense, but for me it helps me truly get my money's worth out of all the product I have. Haha.

The layout is of seeing the Blue Man Group in person at The Venetian in Vegas when I went last Christmas. [I'm scrapping about last Christmas when it's so close to this Christmas!] I was so excited about the table I decided to scrapbook about whatever was closest to me and I had all this vegas stuff lying around so I decided to tackle that. :) More Vegas layouts will be made when I get some prints [I still need to go to CostCo!]

It came!

After what seems like 2 weeks of waiting, my RitzCamera order finally was delivered yesterday. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm working on a mini album for my mom, I've finished covering everything and all I have to do is add pictures [leave room for her writing] and extra embellishments, tags, and what not once I get the picture in [so I can layer on top of photos].

In this album I used the Basic Grey Porcelain collection to cover about half of the album, and a few papers from a big pack I bought from Cost Co [300 papers for 20 dollars]. They don't necessarily go well together, but I tried to incorporate bright and softer colors to the costco papers and darker distressed feel to the basic grey papers. I really wanted to use the Porcelain papers, but it took forever for my Ritz purchase to come, so I started with the Cost Co papers [I don't know what company they are, aha.] I used chip stickers and cardstock stickers from the Porcelain collection also. I'm definitely planning on adding more once I print the photos out. I still have to print the photos out for my Summer mini album. Not sure when I'll be going to Cost Co [where I get my prints], but hopefully soon because I want to see these things done! And I really want to send out my summer mini album to my cousins. :) They'll love it!

Here are the photos of my unbound garden-mini album for my mom! Haha, not done yet. I have to get binder rings also.

Pictures coming soon! Editing is a HASSLE!

Ordered!

For our one year anniversary, my wonderfulll boyfriend ordered me a 3m Scotch ATG 714 gun. :) *yay* This is great because I just went through one spool [would that be the word?] of Tombow Mono in a week! AH! Haha...

I finished my summer album to the best of my ability yesterday. I say that because I still need to print out photos to add to it and then layer a little more embellies .. :) It turned out great and I can't wait to send it to my cousins & aunt!!

I'm starting on a new mini for my mom, it's going to be a garden album FULL of all the flowers we have surrounding our house. It'll have pictures that I'll take of each flower around the house, and then on the little inserts I'll leave her some room to journal about each flower, why she chose them, etc. She loves her garden and is VERY proud of it. She spent so many hours getting it perfect, and now it's officially finished so I thought this would be a nice gift. The flowers all bloomed for the Spring/Summer season and they were sooo beautiful. Unfortunately some of the flowers are dead or she cut them now so I'll have to leave a few blank pages to be filled in later. I don't know my whole goal yet but I've picked out a set of papers I want to use, some stamps I want to use, and a daisy punch. Even though we don't have daisies, I thought it would be fun to incorporate.

I'm still waiting for my Ritz Camera order to come to me! Haha. I feel like it shipped out forever ago, but it's okay. :) I know it'll come soon!

Summer seems to go so fast ...

This summer is different, it feels like it will never end.
Soon it will hit August 25th and I'll have to go back to school, this time COLLEGE.
I'm nervous, honestly. Scared of the severity of failing.
I need to get a little studying for math done. I haven't done any math for over a year now! It will definitely be a difficult course, at least I assume it will be. English will probably be the hardest though, formal writing doesn't come easy to me.
These are my random babbles for today.
I did something bad! I bought 5 stacks of DCWV paper! Metalic, the Green stack, Citrus, Fun in the Sun Summer Glitter AND 180 sheet paper. I was so stoked to find the Summer stacks for only 9 bucks on clearance in a neglected aisle at Joann's. All of the other papers are premium stacks on sale right now also. I think I need to spend money a little more wisely. I'm still waiting on one of my orders from RitzCamera. It should [hopefully!] come Monday!! When it comes maybe I'll do a video. Only it would be of great quality considering I only have a webcam on my laptop and one for my desktop. Nothing great.

One day in the far future [2012?] I'll get a camcorder. I figure more fun different things will happen in my life when I am 21 rather than now when I'm 18 and my dad still won't let me drive to LA (Anaheim) from here in San Diego. That's okay cause I'm too scared [I've seen the way people drive there! It's NUTS!] Haha. Also, the technology will more than likely GREATLY advance .... :) hopefully. My life depends on it! Jk, I would say I'm addicted to technology. Go figure ..

Once again!

Check out the awesome blog candy that's being offered right now in the links/pictures posted on my sidebar!!! Making a trip to Joann's today to get some DCWV paper stacks. I'm addicted to their paper I can't help it!! I'll let you know what I buy when I get back!

Since one of my last posts ....

about doing my whole own layout, I quickly got bored of it, and used this layout! Well, it's a template from somebody else (a link is in the footer of her page, her stuff is awesome! I found it through a google search though and the original theme had this cute girl .. well her skirt at least .. and a ton of shopping bags.) .. haha, I love parenthesis, but since I don't shop (for clothes) as much as I used to, I wanted to customize it a little and erase the stars and sprinkles ... so I opted for a plain gradient background, made my little banner thing .. :) and made a simple background for my date. The signature is my own! :D I scanned it because I'm still not used to my graphics tablet .. I guess I should start taking graphic design classes, but for now psychology still interests me enough to figure out what I want to do. That's what I love about community college, you can figure out what you want to do by experimenting, but you don't have to pay A TON of money. Books are also really expensive, but the good thing about the internet is "you can find anything for cheaper online" ... that's what I always say. >.< The only thing that hits you is shipping and handling which is why I try to find places with cheap or mostly ZERO s&h.

So we have an old door and it's a pretty skinny because it was the small half of french doors. Anyways, I'm going to be taking the nice long skinny door, prime&paint it, and then make it a desk! :) It's going to have a storage system underneath it on one end and the other end will be legs and it'll be pretty close to my computer desk {which is really just a shelf in my closet.. hahaha I absolutely <333333 the ELFA system from The Container Store!! Anyways. :) I'm excited for it to finally be done because my room is terribly messy from having no desk to confide my work in. Since I have a big partly-empty room I just push my scraps and tools I won't need anymore for a project over and create a line of mess! and then the whole floor gets filled with mess! Aah how I wish I could be organized ... I'm thinking that when I become a mother [10 years from now, or a little less probably] I'll become a good cook, cleaner, and organizer. It seems like all moms are!! Hah.

I went to Sea World AGAIN today. I love it there. The animals are so adorable and they don't stink! At least, I don't mind the smell of fish? Haha. Zoo's I don't like because they don't have options for hot days. It's just hot and smelly. But I do love the Gorillas and Butterfly Expo [when it comes around @ the Wild Animal Park].

By the way! Check out the awesome blog candy going on right now on my side bar -->>

Learning ...

I've been trying to learn how to make my own SVGs. I really want to incorporate diecuts into my Summer mini for my family in Pennsylvania and I want to make a nice card for each of them. I thought it would be cute to do maybe little cartoon diecuts of my aunt and her two children in front of a collage of all the SoCal goodness we did as my back cover for my mini[photo is of my grandma aunt & cousins at Sea World feeding the ADORABLE Sea Lions!] Anyways, I tried using Adobe Illustrator but that was difficult [seeing as I've never used it before!] So I'm going to try Inkscape after watching a tutorial on YouTube late last night, unfortunately I don't remember who posted it! :(

Summer 09!

So my family came to visit a few weeks ago (July 15-22). After they left I got my room officially cleaned up and I started working on a project for them. I wanted to make a gift mini-album for their first time in California and to just have them remember all the things we did! I dated each page and put what we did, I'm not even close to finshed yet. I still have to print pictures and have 2 more days/pages/events to cover!! But here are the pictures of what I have so far! I took with them my webcam because I can't find the charger to my d-slr and can't find the USB cable to my point and shoot. Hmm. This book isn't supposed to have a matching "theme" really, because we did so many different things this summer I wanted to represent that with different patterns, colors, textures, and elements. Like I said, I have tons more to add. :)

The next 2 pages/little taggy-type pages are going to be our trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain and the next day when we went on a VIP tour through WB studios [the best day of my summer!!] I keep all little things when I go on trips. Park maps [which you see in the Sea World page], tickets, etc. So it's nice to incorporate those little things that they probably don't have anymore.

I decided to date each page because I always forget what day I did what thing, it's always a little nice to know. I don't know, those things bother me, when I can't remember. Haha.

So I'm off to edit some pictures to print out for the album. This part is exciting because I get to sit down on a chair! Haha, I've been doing my work on the floor [creating a HUGE mess], so it's nice to sit down on some cushion for a bit! I'm also going to be working on making this blog a little prettier. I really want to get to my web-design roots again. (I used to be a weird little middle schooler obsessed with blogging and graphic design. Then the world wide web changed their language a little bit [Web 2.0?] ... and I got confused. Haha.) .. I miss it though. I love coding everything it makes me feel accomplished because it's the only thing I know I can! I might go into computer science but I'm scared of being bored and hating my job like my dad does, so my major goals for college for now is graphic design, even though I'm not taking any art classes this upcoming fall. I wanted to be a psychiatrist for the longest time, but it faded away as I got more into art, so I decided for this fall semester I would take one psych class and see how I like it. If it totally intrigues me and leaves me wanting to know more, then I'm definitely going to pursue that as a career. The human brain is a beautiful thing, and I always want to help those who can't function it the way ... it's "supposed" to, even though I hateee the way that sounds. I don't know how else to word it.

Well, that's enough of my random-blabble. Hope you enjoy! Better pictures will come when the book is totally complete!

Redone!

I've redone my blog layout once again, for the 3rd time in the past 3 weeks I think. Haha this time, I've actually done it myself. There's more I want to do with it, but I'll have to wait for tomorrow. I need some rest!!!!

Amazing opportunity over @ Butterfly Kisses

Arlene, who makes some amazingly cutee mini albums and cards, is having some blog candy! She's giving away soooo much stuff it's amazing! Haha, how can anybody afford to give away these amazing things? Anyways, her and her friend Bona are really inspiring.

Head on over to her blog at http://www.butterflykisseswithlove.blogspot.com/ to see what she's giving away and her other great projects! Check out her Youtube Channel also! http://www.youtube.com/user/mybutterflykisses12

Super excited for whoever wins this one! :)