Hitchcock Blonde Kit

This will be long on photos and short on chatter for once. :)

I've been playing with my Hitchcock Blonde kit by Technicolor Postcards. And let me tell you, it is awesome. Cynthia designed her own papers which are so beautiful I have had a hard time cutting into them. She also included a ton of really cool coordinating supplies, too, including a bunch of amazing vintage stuff. Here are a few things I've made so far; everything I used was included in my kit with one (noted) exception (click on any picture to open it bigger and/or read the journaling):

"It" Girls. The red is a piece of gorgeous burlap--normally I would say "gorgeous burlap" is an oxymoron but in this red? Hello. The strip that looks like film is cut from her gorgeous "Film" paper. Love it.


"Secret Weapon." I told you you'd see this photo again. :) I love these shoes! [The big {} shapes are not from the kit.]


But this little card was! It had buttons sewn onto it so I took them off and used the card, too. :) These shoes are definitely not washable but they are guaranteed fabulous. :)


I altered photos of the shoes and printed them out in a big strip. I mounted that on a piece of amazing vintage ribbon and then added the buttons on either end. The red knots on each button are from a thread I pulled off of the red burlap.

I had all these lovely flowers and buttons and vintage jewelry pieces on my work table and I kept pushing them around and lining them up and grouping them as I was working on the layouts, but I just wasn't feeling flowers on either layout. And by the time I finished the layouts I was sort of attached to these beauties as a group, a unit, so I decided to leave them that way!


I had this little shadowbox just waiting to be used, and it seemed perfectly suited to this project. I mounted the "Vertigo" paper on the inside and then mounted all the flowers and buttons and jewelry and little pearls on top.

Here it is opened, since it was hard to photograph with the glare from the front.


And a closeup, of course!

I also have enough stuff--including the coolest black chipboard 5x12" album!--to make a ton more projects. So don't be surprised to see more later on in the month! :)

Now, the best news is that Cynthia is doing a super-duper special on her blog! Head over here and leave a comment and you could win all of the amazing papers that she's created, as well as the Hambly overlays and some Thickers chipboard letters!! She's also doing a special on the kit, if you leave a comment you can get $5 off the kit for a special price of $29.99! So go here and leave a comment and then go here and buy the kit!

Thanks for looking! :)

A Joyful Heart

Remember this? It's one of my submissions to Cynthia for the Leading Lady Design Team. I promised I would show the rest of this, so today is the day! (Click on any of the photos to view them larger.)


I adore hand-binding books! There's something so satisfying about taking a pile of paper and some thread and turning it into an actual book! I almost always use contrasting colors because I love seeing the stitches.


The theme for this book is "A Joyful Heart: things that make me HAPPY."


When you open the book all the way up it becomes a star! (Pretty cool that it matches up with the compass on my mosaic table, huh? Ha ha.)


To make the star look more dramatic, there are mini pages in each signature. (A signature is each set of pages sewn into the book. In this book there are seven signatures, which you can count on the above photo of the spine.) I used several different colors because I couldn't decide on only three to add to the bright, happy feel of the book.


The first set of pages is, of course, about Jason! My number-one happy-maker. Him. Us. Our marriage. Our life. Okay, I'll stop now. :)


The next page(s)... family! I put little photos of lots of family members and two larger photos of my adorable nieces (and their cheeks!).


Next up? Friends, of course! I'm blessed to have too many friends to include on here, but I love all these photos and all these people!


Another thing I love--TRAVEL! Each of these nine photos was taken in a different country--wow! I love that some of my favorite photos were taken by random strangers we handed our camera to. :)


Creating and art of COURSE made it into the book. :) I love that the butterfly says "Beauty Dreams Goodness," all words describing and integral to art!


Some of my favorite things that I do to relax. :) I made the circle text-boxes in Word with coordinating colored backgrounds and white text.


And finally, some of the food that makes me happy. Again I made white-text text boxes in Word and accented them with bling. [The photo is of me in my Italian neighbor Nunzia's kitchen as she taught me to make lasagna. Oh, Lordy, talk about HEAVEN. (Nunzia is on the friends page--we're both wearing aprons.)]


Whew, we made it to the back cover. Love this quotation. :)


There are a ton of other things that make me happy, obviously, but I'll have to save that for another book. Or ten. :)

[Big thanks to Tena Sprenger! You're the best!]

A Leading Lady

When Cynthia first announced her amazing plans for Technicolor Postcards Studio Crafting Kits, I knew I'd love them (because she has stunning taste!). When she announced her Design Team call, I went to work creating projects that showed Me. Capital-M Me; my style and my vision and my passion.

I worked feverishly (which is very Me). I was obsessive-compulsive about my techniques and re-did things until I achieved the look I'd envisioned (very Me). I used tons of color (Me-me-me!). And also only black and white (Me, too). I made a hand-bound book (Me!) and two scrapbook pages (with lots of blank space--Me!).

In the end I came up with three things that I was happy with. Three things I felt encapsulated me and my style at this moment. Three things I was glad I'd created! [I shared one page here and will be posting my other submissions later this week.] So I sent them off to Cynthia and then packed for our vacation and tried not to think about it.

But I did. I thought about it a lot. So when she said she'd post her selections for Design Team (aka "Leading Ladies") on Saturday, I checked several times (in between, you know, being on vacation and being social with our hosts!). And then suddenly I saw this:


And then I made this noise very, very loudly in our hosts' house: WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!