Quinceanera Painter's Tray Gift

I have a quinceanera on Saturday and realized I either needed to buy a gift or make something.  Well, this special  young lady is the daughter of one of my friends/coworker and she used to come over to my home and craft with us.  I thought I would make her a mini-album that she could put some photos of her birthday party in, but remembered I had two of the 7 Gypsies Painter Trays.  I found them in the clearance section at Joanne's before Christmas.  They usually sell for at least $19 and they were on clearance for only $7!! I bought the only two they had.

For those of you who don't know, a quinceanera is a 15th birthday celebration in the Catholic Hispanic culture.  It's a day to celebrate when a girl becomes a young lady.  I've been to plenty of them and Kenny & I have participated as padrinos (Godparents) in two of them - the first was for Vanessa and the second for Erika.

The parties are just like weddings - very elaborate and very special.

Now to the project:

Here is a photo of the entire thing:

And some close ups:

The color of her dress is a salmon color and the decorations are a mixture of the same color and a light teal blue (I'm sure there's an official name, I just don't know what it is).  I started off with a paper line from CTMH but realized the "salmon" color was really more orange than I hoped.  I accidently found a scrap piece of some paper that we had forever.  In fact, it's one of the first paper pads Carly and I bought.  I no longer have the cover page, but the pad was a Rock Star pad with lots of coordinating papers (probably DCWV, but I'm not sure).  I used those sheets and added a teal color as accent.

The light wood and gold accented papers are from a paper pad from DCWV.  I love this pad!!

So the idea of the painter's trays is to decorate it and she can fill the empty spaces with photos.  I really like the way it turned out.

I used my Storybook Cricut cartridge for the crown, "15" and the mats; Tie the Knot cartridge for the "V"; SU! pennant punch for the pennant; SU! doilies; CTMH washi tape; the micro beads, gold flowers and assorted ribbons are from my stash.

I hope she likes it.

Peace

I finished another Art Journal page.   I worked on the base of this page awhile ago and then moved on  to other pages before going back to this one.

I saw somewhere that someone adhered rolled pieces of paper to their canvas so I thought I'd like to try it.  I grabbed some scrap pink paper and started inking it up.  I also stamped random background on some of the papers.  I also grabbed my trusty English/Spanish dictionary and tore out some pages.

Once I adhered them to the page, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do.  I used an empty toilet tissue roll to apply white paint circles on the 3D papers and then decided to make one of them a peace sign.  Then grabbed some white rub-on letters that I have and wrote the word "peace".

Here's the final page:

Another shot and a side view:

So here's what I hate about the Art Journal.  I really, really,, really like how this turned out and would love to frame it but I have more art work on the backside of this page.  I really need to only work on one side of pages.

I love how this turned out!

Virtual Room Tour

On Saturday, five of my scrapbooking friends and I had a Craft Room Crawl.  We met at the home of our last stop and then carpooled to each others crafting rooms - five stops total.  First stop...amazing! This room was called the Girl Cave.  Karen's room is layed out perfectly with different stations for different mediums.  There's a cutting spot, glitter, flower, etc.  The entire space is cozy and girly and all supplies are stored in a way that you can just grab and get creative!  Awesome!

Second stop is the Fungeon.  Nancy's room is very organized with lots and lots of shelves to put everything.  She definitely won the contest of "she who has the most paper".  The room is painted in a beautiful soft blue that is so relaxing!  Her spot is a "everything has it's place" craft room and plenty of room to spread out and get your scrap on!  Love it!

Third stop doesn't have a cute name, but Dawn said she'd work on it.  Her room was spectacular!  There are custom made cabinets surrounding her double tables in the center of the room.  The cabinets have plenty of storage on shelves or in drawers.  I love that she had plenty of Disney inspired art.  Her containers are labeled so you can find what you're looking for.  It is put together well and very, very nice.  Classy!

The Command Center was the fourth stop.  My room is at least 1/2 the size of everyone's and so quirky.  Carly and I love our space.  There is lots of inspiration art and photos all over the walls.  I love our thrifts store and yard sales pieces that fill our space with a lot of storage and work stations.  Carly and I cleaned that room like it's never been cleaned before!  There's so much to look at and love.

Here's a virtual tour made just for you.

I hope you like the Command Center as much as we do!

Last but not least was Wanda's almost empty craft room.  She had a table and a shelf and that's about it!  She sure did get lots of great ideas and inspiration by looking at each of our rooms.  That was her intention!  So we ended the night eating cupcakes and drinking wine.  Oh I forgot to mention at each stop, there was food/drinks to share with the tour group.  It was nice relaxing outside at Wanda's and talking shop.

Shade Tree of Love

Here's my project for the Mixed Media challenge on Splitcoaststampers.  The challenge is to either use a hole in your project or to make something beautiful out of an "oops".  I chose Option #2.  This page is from my Art Journal.  I worked on this awhile ago.  It started out as my mixed media projects usually do...a little of everything.  The circles on the left where punched out of a baby shower invitation.  I was making a stencil but thought I'd use the circles too.  So I adhered them and then painted over them.  Sprayed some distressed ink and then drew circles around them.  The right side, I adhered some paper tickets that I had laying on my desk.  I didn't know what my plans were but it just seemed random enough to be cool.  Well, I was wrong.  I regretted it almost as soon as I put them down.  After throwing some paint, ink, sprays, stencils, etc, I still did not like what was happening.

I did however love the left side circles.  With the pink background it sort of looked like balloons in a pink sky.  I loved that and wanted to keep that side.  Now what....

Sky = tree scene...so now the tree idea.  So I cut out a "fluff" for the tree and adhered it.  Then I used a brown ink spot to just spread into a trunk.  I cut some branches and put them in the tree...hated it!  So then I decided to use punched hearts for the "leaves".  I grabbed my green scraps and punched away.  I glued the hearts within the tree.  Then I painted a watered down green acrylic paint wash over them.  Used a baby wipe to remove some of the paint to show the patterned paper.  Charcoal pencil for shading everything!

Then I grabbed some small stamps and started randomly stamping shapes as flowers on the bottom.  Used a doily as a stencil and randomly painted white acrylic.  I added some teal ink right above the "grass area" to add some blue to the sky because before that it was all pink.  I added the K+D in the heart on the tree trunk - FUN!

After all that, I decided it needed something on the left side.  I added the house.  The base is an old book page; roof is scrap paper and the red door.  Again, used charcoal pencil to shade.  I want to add a quote but I'm not sure what yet.  Oh, before I forget...I put the moustache down at the same time of the tickets.  I thought it adds a little humor and kept it there!

All ink is Stampin' Up!

Heart Punch is also SU!

Acrylic Paint is assortment

White Pen is Sigma (geez, is that the name??)

Pocket Pages Completion

So I finally finished my pocket pages for my Orlando trip.  I'm so excited because it took a really long time to complete.  I pushed myself out of the box and loved making these pages.

The Incredibles pages are my favorite.  I loved the challenge of the 4x6 and 3x4 bases that I had to work with.  Very easy way to get through and scrap a lot of photos.
Here are some photos:

Memories and Broken Heart

I just realized that I stamped Sept 25th instead of May 25 on this.  Well, I'll cover it somehow and restamp.  DUH...

Memorial Day 2015 - May 25th:

We got a call at 7:59 a.m., Grandpa Charles passed away.  He was 82.  Maybe we weren't completely surprised but it was still unexpected.  My father-in-law was a hardworking man who did his best to make his family happy.  He was quiet and didn't say much, but if we needed him, he would be there.  You know I'm always ready to say that we weren't really that close to him, but once I started going through my memories, he is going to be missed.  Charles did magic with his roast.  He never shared the recipe so now it's lost, but he always brought a huge pan of his special roast with him to every party.  He always asked how things were, did we need any help, and was genuinely concerned with our family.  As I am writing this, I am looking at a 21 year old family portrait of my four kids and remembered that Charles bought my daughter's dress that she's wearing.  I remember buying the boys' shirts to match the dress.  How quickly all these special little things are forgotten.

I put together this Art Journal page because my heart really is breaking.  After my dad died two years ago, Charles was the first person I called once the funeral was over.  I don't even know why, he just came to me and I felt the need to call him.

Mixed media has been my creative outet.  

You Got Some Xplaining to Do

Even though I was at a Mother's Day Weekend Crop last weekend, I didn't have a chance to take any photos.  I finished so many layouts.  It was a very successful weekend.  The weather was perfect and the food and company was amazing.

I did not spend any time in the Command Center this past week.  I really, really, really need to clean that room!  LOL

I need to unpack my bags for sure...

I thought I'd share some photos that Kenny and I took last month.  We went to a "Hollywood Premier" party.  Red carpet and everything.  We were asked on the invitation to dress as our favorite celebrity and here we are as Lucy and Ricky.

I do have to admit that we had many cocktails but had a blast taking these photos.

Keep Cool!