My Time

Another one !

 Meet my newest great-nephew, Kayden Skyler Mays.  I haven't met Kayden in person yet but he sure looks like an inquisitive little fella.    

Congratulations to Jeremy and Tiffany - he's georgous.

 

 

94th Aero Squadron

Today we went to brunch at the 94th Aero Squadron in Van Nuys.  Val especially likes this restaurant since it is right next to the runway of the Van Nuys airport and he can watch the planes come and go.

Great food, great company, a great way to spend some time. 

And it was HOT today.  Was 108 when we left the restaurant - and it's only June.  What's with that ?!?!

Fireworks Canceled

Our Stevenson Ranch Fireworks have been canceled this year.  We are just too dry and the fire danger too great.  This would have been our 10th annual fireworks show, it started the year our home was built.  It has become a tradition for us to watch this show either from our home, or to walk up the hill to the park and watch from there with thousands of others.  This had grown to be the largest display in the Santa Clarita Valley and for sure one of the better shows in Los Angeles. 

According to this article - the Los Angeles County Fire Department is good with the show going on, but our Stevenson Ranch Community Association is using an abundance of caution in their decision.  Stevenson Ranch has seen many wild fires approach our community in recent years - and some have been just too close. 

Although very sad to not have our usual display - I am good with the decision.  I would much rather we be safe than sorry.

So - now we just need to find a "Plan B".

Michaels got me

I stopped at Michaels on my way home tonight for ONE thing that I needed.  

Wouldn't ya know - seems the whole dollar bin jumped into my cart. (don't ask why I needed a cart for the ONE thing I went to get). 

Just look at these goodies.   From the dollar bin.  Never too early to start a little Christmas stash, right ?

Boy - did they see me coming.

Creating Keepsakes Convention

Wow has this been a busy couple weeks!?!?  I have had so much going on latey.  I attended CKC Pasadena June 11-13, and finally I am getting around to going through the photos I took and the projects I made.  It was another great adventure with girlfriends which is always good therapy for the soul.  Way too much shopping - I really need to stop that!!  But I will use it all so I won't feel too guilty.

This is some of us as we were packing up from the crop Friday night.  

I took some great classes.  Many of us were in The Latest & Greatest with Basic Grey.  Look - - a whole row of my buddies.  They were hard at work on their projects and didn't know I was having the class assistant take the photo.

I also took a basic photo class from Erin Manning.  She is a great teacher and I learned much.  Loved it.

I was in the Paper Crafts Card Swap class.  Very much love the cards they had us make - here are photos (remember you can click on it to see it bigger).

The location was pretty good - except that it was very spread out and the meeting rooms and such were not marked very well.  It did get very confusing.  But hey - I'm glad there was a CKC in Pasadena at all since they have never had one here in Southern California.

All in all - a good event (and excuse for gathering friends) and I would make the effort to attend again.  Just hope I don't have to travel too far to do it !

YuDu Tour Shirts

My friend Amy and her family are going to Europe in a couple weeks.  She’s a very crafty lady and came up with the brilliant idea to create tour shirts for her group.

I volunteered to help her with the YuDu, and our friend Erin came to help.  Good thing too as we ended up doing 14 shirts – front and back.  This turned out to be a great social activity !  (and yes - that's my craft room in the photo)

Amy drew the ship design.  We had some troubles with it as the lines were just a bit too fine.  My first exposure of the emulsion didn’t work out – the lines were so thin that it just wouldn’t wash out.   So I copied the design on my all-purpose printer, and selected “darker”, then tried the emulsion again.  This time most of the image did wash out of the emulsion, but the lines were still so fine that the paint was drying very quickly in the screen.  With doing so many shirts, that became a problem.  But we coped ok and just rinsed the screen after every few pulls.

 

This was the back of the shirt with the ship on front -  Isn't this a great idea !?!?

 

Remember you can click on the picture to see bigger.

 

This was my first experience in creating multiple items with the YuDu.  A few things I learned that really matter in creating multiples that you don’t really have to think about on doing a single item –

• Be aware of how much your screen may be drying between pulls.  We were seeing less detail after 2 or 3 pulls because the fine lines in the design were drying quickly.
• Because it takes time to pull one shirt off and put another on – be aware of the position of any air conditioning vents or fans blowing.  My machine ended up being right in the path of the air conditioning flow – which caused the paint in the screen to dry faster.  I turned the A/C off only to realize that my fan was doing the same thing.
• Because we were rinsing the screen after every 2 or 3 pulls – we were losing time waiting for the screen to dry after each rinse.  I found that setting the screen in front of a fan works wonders!  It dries much faster than in the drying rack.  Be careful not to do this to dry your emulsion before you have exposed it.  Remember to keep that in very low light until your image is burned in it.
• We found that the paint we were reclaiming was lumpy – so we just added a tiny bit of water to the bottle after reclaiming and shook to mix it.  Worked great, thinned the paint out nicely.

 

 

This is another shirt Amy made for her family --

The ink is the Gunmetal Bronze color and it's really georgous.  It is a black but has lots of sparkle to it.  Looked really georgous on some hot pink shirts she did but it didn't photograph well.    Love this color paint !!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then Amy screen printed onto some luggage tags, and onto some document wallets.  These were leather, and this was perfect to screen print on.  The ink went on beautifully. 

 

 

I think her family will be a hit in Europe - don't you ?

 

Makes me want to take a trip so I can customize some things for it !

 

 

Disney California Adventure

Tuesday I spent the day at Disney California Adventure with my cousin Mike and his family.  Cute kids -- it was fun seeing them have so much fun !!  And I had actually never been to California Adventure so it was all good.

So here's a few photos from the day --

Boy was I exhausted, it was a very long day -- piled onto several very long days -- so I'm very sleep deprived at the moment. 

 The bug eye glasses are from "It's Tough to be a Bug" show -- which I might add did make me jump.  Very cute show.

These kids also had a blast running through the water play areas.  Believe me we had some very soaked kids, and more than one set of blue lips.   Swim suits would have been a good idea for the kids if we'd known about the water play areas.  Next time !

Very fun day !  Now - recovery.  :-)

Playboy Jazz Festival

We spent this past Sunday at the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl.  Great music all day (very long day) and some pretty funny people watching too. 

Some of my favorite performers included  Alfredo Rodriguez, a youngster who already has an incredible life story --and he's only 24 -- what a future this guy has ! 

Monty Alexander - click here to hear this guy play - you won't be sorry ! 

Patti Austin was fabulous. Her voice is so powerful.

King Sunny Aide and His African Beats were great.  Would love to see them again. (This guy is actually Nigerian royalty.)

Anat Cohen, Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland Big Band, among others.

And then there was Kenny G.  This is Kenny as he was making his entrance playing through the crowd.  Wow.

Bill Cosby was the Master of Ceremonies.  Saw the new Miss California USA being interviewed just a few seats over from us.  And were amused by seemingly endless string of people stopping and chatting and hugging at what we can only assume was Hugh Heffner's table.  Plenty of cute girlies that's for sure.

Such a fun event - can't believe we've never gone before.  We'll for sure be back next year !

Creative things......

I haven't done much creating lately, so haven’t had much to post. 

I’ve been trying to find my scrap table, think I can almost see it now (so sad).

I did make this card for my favorite uncle and his wife.  They were both recently diagnosed with cancer and both love getting out and riding.  So – this little card was meant as some encouragement to hurry up, get well,  and get back out there !

I got this new rug to throw some color into my scrap area.  See the dull grey carpet it’s laying on …… even little Smokey Jo-Ella approves !

 

We – and by We I mean Val -  are also in the process of putting up some new shelves in the scrap area (because my “stash” seems to continue to grow).  Val got all the anchors in the wall and then we realized the bracket (huge brackets) that came with the shelf is bent beyond repair.  Sooooo not quite done yet.    And let's just not talk about the spray painting of said shelves.

 

This weekend is Creating Keepsakes Convention in Pasadena.  It’s the first one around here and will be the first one I’ve attended so should be interesting.  Lots of shopping, classes and friends.   I’ll be commuting back & forth each day (or shall I say each night).  And I'm sure I'll be exhausted by the end of the event.   I’ll report more on that next week.

Reflections - part 2

I wanted to share a few more photos from the Reflections event last month.  Better late than never right ?   

This first photo is a very cute little house we made in a class with Melissa Philips. The roof comes off - making this a possibility for a cute gift card or small gift holder.  Don't know what I'll use it for yet - but I had fun making it.

Inside was this really cute banner ----

(remember you can click on each photo to see bigger)

This layout is just one of several very cute patterned papper layouts we made in Shannon Tidwell's class.   Fun class and love her energy.

I already shared a photo of the project from Stephanie Ackerman's class - she's the best teacher. 

Mara May had some cute projects (including the party hats from my previous post).  But I've been slow in getting to the projects so have no photos to show.

Maggie Holmes also had a cute little book - but I've still got lots to do on that one too !  I'm a bad student!

Part way through the last class Karen and Susan (affectionately known as The Prize Patrol) gave us each a little give.  These ladies put so much effort into all they did for us - just have to love them.

So here is the little "tiffany's box" we got, and the little goodie inside.  So much attention to detail.

So - if I were you - I'd be watching this event in the future.  It promises to be even better from here.......