A Winter's Day and City Walk

I love, love, love this umbrella paper -- it's DCWV from the Juniper Berry Stack.  The strip on the title is from a Recollections 6x6 pad.  While the rest of the country was digging out from snow storms that just kept coming, CA went into a drought.  This was a winter walk from home down Zelzah to CSUN.  The clouds are coming in, but the bird of paradise is still blooming.  I think this was the walk that I started out in a sweatshirt, but ended up with it around my waist.

From Universal City Walk -- the pics of the Sponge Bob care came out really oddly tinted.  Night time with lots of neon and fluorescent lights I guess.  We love walking City Walk.

HHN's

I've been remiss in posting some of the things I've been working on, so now you get a bunch dumped out all at once.

First, some layouts with photos of David and Scott from Halloween Horror Nights at Universal.  They were both scareactors (their job title) for the special nights.  I loved getting the behind the scene photos from them.

David worked with the "Tramily" -- the normal tram ride was suspended during HHN and the guests are dropped off up by the Bates Motel (that was awesome getting to see that up close) and walk through various areas that have been infested with Walking Dead.  Scott worked in the Insidious Maze.  I haven't gotten to those photos yet -- soon.

Behind the Curtain shows their costume and make up area.  I used a sketch from "Stick It Down" -- a new site for me.  I loved the sketch and even though I didn't have photos of different sizes, I think you can see the inspiration there.  I also was inspired by the "FLOWER" challenge at S.W.A.T.   -- I think this is the first time I've participated in a challenge there, although I've been watching them for a while.  The challenge was to use something for each letter of the word "FLOWER" on your layout.  Here's mine:

F -- floral pp, flourish, fashion, fonts (Bones and A Dripping Marker) for title
L -- layering, lacy doily
O -- Orange (and lots of it) -- one of the colors I have a hard time with
W -- wood veneer (under the title "BEHIND") and white accents (doily, word "Halloween", title, journal card)
E - eek! and the orange "bat" paper is part of the Eerie collection by Basic Gray (it's older)
R -- Round embellies (near title) and Red  (the color of the font in the title and in some of the strips

Yep, that's my DH all made up, with his boss.  Love these photos of the monsters playing cards, showing off pics of the grandkids and taking a quick nap.

The "Tramily" -- both DH's group and the whole group.  And then, of course, they had to start acting out.

Such fun memories of their time as Scareactors for HHN.

Pippin

This layout is a couple photos from my son's school play "Pippin" from last year.  It is for a couple challenges over at Skrap N Chat -- Load Day 3 and Law 11.

It's night, so the photo has glare.  Background, upper left embellies and black borders along the bottom are G45, red pp is Karen Foster, stickers are Imaginesce.  Have had some of these for a long, long time.  Used the ticket for the title and journaling -- who what where and when :-)

Scott and Agent P

Quick and easy for the LOAD at Skrap N Chat:

My ODS and his Platypus -- Perry (or Agent P) from Phineas and Ferb.

The photos themselves are not great (bottom right is him sleeping in bed) and the photo of the layout isn't wonderful either.  Green is the mat color and major color in the background (MME), Gold brads and title, four Platypuses (Platypi?) and brads.  Looks much better in person.

Dancing in the Moonlight

These photos are my YDS and his gf from Winter Formal -- the theme was "Dancing in the Moonlight".  They had a great time and look so cute together.

I used a sketch from Let's Scrap (3-12-14).  The background is from Michael's or JoAnns -- their house brand.  The little bits of snowflake blue paper are scraps from an old DCWV winter/Christmas collection.  The argyle is from Recollections (open stock) and the silver, shiny paper is from a Recollections stack called "Mercury Glass".  I found this stack after Christmas dirt cheap.  It reminds me of the old Shiny Brite Christmas ornaments and I love it.  The stack has different colors, so expect to see more of this :-)  It was hard to photograph the layout because of how shiny the paper is, but I like the look and feel of it with these photos.

I love using the bits and pieces or memorabilia -- and so proud of my son who remembered to bring Mom the ticket home :-)

Cards

I forgot to share the Valentine's cards I made for my guys (and Mariya).

I love being able to use "left-overs" or stuff I've had in my stash FOREVER on cards!  I used many "forgotten" items on these cards.  Top left -- for Scott -- I used a leftover stamp image, forgotten rubons, and some new washi -- the wider one was a freebie from Scotch.

Top right -- for Mariya -- freehanded the hearts to make the elephant (she loves them and collects them, I learned recently), a leftover "hi cutie" sticker, forgotten paper (seriously, have had that stuff since the boys were babies) and oldie oldie convo heart stickers.

Bottom left -- for Ben -- paper from one of the first stacks/pads I ever bought, left over mittens from a preschool game I made.  I think I put rubons inside.

Bottom right -- for David -- chipboard hearts and label from God only knows when/where (don't remember buying that set), used my crimper on the red paper -- love the texture it gives, base paper was in a pack I bought for the solid color cardstock, but the white birch bark look gives a pinkish-heartsy card a nice masculine look.

Time to think about St. Pat's day -- instead of waiting for the last minute like I did with these.

What I've Been Up To

So our computer died and was in the shop and has been resurrected.  Sort of.  I wasn't able to post during that time, although I did scrap a bit, because Scott's laptop doesn't connect to our printer nor can I upload photos to the laptop.  Ain't technology grand.  Meh.

So -- here are my most recent layouts.  Mainly from the last couple weeks -- didn't bother trying to photo all of January.

Here's one from last summer's Shakespeare in the Park -- "The Scottish Play" (Macbeth)

The journaling pulls no punches -- this was one of the worst productions of Macbeth we've ever seen.  But it's always a fun evening at Griffith Park -- we bring a picnic dinner and wine.  And we know how to entertain ourselves before hand -- Ben and Darrin played Magic.  Scott and David played with food in the grass.  And I took photos :-)

The rest of the layouts feature horrible photos.  Really.  Here's Ben and NorCal friend Nick.  Nick and his family invited Ben to spend a day at Disneyland with them.  He had a blast.  We picked him up at the Grand Californian Hotel.

Next two layouts from Ben's 17th birthday -- one at Outback and one at home.  Ben knew we were going to Outback for dinner, but he overheard the waitress confirm a party of 7.  He thought I'd heard wrong and was worried we were taking someone else's reservation (Mom, she said 7.)  When I told him that 7 was correct, he got confused, then apprehensive.  "Who else did you invite?"  The other guests were a bit late (teenagers), so he had a while to worry.  LOL.  But he was much relieved when his friends Hunter, Thomas and Kenny showed up.

After dinner, we went home for cake and ice cream.  These photos are so awful (our apartment does not photograph well -- lack of natural light and tan walls) so I added a bunch of stickers that I've had forever.  Made it silly and fun.  Made Ben smile.  :-)

The most recent layout I've done -- dinner and a movie last summer (Despicable Me2) at Universal City Walk. I found the die cut files (Minion and title) online and used a googly eye for the minion.

The last layout are some photos of Scott and David with celebrities.  One of the perks of living in LA is running into people.  Scott and David ran into George Eads (from CSI) at a bar next to their work.  He had been filming on location in the area and stopped in.  Apparently he was feeling no pain and hammed it up for the photos with the guys.  It was weird too, because David and Scott don't often go into the bar -- I think this was the first and so far, last time.  You just never know who you'll see....