Count Down to Vacation

Tomorrow we will be on our way to North Carolina! My whole family plus one father-in-law packed into our van, along with our clothes, snacks, and a boatload of scrapbooking goodness. I promised I'd share pictures of the finished packaging for my goodie bag items for the retreat participants. (I'll have to get a picture of my decorated goodie bags, as our hostess Amanda insisted we have one. I was down to last minute, so I have a lovely decoupaged Target redbag.)
Here are the finished sets. I wish I'd had a bunch of glassine envelopes available instead of the sandwich baggies, but I made do. Each is made in the favorite colors of the recipient.

This one here is for our hostess Amanda
More lovelies. I cut the ice creams from Basic Grey's cupcake papers
This one is for Theresa, who invited me into the group. She likes purple, can you tell?
I know it's Kendra's on the left, but can't remember who the other is for. Thank goodness they all have names on the back!

Studio Sightings

I thought I'd show you my fancy-dancy studio (re: spare bedroom that happens to have a desk in it). I'm traveling to a retreat later in June and these are the goodie-bag gifts I'm bringing to the other girls. I wrapped vintage and new trims around shipping tags. Some of the tags came pink, others I used Glimmer Mists to colour. Added things like posies, buttons, journal labels. Each set is based on one or more of their favorite colors. I will package them with crepe rosette's that are inspired by Kris Hurst's work (I have spent literally hours going over her blog posts). I hope to show you the finished packages later, but I need more colour ink to print out some collage elements for the rosette centers.

Here are just the tag elements

And this is my favorite stash-away for ribbons, glitters, buttons, and my purchased tag sets from Marilyn Healey's etsy shop.
Her's smell better.

Frippery

I found these at the big M's a week or so ago- aren't they delicious! They are by K&Co in their Amy Butler line. I love Amy Butler fabric and her cross over to the paper world has been fantastic. Another fabric artist, Heather Bailey, will be doing a paper line for Autumn Leaves. Can't wait to see those!

EyeCandy Sugar Buzz

I am living proof that you can get a sugar buzz from eye candy. There's just so much to see between blog hopping, and great magazines and books available. Today I received French General's book, and I am going to make a serious study of it tonight. Just flipping through the pages I wondered what took me so long to get it- the pages are gorgeous! And today I discovered two new (to me) blogs The Ribboned Crown and Sandra Evertson.

Meanwhile, I need to get to work on making some EyeCandy of my own, especially here. Just have to figure out all these crazy codes!

A start

Well, every blogger starts somewhere. Here I am. I've been reading so many marvelous blogs over these past few months, I've been inspired to start my own.

I'm not sure exactly which direction I'm heading, just want to share my thoughts and favorite findings for now. Need to learn how to decorate this place and get all my links in the right spot.