February 21, 2012

Stamp Carving Frenzy

I have a new crafty hobby/pastime!  Carving my own rubber stamps!  I have been taking an online class, Stamp Carving 101, from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, and I. Am. Hooked!  It is a self-paced class that you can join anytime, so if you are interested, you can check it out here.

Here is a sampling of some stamps I've made and some tags I created from them.











And, finally, here is a layout I made that incorporated a few of them, including heavy use of that alphabet set:




Thanks for visiting!  I'm still carving away, so will share more at a later date!

February 14, 2012

Local Girl Triumphs

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Laugh if you must.  I've lived in the Los Angeles area for almost 18 years.  And the first three years I had a job that required me to drive to a lot of different areas.  I am really good at driving from A to B.  But if I have to get from B to C, it'd be best for me if I drove back to A and then headed out to C.  I'm a homing pigeon of sorts, I guess.  Also, my A point in those days was the LAPD Crime Lab, so if you need any directions, I'll have to send you there for a layover before heading you out to your final destination.  Except, now that I think about it, they have since relocated the Crime Lab.  So, unless they've also moved the duck slaughtering facility that was next door to the lab :-(  , and Chinatown adjacent, you're better off asking somebody else for directions. 

Which is why this seemingly trivial event is really a notable achievement for me, and I felt kinda like a local for the first time. 


Here's the story:


And here are those girls!  My daughter, Jillian, is there in the middle,
dressed as a favorite character, Lichtenstein, from the anime Hetalia.






It really IS the little things! 
Thank you for sharing in this triumph with me! ♥