A great escape

A piece of advice: when your kitchen is a dirty, empty shell of a room awaiting renovations, the best possible thing you can do is get out of town! Bonus points if you can work out a way to do your favorite thing while you're away.

Several months ago, I was invited to a craft retreat for this weekend and, not having any idea what stage our renovation would be in, I accepted. Fast forward to August 9. As I was packing my bags to leave my construction-in-progress house, I thought: could we have timed this any better?

I'm kind of amazed at all the pages/projects I've gotten done, all while enjoying home-cooked meals and a snack table that's overflowing with all the treats I never allow myself to eat. Yeah. It's heaven.

My count for the weekend:

• 9 scrapbook pages (probably more like 11 by the time I leave today)
• 1 mini book
• 1 altered clipboard

I won't share my calorie count. Besides, I lost count of that somewhere around 6:30 p.m. on Friday. Oops.

So I'll be sharing photos of the project I created over the next week, but for today, here's another peek of one of my projects with the new Front Porch Kit that will be released on Tuesday.

Be sure to visit the Little Blue House blog where you can see more sneak peeks of the kit as we count down to the full reveal on Tuesday, Aug. 13. You can also enter to win a FREE kit by commenting on the sneak posts there!

Sneak Peek!

It's time for a new Front Porch Kit from The Little Blue House!

Today starts all the fun, with sneak peeks of some projects we've created. Here's my sneak for the day:

So many fun things to play with in this kit. You are going to LOVE IT!
 
Ready to see some more peeks and maybe even win your own kit? 

Visit the LBH blog and post a comment on any of the three Sneak Peek dates, and you'll be entered into a drawing for a FREE Game On Kit!

And please come back tomorrow for a few more peeks before the BIG reveal on Tuesday, Aug. 13!

Upcoming Classes...in Texas AND Charlotte, NC!

It's been a busy summer, to say the least. Yes, I've been crafting away in my little upstairs nook. Meanwhile, our downstairs is undergoing a pretty major renovation to create a new master bath and updated kitchen. But that's a whole other post...

Today, I'm super excited to share some upcoming class news!

First, I've been working with Tracy at The Little Blue House to create my own series of classes. It's called Fab Five and each class will feature five brand-new techniques that you can incorporate into your future projects. Of course, we'll be playing with some tools, including the best and latest from We R Memory Keepers. But we'll also be creating a great piece to take home with you...from mini books and layouts to cards and home decor.

Here's a peek at the class that's coming up on August 20:

 The class features a 6x8 mini book with a fold-over magnetic closure and spiral binding.

Inside, there are tons of layers and textures to keep things interesting. You might even spot a few of the techniques I'm sharing...

We'll be using the Beautiful Life line from Echo Park Paper (so pretty!), along with some goodies from Maya Road, May Arts, Queen and Company and Canvas Corp. This kit is FULL of fun stuff!

The class is on August 20 at The Little Blue House, and registration is open now. Stop by the shop or call 817-431-7930 to reserve your spot!

Also, registration for Stitch Craft Create Live in Charlotte, North Carolina, opened this week! I'm teaching three classes on Oct. 25-26. You can see photos of all of them on the SCCL website, but here's a peek at my current favorite that I developed just for this event:

The covers are made from cork, which is so easy and fun to work with and adds such great texture. This class features the Photo Freedom Volume 2 collection from Echo Park Paper.

If you're in the Charlotte area (or are up for a little road trip!), check out all the details here.

Hope to see you in class!

The Great Purge of 2013

Remember back in September when we moved into the new house? It took me nearly a month to pack up my carefully organized (well, kind of organized) craft room.

It went from this...

to this...

to this...

to this. Sniff, sniff.

After about a month in the new house, the projects were piling up. CHA was only a few months away. New product rolling in. I was forced to get the room unpacked. So I got it to this point...

It's now June. Another CHA is looming and I've just finished the first round of convention classes. The room is a nightmare.

It's time for an intervention. I can't work like this. I need order. I need organization. I need a calmer rug on the floor. (Sheesh, that thing is ugly!)

And so it's time. Conveniently, my kids are out of town for the next week. Most moms would be ready to let loose and party like there's no tomorrow. Me? I just want my craft room clean and organized.

Yeah, I'm crazy like that.

It's all about the details

Well, I did it again. I created a whole slew of classes that are way more complicated than I originally intended for them to be. Conveniently, I had this "epiphany" last night, less than 12 hours before I was set to teach the first class.

I got to the classroom an hour early, determined to somehow make up for my overly ambitious class-creating by making sure everything was perfectly in line. And it was. For the first class...

In the end, everything turned out okay. In fact, it was better than okay. Verging on awesome.

Partly because I had 60 amazing (AMAZING!) students who appreciated all the stupidly complex details I put into the projects and executed them to a tee! And also because I had two freaking amazing (volunteer) assistants who rocked my world, working their butts off to help every single student get every single one of those crazy details into their project. Thank you Barb and Judy!

Today's experience reinforced one central point: I love teaching. I really, really love it. It fills me up with all kinds of happy.

So there will be more teaching, and more projects that are probably more ambitious than they should be. But that's just who I am. I don't do simple.

And hopefully -- fingers crossed -- I will see some familiar faces in future classes. In addition to Stitch Craft Create in Charlotte, I'm working on a few opportunities to teach in the DFW area.

Stay tuned...I will be posting future classes here and on my Facebook page.

In the meantime, now that I'm done making kits for my classes (did I mention they were crazy complicated?), maybe I'll have some time to post some actual work on this blog. We can only hope.