yeah you. {Scarlet Lime October Kit}

Do you remember when Jake Ryan shows up and waves to Samantha? How she turned to look and verify he meant her, and he whispers “yeah you.” I’m ready to share a recent moment that felt like this.

(ps – if you don’t know Jake Ryan, RUN and rent 16 candles. Or come over. We can watch it together as I’m ALWAYS available for a viewing of this film.)

Ok so my story. It’s just over a week ago and I’m doing my morning e-mail checking, responding, etc. I see an e-mail from Christy at Scarlet Lime which isn’t too odd considering one of her kits is featured in my upcoming class and I click on it.

Then I blink. I turn and look behind me. I check side to side and re-verify I’m in my own e-mail account…

she asked me to join the Scarlet Lime team, as Zoolander would say- “for serious”.  I  was a guest designer for them one year ago and LOVED the experience – and now I get to be on the team. I think I had a dignified response, but the one said aloud here in the bat cave was more like “SHUT UP! WOO HOO! YEAH!” Ok, and there might have been a little (big) dance too.

I’m just keepin’ it real y’all. I’m thrilled, honored to be asked, and happy to bring you my debut offerings:

 

You’ve got to see this one in person to really get it. I hand cut the heart with pinking shears then adhered to background paper and turned over paper edge to expose the pink.

To keep it down I machine stitched. My tip- keep tearing the paper as you go around to make it work better.

The brown pearls are slam-a-lamin cute. I didn’t realize I’d become addicted to them.

Oh and that tulle. What a pain. What I mean is this – to get those pearls & buttons to hold it down into place required a lot of liquid adhesive, heavy things to hold them down while they dried, and patience. Lots of that.

Once it was all dry though? Oh I’m in love. I want to do this again & again.

My second page with main kit…

I call this one “olde school while on phone at 2am”. See this was the first page I made with this kit and my bean was tweaked. I kept getting locked up thinking about how my pages would be lined up each month by the legendary Valerie Salmon & Greta Hammond (not to mention the other new designers!) So instead of focusing on my page I waited until it was LATE. I worked hard on Big Picture stuff and then started chatting with my dear cousin around midnight. As we talked on the phone I fiddled with products and by the time I hung up this page had appeared on my desk. I remember when teaching students in classes to fold over the paper (to reveal both patterns) was considered a huge revelation in scrapbooking. To show both sides… whoa. I made more class pages with folded over corners like the one in bottom left than anything else that year.  At 2am I wasn’t sure how I felt about the page, but when I came back the next morning? Yes. I definitely like what I did. Phew!

FYI- trying middle of night creating is not for faint of heart. Sometimes the results will be hideous. embarrassingly so. But that’s how you get to the good stuff – let yourself be ok with creating ugly stuff too.

Now onto the project kit-

I love this kit. Pink + brown + orange was sooo good to me. These photos have made me crazy from their cuteness (check that pointed fat little foot!) for weeks now, but I’ve been working with class stuff that had no room for dress up pics. Then when I spied that lace trim made just for me I knew what to do.

I grabbed that brown paper, added that lace between the two photos and worked around that. Seriously – I knew exactly that I just wanted those 2 pics + lace and whatever else worked out would be fine by me. I hand wrote (backwards) the title on patterned paper and cut it out with my trusty micro tip scissors.

Outside thread, adhesive, and tools I used nothing outside the kits. NOT EVEN CARDSTOCK with all these pages. Are you shocked? I sure was.

This was fun too – and Christy sure does pack her kits with good trims.

I crimped that pink paper, like, totally. Crimping feels “so 2000 and late”  if you know what I mean but in a good way. I loved how that paper looked crimped up.

See that plastic circle? That’s one part of one of the round beads in the project kit. I got crazy and tried to bust one apart to see if I could use parts. When I did, I found out it’s just rings of dotted edges (like this) put together. I totally had a mad scientist doing crazy crafting in my volcano lair over that. FUN.

Well that’s it from me for today – but of course now on the 1st of each month you’ll be seeing more of me + Scarlet Lime. I’m VERY excited, can you tell?

You can see all our rookie/debut pages + the work of the always fabulous Great & Valerie (and guest designer Erin) over at www.scarletlime.com.

I’m loving on both these kits so much!! Ok, but now I really do have to go finish my Big Picture work. (I know, I know I keep saying that!)