Hi There!! Remember Me?

** Just a reminder, CTMH's Sampaganza ends Saturday, June 30th!  Please check out my special offer and let me know if I can answer any questions or if you'd like to place an order :-) **

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Wow, it seems like FOR-EV-ER since my last post.  I have no excuse other than life has been total and utter chaos over the past few weeks.  It happens to the best of us, right?  I've been completely swamped, and now backlogged, with projects.  Everything from preparing for a garage sale, to photo shoots and post-processing, to card making/scrapping.  I'm so far behind, at the rate I'm going it's going to take me until the end of the summer to get caught up!

Last weekend we had a garage sale at my parents' house which was such a blessing!  Since we live in a condo, our association doesn't allow for us to have our own, so we're at the mercy of having someone else allow us to participate in theirs.  We un-hauled our garage, spare bedroom closet, and (gasp) my craft closet.  I've got so much room now, I don't know what to do with it... Lol!  I managed to find new homes for a LOT of my yarn and about 90% of my fabric that was occupying about 6, 13-gallon plastic tubs in my closet.  It looks so bare now, it's kinda depressing :-(  I'm sure it'll fill back up in no time though.  One of our goals with the sale was to clean out some unused stuff, but also to make some $$ to put towards a new laptop for Hubby.  He's a part-time, freelance wedding DJ with a couple of weddings coming up and his poor 5 year-old laptop just couldn't cut it anymore.  Let's just say with all the craft stuff I gave up, we made enough for a decent mid-range one.  Getting it up and ready for him to use has been another side-project that has been taking up quite a bit of time, but it's worth it if it helps him with his gigs.

I did make some cards for Fathers' Day, but I have to admit that I did buy some cards too *hanging my head in shame* I just completely ran out of time and energy, and also managed to completely forget to even take pictures.  Just too much to do over one weekend :-(

The BIG project that I've been working on over the past few weeks was a photo shoot (my very first one!) that I did for my sister's BFF who had a beautiful baby girl back in May.  I took over 250 photos that I ultimately had to review and either discard or post-process to give to her.  That's a LOT of pictures to look at!  Not to mention, I'm not very good with Photoshop yet, so adjusting the coloring and stuff has been a challenge.  Fortunately, I found a GREAT online class for doing just that over at JessicaSprague.com.  It completely changed my process and really did take my pictures from "Good to Great."

The awesome parents of the beautiful baby girl, even though I told them this was a pro-Bono photoshoot, chose to give me a gift card to Michael's for doing it.  Since I felt completely guilty taking any sort of payment for this, I decided to use the gift card to make them something with the pictures.  Enter my very first Hybrid Mini-Album.  I've NEVER made any kind of album before, so this is a huge accomplishment in itself, but what made it even more special was being able to use BOTH machines I have to do it.

I didn't keep track of the specifics of the entire project, but here's the basics...

• 8" x 8" chipboard cover and back, covered in digi paper and then coated with Mod Podge.
• 5/8" Black Cinch binding
• All patterned paper came from Lilly Bimble's online shop - Paris Pink paper set
• All Cameo cuts came from the Silhouette Online Store
• All Cricut cuts came from the Theresa Collins Sophisticated cartridge

If you have questions about any of the specifics on this project, please let me know.  Since I was in such a time crunch, as well as this being such a time-consuming project, I didn't really keep track of all the specifics, but I can do my best to recall :-)

I've got bridal shower invites, my Godson's 4th birthday party invites, as well as two flower bouquets to get done in the next couple of weeks.  Going to be busy, but completely worthwhile.

I'm exhausted, so I'm going to get to bed.  (Hopefully) I'll be back sooner rather than later with some more projects for you :-)  G'Nite all!