When I pick a place to play.....

I pick the best! Today, I thought I'd take you on a tour of Scrapbook Your Life! in San Diego CA, where I have been playing for the past 2 weeks....and will be "living" there most of this coming week!

6400 Square Feet.....that's SIX THOUSAND, 400 SQUARE FEET!!!! What a wonderland to play in!!!



More Disney, Vacation, Beach, San Diego, local tourist attractions......themed paper, stickers and embellies than you can fathom!



I call these "rounders", but they are square, with paper, stickers, chipboards, flowers, glitter...on all 4 sides...all coordinating...everywhere on the store floor. So much to see....so many things to buy!!!



My favorite paper this week:



with "to die for" chipboard embellies to match. I used these on my "MOM" acrylic word book that I will post tomorrow. I made the whole thing in under an hour! Sooooooo easy!!!



Now, in all honesty, I will confess....the store was looking a little sparse the last time I was out here. But wow! Have they stocked it up! And just in the last 2 - 3 weeks....everything is filling up fast! How do I know? Well, I was there til 11 pm last night and when I left, 3 very dedicated staff people were STILL there putting new product out on the shelves!!!



boy stuff, girl stuff, baby stuff....all the new Fiskar's baby line....with three peas in a pod! It's so totally cute. And I "don't do baby"! LOLOL!



So much glue, tape adhesive....where do I start? My cart is already so full....and my bags are way overweight for the trip home!!!




So much ribbon I couldn't get it all in the photo!!! Lots of drooling on my part. Ribbon is one of my great weaknesses!!!



paints, inks, pens, melt art, Ranger (yeah!)....this is probably my fav part of the store. I call this the "toy" section. And I am pushing, pushing, pushing for them to get in product. I even ordered some stuff for this section.....the new Scor-It Mini AND the tote for it....Tim Holtz sentiment keys, my fav colors of distress inks AND reinkers....just so much stuff that was being put out and added late last night after I took these pics!



So, here you go...the FAMOUS "wall of paper". As far as you can see. And this is JUST the patterned paper!!! Thousands of different designs. I promise...you come in and we'll count them together!



And the solid colored papers are on these squares....both sides! So much paper! I call my girlfriend a "paper whore".....but I think we could say the same for this store! Just so much paper...I LOVE IT!!!



At least a dozen more HUGE boxes of product to put out when I left at 11 pm!!!



Almost forgot the punch section. I do love my diecuts (Liz just ordered $2600.00 worth of Spellbinders nestabilities and new dies!!! Hope they get here this week!!!)



And the classroom where I will be this week! I promise the boxes will be gone today!!!



This store includes a play area for your kids with TV, Disney DVDs and toys. I've even seen grown men taking naps on the floor in the play area while they wait for their partners to finish shopping!

There's a computer in the class room, so your hubby can browse the internet while you are shopping....or you can take a break and check your emails (ok, who on earth does that when there's this much to buy???) :o)

This truly is a mecca of things to play with! Today, I promise to take lots of photos of new product and this might be a double-blog day....if I get home in time I'll add all those tonigh!

Ah! Wouldn't you love to be a mouse in my pocket today? Come and play the JLo way in a scrapbook mecca like this? I can hardly wait to get on the road and get down there just to see what's new on the shelves!!!

My class today is at 1 pm....so hurry on down, there are still openings. We're doing 4" x 4" square acrylic albums....and I'm changing out what we will be doing even as I type this (because there is so much new stuff in the store right now!)

Doors open at 10 am. If you get there before me.....don't buy it all!!!

Pieces of Me

I thought it would be fun to do this project on National Scrapbook Day at "Scrapbook Your Life!"....we will "scrapbook your life"! Get it?

This is a 12 pocket star book and you can use it for grades 1-12, 12 photos of your life, your ancestors...anything. And as you will see..you can also do less than 12 photos. So, this is the class sample for May 3 at Scrapbook Your LIfe! in San Diego.

This front tag is a Spellbinders nestabilities oval die...embossed 3 dies smaller. Relly has a nice ruffly look.



The book opens up to a star



And there's me...quite the chubby baby. I'll be showing different ways to cut and emboss these nestability dies.



More proof that I've had bad hair all my life!



These are MSE's new swirl stamps. I adore them!!! So, don't bother asking about that hat...it was a phase circa 1972!




For this one, I used the heart inside the oval, then nested the heart.


Love the fact that you can place the die anywhere and cut it out!



Sorry about the shadows...it's that great San Diego sun!!! I do think I'm getting warm!



This class is going to be so much fun...you will just love it!!! I used the Scor-it and the Bind-it-all and will have them at the store for you to use, but I know you will want to buy your own! The store has ordered them and they should be here just in time for class!!! And there you have it...you've seen "pieces of me" from birth til now.

Destiny is not something you wait for.

Destiny is choice. - Walter Anderson

When I designed the album, "The Closets of my Life" in the fall of 2003....I had only been scrapbooking since February of that year. So you can see that I learned quickly....and went way beyond the boundaries even back then. As I was picking a closet every decade, I decided to do a "dream" closet for 2008. I was halfway through the decade. Kerry and I had married. Our life together was just an adventure as he was happily showing me the world, trying to expand who I was.



Here's what I wrote in 2003 about 2008:

In 2008, I will be 56 years old. Colleen will be 55, Elaine will be 54 and April will be 52, and my son, Jason, will be 30. There are already new memories in this closet. The 4 Moore Girls took their first vacation together in 33 years. We went to Puerto Vallarta for a week. A year later, April′s husband died and that will change our future. Kerry has a new granddaughter. I will need to keep things for her! I′ve lost 30 lbs and I have retired. For the first time in my life, I am able to stay at home!!! I have time to go back through all my memories and put them in scrapbooks and display all the things I′ve saved these many years!!!

There are planned events that I will add to my closet! In January 2004, we are going on a 15 day cruise down through the Panama Canal. I hope to get the first stamp in my passport on this trip! I want to go to Israel. Maybe my son will get married and have children; maybe I will be a Grandma! I would love to open a scrapbook store and design a line of scrapbook paper.

I have designed a huge walk in closet for my future, filled with all my scrapbook stuff. Filled with Chatterbox stuff!!! I know I am going to need a whole lot more space to store all my memories, my scrapbooks, my journals, my keepsakes, and my secrets!!! My life is so full right now, I cannot imagine it getting any better, but I know that it will!!!

As I look back at the closets of my life, they are full of wonderful memories, things that I love to touch and feel, stories that can make me laugh and cry. The seasons of my life continue to spin on the wheel of time. Each day that God gives me, He allows me to be a part of this wonderful, unimagined life of mine. One day, I will walk on, but hopefully these memories of mine will live forever tucked away in the closets of my life!






My dream back then was to own a scrapbook store and I decided to create one inside of this pop-up layout. Of course, I was doing this for a chatterbox contest...so this is filled with Chatterbox supplies.




You can see 2 rows of mini layouts. I simply downsized copies of projects I had done. Then 5 rows of product. Did I really want to own a store? Yep...I even made an offer on a local store that was going out of business. But it fell through and today, in 2008, I am truly grateful for that!



Another row of mini layouts across the top. Across the bottom are mini file folders filled with 1" squares of Chatterbox paper.



I do not own a store...rather I have a studio that looks much like this. Walls filled with product, layouts everywhere...tables for my friends to come and play with. All the fun benefits of owning a store...none of the risk, stress or worry...and loads of time to create and design just the way I like.

I'm so glad I did not wait to own a store. I'm so glad that I created my own destiny...having a place to play all the time!

How fast the past 5 years have flown! This month marks the 5th anniversary of my artistic career. Sort of fun!