Laura Vegas

first up, thanks to everyone that left comments for the giveaway. i believe that a new magazine or idea book can make the world a happier place. truely, i do. you should see how excited i get every time i get one in my hands. lol! so i'm glad i can send two of you the same sort of happiness. called upon the random number generator (love that thing for it's fairness), and it told me #50 and #68. congrats girls! send me your mailing addresses, and i'll get those out to you.

since valentines day is coming up, i thought it would be fun to make a handful of valentine's projects to share on the blog all next week. i got my hands on the new making memories love struck collection recently, and wanted to start with that. the first thing i pulled out was the love struck garland kit.

this is a really cute kit, that has everything you need to make the 3 garlands shown above. but i knew that for me personally, i wouldn't hang up something like that. but i loved the individual pieces to the kit. so i thought i would use it to make some other projects.

here is one of the cards i made. there were 4 of the decorative edged square pattern papers, so i made 4 simple cards using them. simply adhered them to white cardstock, and then added a few random embellishments from the rest of the collection. you can see the other 3 cards i made over on the making memories blog today. and stay tuned, because i did a really fun layout using the garland kit too.

do you remember THIS POST of mine from about a month ago? it was such a great idea. to capture a photo of my island once a week, to show what's going on at the time. apparently i didn't keep up so well on this idea. but i do have 2 photos. and since only a month has passed, that's not so bad.

this was around the second week of january. i couldn't post this photo at the time, because i had my not-yet-seen making memories products that i wasn't able to share with you yet. that is seriously the hardest part of this job. having goodies and working on projects, and then not being able to share for a few weeks or even months. anyways. i was working with the new MM panorama collection, and making some sample layouts. i also have some of my jillibean soup projects up there. i have a pile of paperwork, 2009 planner, and an envelope of receipts for tax stuff. my project 365 album is sitting there, to work on. and i see alyssa's binder.

fast forward 3 weeks, and this is what my island looks like today. project 365 album is still sitting there, still waiting to be worked on. the paperwork and tax stuff is still there, but now resides in that black basket. a pile with a hero arts catalog that i need to order from, my magazines for my giveaway, and my planner for my scrapbook stuff. a crayon box, and pile of markers that are left over from alyssa working on a science project posterboard last week. i keep asking the girls to put them away, but no one's listening i guess. a webkinz doggie that haley grabbed from sarah's room one morning. i keep asking that the dog goes back upstairs too, but still a no-go. a baseball, that i have no idea why it's in the house. but nikolas was trying to throw it, and that didn't seem like such a great idea. a pair of my pajama pants, since i don't have access to my bedroom during the day (joe works nights, and sleeps all day). sometimes i have to stick my jeans in the dryer for a bit, when they get too loose. lol! and scrapbook related? all the other stuff. i have the new making memories lovestruck collection out, and am making some little projects that i'm going to share on my blog next week.

i think i've put off this post a bit, because it's so hard to sum up my first CHA experience. i had such a great time. four days of jam packed goodness. a six hour drive there, and an eight hour drive home (took me two hours to get out of LA). dropping finished projects off on street corners and not quite done booths. met so many people. online friends, new friends, and all sorts of people that i've admired and followed over the years. first up, my roommate and BFF in this experience.

and i'm warning you up front, some of these photos aren't great. in fact, some are terrible quality. i feel better knowing that i wasn't the only one that wasn't sure what to set the camera settings on. lol! some of these gems are from my camera, some are lynn's camera, and some are ones that i got from everyone else's camera's. we'll settle for the blurry, grainy, and off color photos, if it means having something to remember it by. i wish i had more grainy photos in all honesty. i didn't take enough and i regret that.

lynn ghahary has become one of my closest friends over the last year or so. and neither of us had been to CHA before. so we just decided a few months back that we would go. i have only met one or two of my closest online friends in real life. so this was so cool. i'm so glad we got to do this together.

lynn worked the make and take table at the GCD booth in the mornings. i could always find her, by listening for the hammering 😉 i finally did their make and take on tuesday morning, and we made the coolest necklace. i really do love it. since she worked the booth in the mornings, that left me on my own.

i  met up with the CK editors the first morning, to get my badge. and i got to hang out with them for a few hours, while they checked out all the new exhibitors. stopped at the creating keepsakes booth, where elizabeth was doing a book signing. in the back is me, suzy plantamura (fellow dream teamer), joannie mcbride from CK, and megan hoeppner from CK. and in front, is the adorable elizabeth. we all had a CK dinner later that night, along with kim jackson from CK, and mou saha. had such a great time, and great conversation. a lot of laughing. i was a little more on the quiet side during dinner. honestly, i was just in awe that i was amoungst such a great group of talented and fun girls. it was something i'll never forget.

elizabeth kartchner is seriously the cutest girl ever. i love my green eyes, but they have nothing on her's. lol! i have been a huge fan of her's for a few years, and a loyal blog follower. it was the coolest thing to meet her in person. she really is the sweetest and kindest person.

elizabeth has a new collection debuting called dear lizzy, through american crafts. her booth was one of my favorites of the entire show. so cute. i cannot wait to get a hold of her products. while her scrapbook style is so different from my own, i really am drawn to it. and the products are something i can definately see working onto my layouts. i'm already using her shadow boxe ideas in her booth as inspiration for a project in my scrap room :) 

suzy had to be the most hilarious person i met at the show. she warned me up front, that she was a little hyper and crazy. and yes, she was. lol! but in a good way. she had me laughing the entire time we hung out. i walked the floor with her and her two best friends one of the mornings, and they definately know how to have fun. like when suzy hopped on liz's bike from the booth, and rode it down the aisle's. it was the funniest thing, even if she did get a few dirty looks doing it. lol!

i got to see doris sander over at jenni bowlin's booth. doris and i were on the lil davis design team together years ago. doris was so softspoken and sweet. and i say that in a good way. i guess i had it in my head that she was loud and crazy. no idea why. lol! it's funny how you get a certain idea of someone in your head, just from reading their blogs or chatting online.

this is really a bad photo, but i'm posting it anyways. lol! i also got to visit with kelly goree for a while. the first night i was there, i was hanging in the jillibean soup booth. and kelly came over to talk to the girls there. i didn't say anything, and was just standing off to the side. in the middle of a conversation, she yelled "hi laura vegas". it was so funny. and i was thinking "omg, kelly goree knows my name". lol!

 

also ran into suzanne sergi, while i was walking around the making memories booth. we've emailed back and forth for quite some time now, and it was so nice to meet her in person.

i met becky olsen the first day, while checking out the teresa collins booth. i knew her face, and i knew her name. but i was having a hard time putting together where i knew her from or her work. when i got home, i was looking through some current magazines, and i kept seeing her all over the place. so now i have her all pieced together in my mind. lol! becky was so nice, and i had a great time meeting her. we consistently ran into each other a few times a day for the next 3 days. it was kind of funny, that everywhere i went, there she was.

i wish i had more photos of all the other talented designers i got to meet. i would meet them so fast, that i just didn't think to take the camera out all the time. it's a long list, and i really want to remember them all. one of my favorites was jennifer mcquire, because she's so amazingly talented. another favorite was jennifer johner. i had told her a few weeks ago that i really loved her blog, and that i secretly wanted to live in her house (her home decor is so stinkin cute). and i was glad to know that didn't scare her away from me, and she actually came and found me at the show. lol! i could go and list all my other favorites, but that would take me a while.

putting the names to the faces and the faces to the names. that was one of the things i loved the most about CHA. you follow all these amazing scrapbookers over the years and you get go know their work. you know where they're featured (magazines, online), and who they design for. sometimes, you know way more information about them than maybe you should know. lol! so it's fun to get to meet so many of these people in real life. everytime you'd see someone, you would glance from their face to their name badge. and you'd mentally piece it all together. how you knew them and where you knew them from. it was so cool. to be surrounded by designers that all have the same passion for scrapbooking, and that can relate to the "job" part of what we do. it was just amazing.

the other amazing part of the show for me, was seeing all the projects and products up close. i could walk into a booth, and recognize the samples and know who made them. that's cool. to have a style that is so recognizable, and that people know you made. i loved seeing some of my favorite designers work up close, and to take in all the little details that are so much cuter in real life. loved seeing the new products. there are so many things coming out, that i cannot wait to use on my projects. was also nice to meet the manufacturers, and to get to know them a little bit more. i have always wanted to use their products. but after meeting some of them, i want to use their products even more. i came home very inspired 🙂

i'm sure i could go on and on. i have gone on and on to a few friends about this whole trip. there's just so much more to say about it and to remember. but this summary is going to have to do for now. 

and just an FYI. typepad is being wonky about sending the comments on the blog to my email. not sure what's going on with that. i'm getting some, i'm not getting a ton, and i'm getting some days after the fact. lol! but that's usually how i reply to everyone and answer any questions. so always feel free to email me if you don't hear back on something 😉