Maya Road and Me

howdy

i hope everyone is having a great weekend! i am chilling with my family and teaching some classes at the scrapbook barn - what a cute store. it is race weekend for me - monday 7:30 am. i hope to be done by 9 am. i am working on the hydrating well before the race. runners i have to say are a crazy bunch. from the port-o-potties to the mud flap shorts to the wacky energy gels we down, it is a very interesting hobby. i am glad that i am finally feeling the fire for it again!

i wanted to share this idea for card making - i always seem to have extra photos i print or have leftover - this photo i think i had printed online but for some reason the people sent me 4 copies of the same photo. anyhow, you can turn your extra photos into easy to do cards. check this out:

the photo is framed in our scallop frame and a simple set of stickers was used along with a microchip heart. how simple is that?

i am off to do some creating and photo printing now. hope you all are having a great week. oh yeah, make sure you check back next week b/c i have something cool to give away (probably on labor day - monday).

a sheer keychain how to

• 

i wanted to share this quick make and take with you - carolyn from the crafty scrapper had shown me one day what she had done with stamping our sheers - i had always applied the alcohol inks but never in combo with stamps.

supply list

• sheer keychains of your choice (i used the girl one) - hint you can also use an acrylic one! we make 2 different acrylic ones which will be out in september
• alcohol inks - pick your favorite 2 - 3 colors; add in a metallic one if you desire
• stamps of your choice - i used 3 different maya road ones (metric, sakura and oval calendar)
• black ink - ranger makes an archival one that i love to use and if you allow it to dry, it won't smear
• applicator for alcohol ink

instructions

1. take the keychain off the beaded chain
2. take one of the sheer pieces; using the applicator tool, apply drops of the desired color and metallic on the felt part, then dab onto the sheer keychain until you see the color you like. allow to dry
3. ink the stamp of your choice and stamp the sheer keychain as shown.
4. allow to dry and you are done!

seriously how easy is that?

on the home front, we have been trying to put some structure in noah's potty training. it is hard because we have to make it a habit ourselves to get him to sit on his seat. well it must be working because the little toot started pulling his pants down at daycare at various times during the day - LOL. some times he will say " i pee-pee" but by then it is more an afterthought to "hey i peed". but i see some hope as he is at least recognizing when his diaper is damp.

and on the running front, i ran today (therefore earning the time to blog). anticipating the big race on monday. i am getting comfortable with the thought of a 15k race again - which is good because a month ago i would have dreaded that distance.

tokyo

so i did finish the tokyo album i spoke about yesterday (and yes, i have been banking some running days to cover this post). it turned out to be a very simple album - i actually got 19 (yes 19) photos in it total.

here is the inside front cover - notice the sheer journal card i left for them to fill out about their trip. notice i took a piece of our sheer ribbon and cut it into a leaf shape.

again i kept it very simple and it was easy to make in an evening. i have already wrapped it up in sunday's comic and tied it together with a tag and string to send off to my SIL and BIL. i hope they enjoy it!

today we (noah, david and i) sat down and had lunch with everyone at the warehouse. we try to treat everyone once in a while as a thank you for all the hard work they put into packing our orders and unloading our containers. if it weren't for them, it would be us out there and heaven knows i would be bad at the fork lift.

noah had a great time too - he LOVES looking at all the ribbons and he even pulled some to stack today. we are trying to make sure he puts them all back in place when he is done. i was happy to see he knew which style of mahattan ribbons went back into which bin. even though he took out like 10 rolls, he was able to get them all back into place where they belonged without a problem.

well it is time to get some laundry done and chill out for the rest of the night.

oh and CHA-W production planning is in full swing. we have some kick butt new things planned and some very cool things which we hope to see the prototypes soon!

creating

first off, thank you for everyone who has emailed us about the kits from my last post, they are all spoken for! everyone that has emailed us about them, i will email you in the next day to confirm.

so the other night, i picked up a copy of simple scrapbooks - mini albums in an evening - magazine. great stuff. lots of maya road in there but of course that is a lot of what we are about, right? mini albums. anyhow, i thought i would create one today. it won't be done techinically in an evening as i started earlier today but i will finish tonight.

my album is a gift i will give my BIL and SIL (david's sister and her DH) - they are crazy amazing photographers in their spare time (they are crazy engine-nerds like us in real life). in fact both have won some cool photography contests in portland.

here are some photos they have taken.

(this one is at cannon beach and i am pretty partial to this one)

(this one is in washington state)

(this one is from pearl harbor)

anyhow, i wanted to make them an album from one of their trips. i decided to take the simple scrapbooks approach and make it in one evening. check out what the start looks like:

this album will simply be one of a lot of photos - i think i will be able to get 16 total photos in here with some simple embellishments - some rubons, sheers, buttons, patterned paper and a 4" binder. this is a perfect size since a 4" x 6" photo can easily be trimmed to fit inside the album. i figured this would be also a cool way for them to display some photos and since i don't know all the details of their trip, i left one page with a journaling sheer for them to write about the trip later.

if you will notice, i sanded the button on here. you know what inspired me? our design team! check out this latest project on our website. i hadn't even thought of sanding our buttons til now. look how cool they look on this project and i was able to lift that idea to use on this album.

i will work on the rest of this album tonight; i only have 4 more pages inside to do and share with you all tomorrow - what do you think of this album?

great weekend.

it has been an absolutely awesome weekend here for us. i got a lot accomplished this weekend and it was what i needed.

i started off saturday morning running 11.5 miles at 6 am. i dread the early saturday morning runs especially when i have to roll out of bed at 4:50 in the morning. i am not a 4:50 in the morning sorta person. but i got it done. 11.5 miles with 2 BIG hill repeats. there is a race i am doing on labor day. it has been a couple of years since i have done it - a 15 K (9.3 mile) race. i am actually looking forward to it. i have to say it has been a long time since i have said i was looking forward to a race - LOL. i know time changes, priorities change with babies and the such and i see that. but it is good to see that i want to get back into it again.

we have also decided that we are going to do this cool photo wall in noah's room so we headed to ikea on saturday to pick up various random frames. i framed up about 5 of the 20 photos we have planned so i need to get the others printed and ready to go! hopefully if everything goes well, i can share a photo with you of the wall soon!

and my foray into cooking more often, well i have had mixed success with it. sometimes i like to read bon appetite but more so for inspiration. there are some delish recipes in there that sound devine but i really don't have the time at this point to make something like a brownie chip cookie (which involves baking a brownie and then cutting it up to use as chips for a cookie). but this week i did manage to cook some fresh okra from the farmer's market and i made a kickin' veggie beef soup tonight. small steps. i find we eat out more often when i don't at least have some plan so i am working on that. it isn't easy but i have BBQ chicken, meatloaf, spagetti planned this week.

And finally, I have had some commenters ask if I had any kits leftover from my classes to sell. Well cleaning out my office today, I found a handful of kits which I am no longer teaching anymore (I have retired them). So I thought I would offer them here.

Here is the first kit - which I only have 1 left of - it is a Summer Album that is a mix of Sheer and Chipboard pages.

Here is a list of the products in this kit (value over $45):

1 – MR sheer tabbed album

1 – MR chipboard tabbed album

1 – MR sheet of rubons

½ - MR packet of trinket flowers

3 – yards of MR trim

6 to 8 MR chipboard crowns

1 – sheet of alphabet stickers

6 – sheets of patterned papers

1 – MR tin of felt pieces

6 to 8 MR chipboard hearts

Some extra goodies

Handful of bling

Instructions (color)

You will need: stapler, black ink pen, white gel pen, stapler, basic materials, glitter glue, inks

And here is my second kit which is a My Life Spring Tree Kit; I have only 4 of these left.

This kit contains the following (retail value over $45):

8 – pieces of patterned paper

1 – MR tree album

1 – MR tin of butterflies and bug

1 – MR tin of buttons

1 – MR tin of ribbon slides

2 – MR sheets of rubons

3 - ~ 24” lengths of MR ribbons

1 – bulk pack of MR alphabets

8 – MR pieces of chipboard blossoms

1- MR keychain (varies)- extra goody

Instructions (color)

You will need: glitter, mists or acrylic paints; inks; black pen and basic materials.

Again, I am offering these since I won't be teaching them anymore. Each of these kits will cost $35 plus $7.50 s/h (more for s/h out of the country). Each kit does have full color instructions and I always try to throw in extra goodies in each of my kits for you to play with. Payment should be made by paypal only.

As I have always offered any of my students, if you have questions about the kit, you are always welcome to shoot me an email and I will try to help you out!

If you are interested in these kits, please use the contact us form here. Let us know which of these kits you would like and we will work out the details with you.

Hope everyone is having an awesome weekend!

yes i ran today too

wow this has been a great week for me running wise. some of it are the pending races i have signed up for (a 15k and a half marathon) and some must be from the olympic watching. i used to think it would be so cool if i could have been good enough to make enough doing a sport. alas, when God was passing out the talents, sports were not one of them - at least not good enough to do anything serious with.

and i think noah is starting (i stress starting) to get the hang of sleeping in his own bed! he stays in it about 75% of the time now. he isn't thrilled to be sleeping in his own bed when he could climb into mom and dad's big comfy bed but we have found he will stay there part of the night at least. at 4 in the morning though, he will come trotting down the hallway to our room and say "bed bed bed" and right now, we let him climb in bed with us. but i see at least some progress so that is always a blessing!

and i have been working on some new albums. check out this one of our 4" binder classic albums:

i whipped this one out in 2 days - sometimes i get inspired, sometimes half finished albums sit around for a month before the whole process comes together.

anyhow big run coming up saturday at 6 am; i better start drinking my water now!

and if you aren't signed up for our newsletter, check out the latest from our design team here. and yes, we do have some new CHA-S products up on our website to sell now! check it out here. remember, the orders are filled by a network of LSS and online stores!

yes i ran today

and i feel pretty darn good. it was a short run but noah came with me and we beat out the rain here in dallas. the weather has been amazing the last week. think 80F with rain. that is a much welcome change from the 105 degrees from a couple of weeks ago.

and i wanted to share with you this cool tip. check out some of our new flowers (which are arriving in september) that i "dyed" with our mists.

here is a simple list of the steps needed to recreate this look.

1. get your fabric flowers out (again i used ones we are releasing in a couple of weeks)

2. wet the flower

3. take a cotton swab and dip it in the mist color of your choice (i used orange and pink respectively)

4. "color" the flower as desired. if you feel there is too much color, spritz with some water to dilute.

5. allow to dry.

and the result is a super cool watercolor effect!

you did know our base mists can be heat set right? yup - just allow to dry for 24 hours and then heat set with an iron or in the dryer. this won't work well with the metallics as the color will come off but i will experiment and see what i can come up with.

enjoy!

today

well i did run today. 9.3 miles total. i ran with my friend carlos. noah came along in the jogging stroller and david biked the route too. my legs are tired. i am actually surprised that they aren't more tired but i finally tried something that a lot of long distance runners do after a long run - if you can believe it, they soak in ice - bags and bags of it. weird huh? but it helps with the soreness and inflammation. while i didn't have enough ice churning out of our freezer to have an ice bath, i did soak in a super cold tub of water. and it is interesting because tonight i am really not sore. i will need to see how i feel tomorrow.

i wanted to share a photo from my trip to boston. unfortunately it isn't a picture from my classes. it seems that during classes i always forget to take out my camera to get some photos. anyhow, this is a photo of my last day there before i hopped on a plane home.

these are some friends from high school that live in the boston area - B and CC  (BTW, isn't CC's son a total doll)? we all met at this "super nerd" camp in south carolina. B and CC are amazingly smart, caring and well rounded people.  even though we don't get to see each other often, it is almost like it was when we were younger. there isn't any awkward silences and we "get" each other's humor and such.

in this photo, we are at a restaurant called "flour" that I had seen featured on the Food Network - the lady that owns this restaurant graduated from harvard with a degree in applied math and economics but after a run in the corporate world, decided to follow her passion. it is neat to hear about and see those who can turn their passion into a smart business. but what struck me also was that when we were at the restaurant, you could see the owner in the back making a batch of her desserts.

i think that is cool because i think if you took a look behind the MR curtains, you would see me in the back working too. i often get emails where people are surprised that i answer the emails personally. some of it is because i am a type A hands-on type of person but some of it is because i enjoy it.

well tomorrow is monday so that means back to business as usual! i have some more classes coming up that i am adding which i will share with you later this week!

freebie

so i have decided that i am (at least before my half marathon) only going to blog on the days that i get my workouts in. so if you don't see me blogging, that means i have been slacking on my workouts!

but i did run today- even got up at 7 am and ran in the rain for a bit. i am headed to the craft scrapper tomorrow to teach some classes. can't wait. my car is packed and after i grab breakfast with my boys, i am off!

noah has taken an interest to "crafting" lately. right now when he sees me bring out the big red die cut machine, he begs to sit with me and help. and i let him under very very close supervision.

noah just loves to be in on the action and when possible, i allow him to "help" me out (supervised very carefully of course because he often loves to stuff chipboard pieces in various random places)

and deb has been working hard on some goodies for you. deb and i love freebies of all sorts and here are some free downloadables for you which go with our albums. there are 2009 calendar pages (think how great this would be for gifts), templates and more. check it all out here! print it out on the paper of your choice (or what about a transparency) and put it in a MR album for an easy gift!

neck deep in product

so we are knee deep in new products. or it might be waist deep. i got a chance to take a quick photo today. make sure you start stalking your LSS /online stores soon as these products are shipping to them as soon as we can get them out.

check out one of the boxes of our mists which have arrived. this has been keeping us busy all week before the big ship out begins.

but i want to thank you all who have convinced your stores to stock our products! there are some things which we have reordered 2-3 times already due to the demand! thank you thank you! and we already have some cool stuff planned for CHA-W. yeah i know, it is crazy but the product cycle and the time to get things done does require that we start now with the planning.

and another piece of cool news - we have been nominated in about 10 categories for the CK reader's choice awards! this is our first time ever and if you would like to vote for us (or any of the other nominees) - you can do so here.

we truly are excited to even have made the nomination!

hope you all are having a great wednesday!

thanks for the baby crib to bed tips. i am trying some tonight (with some mixed results) but i know we have to be in this for the long haul - LOL!