Hey guys and gals!  Gym Girl here.  Did everyone catch Julie on HSN yesterday?  She was awesome.  And beautiful (of course!)  One of the blog commenter's put it best yesterday.  She looked svelte. 

Strange occurrence for me today.  Someone told me I was beautiful.  This is categorically untrue, so self esteem boosts like this are few and far between.  So, since I am feeling super spiffy today, I thought I'd share the self esteem boost with you.  Several of you commented yesterday that you wanted to see my projects from the weekend.  What better way to feel better about your own crafting abilities, than to look at mine.  So, here is you self esteem boost for today!  These are some of the cards I made this weekend.  Now, I must give credit to our own, very talented, Debbie Olson.  I scrap lifted the buttons on the peas from her.  I am a very simple scrapper, as you see.  I prefer clean lines and geometry in my projects.  So, feel great about you abilities, today....you're welcome!

I was going to put some more great projects from the girls over at SRM to support their Cosmo Cricket week.  But, I don't think a side by side comparison will fare well for me.  So, check out our Facebook Fan page or the SRM blog http://www.srm-stickers.blogspot.com to see some great projects!

Hey all!  Gym Girl here.  How was your weekend?  Mine, you ask?  Great!  My friends and I had what we like to call "Moms Gone Wild!"  There is a scrapbooking expo that comes to Salt Lake every 6 months.  We ditch the kids and husbands and head to the big city.  We get a hotel room and spend two fabulous days scrapping and shopping.  OK, that is an exaggeration.  We always have great intentions of scrapping, but usually end up doing more shopping.  I have come to the conclusion that I may need therapy.  I collect more paper crafting supplies than I will ever use in a lifetime.  I buy everything in sight, then refuse to use it.  It's so adorable.  What if I use it and then think of something else to use it on?  What if I can't find more?  Oh, I get paranoid just thinking about it.  So, I go a little crazy at these shows.  Especially when I find some great deals.  So, today, after a weekend of shopping overload, I am home on my euphoric shopping high.  I actually made a mini album and some cards this weekend.  I am not a super scrapper like all of you, so I will spare showing you my amateur projects! 

Instead, here are some awesome projects from the very talented design team over at SRM stickers. 

What, you ask, could be more fun than these great Cosmo/SRM projects?  I'll tell you what!  How about a whole week of Cosmo greatness over at SRM?  You heard right!  They are having Cosmo Cricket week on their blog.  www.srm-stickers.blogspot.com

Well all, you have a new blog to check out, and I have some scrapbook supplies to look at (and possibly use.....nope....can't....(sigh)......anyone know a good therapist?)  Don't forget to watch Julie's 15 minutes of fame on HSN tonight at 7pm Eastern.  I'm sure she'll rock!

It seems that when we combine moving a warehouse with other things that the blog gets dropped. Here's what we've been up to.

The old warehouse is almost empty.

We don't have a photo of the new one yet, but we will soon. Lindsay and his boys have been working so hard. In fact, last Saturday they took my son Ethan too. When they came home to drop him off, they all walked in single file. I wish I had my camera because they all turned at the same moment and smiled. They were so dirty! They had lines where their shirts tucked in!!

I've not helped at all with the moving. I've been much too busy freaking out about my first 8 minutes of national fame. That's right. I will be on HSN this Monday presenting a fun kit. The time is 7:00 Eastern if you would like to tune in to watch me hopefully NOT make a fool of myself.

I've been pretty stressed about this! In fact, I keep having nightmares. The most common one is that I forget to get my nails done (I've never had them done, but HSN strongly recommends it). I realize that I must have them done before I go on TV, so I run off. Then, of course, I can't get back to the show in time and I wake up frantic!

Another nightmare is that I grow really tall, during the taping, like Alice in Wonderland. I am looking down at the display from above. The hostess is like 8 feet shorter than me. In this dream I am worried that the camera man won't be able to get my head in the shot with the product.

No psychoanalysis needed. I know I am certifiably insane!

Thanks for hanging in there with us and check back tomorrow for a Kit Club giveaway. I'm super excited about this one. It's really cute!

Good Morning Everyone!

I got this email from Donna B over the weekend and I absolutely fell in love with her project.

Have you ever thought to sew a zipper into paper? I have a hard enough time sewing one into fabric. In fact, that is a standing joke at the trade shows.

You see, I sew almost all the skirts I wear at the shows. I can't remember how, but someone once noticed that I don't finish off the top. In fact, my skirts are made without buttons, zippers, or an opening of any kind.

Here's where us really broad-hipped, flat-chested girls have the extra advantage! I simply pull my skirts on over my head and they hang beautifully on those wide hips!!! Did you know that if you don't have to put an opening in a skirt, you can make one in about ten minutes? It's what I call my pear-perk.

OK, enough about hips and zippers. I'll bet you all want to know who won that fun kit......... Congratulations.......... Just Jennifer who said, "such beautiful layouts! the kit looks like a lot of fun!" Send us your address to kristen at cosmocricket dot com and she'll get it to Transparent Touches and Tags. They'll be sending you your prize. Thanks!

Random Thing #1: A Cheap Date

Maybe we should say an inexpensive date! Eric and I went to the Hobby Lobby looking for acetate. They don't have it by the way, but they do have these home decor signs. I thought it would be fun to take our photos holding them. And you know what..... it was! It reminded us of being in college and having to be "creative" in our entertainment because we were such poor students. I told Eric that we should run to the Hostess store afterward because that was our favorite date back in the day. Ding-dongs for me, Ho-Hos for Eric and a date for a buck! Those were the days!

Seriously though, I think it's an awesome idea to have the title of your layout right in your photo. Take your favorite person down and have them hold the "Absolutely Fabulous" sign! We only had our cell phone camera, but if you were prepared, you could get even better pics.

Random Thing #2: Commenting on the Blog

I have to give a special thanks to everyone that commented on the blog yesterday! Everyday after I write the blog I call Lindsay. He answers by saying, "what's up?" I reply by saying, "the blog." It's a tradition. Then he reads it and gives me his take. Yesterday he predicted 12 comments. I was insulted, because this is code for I don't really like the blog today and you're not going to get very many comments. So in defense, I told him I knew I would get more than that.

Well, I waited, and waited. Either Lindsay was right, or you all were not talkative because by 4:00 in the afternoon there were around 9 comments. EEeeek!! I was going to owe him a King Sized Reeses....... yes, everything with us is a bet that centers on chocolate!

However, I am a tricky girl. Lindsay knows this and so he usually has lots of no-cheating rules, but yesterday he let his guard down. I called my lovely assistant Tiffany, asked her to email a select few friends and ta-dah, 22 comments.

Lindsay, where's my Reeses?!?! I have a few commenters to share it with so make it a super-duper-king-sized one!

Random Thing #3: A Giveaway

Yep, you heard me right. Your reward for reading this far is that you could win the Jack's World Stamps, a Joy Ride Paper Crafting Kit and Ethan's album. All you have to do isleave a comment on our website blog www.cosmocricket.com and tell us what the sign you would choose to hold in your photo would read if it could say anything. We'll pick a random winner tomorrow morning.

Good Morning Everyone! Thanks for all your tips and concern for Mr. Jack. He now has an OT eval scheduled for Thursday morning. We will be trying the slanting board today as well. I know he's going be fine...... I have been down similar paths with two of my other children...... but the concern comes from turning him over to others who may or may not understand everything, have differing expectations and possibly harsh judgments. We'll make it through though!

Ok, have you noticed that it's a common thing for mixed media artists to love to get messy? I think it's because it's just so much fun. But, you don't have to. You can make simple, very clean collages too. I had a lot of fun making this one over the weekend. I like to think of it as the "softer side of collage."

I apologize for not taking photos of the process. I was just experimenting with things and enjoying myself way too much.

I had been told by Jan Hobbins, over a year ago, that you could take our element cards, especially the vintage ones, coat them in UTEE, freeze them, then crack the UTEE making them look like they had antique glazing (you know how it is cracked on old vases, etc).

Well, this is my first attempt and I learned a lot! First a thicker coat of UTEE works a lot better. Second, don't get impatient waiting for it to freeze, it will warm up very quickly in your hands, so it's got to be good and frozen all the way to start. Crack quickly, like I said, it warms up fast.

After you've frozen and cracked, wipe some distressing ink across it. I used Ranger's vintage photo.

Here's a close up. Like I said, first attempt and I did everything I warned you about not doing (too thin of UTEE, not waiting for it to freeze enough, not cracking fast enough, etc).

Still I think it's a fun look....... although I'll get it even better next time! By the way, that is our Coordinations cardstock as the background. It looks like fabric and I LUUUUUURVE it!!!!

Hey for those of you that are in the Germany area, or would like to take a trip, our very own Natasja Verbeek is offering a fab workshop featuring Material Girl.

Check it out!

Hey everyone!  Gym Girl here...  Did everyone see how sneaky our design team was this weekend?  Lindsay started a hijacking trend.  I can't wait to see what those incredibly talented ladies are going to come up with every weekend to share with you.  I didn't want to give out Lindsay's typead password to everyone (I still have to work with the man.) so hopefully I'll remember to post them every Saturday.  I gave Natasja permission to text me if I forget.  Although, I didn't think of the time difference from here to Holland.  Hopefully she doesn't get anxious and send me messages at 5am!  Normally, I'd already have been up for 2 hours, but not on Saturdays.  Gym Girl's gotta sleep sometime, right?

So, have you checked out the monthly challenge over at scrapbook.com yet?  March's challenge is up and going.  You still have plenty of time to play along!  Check it out! http://www.scrapbook.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/1529651/ I think I'll let you go there and win, instead of making Lindsay's pocket buzz every 3 seconds by offering a contest here. 

Last month's winner was Melanie Douthit and her awesome "Fall" layout using Nutmeg.  Congrats Melanie! What a beautiful LO!

Head on over to scrapbook.com and give it a shot.  What do you have to lose?  Conquer those fears, remember? 

You guys are crazy. Where was the help when I needed it early this week?

 So here's an update-Yesterday and today, as your blog comments came in, they would first go to my I-phone, which many of you guessed was located in my pocket.

 Men don't have purses with unmentionables and cell phones in them, they have pockets. We like pockets. If we don't know what to do with our hands, we put them in our pockets.

 After each and every comment, I would first get a vibration in my pocket. Kind of a Tickle Me Elmo kind of moment.

Then, on top of this, my PC, that I work on all day, would also let me know that I had received another one of several hundred comments, by making a noise like an Angel's trumpet, ceremoniously announcing I had another email.

 Eric and Julie came in for a meeting yesterday afternoon, and after hearing several chimes occurring every two or three minutes, asked me what that noise was. I had to tell them,....."Oh.......It's another Typepad comment." Talk about the double whammy!

 I'm glad I kept my laptop closed for the day or it would have been a triple whammy! We have fun and love what we do and were glad you're part of the fun. Your comments totally cracked us up.

On a much more serious note, while in Edmonton a few weeks ago, while visiting with Sherry and Heather (The ladies in the video clip below), they told us about their good friend, I mean our good friend Jan Hobbins.

 We met her last year at the Memories Wholesale Retailer event and we have to tell you, she is off the charts talented. Jan showed us a million more ways to use our products that we would have never known.

Jan this year, has, and I hope she doesn't mind us sharing, a challenge that we are all pray she gets through. In the video, she has a message she wanted her friends to share so listen closely.

Jan get well and we lookforward to seeing you next year!

The winner of the "let's pick on Lindsay by leaving a gazillion comments" by flooding his email boxes is 'stampin Melissa."

 Email kristen@cosmocricket.com your address and then start stalking the UPS man!

Everyone have a great and fun day and please take Jan's advice.

We love you Jan!
 

Good morning everyone.

Before we begin with the watercolor and salt, I have to talk about superglue and fake eyelashes. I thought that Lindsay might be onto something brilliant here. But then I realized there was a significant likelyhood that I would glue my eyes shut. As an artist that would be bad....... Eric may have to rely on Lindsay to design some stuff....... I know you guys like different and humorous, but that might be a stretch!

Last weekend, we took our kids up to Pocatello to see our niece performing as Esther in her high school's production of Meet Me in St Louis. There was an indoor pool at the hotel and I had a lot of fun watching them swim. Unfortunately, the only camera I had with me was my phone. I got these pics...... and although they are not good quality..... there are some rare ones of Ethan who is generally quite camera shy.

I want to pair these with the watercolor and salt technique. I experimented with it and think I have a plan figured out now. This is something I used to do as a kid with my mom. I remember being fascinated at how the salt draws up the watercolor making a very cool effect. In fact, I used this technique as the dirty layer in the Love Notes papers that we released a looooooong time ago, only I used brown paint! All you need to do is paint some watercolor (the wetter, the better) then sprinkle it with salt and let it sit until it dries.

Take a look.

I first tried rock salt. Here's the effect with it.

It seemed a bit too blotchy to me, so I switched to kosher salt.

I like this look. By the way, when I did the Love Notes layer, I used simple table salt. Play with it and have fun!

Now, for today's winner: Congratulations Kelli who said, "Lol, I think you're just jealous of all Julies air time lately! That second image, first layout, is really great :o) I might have to try that out myself!" Kelli, are you my soul mate? Although our drawings are always completely random, I couldn't agree with you more! ;) Send Kristen your address and she'll get you your prize (kristen at cosmocricket dot com).