Today's projects (and Ella Week 5)...

Last night I was visited by the UPS person with 2 more boxes of product from a recent publishing. Wow, those boxes were loaded and that pile on my desk is overflowing with new stuff I want to use, I'm starting feel a little performance anxiety! It's been over a week since I sat there - and I don't know about you, but if I take a break like that, it takes me a little while to get back up to crafty speed! Plus I'm feeling an overwhelming need to purge out the old stuff and re-organize. If I start that now, it will be another few days before I get to sit and work. I better just jump in....

Fast forward.....Wednesday night (how time flies!) Here's what I made today:
This first project is a layout for the Ella Week 5 Sketch. It was a 2 page sketch this week but I decided to only do one page (the right one).

 I really wanted to use the pictures of Marilyn I took for my photo class. (Besides, it's way easier to photograph a single page layout than a 2-page one.)

Love these papers and finally got my hands on a little collection of LilyBee. Had a hard time tracking down the embellishments, etc. (We must be in between releases and I know this is an up-and-coming manuf., so their stuff must have flown off the shelves.) Anyway...had to get a little creative with the paper itself. Here's a close up of the flowers:

For those flowers I accordian folded 1/2" strips of the paper then smashed it up. I used glue dots to tack it to the background as I twisted it around to make the shapes.
Next up (after the laundry and errands, etc.) were these 2 cards for the Cards Blog challenge. This week was transparencies. Honestly, this is a weak area for me. I own a ton of clear stuff and I love the way it looks but I rarely use it. The stuff intimidates me. Here's what I came up with:

This Hambly transparency came in one of my goody boxes yesterday. I thought it would be great for a new house card. It's hard to see but the lined paper inside the second card is cut in the shape of a house. I used a Maya Road house-shaped mini album to trace and cut the shape on both cards.

Next on my project list are submissions for a few design teams. Anyone else submitting? Seems like there are a lot of choices out there right now. Wonder if this is the standard time of year for design teams?