Christmas Came Early

So, right before Thanksgiving I purchased my very first Mac...and let's just say that I'm a convert. I have finally left the dark side. Goodbye Bill Gates, hello Steve Jobs, you're my new best friend! I now own 20inches of pure beauty! You would never know how much of a computer geek I was if you meet me for the first time. But I am! I am totally in love with my new iMac complete with Adobe CS2! Here's some photos of me with my new baby:Also, Window's new operating system Vista will be on sale to the public soon. Microsoft has yet again copied Apple. Watch this totally sarcastic video by the New York Times about Micrsoft's copying skills:

10 Days Til Christmas!

Only 10 more days until Christmas! And I'm up late finishing up all my cards, folding newsletters, inserting photos and licking them shut. They should be out the door tomorrow...or today, actually! I only have a couple more projects to finish up before Christmas comes. Everything else is wrapped and under the tree. I hope you're having a great holiday season so far! Here's an ornament I made earlier this month. It was going to be for an ornament exchange, but I liked it too much to give it away, so I decided to keep it for my own future tree.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey, everyone! I just wanted to say happy Thanksgiving! I hope you has a great one. I just wanted to let all of you know how thankful I am for you! Especially my family. I wanted to share a photo, so here is one of my little brother, Josh and I at Hannah's wedding rehearsal this past August. I hope everyone has a great day, and don't over eat!

Success at the Art Show

Last Friday was the Annual Design and Portfolio Review at my college. And I'm so excited to say that over half of my seven pieces were awarded. Including TWO FIRST PLACES out of the eight they gave out at the show. God has really blessed me and given me favor at school and I was so excited and surprised to have won so many awards. I was also asked to join the Art Directors Club of Denver because I recieved a first place award. Besides my parents being there, my good friends Hannah and Brendan came to the show. Afterward, we all enjoyed a great, late dinner at Olive Garden. Here are some photos from the night including photographs of my seven pieces which were:

1st Place for Identity Design: Veritas 321 Energy Partners, LP Logo & Collateral
1st Place for Brochure Design: Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Speed of Sound Exhibit Opening Night Promotion Package
2nd Place for Brochure Design: Lifted Band Promotion Package
Honorable Mention: 6th Street Shoes Fall Collection Shoe Catalog (photos also taken by me)
Also: 24 Season Five DVD Packaging
Also: ADCD Annual Student Show Poster
Also: myvictim.com Propoganda Poster
click on any photo to view larger

Please let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you! I haven't been posting a lot because I haven't had any comments, so I'm not sure if anyone is out there looking. If you want to leave a comment, click on Comments below this post, then type your message in the comment box along with your name, click on Anonymous (if you're not a Blogger user) and click Publish. It's that easy. You don't even have to sign up! Thanks for looking.

Ski Challenge Ad Campaign

So, I took the day off school today. If you hadn't heard, we had quite a bit of snow here in Colorado today. It was nice to not have to go anywhere. I wanted to share my last school project. I really wanted to do something related to skiing...I don't know why, but I thought it would be fun to do something out of my norm. Let me know what you think!! {Click on photos to see larger}

I'm on MasterCard.com!!

I have something soooo cool to share with ya'll! Because of my job, I now have some of my graphic design work on MasterCard.com! How cool is that? The "Customized for your business." banner that appears on the home page of the MasterCard® Small Business site was designed by me! Here it is:


If you click on it, it takes you to our new program: MasterCardGiftCard.com.


All of the banners on the home page of this site where designed by me, along with the majority of the side graphics and photos you see on the site. Also, in the Product Gallery, I designed the tan striped card and the red envelope gift card. And all of the carriers that are viewable in .pdf format were also down by myself. It's so cool to see my work on the web, especially on MasterCard's website. So, go check it out! MasterCard® Gift Card

A Springbok

Hyundai Gazelle vs. Lion (Hi-Res)


Okay, for those of you that don't know, I am now working at Springbok Services as a graphic designer and I'm loving it! I've gotten to design for well know corporations such as McDonald's, Mercedes-Benz, Toshiba and Starz. If you don't know, a springbok is an African gazelle like the one in this clip above.

I'll post more later! I'm off to enjoy the a weekend retreat with my mom!

Night in the E.R.

Yesterday was just a normal day for me. I went to work, come home, drove a friend around, grabbed some coffee and watched a movie until 12. I went to bed and I tossed a turned for about an hour. I couldn't fall asleep because I was kind of having some difficulty breathing and it seemed like my heart was beating very fast. I thought it was maybe just the caffiene from earlier, so I got up a tried to watch some tv to fall asleep. But the more I sat there, the faster my heart was beating and the harder it was to breathe. My body started shaking and my breathing was irregular. I woke my dad up and he drove me to the hospital. On the way there I started feeling very light headed along with my heart racing and hard breathing. My arms, hands and legs starting tingling and started to go numb. My lips were cold and my face was numb. We got to the E.R. and the nurse took my heart rate which was at a rapid 140+...crazy since I had just been sitting still for the last couple hours. Normal is 70-80, so it was double what it should be. They put patches on me and hooked me up to the heart/blood pressure monitor. They also tested that my heart was pumping evenly although very fast. They drew bood, hooked me up to an IV, gave me oxegen and took an X-ray of my chest. They then gave me some medicine throuh the IV that would help calm my heart rate. Praise God, my tests came back negative for blood clots, possible heart attack, failure, damage, thryroid, etc. They told me that it's common for heathly people my age to have their heart race when they get under a lot of stress. They said I need to stay away from caffeine and also eat potassium because my blood work came back that I was laking potassium. My heart was beating so fast I couldn't breathe in enough oxygen that the heart needed to pump, so the tingling feeling was carbon dioxide in my blood. I was at the E.R. for about two hours and they let me go when my heart rate was down to 100. The medicine made me really drowsy so I came home (at 4:45am) and crashed out!

It was so bizarre and scary! My dad and I were praying the whole way to the hospital. That's the reason I was calm and kept from passing out before we got there. I'm having to take it really slow today so my heart doesn't race again. Please be praying for me, that this won't happen again in the future. I'll be meeting with a doctor soon to learn more about what I can do to keep my heart and body healthy.

Jazz Band Collage

I just wanted to share my most recent project in Photoshop. I did this on Monday and it was soooo fun! We had to make a poster for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band that will be here in Denver in a couple days. The hard thing is that we started with all old black and white photos. I did all of the colorization and layering to create the different effects. Overall, I wanted it to look like a jazz club. I used a total of four photos. The man playing the piano is the focal point and note that I added some smoke coming out of his cigarette. Let me know what you think!

{Click To See Larger}

Photoshop Fun

I've been having so much fun the past four weeks in school. We've been working in Illustrator and I am learning so so much! I just wanted to share a couple tutorials I have done in the past two days.

This one is a collage of a much of photos. Very random, but contemporary:


This one is a technique called matte painting. You can an existing photo or video clip and you recreate it. They do a lot of this in post production of movies...such as Lord of the Rings, all the amazing mountain views are matte paintings. Or in Star Trek, the surfaces of the planets are made by matte painting. So our project was to turn this house into a haunted mansion. It was so neat. I recreated the background and lightning, I dirtied the paint and broke some windows and columns. It was so cool!
Before:

After:


We're going to work on a Jazz band collage on Monday, so I'll have to post when I finish.

Three Years and Counting...

I'm am so very excited to say that as of today, Clint and I have now been dating for three years!! Wow! It's so unbelievable! It just comes to show how three years can fly by so fast! Our relationship has grown so much this past year and I know it will continue to. We have had a lot of life changes this past year including college, jobs, cars and weddings. It has been a great year and I am so grateful that God has kept our relationship so strong while living 700 miles from each other these past 2 1/2 years.

I wanted to share a scrapbook page that I did awhile back commemorating our first date which was Clint's Senior Homecoming. That day doesn't seem so long ago, yet three years have past. It's so hard to believe that within the next couple months, we'll both be graduating from college. I love you, Clint! Thanks for being an amazing boyfriend!

If you click on the page, you should be able to read it.

Creating Keepsakes September 2006

I just wanted to share with you my most recently published page. Vanessa Hoy, an editor at Creating Keepsakes, asked if I would scraplift a page for the Six Degrees of Scraplifting article. It was so fun. I copied another lady's page and then the amazing Joy Uzarraga scraplifted mine. Also, Clint and I's cute faces made it into the table of contents at the beginning of the issue. The second time my face has been in the table of contents! Go check it out if you get a chance!

"Punk Love" seen on page 11&107.

Bachelorette Favors

So, Miss Priss on Two Peas wanted to see some more up-close shots of the favors I gave to the bride and bridesmaids at Hannah's lingerie shower and bachelorette party. These are clear mini paint cans that I embellished with ribbon to match the color scheme of the party. Inside of each bucket was Hersey's Nuggets with a label that said Hannah's Bachelorette Party. For each girl, I picked out a Bath and Body Works lotion, lip gloss and Victoria's Secret panty that matched their personality. I also got these great kraft color notepads at Target (2 for $1.99) and decorated them to fit each bridesmaid. It was so fun. Click on the photos to see them larger. Thanks for looking!

Back From Texas

I got back from Texas this past weekend, and I had a blast! It was so nice to get to hang out with Clint for a whole week. It went by way too fast! We did so much in one week. Clint and his band Lifted^ have been working on recording their songs for a demo CD. I took pictures with Clint and Ross worked on laying down the guitar track for their song Abba Father. After awhile, Clint let me help.






That Friday night, they played at the Rock Bottom Cafe. It was such a neat restaurant and Lifted^ put on an amazing performance. I had a great time taking photos. I was really sad to come!

A Glimpse of the Lingerie Shower

On July 7th and 8th, I threw my best friend Hannah a lingerie shower and all-night bachelorette party. All of the bridesmaids and Hannah's mom attended. We had a great time, and I had so much preparing and getting ready for the party. I wanted to share some photos from the fun night.



These are favors that I made for each of the bachelorettes. I added ribbon to the handles of these clear paint cans. Each girl received a notepad decorated with their name on it, chocolates, lotion, lipgloss and a Victoria's Secret panty. I had so much fun buying things for each girl and putting them together.


Hannah's sister and maid-of-honor Kelsey and I put together this Honeymoon Care Kit for Hannah and Brendan. We loaded it with goodies such as a sundress, bath stuff, tanning oil, a Just Married tank top (that I made), flip-flops to match her bikinis, halter top, Creme Savers, tropical trail mix and other fun stuff!

I designed this tropical Do Not Disturb door hanger and a matching CD with honeymoon songs entitle Love in Los Cabos. This was inside the basket that also matches the colors of Hannah's new apartment.

I made wine charms with stamps and shrinky dink for each person's wine glass.


Erin, Me, Kelsey, Hannah's Mom Yvonne, Hannah, Aimee, Meghan





After the shower, all of us bachelorettes heading down to the basement and watching Just Married and Down With Love, two of my favorite movies. We had a great time!