the long story of my halloween assignment from HELLo kitty...(and a winner announced)

has any one seen the october issue of creating keepsakes yet? i hear it has been shipped and i am patiently awaiting my copy to arrive. for several reasons. and why am i not using any caps today you ask? well read on, as i will be using lots of caps, and when i do, i want you to know i mean them!

here is the cover of said october issue. and guess who made the cover layout? ME!!! when they asked me to do it, i was really excited because the photo they sent me was so NOT the ordinary halloween colors. pink, yellow, lavendar? for halloween? dreadfully delicious! so i had fun making it and here is it's debut. isn't she darling??????

i also had a couple of assignments that were inside the issue, so at this point, i felt very happy with my contributions to the october issue of creating keepsakes magazine and was ready to move on to the next issue!

but i wasn't quite done yet...the most fun was yet to come. let me start by saying...when you get the very lucky job of working for a magazine, you start off all proud of yourself thinking you are such an awesome scrapper. but being on the dream team is kind of like an internship. you go in with total confidence and then you soon realize that you have much to LEARN from the experts. and after years of said internship, you have been appropriately humbled, but are much improved in the process.  

so after i thought i was done with my october issue assignments, one of the editors asked me to make a halloween opener for their article about using different techniques to create halloween elements on pages. i was scared to death of this assignment. let it be said here, halloween is NOT my favorite holiday. i don't like making halloween layouts. i don't do spooky well AT ALL. spooky scares me. halloween scares me. and they wanted a spooky opener for this assignment. i knew it was my own fault because i made this page below for the past issue. and it APPEARED to ck that i not only like spooky, but i do spooky well, right? yeah, lesson learned - don't blow the socks off an assignment that you don't want to do again!

i had about two weeks to complete it and i sat and stared at the products i had pulled for about 13 days. sometimes the intimidation factor stops me in my tracks and i can't seem to get started. i was assigned the color pallette of navy blue, yellow, black, and gray and it needed to use tombstones and be a night scene. and i had to use several of the techniques that had been used throughout the article. sound easy? NOPE!!! 

my first challenge was finding a navy blue background paper that would be light enough to show the elements on top, but dark enough to still look like a night-scene. i tried everything i had in my stash and finally found some by basic gray that was perfect. but i only had ONE piece. so i pieced it together (since each of the two pages were 8.5x11) and used some other blue paper behind the spots i thought would be fairly covered. but i wasn't happy with that solution - you could see the lines between the papers. so i went shopping to a couple of stores and couldn't find any more of this paper.

finally a creative light-bulb went off in my head and i realized from all my studio-calico layout gawking over the years i could use mist on white cardstock! i pulled out all my blues, grays and blacks and created a really gorgeous background and even masked a circle to be the full moon. things were lookin' good and i was no longer intimidated. i was on a creative genius roll!

now that i was in full gear, i decided to HAND-CUT a tree for one side of the page. a tree with tons of branches. scary, twisty looking branches with really small pieces. i then added some sewing machine stitched spider webs that went in perfect circles. i also HAND-CUT a bunch of tomb-stones out of different halloween papers and HAND-CUT some black birds to sit on them. i finished off the two page spread with some really pretty ornate prima rhinestones and gems i had had for years and never found a use for. it was done and i had impressed even my worst critic - ME! and ck loved it - no changes needed.

it was the friday before father's day and i was done and ready to mail it. i realized that in my hurry to finish it, i had forgotten to send my dad anything. so at about 4:15, i ran to the grocery store and bought him a gift certificate to the olive garden, bought a card, stuck it in, and wrote a sweet loving message inside. i didn't have much time left, so i decided to mail both items from the mail box store next to the grocery store. overnight delivery of my dads card was going to be $45. love you dad, but that was a bit steep. then they said their USPS guy had already picked up their packages for the day, so i ran out of the over-priced, rip-off the last minute procrastinator mail box store and drove to the post office instead. i got there at about 5:00 and luckily they hadn't picked up their mail yet! i put both in the mailbox with time to spare and left with a big fat smile on my face happy to get that halloween spread out of my hands so i could start my recovery process (but sorry that my dad would get his card a day late!).

fast forward two weeks later. the mess was cleaned up and i had all but forgotten the halloween assignment from HELLo-kitty. and then...i received an email that they hadn't received it. it showed it had been delivered on the usps website, but some how it had gotten lost in the mail. we waited another week for it to NOT show up before she asked me the question i was dreading. can you make it again??????

ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME???, ((((i thought)))), but i didn't want to lose my job, so i politely said yes, no problem. i had NO more of the products I had used and after visiting three stores, i realized you can't find halloween prints and products in the spring months. i was out of the american crafts letters i had used for the title, so i looked through all my past projects and robbed them of the letters. but i was still missing an E. i asked american crafts to send me new letters as soon as possible and when i received them, i realized one of the two sets i had requested was wrong - they had replaced their old halloween style letters with new ones. ones that didn't work or fit on my layout. 

at this point, i realized i was going to have to get REALLY CREATIVE to pull this off and have it look anything like the first one. seven years in the industry and NEVER a box lost until this one. why this one??? even when memory makers had boxes of our layouts on a train that wrecked when moving to their new offices and all the masters lost their layouts and had to start them all over, my layouts had some how shown up. i guess i was getting my pay back for years of good luck....

i won't get into the details of how i pulled off another copy of this spread, but i did. and it was a successful copy - i thought it turned out even better than the first one even if it had required me to change quite a few things and settle for others. i even realized that my loving slice had a halloween cartridge with caskets and black-birds and i didn't have to recut them out myself. i was super happy when i mailed this one off (and spent the extra money to make sure it got their safely)!!!

and with that long lead up to revealing my artwork (joannie at ck just saw it and called it i quote "wicked with a side of awesome sauce"), you will have to look for the october ck magazine to see it. heehehehe (i say with a grin). and i hope you realize when you see it, that it needs to be fully appreciated for the time that went into it. so you better LIKE IT and let me know you liked it, ok peeps???!?!?!?!??! i need some appreciative, adjective filled love comments on this one please (even if you have to embellish!)!!!!

thank you for reading this long story! i'm off to play some HELLo kitty with my girls!  :) suzy

OH, AND PS, I NEED TO PICK A WINNER FOR THE BUDGET FRIENDLY SCRAPPING BOOK GIVE-A-WAY FROM THE LAST POST!!! AND THE WINNER IS:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

23

Timestamp: 2011-09-09 17:56:31 UTC

Great ideas to use the flowers. I have several jars.

Thanks for the chance to win the magazine.

Posted by: Linda | September 08, 2011 at 04:29 AM

Congrats Miss Linda - email me with your address and I will have CK send it out to you!

Comments

[Lisa VanderVeen]

You are spot on. I put a curse on you. I'll admit it! When ALL of my MMM LOs were lost in the train crash and yours weren't, I said "Double double toil and trouble, put Suzy's opener in a BUBBLE (and pop it)..." Ok, it's late (well, 6 PM is late for me) on a Friday and that's what I came up with... Anyway, I can't wait to see it ;).

[SandraA]

Congrats Linda! I will be sure to buy this issue to see what I'm sure is a marvelous layout.

[Duckienz]

Oh hugs, that sounds quite painful but awesome that you pulled off a remake. Maybe you accidently misadressed the packages and your Dad got the LO and was too polite to question you about it? LOL

Congrats Linda!

Looking forward to seeing your LO sometime.
Allie

[laura vegas]

ok miss suzy! you mentioned to me last week that you had to re-do a layout. and a very detailed one. but i didn't know it was this crazy of a story. lol! you poor thing. i think if that would have happened to me (another not-crazy-about-halloween person), i would have just curled up in a ball in the corner, and rocked myself to sleep. lol! i can't wait to get my copy now, and i will fully appreciate it and show it to everyone i know ;)

[Cindy S]

OMStars!! That is just HORRID!! HORRID! I will be anxiously waiting for my copy of CK and will be sure to oogle your LO with due attention. You poor thing-I can't even begin to fathom. ((HUGS))

[QW]

Always knew you were a cover girl, why do you sound so surprised!?! :o)

[Brenda]

Congrats on the cover - it's fantastic!! I'm still waiting for my copy of CK to arrive, hoping for today. I can't believe you had to redo that layout - that's awful!!! Congrats on redoing it (without a complete nervous breakdown!), can't wait to see it.

[Heidi Sonboul]

WOOHOO the cover! That's so fun and exciting. I can't wait for this issue to come. I always love the halloween issues and I so remember this layout of yours from last year. Plus I spy GCD Studios :)

Great job girlie and fun story

[laura]

i remember that layout! love the cover - congrats! :)

[Laurie]

Oh my, Suzy, what a story!! Congrats on the cover, it looks fab! Can't wait to see the Halloween layout, I agree Halloween is a tough one, I don't like orange, black etc. so I don't do alot of Halloween layouts, just one each year to remember the kids costumes, and the funny thing is my oldest son will turn 14 on Halloween! Yes he made it just a few hours past midnight and was born on October 31. He doesn't like the Halloween theme parties anymore...lol...to old for that!

[Karen]

Hi Suzy, Congrats on your layout! It's no surprise they continue to pick you. You're super talented. Just let me tell you that I kept on waiting for the punch line...when you realized that you had mailed your dad the Halloweeen layout and the Olive Garden giftcard to the folks at CK!! but I guess not!! very funny either way....

[photochic]

Oh wow that must have been the best-worst week in the WORLD!!! That would be incredibly frustrating. I hate Halloween too. I love your layout though! Not halloween colors, but hey- FINE by me!!!

[Kim Thomas]

Wow, what a story! I can't wait to see my new CK. It will be the first LO that I look for. I always love your work and can't wait to see it. I guess you needed to stretch your creative muscles! lol Thanks for posting. :)

[glee]

i love this story and i can't wait to see your page in ck!

[Melinda T]

I got it the other day! I saw that your lo made the cover! I love it! PS-I don't do spooky either!

[Cindy deRosier]

What a great story! Congrats on 2 successful LOs.

[Brittany]

I LOVED that opener when I received the magazine. Still thinking about it, actually. :) You rock! I'm sorry you had to redo it, but I am glad you did. I know it will be one I turn to again and again!

Love the cover too! :)