The book that I won, "Cut Loose" came yesterday and I spent the better part of the day reading it from cover to cover. I had been watching (lurking) Crystal's web page for some time and had seen some of her work. I wanted to buy this book and was thrilled to win it. Now I must say that anyone who buys this book is a winner. It is so much fun to read and I already have sticky notes posted on several of the pages. I am anxious to begin this journey. I'll try to post a few of my pages for the first challenges next week. Al least for the ones that I have marked with ideas already. Thank you Crystal for such a wonderful work. Now if she could only convince the powers that be to let her teach in the greater Pacific Northwest. ... I need to let you know what I used on this L/O. The papers and the the flower are from Little Dreamers, lovey dovey kit. The crumpled corner is from Scrap Girls and the fonts are Bradley Hand, Impact and Amazon BT. This was done on PSE 6. It was fast and fun and not like me at all, thus my first attempt at cutting loose.

I spent some time this weekend playing with the photos from my birthday using the tutorial from Crystal's site. I had a tough time with the first one and then things kind of clicked. Here are a couple of the before and afters.The difference is wonderful. Thanks Crystal for the help.