On the road again...

We had a safe trip to North Carolina and a nice reunion with some friends we met when we lived overseas.  Charlotte is beautiful with lots of interesting old houses.  Tomorrow we are off to Clemmons to see our family and we are looking forward to the reunion with cousins we don't see very often.

This is mainly a "just checking in" post but I did have a few photos from Chicago that I wanted to share.  I am always interested to see how hotels are decorated and sometimes you can find interesting ideas that you can apply to your home or your projects.

After the Gala on the Tuesday night, a group of us went to dinner in the hotel restaurant.  We were seated in this "cage" (I wonder how they knew it would be a good idea to do that!).  I think it is a very interesting idea - an open room within a room.  It definitely gave us a feeling of being set apart and a bit special.

Here is a closer view of the light fixture.  I can definitely see trying something along these lines (but on a smaller scale) in paper with brads or eyelets.  If you look back to the photo above you can see that it made interesting shadow patterns on the ceiling!

We were staying at the Intercontinental and there was a definite sleek/modern vibe to the place.  There was a lot of interesting artwork and the check in desk was pristine with just some white iMacs for the clerks to use (even the printers were hidden).

It took me a while to figure out why there were birds perched on the hanging rail in the room - then I saw that Joy and Melanie had used the birds in their room as hooks to hang their jackets!  Makes perfect sense once you think about it...

I had to laugh a little about the sink in the bathroom.  It looked very pretty but was totally impractical since every time you used the water it splashed right out the back of the sink and made the wall and floor wet.  Sometimes function is more important than looks!

This was the most bizarre room art I have seen in a hotel in quite a while.  The same "interesting" picture was in every room that I was in.  (Sorry for the glare - it was impossible to get a photo without flash glare or reflections from the windows).

Who/what are these little yellow creatures and what are they doing in that tree?  We called it the Pokemon tree...

Here is one more thing that caught my eye - the carpeting in the area of the convention center where the Friday morning Cricut Circle meeting was held.  I really liked the colors and shapes and I am planning to make this into a background paper for a digital project.

A month or so ago I told you about a site that I had found called "Pixels 2 Pages" (here is a LINK to the post).  The site is a great resource for users of the Creative Memories Digital Software and is run by an international group of independent Creative Memories consultants.  I used one of their lessons and templates to make the globe image with flowers that I shared in June and that I use in the left side column to link to my CM site.

I had a note from one of the team members today and who told me that they have a "video tidbit" about making plaid paper.  Here is a LINK to the specific place on the site.  The plaid I shared yesterday was done with a piece of striped paper from a Power Palette I purchased.  Jenny shares a way to create a plaid background by using one of your photos that is really interesting.  She takes a tiny slice of the image and stretches it to create the first set of stripes.  When I watched the video there was a problem with the sound but that could be a computer/internet issue that I am having here.  Even if the video doesn't work for you, there is a downloadable sheet that shows you what to do.

I am definitely going to try this technique as soon as I have a chance.  If you use the Creative Memories software and are getting interested in doing more digital projects be sure to visit this site - here is a LINK.

I haven't been able to catch up with all of my email and comments but I will try to get to some more in the morning before we leave...

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