Scrapbooking with Donna Downey

If you're involved in the world of scrapbooking, you probably know the name Donna Downey. With over 10 years in the business (in addition to photography and journalism), she is something of a scrapbooking guru, while also being fun, entertaining and oh so inspiring!

My youngest daughter called me a few months ago, practically hyperventilating because Donna Downey is coming to town and we have to take a class and she is so amazing and it will be so much fun and will you please go with me??? How could I resist?

The workshop was held last weekend at a wonderful scrapbooking store in Chandler, Arizona, called Paper Vineyard.

We spent over 6 hours with Donna (in the white glasses) and her assistant Rebecca in a fantastic workshop called "Fabric Scrapbooking," learning new techniques to create a canvas album.

Here are some of the tools and pages laid out. Donna does a lot with painting techniques. We were using both acrylics and watercolors.

Something I have wanted to do for a long time is create an album about all the wonderful Yorkies we've been lucky to love over the years so this was my theme ...

Masking was a lot of fun to do ...

This was our disastrous work space  - geez, looks like home ...

All of our pages sport cute little embroidered canvas tabs. This one says "dream," which worked well with the photo of Miles and Louie napping ...

We used modeling paste to create texture ...

As well as embossing powders used with stamps and set with a heat gun ...

Although I still need to add flowers to this page, this is the "dog house" which makes me smile ...

Here we twisted a length of wire into a heart to frame a photo ...

Even with all the hours we were there, we still have more pages to complete and I want to add pictures of Buddy, Skyler and Reggie, our first three Yorkies. We also need to paint and embellish our album covers. Lovin' this scrapbooking stuff.

If you get a chance to take a Donna Downey workshop, please don't pass it up! http://www.donnadowney.com/