New Cardmaking Project

I'm so excited to offer a new cardmaking class featuring the Greetings to Go kit for Memoirs, Club Scrap's July 2009 kit. It's got this really cool soft green and a red that's not quite orange, nor pink, but not your typical red either. These have been combined with a brown, white, and an ivory paper they call "Butter." It's a really pretty combination! We'll be making 15 cards, all very different, using a variety of techniques. Check out my calendar!

Why Club Scrap?

There are a LOT of scrapbooking companies. Some specialize in particular items like stickers or fibers or eyelets. Others sell just about everything under the sun. And you can shop for products on-line, in shopping plazas, at Wal-Mart or Target, and at scrapbooking home parties. Believe me, I've shopped all those places! There is so much out there, so much available, that it can be overwhelming, right? So, how do you know where to shop for products, and how do you find products that you will love and, hold onto your seat, use???

When I first started scrapbooking in 1997, my products came from the few local stores I could find and Wal-Mart. I was having a hard time finding a place that was convenient and also had quality products. I wasn't happy putting my beloved photos on papers that were not much more than printed copy paper, but that's what I did for seven years. In 2002, when we had moved (yet again), and the closest scrapbooking store was over an hour away, I started a quest to find something else, though at that time I didn't know what I was really looking for.

In a magazine, I found an ad for a scrapbooking club. "A club?" I asked myself, "why would I want to subscribe to a club?" "Well, my dear," myself replied, "let's check into this and find out." So I went to http://www.clubscrap.com/ to check out this interesting phenomenon, not realizing I was taking my first step down a road to scrapbooking bliss!!

So, what is it, you may ask? Club Scrap was the first of-the-month scrapbooking club. It was started in 1999 by Tricia Morris and Dinah Mueller, two women in Wisconsin. From the beginning, their goal has been to create high-quality scrapbooking products and sell those products in themed monthly kits. Each Member receives her goodies in a pizza box delivered straight to her door. These kits don't just contain paper; they have wood-mounted stamps, fibers, metal embellishments, stickers, stencils, unmounted stamps...everything you need to create classy, beautiful, and quality scrapbook pages. And 98% of the pizza box items are created by those great ladies in Wisconsin and their staff...they don't pull from other companies' products...they design each element of the kits, on occasion adding a unique item from another vendor that enhances the kits. Sounds pretty amazing, don't you think?

But, wait, there's more! Club Scrap also creates cardmaking kits, projects, and digital kits...all around a particular theme each and every month. Their design team must work overtime creating all those unique products. Take a look at this month's kit. This very creative kit is called Expressions, and that's just what the artwork portrays--expressions of various sorts--in a palette of white, black, and luscious blue. This is truly a fun one!

Want to experience Club Scrap for yourself? Contact me today, and I can get you started. And you, too, can take your first step on the road to the ultimate in scrapbooking creativity and bliss.

Scrapbooking Assembly Line Style

My favorite way to create scrapbook pages the last few years has been using ALSB instructions that Club Scrap creates. There is an ALSB download for each monthly kit, and Crafters have their own special kits and instructions to use at our workshops. So what is Assembly Line Scrapbooking, you may ask? Simply, it's taking a stack of papers, following cutting instructions, and assembling layouts...all before even deciding what photos will go on the pages. It takes a lot of the stress of planning a page out of the equation, though it is just as creative as "traditional" page building. Once the elements are cut, they can be placed on the page in any fashion, and embellishments, photographs, and text are added to make each page unique. Some CS members "ALSB" their kits as soon as they arrive. The pages are then ready for photographs, whether the scrapbooker finds them in her box of waiting photos, has them on her camera or computer, or hasn't even taken them yet!

I've got two ALSB workshops coming up in June. On the 12th, I'll be teaching using the Crafter exclusive Blue Orchid kit. This one is a beauty! With its shades of blues and greens and printed papers, it is a very classy kit that can be used for a variety of layout topics. Each of our Crafter kits has something special, and this kit comes with a number stencil. We'll be learning a basic stencilling technique in this class.

On the 14th, the workshop kit is another Crafter exclusive, Blue Moon. Shades of blues with white and a hint of red--really great for pages featuring boys, or even tomboys! The special elements in this kit are some cool frames that we'll be inking to match the kit. And you'll get plenty of frames for future layouts as well!

Stay tuned for info on my next cardmaking workshop!

My New Venture

Scrapbooking has been a big part of my life for over 10 years...I even designed a scrapbooking studio when planning our new home. It's great to have a place dedicated to my craft, and I just love spending time in the studio creating new projects and organizing my supplies. Speaking of supplies, I think if I opened a scrapbooking store, I'd have enough inventory! Well, local scrapbooking stores (sometimes called LSS's) aren't known for turning profits, or staying in business very long, so I figured I'd do the next-best thing and join a sales team for one of those companies that do "home parties." Now...which one would I choose? Actually there was no need to make any decisions there--it was Club Scrap from the very beginning. So...I am now a Crafter Representative for Club Scrap's direct sales divison called "Food for Craft."

Two years, two months, and nine days

Wow. That's how long it's been since my last blog entry. Shows how busy my life has been, I guess! What happened in 2008? We moved to our new farm and into a small cottage, tore down fencing, put up new fencing, put SoftStall mats in seven horse stalls, tried to find a buyer for our house, opened a horse boarding business, sent Ashley off to college, started building a house, found a renter for our house, planned a wedding, made the wedding gown and four bride's maid's dresses, finished the house and moved in. Whew! Then, 2009 found us welcoming Patrick into our family with a wedding and Ashley back home from school, having surgery on both of Julie's feet with eight weeks of recuperation, spending a lot of time with horses and their owners, helping get Ashley moved into an apartment and a new school, and trying to figure out the US and GA taxes & regulations for running a business with employees. We also had an addition started on the house and a swimming pool put in. In April, Larry and I took a cruise to celebrate Club Scrap's 10th anniversary and, later in the year, took Julie to Disney World for the 1st time. I also attended Club Scrap's October Retreat in both 2008 and 2009 and I was the Ref and Camp Director for their Pro Scrapper's League on-line papercrafting events. That's why I was too busy to blog!

Challenge for Pages of Pictures

Erin, the blogger of Pages of Pictures, has a tutorial challenge going on. She has challenged her readers to pull out an unused/ unloved tool and create something with it. I chose my Wizard Embosser by Spellbinders, as it is one that I have recently fallen back in love with. Since buying it a few years ago at a Stamping Expo, I've used a number of things to run through the machine with Club Scrap cardstock, but I'd gotten tired of those things and hadn't used it in a long time. Then, when doing a Little Fat Book swap this winter with the Club Scrap Chat forum, I received a lot of 4x4 cards using a unique embossing template, which I later learned was called Cuttlebug (this is by Provocraft). Now, I'm not going to go out and buy another embossing machine since I already have the Wizard, so I did some research and found out that I can use the Cuttlebug embossing folders with my Wizard! I ordered a few of the folders, and when they arrived the other day, I pulled out the Wizard, dusted it off, grabbed some luscious Club Scrap cardstock, and embossed away! I was so impressed with the result! I've made two projects with my old tool (the Wizard) and my new toys (the Cuttlebug embossing folders).

The first project is a little booklet to keep my Wizard Recipes handy. This info is from the Spellbinders website, and it gives lots of ideas on how to use the Wizard to cut and emboss items, and how to stack the plates, cardstock, and embossable items to run the "sandwich" through the machine.

My second project is for the spring Little Fat Book swap at the Club Scrap Chat forum. I ran the blue base paper through the machine with another floral Cuttlebug embossing folder. The pic shows the decorated side and then the back of another 4x4 page. I like the way the embossing dressed up the foundation page.

So, now I've gotten my old tool back out and I'm glad I did. Now I have to order more Cuttlebug embossing folders to play with! It's much better than the Wizard sitting around gathering dust.