Polk-A-Dot Scrapper

Scrapbook Expo - Chantilly, VA

I went to the scrapbook expo last week in Chantilly, VA.  I had a great time!!! I've heard mixed reviews about prices and the show being small.  Well the show was small, but large enough for me.  I picked up a few things and while the prices were similar to online I wasn't paying shipping so it was all worth it to me.  There were a few things that were just flat over priced and there were some other things that weren't.  You really had to watch what you were buying.  I definately went for the things I would have to order versus things I could pick up at Michaels.  The picture below that was already on my FB shows all the goodies I got!!  I think I did all right for a few hours walking around the expo.

 

Weekend in the woods

I'm back!!!! I've been back for a week.  I spent last weekend in the woods with a great group of ladies geting a lot of page done!!!  I actually page planned for this trip and managed to get 36 pages that I had planned completed and a couple of extras!  It was a great time!!! 

I jazzed up a little pinterest inspiration for this one.  So super easy!!  A couple strips of paper and a mickey punch and that was about it.  I cut the hands and the Disney logo with my cricut, I punched out all the Mickey heads with my punch, but the cricut does make those as well.  Martha Stewart Christmas Twine for the balloons and banner bows.  The embossing paste that I mentioned in my haul video was used on the banners with the designs.  I had to try it before I could make a video and talk about super easy!  I used a DCWV Stencil that I picked up at JoAnns, i used the white embossing paste let it dry and then colored it with a Fiber-Castele Gelato in yellow. 

My Godson is playing Basketball now!  So we're not sure he's doing football again, but at the moment he has decided basketball is his entire life.  Oh to only be 7 again!! Love it!!!  So this was quick.  The letters were cut on the Silhouette and the basketball hoops on the cricut.  The other embellishments came in a pack of stickers I just popped a few up and grouped them together, nothing too fancy, but it was probably one of my favorite pages of the weekend.

This is one of my God Daughter's pictures from her 1 year old birthday photo shoot last year.  She'll be 2 this year.  OMG they grow up entirely too fast!!!  I always blur her out and especially this one because she's in swimwear and you just have to be so careful now.  For this page I wanted to create a little texture so I used the DCWV cork 6x6.  The ruler came from a pack of paper I had in my stash I honestly don't remember.  I'm sure it was in a DCWV paper pad though.  Nothing fancy just a few layers and great textures.  That's always fun on any page!! 

I have quite a few more pages, that I'll be posting as I unpack.  I'm a little slow this time because I have a day crop coming up too so I won't be unpacking completely. 

Happy Mother's Day everyone!!! I'll be spending it with my God Daughter!! I can't wait!!

A bunch of pages (photo heavy post)

So I've actually done quite a few pages since Christmas, but since some of them were for a gift I coulnd't post.  Not great pictures just a few I snapped with my cell phone.  So I helped my cousin with an album for her fiance who is just finishing up college and is a football player.  She did a scrapbook of all 5 years that he played.  Here are a few pages that I did for her.  It was so much fun helping her out and she even learned to like scrapbooking. 

We did one of my God Baby since she was born while her Dad was finishing college too.  That Stampin' Up Owl Punch is my new favorite thing!!!

I also did a quick page over the weekend of a Christmas party that I was at with my family.  We love our crazy selves!!! 

 

 

Scrapbook Shopping Fun

I talk about my favorite scrapbook store all of the time!! I had to share on my blog as well as my Facebook page all the fun I had there on Saturday.  So twice a year (spring and fall)  Scrapdoodles in Fredericksburg, VA does a consignment sale.  It's great you; you drop your stuff off, they sell it, and you get a gift card for what you sold, less their consignment fee.  Needless to say I came home on Saturday with stuff ready to sell next spring AND $365 in scrapbook goodies thanks to the great sales I had this fall!  I'm so so over joyed.  It took me 15 minutes to get used to the idea that I could pretty much get anything I wanted, but after that it was game on!!!!  So I couldn't be happier with my new goodies and I can't wait for the next consignment sale no matter how great my sells are.

Also over the weekend I found the best little store for dies and rubber stamps.  Gotta love anything made in America right!!!  So there is a great store in Williamsburg called Impression Obsession.  They open their warehouse once a year for a huge warehouse sale!!! I was there this past Saturday when they opened and got quite a few goodies.  They had great deals on stamps, dies, acrylic blocks, ink pads, everything!!!  The ladies are also super nice too!!!  So of course I had to share a picture of my goodies!!!

Rolling Cart Update

In a previous post I talked about my Raskog Kitchen Cart.  I love this cart and it holds a ton of stuff.  Over the past weekend I bought a 2nd one.  I haven't put that one together yet, but it will hold my Project Life cards and a few other things that I have hanging around my scrapbook room that need a home and better access for me.  I'm trying to get organized for crop season as I like to call it.  Fall will be rolling in shortly and all of the day and weekend crops will start up so organization is a must!

Here is a picture of my first cart now organized with my punches and stamps.  The bottom to shelves are full with punches and the top holds my large organizer from Close To My Heart.  The punches are held in the Antonius Basket Insert from Ikea.

Here is another tray holding has 2 full Project Life sets and 1 mini kit. Soon this be sitting in my 2nd cart! I can't wait to finish getting everything together.

Missing in Action

So what's been going on besides NOT SCRAPBOOKING.  Well, I went on vacation!!!!! Life was extremely busy before vacation so nothing got done and since getting back there has been family parties and just a lot of time enjoying the sun and heat of southern Maryland.  So, where did I go on vacation....EUROPE!!!!!  Me and Mom took a Mediterranean cruise.  We started in Venice, and traveled to Croatia, Santorini, Corfu, Katakolan, and Athens.  It was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life!!! I couldn't have asked for a better trip.  Here are a few pictures:

Me and Mom eating amazing gelato!!! OMG I wish I could get more of that here!

Our favorite Island, Santorini

Relaxing on the gorgeous black sand beach of Santorini

Eastover Baptist Retreat Center

What a great weekend away.  I spent it with 26 lovely ladies at the Eastover Baptist Retreat Center in Surry, VA.  The drive from my house was 5 hours, but it was well worth it and I think Mom and I have decided that it will be a yearly event.  So for Mom it was camping, for everyone else, not so much.  Yes we were in the woods, all the the way in the woods. No TV, no wifi (unless you had verizon hotspot) and limited cell service.  Thankfully I have Verizon so we were ok.  We rented a mini-van because we thought we needed to bring everything under the sun for 4 days of cropping with no store within 45 minutes of the retreat center, but it was worth all the packing. I finally got started on scrapbooking the pictures from Disney.  I have a bunch but I finished the majority of my Animal Kingdom Pictures.  Here are a few of the layouts.

My Cricut and Silhouette got a workout over the weekend.  I also managed to use up the Zoo paper from Creative Memories, I had 2 packs of that.  I also used up a few packs of old stickers I had laying around in my stash.  My goal over the weekend was to use up a few things and to use some new things that I had purchased.  I did use my new Lawn Fawn Critters on the Savanna stamps and the matching dies.  They were a ton of fun to color with my Copics. I also got to use my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher that I purchased from Scrapdoodles a few months ago.  The girls in the store were hilarious, they said that having the tiny attacher would be life changing. Well....I LOVE IT!!! I used it a lot over the weekend and it will be a "staple" for sure in my stash now, HA!!!

Can't get enough organization

I talk about organization ALL the time!! There are a ton of reasons for that.  Other than trying to make my space super efficient so that I can get more pages done it's just plain a pain in the behind to pack for a scrappy weekend away.  I'm gradually getting better about not brining my entire scrapbook room, but as with all things I'm a work in progress.  So, todays organizing post is about my new favorite Thirty-One Tote.  Now I'm not plugging it because I sell it, but really I just like the darn thing.  I actually love it!  It's probably up there with the Large Utility Tote for me.  The Super Organizing Tote is new to Thirty-One.  I think it came out in the 2012 fall catalog (yeah I'm a great consultant, huh).  Anyway I actually hadn't paid the tote any attention at all until a few weeks ago while relaxing at a friends house going through the summer catalog.  So, if you ever actually read a catalog Thirty-One makes solution sets to help us consultants sell the products.  Well they put in a solution set for scrapbookers!!!!! Yeah that's right they gave us crafty folks a shout out!!!  So it's just bag right, nothing exciting.  NOPE, that's not the case with this bag.  IT HOLDS A 12" TRIMMER!!! Yeah I know you're sold now, right! I know I was.  I travel with 2 trimmers for a weekend away.  My new Carl Trimmer of course and everyone's absolute favorite the Making Memories Trimmer.  You got it and they both fit and you know what else fits in this bag...The Creative Memories Power Sort Box and Two additional Power Sort Dividers.  So now you want to see it to believe it, right..HERE YA GO!!

Oh yeah and it ZIPS SHUT!!!  You could totally do a day crop using the Super Organizing Tote.  It has  pockets on the outside for all kinds of stuff so that's great too.  It's great!!!!  Well that's my new favorite organizing thing!!! I have a few more posts coming up this weekend with some organzing tips so stay tuned!

Gypsy in Linked

WOOHOO!!!! I have linked my Gypsy to my Cricut Craft Room.  Needless to say it took ALL DAY!!!  I had to re-install Cricut Sync and Cricut Craft Room a few times and start over a few times, but it finally worked!!! I am running Windows 7 and had to set both programs to work as if they were in Windows XP.  That seemed to work.  I did have a problem with the Craft Room being able to see my Gypsy but eventually that worked as well.  I'm hoping everything continues to work appropriately.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to updated my Expressions 2 to work with Craft room and if it does, I'll be re-purchasing the Cricut Mini that I returned because I couldn't get it to work on my computer.  I also have a few catridges to load tomorrow so I'm going to check out how that works for me as well.  In other wonderful news, since all of us Cricut Fans have been so patient waiting for the Gypsy linkability to arrive we have received a $20 credit on our Cricut.com accounts.  It Expires in Feburary so get it while ya can!!!  Happy cutting!!!!

New Trimmer

So, I finally got a new paper trimmer. I've been putting it off for a while, but the my old one was DONE!  I decided to stay budget friendly even though I would've loved the Cutterpillar Pro.  I also wanted something that just wasn't huge to carry around.  So I went with the Carl RT-200N.  I'm so glad that I did.  I read a few reviews on Amazon that it wasn't that great, but I really do like it.  It cuts smooth ever time and it has the photo sizes pre-marked on the grid which I LOVE!!  The major complaint that I read about was that there really isn't a paper holder so you don't get straight cuts.  Well no there isn't a magnetic strip or something that holds the paper in place, but my hand on the lime green plastic piece that keeps you from cutting your fingers off did just fine by me.  You line the paper up with edge and hold down the lime green plastic and push the rotery blade and that's it.  I did get the size that's 12x12.  I decided not to get the longer one for space reasons.  It's uper light weight with easy to read rulers and that's really about all I need.  I picked it up at Staples and I think it was priced wrong.  Online this retails for $60-$70 and Amazon (one of my fave online stores) has it for $40, but Staples had it priced at $34.  Not too bad if you ask me.  I did notice that the replacement parts were not for the this model but the one below it which they didn't have, so I'm thinking they just didn't realize, but I'll take a sale anyday!!  Here's a pic of my new favorite scrappy toy!!