Polk-A-Dot Scrapper

Ink pad Organize More Review

Right after Christmas I purchased the 60 Ink Pad Organizer from Organize more.  It does hold every size ink pad.  I don't like it for the distress inks because the spaces are too deep.  I ordered lavender, to match my scrapbook room. It is lavender if you hold it just at the right angle.  What's funny about this is my walls are the exact same shade of lavender.  It's extremely pale, almost white, so you have to hold it at just the right angle to see the lavender color, so if you're looking for a true purple, this isn't is.  The function of course is AWESOME!!!  I have mine sitting on my Expedit, with some stuff behind it because it takes up absolutely no space.  I can't wait to fill it up with inks!!!

 

Kiwi Lane Designs Product Review

One of my favorite purchases at the scrapbook expo were the borders, photo sets, and accessories from Kiwi Lane. Check out there site when you get a chance. They're great for page planning and cutting pictures to the perfect size without all the guess work. We've all cut a picture in the wrong spot before well these fix that problem! They're completely see through, you trace and cut, perfect every time!! Love the borders to use specific designs on the corner of a page without just having a boring straight cut. The accessories are nice too even if you just use them for placement and cut them with your Silhouette or Cricut. So check them out and enjoy my first page with them!! My borders are from the Madison Avenue set; I used the arrow and bracket from the Sweetheart set. I inked all of my edges with distress inks and I cut the film strip from Silhouette.

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!!!

Recipe Card

So excited to finally make something, WOOHOO!!! So I'm taking part in a recipe card swap while I'm on a retreat.  So I picked a recipe by Rachel Ray.  I have her new book 365 recipes and drinks by her and her hubby.  Yeah, I love it!!!  So, since the recipe is for crab cakes I went with an underwater theme for the recipe cards.  I used the Cricut for the seaweed.  The tall piece is from the Lifes a Beach Cartridge and the smaller one is from Create a Critter.  The sand came from the Miss Kates Cuttables file Beach Day.  The large crabs came from the Silhouette Design Studio Crabby Word Image Set.  I deleted the word crabby and just kept the crab.  The smaller crabs are a Martha Stewart Crab Punch.  The little sea shells are a punch from the dollar spot in JoAnns.  All of the cardstock is also from JoAnns with the exception of the white.  The cardstock came in a pack called Minty Fresh, I really like all the colors together.  The sand is Krafty cardstock. Oh and I couldn't resist googly eyes on the crabs.

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!!