Scrap Girl

I went to an all-day crop last Saturday and did a wide variety of pages.  We have a family tradition of baking cookies every year before Christmas and I usually do an annual page about that.  I started out with two different papers from the Signature Suite Paper Pad from My Mind’s Eye.  The one with the striped pattern I used for my base pages and then cut the darker brown patterned paper into 5 inch strips.  I made sure to crop two pictures the same size for the far edges and then just cropped the rest to smaller sizes.  I tucked some just a little underneath the dark brown strip so it looks like they are tucked into a pocket.  I cut out the cookie title with the Cricut and used stickers for the bake-off part of the title.  The cookie embellishments are Jolee’s By You and I was so happy to find those at a dollar store.  I did my journaling on the computer on some lighter paper and then just attached it to my page.  It all came together fairly quickly which is always a plus.  You don’t want to spend all your time at a crop day on one page, that’s for sure.

One thing I especially liked about the Scrapping for Soldiers Event I went to last weekend was the Make and Take mini-projects offered by the vendors who were participating.  The card was made using Close to My Heart products.  They are top of the line when it comes to stamping.  Their see-through acrylic stamps make stamping easier and anyone can use them to make beautiful paper crafted items.  The embellishment for a page was made using Creative Memories paper, a puzzle punch and their stickers.  It was a very cute and creative idea and I may use it again.  The scrapbook page I made was through a woman that has her own business and was trying to promote her Starry Night Kits.  The idea is that she offers a new kit idea to her customers every month through email and if they are interested they can buy the kit that can be used to make a few different scrapbook layouts.  The papers were from Cosmo Cricket and came together quickly to make a cute page.

On Saturday I went to the Scrapping for Soldiers Crop Day fundraiser event in the Twin Cities.  I would say there were at least 50 scrapbookers there participating.  I had a lot of fun catching up with an old girlfriend and reminiscing about fun times we had in MOMS Club together.  She was also working on pictures from those days so we had to put our heads together to remember some names and faces.  The ladies hosting the event were reps from Close to My Heart, Creative Memories and Cosmo Cricket.  I enjoyed the make and take crafts that they had for us to do and free products they gave us to use.  All of us that participated brought items to go into care packages to be sent to soldiers and blank greeting cards for the soldiers to send back home to those they love.  The Scrapping for Soldiers groups all over the country have raised over $21,000.00 for this cause of sending care packages and phone cards to our soldiers overseas.  I was glad to be a part of it. 

Happy Saturday to you.  I just found out this week that as a Today.com blogger, I am no longer permitted to use Entrecard as a resource for my blog.  For those of you not familiar with Entrecard, it is a website designed to introduce bloggers to other bloggers.  What you do is design a card and account for yourself and then put a spot on your blog where people can visit you.  You basically drop your card off on other blogger’s sites and they drop their card back on you.  It’s an easy and interesting way to generate traffic for a blog.  I’ve met a few online friends through this service and am sad to lose it as a resource.  Entrecard has changed its format to allow advertising agents to come in and buy ads on blogs through the site.  Unfortunately, this causes a conflict of interest for Today bloggers as the Today.com site is run exactly the same way.  To Entrecard users:  if you have “purchased” an ad on my site, it will run.  We have two weeks to pull out of Entrecard accounts.  I want to thank my Entrecard friends.  Please bookmark my site and stop by anyway and I’ll do the same for you.

Hi all.  When I posted yesterday’s page I got to thinking that I had other waterpark pages that you might be interested in seeing.  These are digital pages I did using a kit called “Rio” from Kimberly Giarrusso.  I got the kit from a CD that was included with a book I have called “Scrapbooking Digitally–The Ultimate Guide to Saving Your Memories Digitally” by Arquette, Zocchi, D’Agostino and Roberts.  This is a great book if you are just starting out and want a basic knowledge of digital scrapbooking.  The kit was bright and went together great with my pictures.  Last winter, my family decided to take a winter break and head to an indoor waterpark a few hours from where we live.  This was a really great way to escape winter weather for a little while.

The sun is finally out here and that has me thinking summer!  Last year my family went to a campground that was part of a park system that had a waterpark attached to it along with horse stables, golf course, and bike trails.  We had a great time there and are planning to go back this summer.  I did a couple of digital layouts for this trip.  The one I am posting today is of the waterpark.  There was a wave pool, waterslides, and water playgrounds, so something for everybody.  My designer friend gave me the digital kit called Bee Mine to use for some layouts and I used the bright papers and embellishments for this layout.  You can find the kit over at Digital Arts Cafe under Karyn’s Designs.  I’m pleased with the funky title for the page.  I took a picture at the park of the Bunker Beach sign and then jazzed it up with my photoshop elements software.  I especially like this page because you feel like you are at the park and want to jump into the page. 

It is another cloudy day here in Minnesota and I’m about to the breaking point.  I don’t think the sun has been out here for about four days and rain every day besides.  Our poor saturated midwest ground can hardly take much more.  There is talk of major flooding all over our state as well as our neighboring states.  We need some sun to dry some things out or on the opposite end it should be cold enough to freeze some of this water for a few days.  I hardly want my kids to come home from school for fear I’ll officially lose it at the first sign of back-talk or sibling squabbling.  Just keep thinking–soon it will be nice outside.  Soon it will be warm weather.  Soon it will be no jackets and sunshine.

This Saturday I’m going to an all day crop with a friend I haven’t seen in about five years.  It will be great to get caught up and look through each other’s pictures to see how big our kids are now.  We met in MOMS Club about nine years ago in the Cities.  Since I moved away six years ago, I had lost touch with a few of those moms I used to hang out with.  Thanks to Facebook, I have become reacquainted with about a handful of these folks that used to help me get through the day having two small kids and staying home to raise them.  Now that our kids are in school, most of us are working part-time or even full-time and time just gets away from you as you are busy with day-to-day life.  All the more reason for our scrapbooking hobby, don’t you think?

I’m glad to have made the reservations for next year’s scrapbooking retreat.  We had twelve of us go last year and the cabin we go to is really nice but sometimes it feels a little crowded in the craft area.  I like to be able to walk around and talk to everybody without squeezing through someone else’s space.  I found another place that I think will satisfy everybody.  The drive is also a little shorter for everyone which is also a plus.  Now the person farthest away should only have a four and a half hour trip instead of five.  We are located all over the state of Minnesota and one person lives in Fargo, North Dakota so it is a little tricky to find a central location.  I’m just glad that even though times are a little tough financially for some of us, we still are willing to have a “money jar” as one of my friends does, to put her change in for the scrapbooking trip.  Maybe we should all start a money jar to save for something special for ourselves.

This is completely unrelated to scrapbooking but is also important.  There are so many cold and flu bugs going around out there that I thought I should mention this.  I have discovered Earthclinic.com in the past six months or so and it has been very helpful for my family.  All of the home remedies at Earthclinic are things you can find in your cupboard at home.  As far as I’m concerned, I’m willing to try some of these before running to the doctor and forking out the copay, waiting in line, and just dealing with some medical professionals in general.  Just about every remedy I have tried has worked for sore throats to intestinal illness to allergies.  It is easy to navigate around their site too.  If you or someone in your family is not feeling well, give it a try.  Here’s to good health!