Creations From The Heart

CROP FOR THE BUSHFIRE VICTIMS

I am holding a Crop Night this Saturday at my house to help make up some scrapbook pages to donate to the Victorian bushfire victims.  With the help of Susan Curtin from Woodend, we aim to donate some albums to the families of the fire victims and they can fill them with photos to give back to the people that lost all their precious memories. Susan and I are holding numerous crop nights up until mid-June, so if you're interested in joining us, please drop me an email at skyezak at internode dot on dot net

You can come and crop at my place in Sunbury for free if you're making pages for the fire victims or I'm charging $5 if you wish to do your own thing and use all my stamps and tools.  If you have any empty 12x12 albums you could donate for us to fill, that would be greatly appreciated too.  And if you can't come to any of our crops but would like to donate some pages, please contact me.  For my crop nights, I will be donating a box of Bazzill for everyone to use and another friend is donating all her patterened paper so there'll be plenty of free goodies to scrap with on the night.  Just bring your glue and basic embellishments.

Hope you can help us out!

Crop layout

Over at Snap & Scrap, they are having a weekly ALL ABOUT ME A-Z challenge, and this week's one is the letter 'C'.  The theme is CAN'T BELIEVE I DID IT!  So I scrapped a digital page about how I can't believe people would come and learn scrapbooking from me.

And thought I'd post it on this blog too seeing as a few of you are featured in the pics!  Not sure if you can see them as they're a little small but click on the layout to enlarge it a bit.

My journalling reads:

Can’t believe that I ever started teaching scrapbooking classes & running crops at my house. Who would have thought that my friends & family would support my business so much & come along to learn from me. What a success it has been to have had so much fun getting together with a lovely bunch of ladies who all share a passion for scrapbooking. 

Projects for my next Crop on 20th November

After my new goodies arrived yesterday from Stampin' Up, I thought I'd make up a couple of projects to teach at my next crop using these new products...this is what I've come up with to teach.

Both of these projects utilise the new Designer Series double-sided paper set called 'Holiday Thyme', a special edition pack that's been released for Christmas.  You can save $2 off the normal retail price of these paper packs and purchase it for only $14.95.  The project in the top photo on the left is a photo wallet (closed view) and in bottom photo, it's all flipped open ready to add photos to down the middle section.  The vanilla note cards are to add journalling onto.  I'm very, very naughty as I've used one of the yet-to-be-released stamps from the new Summer Mini catalogue that doesn't start until 1st December - it's called French Flair and is just gorgeous.  Not a Christmas stamp, but I didn't have any swirly Stampin' Up stamps and I'll cover the little birdies once I pop a photo on and will leave some of the swirls still showing.  Thanks to Mary for showing me the beautiful wallets she'd made and giving me the idea to make these as they're super-easy.

The other project is a little pocket card (note the word "Merry Christmas" is not a Stampin' Up stamp).  I'm still trying to build my stash up of S/Up products and this stamp suited the card very nicely.  As soon as I make a layout which I also want to teach at the crop, I'll post a pic of that along with the cost on top of the $5 crop fee and you can let me know if you'd like to do these projects for the additional cost to cover stock or just come and crop all night.

On Saturday, I'm off to the Victorian Regionals for Stampin' Up which will be the first one I've been to and I cannot wait.  It's all day in Melboure and we get to do a number of make-&-take projects using a free set of stamps we're getting as part of our admission (the Simply Said set which I'd been wanting to get too).  My Stampin' Up upline Yvonne has been asked to demo one of the make-&-takes so that will be great for her and great to show her talent off to all the ladies attending!  Good luck Yvonne!!  We'll be learning some new techiques and getting an insight into the Stampin' Up world so next week I may be able to share some of the things we did.  Yvonne has posted a card on her blog (link above) she's made with the new 'All In The Family' set which is just gorgeous.  Will make my little family up soon!

Anyhoo, off to cut and mount some more of my stamps so I can use them....

Make & Take for Crop Day

Thought I'd let you in on the make & take I plan to do at my Crop Day next Sunday.  I've used a patterned paper from Basic Grey's new 'Mellow' range for the lid of the box and I am currently making up a little accordian photo album to fit inside it as I might use this for a Christmas gift idea for some special people at Christmas.  We'll just be making the box itself at my crop and you will have to choose one patterned paper, one cardstock, a piece of coordinating cardstock and some ribbon.  I only have a couple of this Basic Grey paper left but there's plenty of other papers to choose from.  It's offically called an origami box and is very simple.  There's no adhesive required - it just folds together.  Pretty amazing don't ya think!

[edited to add....found this box on Kristina Werner's blog....love her work and her fabulous video tutorials]

Make & Take for Crop Night

Thought I'd share the Make & Take I've prepared for tomorrow night's Crop Night....it's using stamps from 'Be Happy' and 'Love It' sets, Real Red cardstock, some twine, white card, eyelet set with Crop A Dile and my own button.  Inks used are Old Olive, Caribbean Blue, Basic Brown and Pumpkin.  Edge of Real Red card has been distressed with my finger nail (who would have thought) - a tip I learnt from the Stampin' Up demonstrator training DVD!!  The stems of the flowers have been pierced with an awl and drawn with a brown marker.  Very quick and easy tag!

My weekend

Well another weekend has passed that was full of scrapping!  Had my Mini Crop on Friday night and had my Crop 'Til You Drop on Saturday.  Both days I had smaller than usual groups but we got to chat a bit more than usual because of the smaller numbers.  On Friday night, Deanne won the door prize of some Heidi Swapp chipboard alphas and on Saturday, Lynne won the door prize which was a set of Basic Grey chipboard elements.  Congrats to you both.  Had a few shoppers pop through which was good to see and had all my older papers discounted too.  I had managed to get to Donnas on Friday to pick up some of her stock left over from the Cardboard Cafe retreat and they were snapped up by my customers like hotcakes, especially the new Cloud 9 papers and sparkle papers.  So hope you all managed to pick up some bargains while you were here.  I've just placed an order today from Aussie Scrap Source so should get that delivery early next week.  Will let you know what I have when it arrives.  Will also be placing an order from Stamp It this week including lots of Tim Holtz distress inks that everyone's been asking for.  A couple of shades like blue and green this time.  Yum, love Shabby Shutters.  I'm hoping to get Debra Sutton to teach a layout class over the next couple of weeks so will keep you posted once we work out a date.  The layout will teach you how to use a mask....  And this week I'll work on the details for the circle journal that I'll be coordinating as I've already had a bit of interest in it...

And last night, I went to lovely Yvonne's house with Mum to make some cards with products from the new Stampin' Up mini catalogue.  Caught up with a few other ladies that were at my weekend crops, Lynne and Gabbie, and it was heaps of fun learning some new techniques and playing with some new stamps.  Mum and I couldn't help ourselves and popped some orders through at 10% off.  Check Yvonne's blog out as she runs regular classes at her home where you get to try out the products and stock up on your stash of greeting cards at the same time.

Off to Playgroup and Kinder today then back home to get some cleaning up done after my weekend crops...always bits of paper throughout the house that manage to blend into the family room mat!

Fell asleep early last night and forgot to set the video for the final of Grey's for this season - so glad you can download off the net which I'm doing now.  Also forgot ER started again last week so am downloading ep 1 of that too!  Can't believe it's being going for 14 seasons!  Remember way, way back when it first aired - Anthony Edwards and George Clooney.  Not much to watch at the moment so have been getting lots of movies from Bigpond Movies where they send them to you in the mail, you watch and return them like a video shop but only by post....kids love getting one in the letterbox as lots of them I get are kids movies.  Until next post, ta-ta!!!