christy’s li’l corner of the scrap galaxy

were did i leave off..oh yes, the vendor fair! it’s huge, seriously HUGE! Let’s see, there was an SEI booth, basic grey, scrapbookpal.com was there, rusty pickle (my favorite!!), li’l davis had a booth where most everything was $1…yeah, the line was around the block, couldn’t get in that one! it’s just overwhelming! product everywhere! what we did notice was that several large companies were not there, and neither were their products! no 7gypsies anywhere, very little heidi swapp, NO chatterbox at all! AND all of the new products everyone is excited about? nowhere to be found. I actually only spent a few dollars-got some fancy pants chipboard, a few sheets of paper, and a tshirt. i remember the first year i went, i spent over $400 at the vendor fair! maybe i’m growing as a scrapper :OÞ

so after hitting the vendor fair, we met up with my darling SIL who took us to dinner. it was nice-she has 2 teenage daughters and karen and i got to talk to her about raising them (our daughters are 14 & 15, hers are 16 & 17) and dealing with certain things that mothers of teens have to deal with :O) it was nice to have someone with experience to bounce things off of!

after dinner, we hit the Lloyd center to find presents for those aforementioned girls…my DD loves Hollister-it’s such a cool store! It reminds me of the inside of an old fashioned airplane hanger-the music is loud and it is just cool! I ended up picking up some perfume-at least i know DD will like it, and i don’t have to return it because it doesn’t fit :O) It smells good-i know because when holding the sampler bottle, i turned it on it’s side to see the name on the bottom, and it just pouuuured down my arm…i smelled so good all day, LOL!

so, back to the convention center, we loaded up the cart and headed in-I didn’t have a crop ticket for this night so I was helping in the booth. about halfway through i was wishing i was croppin’! it was a smaller group of ladies, but just as enthusiastic as the first night. they gave away lots (and lots!) of prizes. did i mention earlier that since it’s a creating keepsakes convention they give away magazines? every person in attandance gets the most recent CK and simple scrapbooks magazines. they have stacks and stacks of them…and the goodie bags, I forgot to mention the goodie bags! I got one the first night! first of all, it’s a huge bag! i’ve gotten one every year I’ve gone, and they come in so handy for toting around scrapbook supplies from crop to crop! every year there’s a different sponsor-this year I got an s.e.i. bag. Inside were packages of glue, embellishments, paper (rusty pickle, yessss!) stickers, lots and lots of stuff. this year’s bags were the best for product by far. loved it. also, during the crop, they have volunteers handing out stuff that didn’t get there in time to be put in the goodie bags. we got cards of fibers, sheets of vintage stickers, coupons, etc. love free stuff :O)

so, after what seemed like a looong night of not cropping (bummer!) we packed it up and headed for the hotel. we DID remember daylight savings and set the alarm to get us up and out early, so we could shop our way home :O) after coffee and pictures (see my last post-the pic of me standing by the water :O) we headed over to old navy. i got DD some flip-flops (again, don’t have to worry about them not fitting or her not liking them-she LIVES in her old navy flip-flops! at 2 for $5 you can NOT go wrong!) and some tank tops too..she also lives in her tanks :O)

We stopped at some really great scrapbooking stores on the way home, got some good deals and lots of ideas, had a wonderful lunch at applebee’s, and even stopped at ben franklin’s, which i had never been in before! One of our customers and friends just had a baby boy-when i saw this…I knew I had to get it for her!

How cute is that? a onesie for the baby, and a miniature onesie to scrap! love it, she liked it too :O) he’s 2 weeks old today, and won’t fit in it for 2 months, but i couldn’t help it, too stinkin’ cute! oh, as for the ben franklin store, they had some neat stuff, but their prices were high-about 20% higher than they should have been by our figuring. (example-something we know retails for 9.99 was 12.99 at their store.) maybe it’s a chain-store thing?
anyhoo, we made it home and mercifully, karen dropped me off at home straight away. she said she would get her DH to help her unload the product and put it back in the store. it was a fun experience, and karen’s thinking about actually doing a booth in the vendor fair. that’s a lot more work than the two of us can do, so we’ll be recruiting girls to help us! it’s something we’re thinking on, i will surely post if we decide to go for it!

happy scrappin’ days all :O)

what a fun and exhausting weekend! for those who don’t know, I went to the CKC* this weekend in Portland, Oregon. It’s always a fun time, and this was no exception :O)
*CKC=Creating Keepsakes Convention

I went up with Karen, the owner of the lss I work and teach at. It was just the two of us this year. Friday we left around 1 and headed up-it’s a 3 hour drive from us, and traffic only got bad in the last 3 miles or so. We stopped at retail supply store first, to get some plastic bags for the store. Then, a couple blocks down the road, we stopped at a place that sells used store fixtures. It was awesome! They had everything from acrylic magazine holders to mannequins! I’m still kicking myself for not buying the life-sized clear plastic leg used for displaying hosiery…I know I could have done something cool with it, LOL! After a quick dinner at burger king, where we got to listen to two grown men yelling at each other in full volume, we headed over to the convention center. I had a ticket for the crop, and Karen had rented table space to set up a booth full of scrapbooking supplies. It took us two trips with a rolling cart to get all of the goodies into the convention center. Thank goodness there was an elevator from the parking garage or we would have been hating life! As it was, it was difficult to roll the cart once inside the convention center beacuse their carpet is so well padded, the wheels just sunk in. It was like pushing it through sand… Here’s the booth, all set up:

The black display full of color is actually a set of 4 shutters that Karen made into a display for cards of fibers. It’s very clever and people love it :O)  Bad news though…no electricity to our booth! So the cash register we lugged in had to be lugged back out, AFTER we found a plug-in so we could get the cash out of it… BAD NEWS #2, Karen’s calculator batteries had died! Luckily she had a pad of paper and a pen, LOL!
We were to the right of the main stage, which was a good location, except every time they had a contest where people lined up, they blocked the booth! The contest this year included a Technique Tuesday American Idol singing competition, a Dance-Off, and a cheerleading competition (on the 2nd night). It was a lot of fun to watch (NO, i did not sing, cheerlead or dance!)

So i sat with some nice ladies from Salem and cropped off and on all evening, getting a whopping 2 layouts done! That’s not too bad considering all of the distractions. It seems like someone was on the microphone making announcements, giving away door prizes, announcing contest, all night long! The highlight of the evening was when Ali Edwards came up to give some door prizes away. Her son Simon ran up on stage and sang us 3 whole songs! It was hilarious, and special, and something I’ll never forget!

You can read more about this extraordinary performance on Ali’s Blog . Really wonderful!

After the crop, we were in a rush to get out of there. The schedule says the crop ends at 11:30…but at 11:15 they tell us we need to be OUT of the building by 11:30!  That ticks me off but i won’t get into that…so we decide to put everything on the booth onto the cart at once and just make the one trip back to the car…

As before, things went great until we got to the dreaded CARPET OF DOOM, lol! Lucky for us, we had a security guy help us get it to the elevator. Yes, it fit in the elevator, barely…just for reference, that black grid wall is 5 feet tall. The next night we did it all in four trips…

Once we got out of the convention center (only getting lost once in the parking garage…) we headed for our hotel. The hotel was awesome-right over the border in Washington, our room was directly on the columbia river. It smelled a little fishy at first, but the view was totally worth it :O)

That’s me looking down-river :O)

We were so exhausted friday that we didn’t budge from our beds until 11 am saturday! It was crazy…luckily we had the room for one more night and hadn’t sleep past checkout time :O) Before hitting the vendor fair at the convention, we stopped at the BIGGEST goodwill thrift store I’ve ever seen! It was really really cool! I found a brand new rolodex (to alter of course!) for $2! Sweeeet! Oh, we also hit Target for a calculator, LOL! I got a really beautiful scrapbook album at target for HALF PRICE, yesss! It’s red, and has an “M” monogrammed on the cover, love it! Anyway…we hit the vendor fair for a few hours….unfortunately, I’m out of time and have to get to work. So, I will continue my mega-post later today :O) How’s that for a cliff-hanger?

LOL, good days all!

time for a new round of scrap galaxy star challenges! (I got the MOST stars last month, woohoo!)

challenge #1: ink/paint/dye background, stitching & monogram:

challenge #2: 8½x11 landscape, 3+ pictures, 1 black & white, chipboard shapes & wire:

this is for my bom, of places in the US I’d like to go. (seattle, washington dc, san francisco, and south beach miami)

check out the scrap galaxy star challenges and join us in the fun :O)

Here’s how my matchbook mini album turned out–i did it up with Easter pics from last year, and will give it to my mom & dad for Easter this year.The Cover:

Open Album:

Come check out the online crop at scrap galaxy for more make-n-takes and challenges!