Paper Whiskers

CKU Provo

  
(This was the view during lunch one day.)

I've just spent a week in Provo, UT attending the last CKU event for the forseeable future. I'm hoping that they are able to bring it back in some form in a few years, because it's a fun way to get away for a few days.

I've been to CKU twice before - once in Minneapolis and once in Chicago, and this one was a combination of the two styles. I made (started, really) a complete 12x12 album and took a bunch of classes presented by various scrapbook companies. All in all, I prefer the classes. The album is great, and I like having the instructions all mapped out for me, but there is no way I would have finished it, even with a stack of photos. And I've realized over time, that I need that instant gratification that comes with a finished product at the end of the class.

And I was very very pleased with the classes. There was only one or two duds out of 13, which is excellent odds. I don't know that I'll ever add photos to the small 6x6 album that we had completed by the end of the first day, but even if not, it was fun to make. And if I do a bigger album for the trip, those layouts will be included somehow.

I managed to journal every day. And I wrote it in my idea journal, along with many baby shower notes, teacher autographs, and random CKU notes, so the experience is fairly well documented. This will come in very handy when I'm deciding how to document the trip.

One thing that came out of the trip, is that I decided on the last ornament for this year's Craft Day. Woo! It was a project from one of the classes, and when we were working on it, I knew immediately that it was the perfect project for us to do.

Trip highlights:

1. The weather was amazing. It cooled down from 90s after a couple days, allowing us to eat our lunches outside, and walk to dinner.
2. The view. I LOVED being near the mountains again. It's the thing I miss most about Montana, and it was just as awesome as I'd hoped. I took many photos, and am hoping at least one turned out well enough to blow up nice and big.
3. The happy anniversary message Eric left on my cell phone Saturday. I'm going to keep it as long as I can. :)
4. The comic shop (Dragons Keep) within walking distance of the hotel. That was a cool find.
5. CKU logo stickers. I was hoping that they would still have some, and it turned out that they were giving them away. Score!
6. Tim Holtz' class. I love the way the projects look, and I'm looking forward to playing with the leftovers he gave us.
7. Hanging out with Kelly. :)
8. The brad-maker from Imaginisce was just as cool as I'd hoped. I haven't got one yet, but I'm almost positive I will get one. It will work with fabric, too, which I am excited about, since I love textured brads.
9. Heartfelt Creations, one of the last stores we shopped at, was my favorite store. They had tons of supplies, but even better, they obviously cater to stampers too! It was great to look at all the stamps and be able to pick out a couple new ones in person, rather than online. It's exactly the kind of store I wish we had around here. :sigh:
10. The Marriott beds. The most comfy bed in existence, I think. lol

All in all, it was a great trip. I just wish we had more to look forward to. :( I'm crossing my fingers that we will someday.

Thursday

Quiet around here lately, isn't it?

Winter finally showed up and dumped a few inches of snow last weekend. Sunday morning I woke up early and took my tripod and camera out to take photos of the feeding station at the edge of the woods outside our building. I used film, so they haven't finished processing at Kodak. Tomorrow, I think, they'll be done, and I can post pictures.

CKU-Detroit registration is up, and I didn't sign up. I told myself that if there was even one class or album track that got me really excited, I'd find a way to go. But the schedule went up and nothing jumped out at me. Not even the album tracks.

I found Disney Gardens (complete with Finding Nemo themed fruit stickers) navel oranges at the grocery store last week and of course, had to get a bag. They were even on sale, so I got a big bag. I'm still working on them and have one for breakfast almost every morning. Yum. It makes my desk area smell great, too.

I've got a new computer at work now. Flat screen monitor and even a sound card. woo! I hate the flat screen monitor though. The image quality is terrible - all the text and images are just slightly blurry.

Valentine's Day is coming up soon, and I've had an idea stewing for a while. I'm anxious to see what it looks like in real life, not just in my head.

Bravo played a marathon of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip episodes last Sunday, in prep for the mid-season startup Monday night. I lost track of it for awhile and hadn't seen most of the episodes, so I thoroughly enjoyed being able to watch them back to back like that. Seriously funny stuff and I would have laughed a lot harder if it didn't make me cough so much.

I'm on pins and needles waiting for our W2s so we can do our taxes. I've got a good chunk of change built into the budget sheet, but it's killing me not knowing exactly what I need to save. It goes up every year and this past year we paid over and above every month, so I've really got no clue what the result is.

The Disney World photos from my trip are really making me wish I'd just bitten the heavy-bag bullet and taken my film camera. The digital did not do a good job, overall. I have several really good shots, but I know that with my film they'd all be good. :(

I checked Kodak this morning, to see if the two rolls from last Sunday had cleared, and found that one was ready. It wasn't from Sunday. It was from Sally's wedding!!! It must have gotten lost somewhere and just now processed. I knew I had more dancing photos. They aren't great, and the best one is sooo blurry, but I'm glad they weren't lost forever.

And something I noticed on Kodak today: their processing fees jumped a huge amount. It's now $5.99 to process film. Grrr. It's only $1 more to do it one-hour most places, and you get prints. I don't want prints of everything, just digitized. Snapfish is looking pretty good right now.

Eric turned 30 on Sunday. We had a party for him Saturday night. I made chocolate cake & Coke cupcakes. They turned out pretty yummy:

And of course, Kahlan had to supervise the present opening. She always has to be in the thick of things, even though she hates strangers (especially Sally, who loves to rile her up!). Some day, she'll get her revenge, Sally!

Bad Blogger...

Yikes, I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted last! Lots has been going on and I could go on and on, so here are some bullet points, to catch me up:

Wedding - beautiful bride, beautiful day; lots of photos to prove it :) and my black and whites turned out great! woo!

CSI premiere - Cirque du Soleil: awesome!; Grissom/Sara romance: bad bad bad idea; Nick's gonna feel really really guilty when he finds out what happened to Catherine; to be continued???: what?

WDW - short story, shorter: won plane tickets, going w/M&D between Xmas and New Year's, CAN'T WAIT!!!

Superman Returns - on DVD November 28 and I'm on the pre-order notify list - woo!!

Abyss, the novelization - I finally found a copy, on Amazon; I read this shortly before seeing the movie in theaters and it made the movie so much better; I've been looking for it for years

Allergy season - It used to be this bad in August, but now September/October is the worst time for me.

Handmade holidays - Yep, I'm crazy. 4 quilts are in the works, along with multiple projects for friends and family. If anyone has requests, speak up now! (yes, I'm serious)

CKU - Keeping our fingers crossed, it looks to be late-April 2007, in Detroit. Hotel is reserved already, and we're just waiting on the official announcement from Creating Keepsakes. I'm looking forward to finding out the new format.

Birthday packages - I finally got my niece's box out the door, I even made her a card. :) Since it was mostly clothes, I lined the bottom of a box with plastic, then tissue papers, then a wrapped gift with the dress I found in it, then more tissue papers, then a layer of clothes, tied in sets with ribbon, then more tissue papers, another layer of clothes, more tissue papers, yet another layer of clothes, more tissue paper, then a personalized canvas bag with art supplies in it, and topped it all off with a piece of wrapping paper cut and folded to fit just inside the box with a bow and the card. It looked really really cute, and I wish I could have shot a cut-away of what it looked like inside the box. Like cake layers, I'd think. :D I'll post a photo of the top when I get a chance.

Mom's was the other package I made. Her gift was a handmade bracelet from elisalou.com and it wasn't going to be on time, so I printed a photo of it and put it in a little box by Jolee's. I added ribbon and lace around the boxtop, and a bird dimensional sticker on top. The card I made matched and together they looked really cute. I'll post photos of those later, too.

Wee Wonderfuls Make-a-long story - So cute, and an inspired idea; I'm keeping this for the future small children in my life.

JC's new song - 'Until Yesterday' is available for listening at the AOL New Music site; I love it!; the new album is "coming soon" - not soon enough!

That's it, I think. I'm sure there's stuff I forgot. I'll try and keep up posting now that wedding madness is over. :D

Covered Mini Book

One of the things that makes CKU fun (and slightly more stressful for procrastinators like me!) is doing the 'get-to-know-you' stuff with other attendees beforehand. Especially if you're not in a dorm. This year, I participated in a secret sister swap with other people in my album track. I love to shop for other people, and especially love to create coordinated kits of stuff so this is right up my alley. Christine was the girl I sent to, and in her questionnaire she said her favorite color is pink. She also likes mini books, and I had just picked up some crushed velvet and matching plaid to make wee bunnies from (hasn't happened yet) so I got an idea.

I sat down that night, popped in Bewitched, and made this:

It started life as a 7Gypsies mini spiral book. I replaced the pages with pink Bazzill and pink vellum, covered it with the velvet and plaid, then made a little charm to hang from the spine (stamped with a Savvy flower and MM initial stamp, then filled in with Glossy Accents).

I'm supremely happy with how it turned out, and just need an excuse to make another one. :D

::tap tap:: Is this thing on?

Sorry for the radio silence.

For the last month, I've been deeply into prep for CKU, including finishing up a batch of client layouts before I left.

CKU was great, but the best part was spending so much time with friends. Seriously, that alone, was worth the money. But I also have some neat stuff to show off and will post it when I get the chance.

While you wait, here's a peek at my album track (think extended class that met three times for the same project - a complete album):

Professor Cathy Z

ETA: Yes, I'm in the pic. In the middle, towards the back, behind the girl with the white-sleeved shirt waving her arms. I'm the one with her arm in front of her face. :P

ETA Again: No, I'm not the one in peach. I'm the one in the blue sweatshirt. I'm at the same table as the girl in the white-sleeved shirt; right behind her actually.

CKU-A in Chicago!

It's official!  Woo-hoo!!

It'll be the same weekend as CKU-MN was this year (Mar 30-Apr 1), so that gives me plenty of time to save up.

I had heard rumors it was going to be an Albums, so I was crossing my fingers. CKU-MN was fun and I'm definitely glad I went, but it was a bit too rah-rah for my taste and I've heard that CKU-Albums is less so.

So, yeah. I'm excited!!! :D 

I'm Thinking of Converting

To 8.5x11, that is. ;)

I've often bemoaned the fact that I can't print on a full-size sheet of 12x12, so I can't do the kind of font work that I'd like to on my pages. I can't quite grasp working half in paper, half in digital.

But then I took Cathy Z's class at CKU. She scraps in 8.5x11. And she's brilliant. Her book is one of the ones I bought on Sunday, on our way home. And that's when I had my epiphany.

I should try this!

So. Since one of the freebies in my dorm nametag goodie bag is an 8.5x11 Canson spiral album, I'll start with that and see how it works out. I'm kinda done with the ribbon/fiber/etc. decorated spines, so I'm trying to think of other ways to bind it. But that's off-topic.

I'm going smaller! Wish me luck! :D

Don't Seek, And Ye Shall Find!

One of the things I desperately wanted to find before going to CKU was a good awl. My paper piercer is just getting too beat up, and the very tip of it broke off awhile ago, so I can't make really tiny holes anymore. And it's been bent a couple times, so it has a permanent crook to it.

I never did find one, and had to make do with what I had. Which turned out okay, but a good awl would definitely have helped in the Arctic Frog class. We learned Japanese stitch-binding techniques, and the first step is making a pattern of holes in the book. Not easy with a needle, like they provided, or a dull paper piercer. But, like I said, it worked out okay, and I managed to finish 3 out of 4 mini books. Here's a pic of what the finished product will look like, taken from their instruction book:

Neat, huh? I like the concept, and I may take it along to the crop this weekend to finish.

So, the point of my post, is that I got this month's kit from ScrapGoods yesterday, and guess what's in the box?! Yep. A paper piercer. And it's a good one, too! Made by Making Memories, it has a shorter tip, so I'm less likely to bend it. And when I was just looking for a link to it online, I discovered it has a compartment to hold needles in it! Bonus!

Winner!

The big excitement (for me) before going to CKU was designing the name tag for our dorm, the Croppin' Genies. We were trying to narrow down our theme, and I had a brainstorm while I was at work one day. So, I created a new doc in Word and mocked up this:

The next weekend, I made a prototype, and got very excited by the final result:

It was a hit with the other Genies, and Kelly and I spent most of a day at a scrapbooking retreat, putting together 10 pink-and-orange Wish-O-Matics:

The label that we handed out all weekend at CKU looks like this:

The whole idea turned out awesome and we got lots of compliments and notice while wearing them. It stuck out in people's minds, like I'd hoped it would, and it was a way to strike up conversations, too. (Although, I wasn't so good at that part. I think the other girls in our dorm did a much better job at granting the wishes.)

I was in a bit of shock when they announced the winner. I'm sure the whole room wondered why I wasn't freaking out like all the other girls. Thank goodness, Kelly went up, too! And it was a trip to see the tag up on the giant screens like that! I wish I'd had my camera out. :D

I'm Back!

I'm back and I feel like I never went. Weird.

The whole week was like stepping out of the real world and into CKU World. It was that much of an immersion experience, and I didn't really pin it down until now. I've been feeling weird about it since we got home Sunday night, but just chalked it up to over-stimulation. But it was more than that. For three days, I was surrounded by scrapbookers and pretty much no one else. We didn't leave the hotel once, after a quick deli sandwich pick-up on Thursday for lunch, but we even brought that back to eat in the room before going down for the demos and make-and-takes.

The whole experience was amazing, and I definitely recommend it to every die-hard scrapbooker out there. Especially if you're a product junkie like I am, and know your designers and company owners. Because even if you're not a scrapbook celebrity stalker, you'll still get a little thrill when they sign your notebook. :D

Over the next week or so, I'll be posting lots more about CKU. I'm going to break it up a bit, and post some photos of different things as I go. It's too overwhelming to try and tackle all in one post.

Meanwhile, CKU-Kansas City, here I come! - maybe ;)

Added later, because I forgot to say: Yes, I had a great time! :D