Michaels Classes Announcement

For those of you that don't know I am a Certified Scrapbooking Instructor for Michaels Stores. We have a TON of new, exciting classes and I can't wait to teach them! Just wanted to give a little preview of a SMALL portion of the Halloween Party class.


In the Halloween Party class we will create a banner, invitation, table decor and favor boxes as well as a layout to commemorate your party!

I hold classes Thursday and Friday evenings and can always work with you if you want to arrange a class for a private group! Here is the September Class Schedule with a brief class description (just click to make it bigger):


I'm hoping to add a calender to my blog soon that will have all of my classes listed on it!

To sign up for any of these fun classes just head over to the Michaels in New Lenox to register! I hope to see you there! Oh, and CROP NIGHT is only $5!

Fun With Summer Days!

I just wanted to share a few things that I have made with the awesome Echo Park Paper Summer Days line! This line is sooooo cute and has such fun colors, it really feels like summer!


I have been using the amazing Scrapbook Generation Sketchbooks a lot lately and I really like how my pages turn out! The sketch for this one isn't my typical style AND I decided on a WHITE background... how strange, even for me! But I LOVE the finished layout and am so glad I decided to go outside of my comfort zone a bit. So where can you get these AMAZING sketch books as well as all of the NEWEST papers??? So glad you asked! You can buy them from my new on-line store, Pink Whimsy! That's right just click HERE and it will take you right to the page to begin shopping. Or click any of the hyperlinks I have listed with the product info!


I made this quick card with the Once Upon A Time Cricut cartridge and my beautiful Summer Days papers. It came together really quick and I used an Action Wobble to make my cone Wiggle Jiggle! They are so much fun to play with! I thought this would be a fun Birthday or even Just Because card!

In celebration of my new business I am giving away some fun goodies from my CHA stash! Make sure you are following my blog and leave a comment on this post to be entered to win a fun prize! Want to double your chances of winning? Check out yesterday's blog post too! Keep checking back because I have lots to giveaway and lots to share with you too!!!

Echo Park and Ecstasy Crafts Card

Welcome to another edition of Tutorial Tuesday for the Cutters Creek Design Team blog! Today I decided to play with a few of my favorite products: Echo Park Paper, Ecstasy Crafts Kits and Flower Soft!


I assembled this adorable little penguin image from the Christmas Penguins and Hedgehogs Set from Ecstasy Crafts. I love the adorable characters on this sheet! It only took me a couple of minutes to layer this little penguin with the Joy! Foam Pads. Then I grabbed my Flower Soft Glue (after a short hunt all over my desk for it) and my Polar White Flower Soft and added it to the white parts of his hat to make it extra fuzzy!


For the card I used the Echo Park Paper Winter Wonderland set. Cutters Creek is currently sold out of that line BUT the new Holly Jolly kit will be in stock soon and it's another GORGEOUS kit! I just used the "Merry Christmas" words from one of the border sheets and added a little of the peppermint paper and of course inked my edges in black to make it pop and in just a few minutes I have another Christmas card finished and ready to send in just a few short months!

If you are a follower of my blog, leave me a comment and you will be entered to win a fun prize from my CHA goodie bag!

The winner of my Westcott Scissors giveaway was.... Lucky #13 - CATHY!!!! I'll be emailing you shortly... congrats!

Confessions of a Paper Ho - Part 3

I still can't get over how FAST the days fly by at CHA! Did I mention that we were also in the middle of some record setting HEAT days? Yeah, glad the convention was indoors! So here's some more of the fun we had:


Here's me doing a Make and Take and the We Are Memory Keepers booth. It was a really cute Halloween treat bag! The super nice person working the booth also gave us each one of the new adorable Heart Shaped Ink Pads in SILVER!


I really loved the October Afternoon booth! The fun saloon set up was just ADORABLE and all for their new lines are YUMMY!


Outside the Provo Craft meet and greet for Bloggers I ran into Jess from Kinderstampo! She is just as sweet in real life as she seems on-line! She was one of the instructors for the McGill Punch classes and check out these SHOES...


Yeah, these shoes are covered in PAPER!!!! Yeah, I was pretty amazed too!!!


I just had to share this super-fancy bathroom on the upper floor of the convention center! The one downstairs is tiny, dark and cramped...


We were also lucky enough to score tickets to the CHA Diva's event! Free food and music with a Diva twist... the band was not super but we made up for that with a LOT of laughter! Above is the crew from the Westcott Brand booth, they were behind us in line at the photo booth. I need to get the copy of our crazy Cutters Creek photo scanned in soon!


While waiting to pick up our photos we had a bit of fun on our own... here's Kim, lighting up the room with her... smile :)


Here's Laura and her awesome candle... that's right, she STOLE the centerpiece from our table, shh! Just kidding, she WON the center piece and got to take home her very own Brittany Spears candle! I bet it has a place of honor on her mantle...


Lori and I are just a crazy duo and by this time had like 20 new inside jokes... we we created #21 when I said "Ready, Set.... Do something STUPID" which lead to 3 tries to get this pic... LOL!


Yep, this is me the Party Animal! Occasionally I do get out from behind the camera...


After the Diva Event, Lori and I headed back to our room to pack. Here is a look at our prize winning Minute To Craft it Creations! Lori won a TON of Plaid Fabric Paints and Jewelry components for her Shrine and I won a Spellbinders Presto Punch and 3 Sets of Dies for my Multi-Media Canvas! Not to shabby for a 10 minute, no preparation craft project!!!


So we packed up our goodies... and yes, these tote backs are all full of the SWAG we scored... seriously!

Of course I was sooooo busy having a BALL in Nana Campana's Bind It All class that I totally FORGOT to take pictures!!!! Let me tell you she is an AMAZING instructor and I was LUCKY to be in 2 of her classes!!!! The Bind it All one and the Echo Park Papers class! I made two GORGEOUS mini-albums which I will share another day...


After our first amazing class we headed over for a Meet and Greet with Sarah from the Pink Cricut blog and Jess from the Kinderstampo blog!


So the final day of the show is also the shortest! And it seriously flew by with all we had left to do and see. We got to do a Make and Take at Graphic 45's Booth... a CHA First for them! I made a spectacular metal flower and I LOVE it! It will be gracing a project very soon!


And Noon we had a Fiskateer Meet Up at the CHA Consumer Supershow. The Fiskateer Leads were all there and shared limited edition punches and goodies for all of us (thanks again!)


A very nice bartender took this lovely group shot for us! It's always fun to meet other like minded people :)


After helping a few friends disassemble their booth we headed out for the Split Coast Stampers event! We got to meet even MORE wonderful people and make some new friends too!

All in all, another amazing CHA experience!!! Now, since you've managed to read this far I would like to give away some GOODIES!!!! Hmm... I'm thinking some Westcott Brand Scissors... so if you want 'em just make sure you are a blog follower and leave me a comment! I will give you an extra entry if you share it on your Facebook or Twitter page too (make sure to leave the linky to that post in your second comment)! In addition, if you subscribe to my blog (there's a box on the top right side column) and leave me a comment letting me know you did you will get a THIRD entry! So that's up to THREE comments per person. *edited* I will close the contest on Tuesday night at 11:59pm! Apparently blogger was having issues this weekend so I'm leaving open an extra two day :)

Confessions of a Paper Ho - Part 2

So I couldn't wait to show off the awesome T-Shirt I created using the blinkies that Echo Park had created for a Facebook contest. The contest was to use on of the blinkies as our Facebook Profile photo and then they would randomly give away paper if they spotted you posting on Facebook. Well, I took it to a whole new level buy grabbing some iron-on transfer paper and one of my hubby's white T-Shirts and creating my own shirt!


Now, I've been a fan of Echo Park since the very beginning and I started a tradition of getting my picture taken with Madison at each of the shows... All of the guys LOVED my fun shirt idea! Living up to my Paper Ho name they gave me the new Happy Days line as a thank you! Seriously, Echo Park is the BEST!!!!


Next we had to head by the ProvoCraft booth to score some free magazines and were asked to stay for one of the Classes! Jinger was our fabulous teacher and we got to play with the E2 machines. The project was SUPER cute... but it was about 20 worth of LUMBER! Seriously!!! When I get them assembled I will post them. I was REALLY grateful for my rolling suitcase at that point!


We also ran into Nikki Sivils in our Day One wanderings. And I just had to snap a photo of her for my friends Tessa and Natalie! Nikki is a sweetie!


Then I had to take a brief brake from my schmoozing to take a Copic class. It was basically an informational class but I did learn some good things! I *wish* that we could have taken home the markers with us, LOL! But I'm glad we got to play with them a bit!


After class we wandered some more and stopped by the Globecraft Memories booth! I had to visit the sample that I had created for them! Yep, I wanted to get in the whole wall so I will do a separate post to show off my project but it's the middle one on the bottom row...


Here's a look at a truly showstopping booth, the Graphic 45 Booth. I could spend hours in there looking at all of the gorgeous projects that they put together for the show!!!

Lori and I also got to take the Tube-A-Licious class from SRM Stickers. There were 200 people in our class and space was TIGHT but we created some really fun decorations! I will be sharing those in a post very soon!!!

Check back tomorrow for more fun from the CHA Show and possible a giveaway announcement!

Confessions of a Paper Ho - Part 1

Hey everyone! Yes, I'm back from CHA and finally have a day to kind of get caught up!!! My seasonal job is winding down so I will soon be home a LOT more! But, I will still be super busy... I'm not only teaching scrapbook classes at the Michaels in New Lenox, IL but I am also starting on the ground floor with an awesome new Direct Sales company, Pink Whimsy. If you are interested in becoming a consultant, please send me an e-mail! I will do a longer post about Pink Whimsy soon...

So I wanted to share some of my CHA experience with all of you! So this post will be VERY photo heavy... but I used my iPhone camera, so the pics aren't huge files and I will also apologize that some are a bit fuzzy or dark but it's hard to lug a huge camera with all my goodies, LOL!


Where to start? How about the beginning! The show officially started on Tuesday July 19th but the Monday before is full of classes and workshops that you can sign up for. Many of the workshops are given by manufacturers to introduce and teach you about new products. There are also classes and workshops during the show as well but if you take those you are also taking away from time you can spend on the show floor scouting new products.


My very first CHA class was the StampingScrapping workshop. We made two beautiful cards as well as a rosette to wear on the show floor. If you were spotted wearing it, you would win a set of stamps! And we got to KEEP the amazing EXCLUSIVE stamp set!


I was lucky enough to get to take this class with Kim from Cutters Creek! We had a ball together in this great class! The above photo is Kim hard at work, while I'm goofing around snapping photos, LOL!


We decided after our morning class to actually eat a decent lunch so we walked across the street to the Hilton and had some AMAZING food! I'm not normally one who photographs food but I felt this delicious ham and cheese sandwich and French onion soup were a work of art!


After lunch I decided to wait-list for a class. My fellow design team member, Laura and I were disappointed that we didn't get into our first choice class, and decided to give the Asian Knot Tying class a try. This is my "good" knot, LOL! Had they had a dozen teachers this class probably would have gone a bit more smoothly. Let's just say it was a semi-fiasco but I did learn a little something....


After class, Lori and I (my roommate, neighbor, fellow DT member and best scrappy buddy) meandered on over to the Hyatt to meet up with a friend. On our L O N G walk through the tunnels we spotted a window over looking the show floor!


You can see many of the companies setting up their booths! It's amazing how fast they can set up and tear down the booths.


Did you know about 5 minutes after the closing announcement for CHA the Convention center starts tearing up the carpets to get ready for the next event? It is chaos, but kind of fun when you are on the sidelines!


Anyhow, after our little adventure we headed back to the Convention Center for "The Taste of Rosemont". This was a fun event that had free food samplings from many of the local restaurants as well as an open bar! The only bad thing is the event started at 4:30 and most of the food was gone by 5! Happily, Lori and I got there right on time and were able to taste many wonderful dishes... including several little chunks of cheesecake... Mmmmm..... Anyway, we had a fun evening and the next day was OPENING DAY!


We decided to hop on the 8am shuttle from our hotel to get over to the Convention Center area and avoid traffic. Well, that took all of 10 minutes to get there and the show opened at 10 so we had a bit of a wait... but it turns out that we did the smart thing... we hung out at the front and started the "line".... (BTW, did you notice my shirt... more on that in tomorrow's post...)


So we laughed, talked, played on Facebook and took lots and lots of photos of the growing mob in the lobby! We were also quickly joined by our good friend Betsy who took this lovely photo for us...


Well all watched excitedly while people from all of our favorite scrapbook companies streamed through the growing mob and into the show.


Westcott Brand even came out into the lobby handing out tote bags. Some of them even had a fabulous new pair of scissors in them! I was lucky enough to snag a pair of these pretty purple shears!


As it grew closer to 10 they set up this ribbon. Then one of the people asked, "So who's been waiting here the longest?" to which I shouted "US!" and then they invited the Lori, Betsy and I to help cut the ribbon!!!! WHAT?!?!?!



How stinking cool, we all got a hand on those giant scissors and took off for the show floor! First stop... Echo Park Paper's booth...