My Memory Makers Masters page entry

Well ... I guess I can post this now. It's the actual page I sent to Memory Makers Magazine for their annual design team contest. The theme was "I wish" I wished for more time.

Congrats to Scrappy Nan!

My pal Scrappy Nan has been chosen to be a Design Team member for The Red Bee scrapbook and crafts store in Tustin, CA. A big congratulatory hug for her as she embarks on her first (not including Zutter Zisters, of course!) DT tenure! I can't wait to see what she creates for them! To find out more, log on to her blog (listed in my favorite links) or Red Bee head design team member Donna Salazar's blog!

Currently in the Midwest ...

and loving it! The slower pace really lets me relax and recharge! While it is a bit hot and humid, air conditioning makes any place bearable! And the evenings are just gorgeous! But one thing about Pittsfield, IL, if you don't like the weather, just wait three days - it will change!

This photo is me of me on my Aunt Brenda's new pig bench in her backyard. She has a thing for pigs, so as a thank you for letting the entire family (and it's a big family) crash her swimming pool this summer, they got her this pig bench she has had her eye on!

As for scrappy news, I am touring four of the Midwest's scrapbook stores, teaching Bind-it-All classes ... it's been a lot of fun! Check out the details on the Zutter Zister blog: www.zutterzisters.blogspot.com!

And my CKU secret sister just keeps giving ....

This arrived a few weeks ago, but I couldn't find the photo! I finally found it, so now I can blog about it ... my CKU Anaheim Secret Sister, Joyce, had said she had one more SS gift to give me, but that it did not arrive in time for CKU. She was more than generous both before and during CKU, so I completely forgot about the last gift she had mentioned until she asked for my mailing address a few weeks after CKU. This framed cross-stitched boxer puppy arrive a few days later. Terribly thoughtful, as I LOVE boxers - I have three LIVE ones and have owned the breed for more than 10 years. So, again, a BIG thanks to my SS and her incredible thoughtfulness!

C2R August was much more productive than C2R April!

I got 24 layouts done this time - compared with 2 last time! I think Nan, Naomi and I finally have the crop thing down now and could relax a bit more! We had yet another great group of gals, one as far away as Colorado. The photo above is my layout for the Layout Challenge Contest. Each cropper was given a 12 x 12 sheet of quilt-looking paper, three mini file folders, a charm and a length of ribbon to create a page with. We could only use three items from our stash, but any tools we wanted. To see more of the layouts, visit www.crops2remember.com!

www.Kits2Remember.com

BIG sigh ... and then a shout of glee! Ah, yes, it has launched! Kits2Remember.com is now live and I invite you to cruise around. Considering I was laid off from my "real" job about three weeks ago, this is what I have been doing for work, among other scrappy things. I am also heading to the midwest to not only attend Rodney's cousin's wedding, but to also visit three LSS in the area and spread the Bind-it-All knowledge around the country!

New magazine launched!

I had the pleasure of attending the launch party for CK Media's newest magazine: Homegrown Hospitality! A lot of crafts are featured within its pages, including paper crafts, work with felt, wood, all sorts of things. But the best part is that it is featuring the work of a very talented local, Stephanie Ackerman! Stephanie recently got married, but she has been in the scrap world for quite some time, designing for Me & My BIG Ideas, as well as having a seat on the design team for Timeless Treasures in Rancho Santa Margarita. Timeless hosted the launch party yesterday, where Stephanie was quick to sign autographs and was incredibly patient through all the picture taking and chat. Stephanie also gave away a lot of the projects featured in the premier issue of Homegrown Hospitality and I was fortunate enough to get two of her cards: A Baby card and a Thank You card. After flipping through the magazine and seeing how many projects were in there, I can understand the amount of hard work that went in to the issue. Thanks to my newspaper experience, and the organization that needs to go into big "events," I can appreciate everything Stephanie has done and she deserves a huge round of applause!

Fun at the Red Bee!

Nan and I Zuttered at a 24-hour crop at The Red Bee in Tustin, showing the croppers and walk-in shoppers how to make a 3x4-inch mini book with the Bind-it-All. The rest of the time we cropped our kids' pages, met some lovely ladies and participated in the contests.

There was also a very cool contest - a page swap where you gather up the items and photos you are using for a layout and then it is given to someone else. They create your page with your stuff and anything they want to add. I was so excited when I won! I had scrap celebrity Donna Salazar's stuff, so the pressure was on! But she made it easy by giving me some great stuff to work with. The picture above shows Donna holding the page I made for her, and me holding the page she made for me! Check her out at her blog, A Painterlady's View: www.donnasalazar.typepad.com! I've also added to the list of my favorite sites!

Nan's birthday was the Thursday before (she is 29, again) so I brought cupcakes and everyone sang happy birthday to her. Nan took top honors in a page contest using paint ... check out her blog, too!

My favorite projects right now

My two favorite projects I have recently created are a CD mini album that I made from a metal AOL CD holder and CDs that I painted with red cryclic paint and a butterfly minibook featuring my new nephew, Brandon. The covers are picture above, but to see more of each project, visit the Zutter Zisters site and click on the Inspiration Station page!

My Scrap Room!

Jeez ... Has it really been a whole month since I blogged here?! Wow! Well, here is one of the things I have been busy with - my scrap room! My hubby and Nan's hubby built me a scrap room in my garage in January and I have finally "made it my own"! It's 8 x 8 x 8 feet, roughly, and FULL of scrap stuff. I managed to neaten it up for these pictures, but it is already a mess again!

I created a Heidi Swapp clock with Basic Grey's new Infuse line, organize my stuff in baskets and containers I got for half off at JoAnn's and hung up my favorite layouts (that, in some way, both matched and covered up my Pea Green wall that was supposed to be a dark sage green - don't pick a color while you are STILL in Home Depot! The lighting sucks!)

It's starting to feel like home now!

Check out my CKU-Anaheim Slide Show!

Four days of scrappin' fun! In a nutshell: The bus tour was a huge success! 108 ladies on two buses toured five Orange County stores, shopping at each one, having a lot of fun! We encouraged the bus tour passengers to create cards to be donated to the Children's Hospital of Orange County so parents, doctors and hospital staff members have cards on hand to give to their young patients at a moment's notice.

I was honored to have had two of my cards chosen by two stores for recognition - and scrap prizes! for my greeting card designs.

Not only that, but the Bus Tour passengers and Lake Forest-based scrapbook manufacturer me & my BIG ideas (MAMBI)teamed up and donated roughly $5,000 to CHOC. MAMBI prepared kits of scrap supplies valued at $75 and bus passengers gave a $25 donation to CHOC for each one. MAMBI then matched the bus tour's donation! A HUGE thanks to everyone who took part!

At CKU, I took some great classes and learned a lot of time-saving and product use tips. The projects were wonderful and I was lucky enough to win some great prizes! Nan and I were recognized for our Sponsor-themed poster ... scrap celeb Ali Edwards said it was the best one she had ever seen. Wow!!!!

Now, gotta get some sleep before I start thinking about 2009!

Uh, how could I not blog about THIS!?

I just realized that I did not blog about the Crops2Remember crop I hosted with fellow scrappers Nan and Naomi! Gee, what an oversight! I am excited to say that it was a complete success and everyone appeared to have a great time! I did not get as much cropped as I would have liked, but I did manage to organize my PLETHORA of ribbon and I enjoyed two half-hour massages (thanks Melissa - you'll be there next time, right?!). We are hosting another C2R crop in August, in fact, and will grow from 24 croppers to 32! Want to see more pictures? Take a look at the web site: www.crops2remember.com!

I got my scissors!

After a much long-awaited, um, wait, Fiskateer #743 finally got her official scissors! Apparently, there was a small group of us that got skipped over in the initial countdown, er, countup, for the scissors, so some of the quadruple-digit Fiskateers got theirs before the rest of us triple-digit gals. You might be wondering what's so special about these scissors ... well, they are Fiskar's gift to their crafter fan club and are engraved, with each Fiskateer's number. Mine say "Fiskateer #743." I now have them to show off, just in time for CKU!

My CKU SS is AWESOME!

She not only sent ME a bunch of scrappy stuff, she sent birthday gifts to each of the boys! And they love their cars and train! If you happen to read this, thanks SS! Can't wait to meet you next month!

MAMBI sale!

OK, seriously, anyone who was anyone in the South Orange County scrap world was at the MAMBI sale last weekend ... National Scrapbook Day weekend! After chatting about it with MAMBI owner Stephanie Rahmatulla the weekend before at Crops2Remember (www.crops2remember.com) I knew I had to go and check out the great deals - or were they steals?! I ran in to fellow C2R croppers Krystal Tran (who took the picture of me) and Christal Parker (who I took the picture of!), as well as long time crop buddy Cheryl Bartezko .. and I was only there for about 45 minutes! The gal who checked me out was well-prepared for the crowd of ladies winding their way through the boxes of scrap stuff ... she had worked for Mrs. Grossman's stickers for several years and had been through plenty of warehouse sales full of crazy croppers! The staff did seem well prepared and the check out was fast and easy. If they had only had a few more carts for everyone to roll their overfilled boxes around on!

So, who else went? I know there were a lot of us! Hope it was a success, Steph!

MAMBI on My Mind

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Me & My Big Ideas founder Stephanie Rahmatullah. An OC native like me, Stephanie was sweet, down-to-Earth, and a lot of fun! Scrappy Nan and I were there to talk with her about our upcoming Crops2Remember event and she took the time to show us around the offices and warehouse. I felt like a kid in a candy store as I walked down the long 2nd floor hallway, past the designers' creative dens, to her office. Steph's assistant was warm, welcoming and friendly as she led us to Stephanie's office ... the poor gal probably found it amusing (I hope not rude!)that I couldn't string a coherent group of words together to form a sentence, much less carry on a conversation! I was too busy staring at all the great MAMBI product that lined the walls of the hall! Knowing how visual designers are, MAMBI has peg boards filled with product, representing what different stores have on their shelves and ranking products by how well they sell. Being both a scrapbooker and a marketer by trade, I was in heaven! Thanks, Stephanie, for an office tour to remember!

My favorite album right now

Even though it's nowhere near being finished, this "Daddy & Me" viewbook album is my favorite at the moment. I can't wait to fill it little by little with black and white images of Xan and his Daddy. The cover is clear acrylic with painted edges. I found scalloped 6 x 6 (or at least it was 6 x 6 until it was cut in scallops) Bazzill cardstock at the Freckle Friends booth at the Pomona Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo a couple weekends ago. Keep an eye on their site: www.frecklefriends.com. I have a feeling that they are going to be very popular vary soon. And the fun part is that Freckle Friends' home office is only a matter of blacks from my house! DANGEROUSLY close! Then I used some of the new EK Success epoxy stickers that were introduced at Winter CHA and Creative Imaginations Film Strips to embellish. And, of course, RIBBON!

For more fun mini book and Bind-it-All ideas, visit www.zutterzisters.com!

Canvas Creations

Angels Scrapbook Garden has canvas now, so I made an April class sample (guthrie) and two store samples (Baby Boy Xan and vacation), so people can see some of the simple possibilities with them. I love canvas and wish I had the chance to play with it more often! Have you seen the triangle and hexagon canvases Canvas Concepts has now? Simply Scrapbooks in Cerritos had them. I really want to do a honeycomb-like wall decor item for my living room! I just need a couple hundred dollars for the number of canvases I want to use!

Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo

This Pomona, CA, Expo was much smaller than the Scrapbook Expos I am used to in Orange County and San Diego, but I still had FUN! My fellow Zutter Zister, Nan, and I were there, hosting Bind-it-All and DreamKuts make and takes for Scrappin' Good Times in San Dimas. Owner Trish, her family and staff are great gals, and we are so glad they invited us to join them. As always, the Zutter machines were incredibly popular and we received a number of compliments about our make and take mini book project.

I met three gals who are going to be on the CKU Anaheim Bus Tour with me, Jennifer, Angie and Stephanie. They all seemed like FUN gals, so I hope they're on my bus (there will be two).

I stopped by the Freckle Friends booth and it turns out that they are local gals, too! In fact, Debbie lives about a half-mile from me and her kids got to the school my Mom works at! It's an amazingly small scrap world! Freckle Friends are the ones with the new Michelle Hill lines ... I have a feeling that you'll want to keep an eye on them!

I also met the Morissets, the owners of the organization tool company, Block Box, who are based right here in Mission Viejo, also. It's always fun to meet local manufacturers! I bought two of their portable SafeStore organizers ... I hope they solve my embellishment problem I have at crops! I'm always digging around and it takes me forever to find something!

What Happens When Daddy is in Charge of Haircuts ...

Yes, there is some hair left, about a 1/2 inch of hair. My Dad now calls him Baldy. I think this will end up on a scrapbook page next to a police chalk outline embellishment.