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.

A New Decor Item for the Bathroom

Seriously ... I had an empty wall in the kids/guest bathroom and needed something cool. Aussie scrap designer Rebekka Erickson (www.rebekkaerickson.com.au) had been kind enough to give Nan and I some of her product to use for Bind-it-All samples, so I took some of it and made this. Rodney even likes it, so I know it's a hit with the family! What do you think? I got the cork board on clearance for $2.50 at JoAnns months ago and couldn't decide what to do with it. I knew I'd use it for something! Gotta love those clearance sales!

Zutter Zisters has officially launched!

The Orange County Scrapbook Expo at the fairgrounds in Costa Mesa was Zutter Zisters' first event and our booth was one of the busiest! Here Nan and I are manning the booth's make and take, where croppers could learn how to use the Bind-it-All and DreamKuts. Wanna know more about these machines and what they can do? Click on my Zutter Zisters link!

CKU Anaheim Registration begins March 14!

They haven't listed the classes or album tracks yet, but if you want to be immersed in all things croppy in mid-June, check out the details on www.creatingkeepsakes.com. Click on the CKU link on the left. Plus, I'm helping to organize the unofficial shopping bus tour that happens the day before CKU starts. Need details? Log on to the Yahoo Group called CKU Anaheim 2005 and see what's being said. Don't forget to add your name to the bus tour Database list, too!

Scrapbook Dimension's First Issue Published

If you are interest in, or simply curious about, digital scrapbooking and mixing digital with traditional, check out the inaugural issue of Scrapbook Dimensions by visiting www.scrapbookdimensions.com and downloading the PDF. I've only had time time to flip through mine, but there was more than one thing that I bookmarked to read later!

Zutter Zisters

There are only two of these in the whole world and I painted them both. It only took 10 hours, but I'm hoping it will be worth it. Scrappy Nan and I are working to help market and demo the Bind-it-All and DreamKuts during it's launch into the scrapbook industry this spring. Zutter Zisters is one of the components (don't bother to go online quite yet, there's nothing on the web at that address yet, but there will be soon!) to help croppers get project ideas and supplies to use with their machines. Nan and I are INCREDIBLY excited about this new endeavor and are looking forward to sharing the benefits of these machines with others. Because first and foremost, these machines are FUN to use and open up so many new scrappy possibilities!

Crops2Remember has launched!!!!

I'm so excited! Learn all you need to know at www.crops2remember.com!

Inspiration struck and I made a mini mini-book

As I was demonstrating the DreamKuts at CHA, I found myself making smaller and smaller rectangles if paper, using the back slot feature of the tool. This slot allows you to cut any width paper between 2 and 12 inches exactly in half. As I showed the intrigued crowds around the booth, I fought back the urge to drop everything, scoop up the tiny 1 x 2 inch pieces and immediately bind them into a mini mini-book. Instead, I waited until today to create the tiny wire-bound book of my dreams. With the help of the Bind-it-all (and the Bind-it-all's wire-bound catalog that was included - I used part of the 1/2-inch wire that held it together since I don;t have that size wire yet)I created a wearable scrapbook I was proud to show off. And it wasn't just because my husband and three boys were the subject, either!

I was there and don't mess with my flair!

"You are here" ... Yes I was there! The sign says it all! And I was there with my flair! Nan may tease that I required her to wear flair, but as any good "Office Space" disciple knows, you can't just have the minimum amount of flair! You must express yourself! And I expressed myself right into a sore neck! But now I have a rewarding amount of flair decorating my new scrap studio - the perfect thing for the skinny wall!

Did I mention I went to CHA?

Yeah, I'm up at 1:30 a.m. even though I'm exhausted. I'm still wired from a very "scrappy" week at CHA. Here are some of my favorite booths that were there - aside from Zutter's of course!!! The Bind-it-All demo allowed me to meet some great people ... including Creating Keepsake's Scrapbooker of the Year, C.D. Muckosky. A delightful gal who brightened my day! I'm looking forward to seeing more of her work in the months to come! Also, editors and contributors from CK, Simple Scrapbooks, Scrapbooks Etc., the new Scrapbook Dimensions (for the hybrid digi and traditional scrapper), not to mention other reporters and columnists, stopped by to see what all the excitement was about. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of writing and blogging about Bind-it-All very soon!

And take a look at the new Cricut Expressions ... 12 x 24. Maybe I should have held out before buying one ... and dang it, ProvoCraft, make my little Cricut's USB port useful already! Sheesh ...

Bind-it-All Frenzy!

Behind behind the counter of the Bind-it-All booth allowed me the best view of the epitome of CHA - the excitement of new products, great deals and FREE stuff! The crowd never diminished for long and the line to order often wrapped back around the booth! It was so much fun to show people these tools and watch their faces light up with the possibilities the Bind-it-All and Dreamkuts would give them creatively. Demonstrating the tools also gave me a lot of practice with them and now I have a ton of ideas in my head that I just need to find the time to create!

Two Peas at Two Pea's Ice Cream Social

Fun stuff for us! We rolled in to the Two Peas reception at the Sheridan Hotel a few blocks from CHA central (aka Anaheim Convention Center) to check out our fellow Peas from www.twopeasinabucket.com. Nan seriously needed some cold ice cream for her sore throat - she had been demoing the new Zutter products all day and needed some relief! I'll be honest - I just wanted something sugary and sweet. We met fellow Pea Bran, aka dontdropthespiritstick on the Pea message boards. She's a mom to two cheerleaders, hence the "Bring It On" inspired handle. We stayed for the first drawing ... I was lucky number 13. It was lucky, but not quite lucky enough - because 113 was the big winner!

Bind-it-All is a hit!

No joke, Zutter Industries had the busiest booth at CHA on Sunday. Sure, there were bigger names with bigger crowds - but only when that booth had scheduled a drawing for some big prize. Zutter, who manufactures the first do-it-yourself wire binding tool, Bind-it-All, had continuous crowds around its booth simply because the tool is like nothing else on the market right now - and I had the pleasure of assisting the Zutter team with marketing tools and project samples. Zutter has also introduced new paper cutter, DreamKuts, that allows you to make perfectly matched minibook pages in a matter of seconds. Learn more at www.binditall.com.

People were gathered around the booth, ordering the two tools, binding wires and chipboard minibook starter kits, With every order, retailers would also get a baby pink robe with the Bind-it-All logo on it and a vintage valise-styled rolling suitcase.

For me, it's awesome to have three of my projects on the side of the Bind-it-All box. The red and blue box, vintage tag book and "Precious" envelope book are mine. And my scrappy friend Nan not only demoed the tools at CHA with me, but she also has two projects on the box (which they mislabled, by the way!) The marching band memory book and the Miami Dolphins fantasy football league journal are Nan's designs. Not bad considering we hadn't ever seen, much less touched, the machines when we made them! We just knew the machines' capabilities and created projects for the instructional DVD that is packaged with each machine. You may have seen it - it was playing at Angel's Scrapbook Garden in Mission Viejo and at the CHA booth. And that instructional DVD holds a special place in my heart ... I coordinated the production of it. Anyone need a video made? Have you people call my people ... ha!

2nd Day of CHA!

Can I just say I had WAY too much fun? For most of the morning I was frantically demonstrating the new Bind-it-All and Dreamkuts machines at the Zutter Industries booth (see next post) but when I stole away for lunch I saw some great things! ProvoCraft is coming out with a 12 x 24 inch Cricut Expressions - they just didn't say when. Still no news on the USB port and compatibility with PCs (bummer) but I am still waiting - and none too patiently! Plus, they were celebrating tbe 10th anniversary of the Coluzzle system, with the founding husband and wife team present and handing out free balloon template packages, complete with foamy mat and knife.

I did a couple of make and takes, one of which from Prima flowers. Nothing too exciting (use a Crop-A-dile to add brads to the flower petals and Prima is now coming out with HUGE brads)but I can see why stores buy up Prima like crazy. the sale reason croppers buy it up - the cute packaging. Only at the show, I saw the entire lines all together. It reminded me of when I collected My Little Ponies (the originals! Not these new-fangled things with glitter and jewels) because I wanted one in every color!

Deja Views had a cute make and take, a mini book with either a girl or boy theme. One sheet of 12 x 12 had all of the pieces you needed to complete it, with the exception of ribbon and brads.

Then I had CLASS. As anyone who knows me knows, I have been to many scrapping classes in many places and this one was the best one I have ever been to. EVER. Suzy West, a designer from Canvas Concepts taught a Scrapbooking on the Wall class, a calendar canvas you can change the month out of. Not only was she knowledgeable and enthusiastic, but she had some great, clever and practical ideas that I can;t wait to share in my classes. Plus, both she and her company were very generous, giving us plenty of materials for the class, but also allowing us to keep the adhesive itself. I know this sounds like a small thing, but everywhere we went, instructors were hoarding the adhesive, even of there was a tape runner with very little tape left on it! Plus, she took everyone's email address and promised to send out a PDF of the entire 2007 calendar that were the right dimensions for the canvas. Definitely above and beyond teaching a simple class! You may be familiar with Suzy's books, appropriately named "Scrapbooking on the Wall" and "SOTW 2." Well, she's got a new one, Scrapbooking on the Table, and it has some great ideas. The reason I know this, is because she gave a book away to everyone in the class - she even autographed it if you wanted her to (which I did!). And to top it all off, they were the only class I've been to in a long time that had raffle prizes. I think five different people one sets of different sized canvas. While I didn't win the raffle, I did end up getting a set of 4 x 4 canvases for calling out their booth number. Now I just have to figure out what to do with them ...

First day of CHA

While the first day of the annual Craft and Hobby Association show is officially tomorrow, there was plenty to see and do today! I took two classes, one sponsored by EK Success and another sponsored by C and T Publishing, or Create and Treasure Publishing.

EK Success had four projects planned for the two-hour class. I think was the only one to finish all four projects, but I'm a fast scrapbooker anyway. The theme was "Mom, Dad and Grad" and featured a tag book, altered frame, decorated journal and a scrapbook page. The projects were interesting, and simple once you broke them down into different skills or tasks. The new items EK featured were ribbon, 3D stickers, great new lines of coordinating papers for both boys and girls and epoxy sticker words, which I loved. I asked if EK was going to have alphabet epoxy stickers because I'd be buying those suckers up. The answer from one of the staff member was incredibly insightful: No, no epoxy alphabets. Apparently this subject was brought up before and the powers that be who choose the products (these would be non-scrapbooking men) don't listen to scrapbookers' suggestions. Apparently, the only scrapbookers in the company are the designer/teachers who go come up with the projects we all see and teach them at conventions around the country. I wonder how long EK expects to maintain their marketshare in the industry if that is in fact the case...

My second class was sponsored by C and T Publishing, which I had never heard of before. They publish books, magazines and other catalogs, as well as manufacture some great chipboard books, such as the one we made the tag book out of. Artist Lea Cioci taught the class and pitched her new book C and T published(It would have been nice to get a copy of it in class). The tag book has some great techniques involved with it using Ranger ink, Gildenglitz, texture sponge and double-sided sheets of adhesive by Grafix, among others.

Both classes were a little more than classes, say, at Expo, but at $25 each, they were also a step above any other classes I've taken, especially the one from C and T. I left with great product knowledge and even learned some fresh new techniques I can use in my class projects.

Since I am also helping out Zutter Industries with their introduction of the Bind-it-All and Dreamkutz (www.binditall.com), I was able to walk around the exhibitor hall early. There were definitely some companies that were better prepared than others. Some of the booth that were already up and had a sense of calm to them were Xyron, Ellison (Sizzix), and Die Cuts with a View. There were definitely some major brands whose booths were clearly not close to being ready with staff running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I'm anxious to see how it all looks tomorrow!

Junkitz at Angelz

Thanks to CHA bringing the native New Jersey crew to SoCal, the Junkitz gang stopped by Angel's Scrapbook Garden for a sneak peak at some of their newest stuff! We also got some demos from Junitz owner Stacey Panassidi herself. There were some great ideas: Using acrylic paint as adhesive for transparencies, using chipboard to add dimension to mounted photos and so much more. They proudly showed off their newest lines they are debuting at CHA this weekend. And the sample projects were incredible. A very talented staff used product designed by the likes of Teresa Collins and Tim Holtz to make some great items. I especially enjoyed the metal Pirate album - my 4-year-old is into pirates and will probably want a pirate birthday party. This would be a great minibook for the party pics! Anyway, all of the projects were created by the Junkitz staff, but I'm sure they'll be scraplifted plenty! While there wasn't a make n take (bummer)or a goodie for everyone to go home with (double bummer), three of the 16 ladies present at Angel's free event went home with product valued at more than $50. First prize went to lovely Lisa, who rarely gets to win anything since she is always WORKING the events! So, congrats to her! I can't wait to see what she makes with all of her new stash of Junkitz stuff!

Wanna know more about Junkitz? Visit their ultra-hip Flash site, www.Junkitz.com.