Scrapping and Lunching at Lain's

Last December, Lain Ehmann  (the scrapbooking superhero organizer of Layout a Day (LOAD), True Scrap and so much more...) did a series of 12 "Deal-of-the Day" offers with special prices on many of her classes.  A portion of each sale went to support the Aasha Foundation, helping orphaned street girls in India to gain independence through education, friendship and love.  The girls received new sport shoes and you can see a lovely photo of some of them wearing their shoes on the Facebook page for the foundation HERE.

In addition to great deals on her classes, one of the items Lain offered was the chance to come to her house to make a project and have lunch.  Since she lives in Lexington and I live in Concord (neighboring towns), I thought this would be fun.  I was lucky enough to be able to get online and reserve one of the spots for the event in February which seemed very far away at the time.

When we arrived, the tables were set up with lots of scrappy goodness - and some goodie bags to take home.  The project we made was a chipboard mini album with a black, white, red and pink color scheme that was perfect for the day after Valentine's Day.

We used the insert pages for the six by six BoBunny chipboard albums and after choosing our papers and covering the pages we all set about embellishing our books.  It is always fun to see how a group of people given the same items to use for a project will come up with very different end results.

We each had a small tin tagged "the little stuff" that was full of the tiny treasures to use to embellish our books.  Lain made these from Altoid mint tins.  I wondered how long it took to save up the tins and she said they had been given to her by a friend who knew she was "crafty" - do your friends do this too?  I have bags of odds and ends that people have saved for me and I need to repurpose them or pass them along soon!

These tins are fun to decorate - especially if you use some washi tape to cover the sides.  The tape is the right width, simple to adhere and easily movable if you get it crooked on the first try.  (For more ideas and tips on using washi tape you can check out Monica Bradford's webinar HERE).

As we used various items we could mark them on our "bingo" cards with M and M's.  I got the first bingo (lucky for me one of the categories was "whoops" and I forgot to punch the holes in the paper on the second page I covered for the album.  I fixed my mistake by using another uncovered page as a guide for the hole punch).

Here you can see parts of my album - I wanted to add a few things to finish it up at home so I'll post the final version once I complete it.  I used Scor-Tape to adhere the paper to the chipboard  and had a lot of fun adding labels, twine, borders, flowers and bling as I went along.

In no time time at all, we had the table cluttered with creativity!

The time went quickly and soon we were enjoying our lunches.  There were all sorts of salads and sandwich options and I tried quite a few!  Isn't the red and white placemat pretty?  It gave me an idea for another project...

I brought along a little treat for each of my fellow scrappers.  These favor bags are one of my "go-to" token gifts and you can find the directions and see some other versions by clicking on the photos below to go to some older posts.

Sometimes I design a fancy edge to cut with the Cricut or Cameo but lately I have been using my Martha Stewart border punches for these treat bags (I have to justify having so many on the shelf!).

Lain's birthday is coming up on Monday so I made her a little extra something.  This mini album holds wallet size photos or credit cards.  I personalized it with vinyl.  I took a screen shot of her signature from her blog and traced it in the Silhouette software

The image was small and my screen shot had low resolution but I was able to get a good trace with a little extra work in the software - I'll give more details about how I did this in another post...

Lain liked the little book but little did she know the best was yet to come (!).  If you have taken any of her classes you might know that she has a "thing" about Hugh Jackman, so I thought it only fitting to fill the book with photos of him for her.

When she saw the photos, her reaction was priceless and after she composed herself she posed with a few of the pages.  I told her she could add her own photos or cards but I think she is going to keep the "Hugh collection" for now.

These adorable mini cupcakes were our desserts - each one more tempting than the next...

...of course, I went for the chocolate topped with chocolate!

I brought along some extra Hugh photos for anyone else who wanted one and also designed and cut some heart medallions for everyone.

I have lots and lots of leftover hearts after cutting out a dozen medallions - watch for them to appear in other projects!  I cut the medallions with my Cameo and the cuts lifted from the mat beautifully (yes that is a Cricut mat - I use them in the Cameo interchangeably with the Cameo mats).

I used a sticker journal block to provide a spot for Lain to sign the back of my album...

and we posed for a photo together that I will use for the album.

We all had a great time and I think Hugh would approve...

We had a very early morning wake up on Saturday to take our younger son and his girlfriend to the airport - they will be visiting our older son and his wife in California for the vacation week.  They left just in time as more snow is coming...it is still winter after all.  I ended up napping for a good part of the day so I didn't finish this post until late.

I hope you are having a nice weekend - my big plan for the rest of the day is watching the last episode of season three of Downton Abbey tonight - are you a fan?

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Sneak peeks from a Special Event...

Happy Saturday!  This is the beginning of the President's Day vacation week in our part of the country.  If you are taking a trip I hope you have a great time.

Here's a little peek at what I was up to yesterday...

These are some of the bits and pieces I used while I was crafting and lunching at a special event on Friday.

I'll have much more to share about this later today.  I went from one event to another, got home late and had to get some sleep before an early morning airport run...


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Happy Valentine's Day!

It's Valentine's Day already!  February is zipping by and spring will be here before we know it.   I hope you will be able to be with your valentine today.

Our snow is melting - it's amazing to see how the nearly three feet of fluffy snow compacts down to about a foot of dense snow.  We did have some rain which hurried the process along.  While I am still catching up from being away so much last month, I have been able to do a little bit of designing this week and last night I made this card for my valentine. 

Here is the inside with some extra hearts (the flip side of the hearts cut from the top frame on the front of the card).  I'll share more details about this card in another post since I am writing this late at night.  It was nice to finally get back in my craft room and make something!

If you enjoy stamping - or want to learn more about it - I want to remind you about the True Stamp event coming up on March 9th - just three weeks from Saturday.

Lain Ehmann, the scrapbooking superhero organizer of Layout a Day (LOAD) and True Scrap, is hosting this one day internet event.  True Stamp is a full day of six live classes taught by instructors from six sponsor companies - Paper Smooches, Technique Tuesday, Unity Stamp Company, Raisin Boat, Simon Says Stamp and Lawn Fawn.  You will have access to all of the classes after the event as well so you can watch them over and over again.  There was a special early sign up discount offer that was good until February 8th but some of you may have missed that deadline.  If you missed it, I have good news for you!

Lain is offering a Valentine's Day special.  You can use the discount code "SWEET" at checkout to receive a 50% discount.  That makes the price only $48.50 - about $8 per class.  Click on the True Stamp image above or click here to view more details.  This offer ends at midnight Pacific Time today, February 14th, so don't miss out on your second chance!

Here is one more look at my card.  I designed the circle of hearts and bows to cut with the Silhouette Cameo.  The words were welded and cut from the font "Script MT Bold" on my computer.

It is taking me longer than I hoped to get "back to normal" but I am making progress.  Most of the Christmas things are finally down but I do have to make a lot more trips to the attic to get everything put away. We may get some more snow but only an inch or two...   Are you celebrating Valentine's Day today or waiting for the weekend?

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Valentine's Week

Valentine's Day is just around the corner.  If you haven't made cards yet, today would be a good day to get them done.  I made this card a couple of years ago and it is still a favorite.  A Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page set and a Punch All Over the Page heart punch were used to make the design.  You can find detailed directions on how to make this card HERE.

Just a quick post today.  I think I am feeling the effects of the fresh air and shoveling so I had a lazy Sunday, took a nap and finished a book I started reading ages ago.  I hope that your weekend finished well.  Have you made your valentines already?

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Blizzard Pages

The storm was officially a blizzard.  Boston's final total was 24.9 inches, making this the fifth largest storm by amount of snowfall.  The record was 27.5 inches from February 17-18, 2003.  I remember that storm very well.  We were on vacation in Florida and my husband and older son were supposed to fly back home for work and rehearsal for the high school show.  They were "stuck" in Florida for a couple of extra days and didn't get back home until Thursday.

We had about 28 inches here in Concord (yes - that is all that shows of the full yardstick!)  There are places where the drifts are much taller.

 I did a few digital layouts about the snow.  Digital scrapping is fun because it is so immediate.  I took the photos, edited them and had layouts done just a few hours later.

 Here is the before and after looking at our house from the street.  The snow was light and powdery so it was easily handled by my husband with the snowblower.  I did the shoveling around the porch and front walk and the snow wasn't too heavy but you had to do five or six shovels full in each spot to get down to the ground!

If you don't live in a snowy place, you may not have seen this tool before.  It is a roof rake to get the snow off the edges of the roof so it won't melt and form ice dams.  There are sections that fit together to make it extend up to the second story and it is tricky to control.

 

Here is the view from the front porch on Friday before the snow...

...and after the storm was over on Saturday.

During the second round of snow clearing our little neighbors stopped by.  The banks of snow formed by the town plows along the side of the street seemed like mountains to them and they had a lot of fun climbing and sliding (and throwing snow!).

You can see how tiny they look as they walked back up the street with their mother - those banks of snow are tall!

Claire spent most of her time going up and down the snow piles.  She was so bundled up that I didn't get very many photos that showed her face.

Emma's favorite thing was throwing snowballs.  She was all smiles and laughed every time she managed to find a chunk of snow to throw (with remarkably good aim).

We were very fortunate and never lost power.  The areas closer to the ocean were hit much harder with flooding from the tides and power outages.  The ban on driving was finally lifted at 4 p.m. Saturday but we haven't gone anywhere yet.  No flights or public transit were expected to start until sometime on Sunday and it make take several days to get the "T" running again. 

I hope that all of you who were in the path of the storm are doing fine.  The predictions were very accurate and we had plenty of time to take precautions which made it much easier to weather the storm.  It will take a while for all of this snow to melt!

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