True Stamp Classes - Great Deal for June

Jelly says - try these classes!

Back in March, I participated in the first True Stamp event offered by Lain Ehmann.  This full day event included classes with experts from six stamp companies.  I was driving home from New Jersey for part of the day so I attended some of the sessions live and had to catch up with the other classes by watching the recordings.  I learned a lot of techniques and the videos and the discussions were very helpful.

These six classes are now available for individual purchase.  The regular price would be $12.95 per class but until the end of June, Lain is making them available for just $7 each.

Each class includes:

-Project video

-Hour-long "like you were there" video (including Q&A and chat)

-Supply list

-Project photos

 

You can click HERE to see all of the classes on a single page or click the individual images below for more information on each session.

Unity Stamp Co.

 Simon Says Stamp

 Paper Smooches

Technique Tuesday

 Raisin Boat

 Lawn Fawn

You can see all of the classes together on THIS PAGE.  Choose one or two or take them all for just $42 (that's $5 less than I paid to take the classes during the event).   You can watch the videos over and over to be sure you pick up all of the tricks and tips.

Thanks for the messages of support about the Creative Memories bankruptcy proceedings.  There was a major server issue and the CM sites were down last night but I believe that everything is up and running again.  Unfortunately, many items have sold out so be sure to decide if you need anything very soon - things are going very quickly.  If you don't have a local consultant, the link to my website is HERE.

The page at the top of this post is one of my Layout a Day (LOAD) pages from last month's challenge.  I used a template for four photos and changed very little, if anything, on the page.   Everyone loves a cute cat photo so I thought it would be a fun thing to post to get your attention to tell you about the sale!

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Creative Memories Bankruptcy Update

 

About a month ago, I wrote a post explaining what I could about the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings filed by Creative Memories (see that post HERE).  If you go to the home page of my website HERE and look near the bottom there is a link for "Restructuring News" (just below the blue line on the left side).

While the company has stated that it is "business as usual," things are changing.  The information that is available to consultants is delivered through various web pages, emails and Facebook posts and sometimes there are inconsistencies.  I will try to summarize the information that I have in order to help you decide on the best course of action for your needs.  Some of the plans of the company have not yet been approved by the Court so there may be changes in these plans.

Rewards Club

All Rewards Club members should have received an email notification of the winding down of the club.  No new members are being accepted.  The club will end on August 21, 2013 and Rewards Club credits will be issued and can be used until that date.  Membership fees will be pro-rated and refunded in the form of Rewards Club credits (must be used by August 21st).  This refund by credit will not happen until Court approval is received.

While Supplies Last for Traditional Products

All or nearly all of the current line of traditional products will be discontinued.  Many are already sold out.  If there are any tools, organizers or decorative products that you have been thinking about ordering, now is the time to order. It is possible that some of these items may become available again, perhaps in updated versions, but this is not certain.

Host Rewards

The Host Rewards Program will end as of June 30, 2013.  There is conflicting information on whether the rewards must be used by June 30th or August 21st.  If you have any Host Credits outstanding on your account I would recommend using them as soon as possible - while there are still products available.

Last Chance Order for Pages, Protectors and a variety of Album Coversets

If the plan is approved by the Court, there will be an opportunity in July to preorder an unlimited quantity of pages, protectors and selected albums and these will be manufactured to meet the demand,  More details about this Last Chance Order program and the specific products to be included will be made available "soon."  The proposed timing for this ordering is from July 8th to July 31, 2013.

Product Certificates, Product Credits, Content CD Coupon Codes

Product Certificates, Product Credits, Content CD Coupon Codes (and, possibly, Host Credits if they don't expire June 30th) will expire on August 21, 2013.  If you have any codes outstanding you should try to use them as soon as possible.  Check any digital CDs that included a coupon code to be sure that you have used the code.

Creative Memories Cricut cartridges

At the time I am writing this, there are five cartridges still available on my CM personal website - Be Young, Divine Wedding, Reminisce Accents, and Stork's Delivery.   Total Sports is the last Cricut cartridge that was released.  It is not listed on the same page with the other cartridges but you can find it HERE.  There a "look book" available HERE and you can also see all of the images in the Cricut Craftroom, but I can't find a link to the full handbook.  I do not know how many of these cartridges are available but the last new cartridge, Tiny Treasures, sold out very quickly.

I do not know if these cartridges will ever become available again, through Cricut.com or other sites.  I imagine it depends on the terms of the exclusivity agreement for the cartridges and could be affected by what happens with the bankruptcy proceedings.  If you were planning to buy any of the cartridges, it would probably be best to get them now, while you can.  Some of the cartridges that aren't available on the website may be in the inventory of individual consultants so you could try checking locally.  If you don't have a local consultant and want to order through my website I'd be happy to help you with any additional questions.

I have some products in inventory at my home.  If there is something that you want that is sold out online, please contact me by email (capadiadesigns (at) gmail (dot) com) to see if I happen to have the item you want available.  I can also do a search with other consultants to try to locate an elusive item that you need and I don't have...

Digital

The company is still working on their future plan for digital products.  I will do another post to try to give some advice about backing up your digital content and projects for the StoryBook Program and your photos on the Memory Manager program.  There has been some speculation that if these two programs are not part of the plan for the new company, the developer of the programs may continue to support them and sell additional content.

What to do...

I have checked my supply of albums and made sure that I have pages and protectors to complete all of the coversets.  There will be new albums, most likely of the Fast to Fabulous type (preprinted and assembled) when the company relaunches this Fall.  Since it is unclear whether new album pages will fit the existing coversets, I am planning to "stock up" just enough to complete the current projects.

Please leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions about the ever changing state of affairs at CM.  I am waiting to find out whether they will be keeping the digital programs - if not, I may decide to move on...  I hope that that the creators of the programs will take them back and continue to support both Memory Manager and Storybook (probably under new names).

The flower photos are all from our trip out west - trying to add something pretty to a long dry post!

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A trip to Colorado

Happy Tuesday!  I've been away and and will be tied up with non-crafty things for a few more days so I am just checking in quickly today.  We went to Colorado to visit family and I have a few photos of things that caught my eye to share.

My husband's brother and sister-in-law live outside of Boulder and this is the view from their front lawn.  They have some great beds full of poppies and I'll have some more poppy photos to share in the next week or so.  They are very interesting flowers and we saw them at the peak of the blooming season.

There were some signs in their town that we don't often see in the East - like this bear crossing sign!

If you live in the mountains, there is a constant worry about wildfires.  The danger arrow was in the "extreme" category the entire time we were there.  There were several major fires causing massive property losses not very far away - the worst in Colorado Springs.  Our thoughts and prayers are with any of you that are affected by these terrible fires.

We visited Eldorado Canyon State Park and saw some incredible rock formations.  If you look very carefully you might see a tiny speck on the face of the rock, just above the trees.

Here is a closer view.  There were a number of climbers scaling the face of this formation.  It seems like a crazy thing to do - but then again, they might think it is crazy to cut up paper the way I do!

In Boulder, I kept my eyes open for interesting designs.  The ornamentation on the second floor of this building would be very pretty for making borders and medallions for cards and other projects.  It always pays to keep your eyes open to look for interesting details.

I hope you have been finding some creative time - June is always such a busy month.  Do you have vacation plans for the summer?  Where will you be going?  How many photos do you think you will take? I took 963 photos in five days - now I need to "curate" the images and get that number down to something more manageable.

I think that this is one of the biggest problems with the ease of digital photography - people take far more photos than they used to take with film and then feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of images.  I am planning to share with you my process for working through the photos.  One of the biggest hurdles is learning to delete many of the images.

I am working my way through the email and other messages from the past week.  I try to keep up when I am away but it is also important to enjoy the visit (and limit my "connected" time).  If you have sent me a question or comment, I should be getting through everything later today.  Please don't hesitate to resend your message if you don't hear back from me in the next day or two - things can get lost!

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An Apple Page - Full of Photos

I tend to put a lot of photos on my scrapbook pages.  The fancy pages with one large photo and layers and layers of flowers and bling and other embellishments just don't appeal to me.  I want to include the photos that help me remember an event or occasion and a larger number of photos nearly always works better for me.

This is one of the pages that I completed in the Layout a Day challenge last month.  I started with a template that had 9 spots for photos.

I didn't care for the center stripe of card stock and the torn paper white strip along the top so I changed things up a little.  I deleted the torn paper strip and filled the green rectangle with one of my photos (a close up of harvested apples in a bin) and then added the title on top of the image.

In order to make the title stand out against the apple photo I added a green glow around most of the letters and placed a circle behind the letter "A," filled it with green sampled from the leaf in the image and then changed the opacity to about 50% so the apple background could show through.

I added a very thin mat around most of the photos as a way of making them "read" as a group.  I also like the way the page looks without the mats (above).  One of the great things about digital is that you can keep switching from one version to another until you finally make up your mind!

I changed the background paper along the bottom of the page to a brighter red and added an embossed dotted texture.  Then I shifted the torn paper strips just a bit and created a central medallion image with one more photo.  This was a photo of some apples on the tree and I applied a filter to "sphereize" the image and discarded the clipped corners.  Then I layered three of the images together (two small and one large) and created a cluster to place on the paper strips.

In the end, there were eleven photos added to this page and the apple sphere embellishment can be saved and used for additional projects as well.

The prompt for the page was a mystery book title - "A" is for Alibi, by Sue Grafton.  In our family, A is for apple.  We just got back from a quick trip out to the family apple farm in upstate New York so this page came to mind to share today.

Do you like pages that are full of photos?  What is your "preferred" number of photos on a one page layout? How many on a two page layout?  Please comment with your ideas about how many photos should be shown on a page.  Would it be more (or less) if you were making a paper page instead of a digital project.

We'll be seeing more family this weekend and I will have limited internet time.  I have a few things to finish up today that I can share while we are busy.  It's raining cats and dogs here - I hope your weather is better!

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A Wrench in the Garden

This page shows what was probably my most literal interpretation of a prompt in the Layout a Day Challenge.  The prompts were inspired by the board game Clue and the prompt (can you guess?) was the wrench - one of the possible murder weapons in the game.

As luck would have it, my husband actually used a wrench on the day that this was the prompt - and he didn't even realize the significance.  We had a new outdoor tap installed at a more convenient location and he needed to tighten the connection.  I grabbed my camera and shot some photos of the wrench in action along with some of the things that were growing in the garden and put together this page.

I began with this very basic template.  The templates save a little time and give you a place to start to create your page.  I adapted this layout to add a third box in the center, making three square spots for photos and journaling with two rectangular images above and below.  I also grouped the entire page and made it smaller, adding a background paper and matting layers.

I deliberately put the bright pink and purple flowers on the bottom row to add some weight to the page and used the lighter colored flowers and the photos that showed some sunlight at the top of the page.  The original design had a white mat with very thin lines between the images.  I added a second mat layer to help the group stand out against the background paper.

Unfortunately, our garden is taking a severe pummeling with a heavy rain all day on Friday - maybe today will be better.


Do you know about Zulily?  Zulily is a daily deals shopping site for Moms, babies and kids and you can find great clothes, shoes and toys there. They also offer some items for the home and there is a special right now on Silhouette products.

Both the Cameo and the Portrait machines are on sale along with many of the accessories (vinyl, tools, blade, mats, pens, etc.)  This advent display frame is also on sale - doesn't it look cute displaying the instagram photos and cards?  The sale prices are up to 30% off regular price and the sale ends Sunday.  You can see what is available and get all of the details HERE.

Chalkboard art is very popular right now and if you like this style, the latest Cricut cartridge Chalkboard Fonts will be very useful. 

image from Cricut.com

You can find the digital handbook HERE.  The cartridge includes three different fonts and some of the typical flourishes and ornaments used on chalkboard signs along with bonus words and shadows.

image from Cricut.com

There are some cute project ideas on the Cricut.com site, like this layout by the Cricut Design Team.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.  We have some special plans so I might not be online very much.  An old friend is celebrating a "milestone" birthday and I have been busy the last few days scanning and editing some photos for a memory book. 

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This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase a product using the link I may receive a commission. I only participate in affiliate programs for products that I use or can recommend without reservation.