Thursday, December 27, 2007

Welcome 2008~!!!

Tons to be thankful for...don't forget to thank God for this wonderful year and look forward to everything coming in the new one! My scrapbook classes start again 3rd week in January and we are SO excited to begin some new techniques thanks to all the amazing donations we have been receiving. More about that in the New year though...many people to thank! Each one will get a special day on the blog just for them. My belly is getting pretty big but thanks to wonderful modern technology I can say for sure that it's not twins! I think I startled the nurse because when the doctor said there was only one in there I shouted "Praise the LORD!!!" It was pretty funny because my 3 year old was there and shouted it right after me. He is very into copying right now. So a good chuckle was had by all. Did tons of scrapping for gifts this year...and have no time to post it on here right now so I hope nobody minds waiting a bit. I'll be taking a nice long break from the world, see you all in 2008!!!

Friday, December 14, 2007

Christmas came early!

Can I toot my own horn again? I am still pretty excited about the layout that Leica Forrest did for Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine. Page 20 if you haven't checked it out yet! And for our American friends who don't get the magazine, you can check out a brief write up on the Crop N Craft Room Website. This website is still under construction but some links are ready to go. Check out the Design Team link...in the write up CS did, they put out a call for used supplies. Well, you never know how that is going to go. People have been hugely generous! And I believe there are 30,000 copies of Canadian Scrapbooker printed each issue (please correct me if I am wrong) so I am a little afraid at how much is going to come flooding into the office! We live in a remote area so we do not have a post office box, we get our mail at my husband's office. I think the secretaries who pick up the mail are getting a little worn out now! The magazine article was not out even 3 weeks and people have started sending things already. The kids are so excited to start class again in January! So even though she has no way of finding my blog unless she googled me, I still really wanted to recognize

GAIL from SARNIA, ONTARIO.

hers was the very first box of stuff for the kids due to the article in CS and she wrote me a lovely letter along with it! The stuff covered half my dining table!!! Check out Gail's generosity:
I swear the stack of paper she sent was 3 inches thick!



It's so funny that this stuff is coming in right now...for one thing it feels like early Christmas! But just the other day at our last class of the season some of the girls were looking at an album I am doing for my niece and they were pointing out specific stickers and embellishments I had used that are fairly recent (like in the last 6 months or so) and were asking if we had that so they could scrapjack the page they liked. I said unfortunately no, we didn't have stuff like that but maybe we could work on it in the New Year and see if we could buy a few things. Well, no need! Several things came right in Gail's package! Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you!!!

Other packages have been arriving almost daily so every other day or so I'll thank a new person! This class has gotten so much bigger than I ever expected...I can NOT thank everyone enough! Classes are done now until mid January when school gets back into full swing. Our last hurrah is on Dec 21st...the high school asked me to come in and be one of the stations for their Christmas Extravaganza. It's the last day of school so the kids get to sign up for different fun activities. I'll take some pictures and post them next week.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Family Scrapboooking at it's finest

Once a month I head over to the DuMont Technical Institute building and teach a scrapbooking class for the Dene K'oe (Pronounced KWAY) Family Acitivity Night. This is a great program led by Leona, the Dene K'oe Self Help Council Inc's Youth/Family Support Worker. This is a very enthusiastic bunch! Our first couple of classes we started out with simple cards but are now into full scrapbook pages. Numbers vary with the insanely cold weather and the ages range from the very small (3yrs) to the very tall (Um, no age mentioned here!!!) and even the Dads get in on the creating.



This program is held every Tuesday night and it is to promote family togetherness through crafts. Ornaments, painting, you name it...but the first Tuesday of every month is scrapbooking. So this week I taught everyone how to work off of a sketch. I absolutely LOVE the Pencil Lines website for this. If you are stuck for inspiration, just head over there and find amazing ideas with just one click! I hear it all the time...I don't scrapbook because I'm not creative. I want to scrapbook but I can never think of what to do. I have a bunch of supplies but I don't know how to use them. Well, the pencil lines site cures that and more! Working from a sketch is not a road map...it's meant to inspire you and cultivate your own interpretation of the sketch. Well, the kids certainly had their own interpretation! Following directions, not so much a priority for the little guys but boy, did they ever have FUN. And that is what it is all about! Some beautiful work was done and I can't thank my fellow scrapbookers enough for all the donations of used supplies! Especially Leica Forrest for her crops held at Yesterday's Memories and Jeanette and the amazing people over at Scrap In Style!!! Couldn't have done it without you girls. Take a look at what the kids were up to (stickers are very popular!):






And with such long waits for photos way up here, a main focus on the class was how to do a blank layout and that it's ok to add pictures later. Here is the main sketch from the Pencil Lines site and the example I came up with. I kept it very simple and to the point to show how fast and easy it can be. Voila! 15 minutes later you have a scrapbook page:

Thanks to everyone who participated and I am so looking forward to our classes in the new year! Leona and I have some ideas up our sleeves for a twice monthly adults only scrapbook class starting in late January. Watch for the flyers and come on out to finish up those projects!!!