Hello everyone. Surprise!!! I am back. After about a year of no posts I have returned however I have moved. My blog is now housed at my new addy www.jerrysmom.com/blog/ . Please follow that link on over and if you would like you can subscribe to my posts. As you will read there, I have just retired and am hoping to be much more involved in my wonderful hobby (hobby?, passion) of Scrapbooking. See you there :)

My Scraproom

I am finally getting around to posting pictures of my new scraproom. My room is actually a building that we had built about 20 years ago as a paint studio when we were in the craft business. We actually made and sold items made mostly of wood at various venues, craft shows in convention centers as well as malls. We also did a lot of the outside festivals. As stated in the previous post we also "did Canton". After we quit the craft business (or it quit us) I then turned it into my genealogy room. That was a passion of mine for over 30 years until I kept hitting my head against the proverbial brick wall. Other genealogists will understand that. Then it became a scraproom for a while then storage. For a couple of years I had my scraproom in our house in the spare bedroom. That worked pretty well until I discovered the QVC Forum and made a lot of new friends who are notorious for being enablers. Now we have our own Yahoo Group and have a ton of fun. Anyway, because of all the enabling and about a 3 month-long shopping spree I outgrew the spare bedroom. So DH cleaned out the old paint/genealogy/scrap/storage room and redid the inside. He put in a new ceiling, new lighting, new flooring and bead-board walls. Painted it my favorite shade of blue and I was back in business. Here are a few photos, pretty much from start to finish on my little hideaway. The room is 12 x 20 and as you will see, it is full. DH is now talking about adding on to the back of it and doubling the size.

It looked so spacious when this picture was taken LOL. Ok, the next picture shows my large work table. It is actually a large masonite door sitting on top of black fiberglass "sawhorses". It is a little taller than most work surfaces, however it works great for me as I stand and scrap probably as much as I sit and scrap.

Here you may see some familiar items if you look closely. There is my Clip-It-Up system with lots of stickers. My Xyrons are on a rolley cart at the end of this table and there is my MM Carousel desk organizer (love it). Also, my Fiskars cutting mat that I got for a steal at Tuesday Morning.

Here is another work area that is probably used more as a catch all at times (I tidied up just for this photo shoot). My paper rack which houses some of my loose pretty papers along with some organizer bins. The black ones I got at Walmart for I think about $10 each. You will also see the MM Embellishment center where I have some of my ribbon, flowers and Stickles. I also have a little three drawer cabinet that holds my glue sticks, glue runners, etc.

More paper storage. This is mostly solid color cardstock and the large paper pads from various manufacturers.

This is a cabinet that we have had for about 35 years. It along with two more were bought as nude furniture which my DH finished. Most of my flowers are kept here. Just below the shelves is a drop down door that forms a little desk like area. Inside there I have all my pens, pencils, etc. for coloring. Below that is where I keep my mailing supplies, envelopes and baggies for the swaps that I participate in.

Next to it is my clock on the wall so I will know when it is time to stop LOL. The storage units below will eventually hold most of my tools.

Here you will see the area where my stamping items are housed as well as my iris boxes of various scrapbook lines are kept. The little rack on the right has all the clear stamps that I have bought recently but have not used (ducking head in shame). The larger white shelf and the smaller shelf are items that I bought at Canton. The larger shelf is considered a book shelf and the smaller one is actually a spice rack, but I have my craft paints stored there (who cooks?). Below those are the Iris Carts that house my different themes such as wedding, Christmas, Valentine, baby etc. I also have boxes that are dedicated to particular brands that I love, such as SEI, Daisy D, etc. These iris carts were all bought at JoAnn's either using coupons or bought on sale at half price. I am a frugal shopper (good thing!). These are actually 6 carts one stacked onto another. The rollers that came with them---only the bottom carts have the rollers. The others were left off so that they would stack. DH had a piece of counter top that just happened to fit on top of them all. Here is a closer look at these carts.

Here you can see that it is actually two different styles. The top carts have a total of 9 drawers, 6 of which are small open drawers. Three of them have divided compartments for embellies and the other three are open drawers that will hold 12x12 paper. The bottom containers are covered boxes. These are great for a collection of themed items, paper, stickers, embellies, etc.

The carts below hold the more familiar iris boxes like you can buy at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. The carts are a good buy because you get the cart and the boxes for one price.

Here is a nice blurry picture (sorry about that) showing that I have my wood-block stamps housed in these shallow drawers. Someday I am going to get brave and take the rubber off the wood and use them kind of like the clear stamps. Will take up a lot less space.

This is my Cricut station. I have the original as well as the Expression. I also have the Jukebox which is still in the box. My Sizzix is here also as well as my dies. Hopefully I will have my Cuttlebug sometime in August that I ordered from HSN, but that is another story not to be relayed here LOL.

And last but not least is my printer/computer area. I have a HP wide format printer which I have not yet played with like I should. I also have the Lexmark all in one which I love. It prints quite well and also scans. One of the main secrets to good prints is quality ink and paper. At this time they are on a folding table with more iris style carts below. These carts came from Hobby Lobby bought with coupons (of course). I have my ribbon and punches in the drawers here as well as miscelleaneous other stuff.

Ok, that pretty well does it for my Scraproom. Hope you enjoyed the tour. Happy Scrapping!!

Canton First Monday Trip

It has been a long time since I have been to Canton's First Monday Trades Day in Canton, TX. DH and I went yesterday and had a great time. We left home about 4:25am (yeah that's early) and arrived there about 7:15. We were actually a little early for the vendors as it seems most don't open until about 8am. However, we got an excellent parking space which is a very good thing, especially when you get ready to leave. It was very nice weather, not too very hot and especially as the morning went on, getting into a shade would cool you off. I think we made all the pavillions and a lot of the outdoor area.

The picture above shows just a fraction of the outside area. Canton trade days grounds are huge with many, many vendors. You can buy just about anything you want to. Lots of very nice crafts and antiques. Now for my disappointment----I did not find a single booth with scrapbooking supplies with the exception of ribbon. Was so hoping to find a booth or booths with stuff like paper (pretty of course), stamps, punches, etc, but no. Now of course I am not saying there are NONE there. I just did not find any. Ok, like I said I did find ribbon. I found 3 booths that seemed to be all the same vendor with lots of nice ribbons. The prices were anywhere from 3 yds/$1.25 to about $5.00 a yard. Most of what I bought was the 1 yd/$1.25 and the 3 yds/$1.25. It ranged from 1 inch wide crochet type lace to about 3/8" grosgrain. There were also some very nice trims that were roses with leaves. You can see the pictures below, however my photography does not really do them justice.

If you count from the left the 6th piece of ribbon has small white roses with light mint green leaves. The 8th piece is light pink and dark pink roses with light green leaves. The 5th, 7th and 9th ribbons are much like some I bought on HSN that were by Amanda Blu. This vendor had many many rolls of ribbons and also gift wrap.

Oh, yes a couple of other things I bought----there is a vendor there that has been selling their wares for a long time called The Shop. They are wood-workers specializing in unfinished wood items such as shelves, peg boards, etc. I found and bought a Spice Shelf ($16.00) that will work great for my craft paints and also a book shelf ($16.00) that will hang on the wall. I am going to place that shelf over the area where I keep my rubber stamps and clear stamps. I will post pics of them later as DH has painted them but not hung them yet. Hopefully tomorrow.

We are looking forward to "maybe" going back on the July first Monday weekend. It will be hotter than----well you know! We have been to Canton many times and was pretty well prepared this time. If you look again at the picture at the top of this post you will see a man (have no idea who he is) pulling a cart. We have one of those that we have had a long time. Ours has a plastic liner but we saw some at Canton that are really nice and will probably buy one of those the next time we go. Those have a kind of flap on the front that has a couple of pockets that would be great for a little notebook and pen. We will also take a small cooler with our own drinks. Iced Tea (which was very good) was $4.00 a cup! We ended up drinking that as well as lemon-ade. I'm sorry, but $16.00 will go a long way on more scrapbooking items or whatever. We also bought a couple of nylon drink can holders that will attach to the cart as well as a metal rack thing that will hold large styrofoam cups. One thing I have learned, you have to keep hydrated!

They also rent motorized carts there, however they are $50.00 a day. Again, $100 for cart rental? No, if it comes to the day I need one of those, I guess I will quit going. Would probably run someone down anyway LOL (Again check out the picture at the top---you can see people using those.)

I have to say, if you live in Texas or close around you should plan a trip to Canton for First Monday. It is always the weekend of the first Monday. Thus the first Monday of June is June 1st, then the event is the weekend just before that Monday. I am not real sure exactly which day of the week it opens, but Friday, Saturday or Sunday are always good days to go. It is open every month of the year no matter what the weather. I have experienced it all. We used to have a craft business and had a booth there for a couple of years. Saturday we kept trying to figure out where our booth used to be. Never could quite figure where it was in relation to where we were at the minute. This morning I was looking at the site map we had picked up and realized that one of the pavillions we had been in yesterday was probably sitting right where I booth had been all those years ago.

Ok, next weekend---its The Great American Scrapbook Convention in Arlington, TX. Now I KNOW I will find stuff there LOL. Also going to find a Tuesday Morning to try to snap up one of those Heidi Swapp totes they are supposed to have on sale that day. $19.99 stuffed with 200 items!

Would You Like To Win a Gift From Lyn's Scraproom?

I saw this on Leigh’s blog and was able to get in the first five! I thought it was so much fun that I would do it too! The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you! This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make --- but I hope you do!
2- What I create will be just for you --- one of a kind!
3- It'll be done sometime this year (most likely it will be in the next month.).
4- You have no clue what it's going to be. Well, a pretty good bet it will be made of paper!
5- Continental USA only.
6- The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog!

The first 5 people to leave a comment win a handmade card or gift (or both!) by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it! So....who will be the first 5 people????? Please??? 5????

Ya know what? This is my little addition: Even if you aren't in my first five, why not start this on your blog, too? Spread more love FASTER! Ready, set.....who will the first five be??

Challenge to Myself

This weekend I issued myself a challenge. Since I have been buying a lot of scrapbooking supplies lately both online and at the big box stores, I decided I needed to actually create something with all those things. I have spent a lot of time making room for them and organizing them. Now it was time to actually put scissors (paper trimmer) to the paper and (eeekk!!) cut it. As you may have read in the previous post I had bought quite a bit of supplies when SEI had a big sale. Among those were items from their Morning Meadow collection. I got shimmer paper, cardstock, ribbon, buttons, brads and cardstock tags. One of the shimmer papers was butterflys and quite pretty. I chose that for the cards that I made along with the ribbon and cardstock. I had also bought some Petaloo Crazy for Daisies from HSN and incorporated those into the simple design using the flowers and the rhinestone flower for the center. I added a tiny pearl to the center of the rhinestone. I typed the sentiment for the inside which I think took a long time as I felt I had to have the color of the font just right. Did not get it exactly the hue I wanted but it will do. Here is the finished result of that little project.

Received My SEI Package (like Christmas all over again :) )

A few days ago, I heard about a fantastic sale on the SEI website. Well of course I had to check it out. I ordered a bunch of stuff including a couple of grab bags. Below is the list of what arrived today.

First though I will say that yes, I would order again even though a lot of it is papers that if I were in a store, I probably would not purchase. I especially like the cardstock, ribbons, buttons and brads that I picked from the individual things that were clearance priced. Now for the bargain bags:
The $80.00 value bag had:
3 pkgs of beaded iron ons
Puffy embellishment pack
Fabric stickers (tabs, corners, etc)
Cardstock tags, alpha stickers, frames, tabs & labels
Rub-ons (will be good for Valentine)
Clear alpha and word stickers
Ribbons, some in pinks & browns, others good for birthday
58 sheets 8 1/2 x 11 patterned cardstock

The $100.00 value bag had:
Ribbon in earth colors
Alpha rub-ons, word rub-ons
Vellum stickers (dots, phrases, borders)
Project portfolio of the Seasoned line (idea booklet)
The Idea Book, a spiral bound book of layouts & ideas for their Serendipity line.
Puffy frames and words
12 x 12 patterned vellum about 12 sheets
12 x 12 cardstock sticker sheets
Alpha stickers
Fabric stickers
Vellum alpha stickers
52 sheets of 12 x 12 cardstock

As I mentioned above, I also bought 99 sheets of 12 x 12 cardstock. All of this for $54.55. The box was very heavy but the shipping was only $6.99. The $100 pack was $7.50 and the $80 pack was $6.25. I am thinking about doing the 365 project on my own without the Becky Higgins kit and I could use a lot of this in that. The design lines of all this is pretty clean and simple. Some good colors for stuff for the guys which is not always easy to find. Yes, I would definitely order again. A very good way to add to your stash. And getting colors you wouldn't normally buy gives you a challenge

Scrapbook Excursion Trip

I have a birthday coming up very soon (tomorrow in fact) and the other day my DH asked me where I would like to go for dinner that night. After some thought I told him what I would really like to do is go to one of my favorite restaurants, however the only thing is its in San Antonio. He said no problem (its his favorite too). Although in the past we have driven down to SA just to go to LaMargarita, I thought this time I would like to make a day of it. I have pretty much seen all the sights there is to see there, more than once. So how about a Scrapbooking excursion? So the night before, I went online and found the locations of several SB stores as well as some Tuesday Mornings. I printed those out along with a map. Our son had given me a TomTom for Christmas and I must admit I was a bit skeptical about it. However, armed with my maps, addresses and TomTom we set out. It was very easy to set the TomTom up and I will have to say it is amazing. It would have taken hours to map out the places I wanted to go and then follow a map to get there. But with the TomTom we went from one address to the next flawlessly. The only address I did not have with me was the one for LaMargarita. Now of course we know how to get there, but the last SB store we went to---well we really had no idea where we were in relation to LaMargarita. However again TomTom did not fail me as there is an option to set it to take you to the center of town. That’s what I did and again it was flawless, because once we got to familiar territory, we had no problem.

Ok, some of my friends on the QVC Scrapbook forum are more interested in what I bought than listening to me go on and on about TomTom. So, our first stop was at a Tuesday Morning in Universal City. There, my DH insisted that I really, really needed the Fiskars 12” trimmer and for $19.99 I had to agree. I also bought some Fiskars shape templates (which I found out when I got home I already have L )

Next stop was another Tuesday Morning on Crestway. There I got Fiskars 8 ½ x 11 Country solid color cardstock, 36 sheets each for $1.99. Not exactly “Pretty Paper” but definitely a necessity. I think this may have been the Tuesday Morning that had some Anna Griffin scrapbook kits. They were, I think about $30.00 and probably a bargain, except the end of the packages were opened so I had no idea if they were complete. I declined on those. We did go to a third TM but by this time I was burned out on those stores. There were several more in SA, but the products seemed repetitious.

As we were traveling to another SB store on my list, we passed one not on the list. Well we were able to make a sharp right and go through parking lots, etc to get back to it. It is a fairly new one, maybe a couple of months in business. It is called The Scrapbook Store and is located at 10130 San Pedro. www.scrapbookstoreinc.com Here I purchased, yes Pretty Paper including dotted swiss, a sheet of Queen of Hearts by FancyPants and some Doodlebug flocked papers. I also got flowers---Flora Doodles by Petaloo in blue and also in white and then some smaller pink ones with rhinestone centers (gotta have some bling). Also found InStitchz by Bazzill, Baby Bundle templates.

Next we went to Scrapbook Cottage located at 502 Embassy Oaks. www.scrapbookcottageSA.com Again, Pretty Paper said take me home. I got Cloud 9 Design (Christmas and Valentine), Heidi Grace (Christmas); Brenda Walton Sweet Talk Postage Stamps (Valentine); GCD Studios (Christmas) and Daisy D (Christmas). I also got what I originally thought was fabric stickers, however it turned out to be a sheet of fabric images (in this case old fashioned Santas, snowmen, etc) that you can attach to your project with stitching, brads, buttons or adhesive. These are Homespun Cotton Scraps by Crafty Secrets. www.craftysecrets.com. Another thing I could not pass up here was a Tim Holtz design ruler. This is a clear ruler, very well marked with gridlines, excellent for my aging eyes LOL. It has a metal strip for cutting and (the real seller for me) evenly spaced holes for piercing ($6.99). I also got another set of InStitchz templates, Favorite Things. And last (and probably least) a white gel pen for making faux stitches when I am too lazy to get my sewing machine out. This store had a LOT of stuff to make recipe books, papers, stickers, other embellies, etc.

The last store we went to was Scrapbook Heaven www.scrapbook-Heaven.com , a very nice big store. Believe it or not I found MORE Pretty Paper, mostly My Minds Eye (a variety) and a couple of sheets from Heart and Home---too ummmm pretty to pass up. Actually I will probably cover a journal with that. I got still another InStitchz template, Cozy Christmas. I also got some beautiful ribbon by 7Gypsies (Chelsea) and Double Dot by BoBunny.

Ok, well that is it for my shopping excursion to San Antonio. Now I just have to find room for all my treasures and also get busy using some of them. Ok, maybe after a trip to Michael’s this afternoon. Thank goodness, with the weather turning bad, I have the day off tomorrow.

For those of you reading this who are NOT on the QVC Scrapbooking forum let me briefly explain the Pretty Paper thing. We have discovered that this is basically a condition (medical? Probably not!) but I have dubbed it PPS, Pretty Paper Syndrome. The symptoms are going to a SB store (or online) and buying paper you could not resist. Now this is “pretty paper”. Will you ever actually use it? Probably not. It is “too pretty” to use. You are either afraid to use it in fear you will mess it up or, if you do use it, then you will no longer HAVE it. That makes sense, right? And I will bet, if you are a true SB’er you have this condition. Am I right?