Busy Week

We haven't been blogging much this week, but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything.  We've got our feet down and running as we prepare for the Christmas Card Classes and the Mega Crop Weekend.  Lots of work happens behind the scenes as we research, plan and prepare for these events, and that's what we've been doing this past week in order to make sure that each event flows smoothly for those that have chosen to join us.

We've got about a third of the cards planned out and some samples made for the Christmas class.  Linda is very excited about the class we will be presenting at the Mega Crop.  We aren't sharing exactly what the class is, but you'll be able to make a complete album of the year's events in a very short time.  This class will be free to the first fifteen people who sign up for the crop.  However it is still open to others at the crop or even if you aren't attending the Mega Crop Weekend you can join us in this class for the small fee of $20.00.  Really worth the time and money, it's a pretty neat way of getting a complete album done.  Enough said about that, be sure to watch your newsletter for the registration of the Mega Crop coming soon.

We had another great card class last week, although by hosting it on Tuesday rather than Thursday, it seemed my whole week was mixed up.  Did you see the cards we made?  They're posted on our Flickr site HERE.  We worked with vellum, distress inks, masking, stitching and punches.  Many of these techniques were quite new to some of the ladies. Here's a peek at one of the cards, but be sure to hop over to Flickr to see the others.

We are so grateful for all the lovely comments we get from customers about the cards we make here at the store.  Many "out of towners" tell us they wish they lived nearer, or that we would open a store near them.   I'm still not ready for cyberspace classes yet, although I did share one last night with my sister in England with the help of our Skype program as I stepped her through some issues with her scanner and taught her some more steps to use on her photo editing program.

Linda and I are thankful for the support that we receive from all of our customers, local and long distance.    We are always open to suggestions that we receive from you and if there is anything that you would like us to look at to offer in the future, please let us know.  No suggestion is put aside without careful consideration first.  Many of our own thoughts and ideas will be on the back burner for months before they come to fruition.  We are hoping to present a calendar class in the fall that has been on my mind for a couple of years now, so if you approach us with an idea that doesn't seem to be used immediately, please keep this in mind.

Did you notice I've added something new to the side bar of the blog recently?  You can now get an email notification when I add a new posting to the blog so you don't have to miss a thing!  It's just below our proud to display 3/50 badge.  Have out ever checked out the mindset of the 3/50 program?  It's really grass roots thinking, and given that here are many papercrafting stores that have closed of late, with another closing at the end of September in Barrie, worth some consideration.  Click HERE to read more about it. They now offer an app for your phone (click on the badge on our side bar) so that when you're travelling you don't have to miss out on your local papercrafting stores.   Hmmmm wonder if there will be any around as we cruise later next month....well maybe when we are in Fort Lauderdale for a day or two.

In closing, don't forget to read your news letter tomorrow if you want to be one of the early birds registering for the Mega Crop Weekend.  As always, we will look after customers in the store first, then phone customers and finally email customers. 

Lilian

Lesson Learned!

Well if I hadn't figured it out before, I know it for sure now....I raised a pretty smart daughter it seems.  Before she left on vacation Linda merrily ordered product and guess when it shipped in?  You've got it ... while she's been away.  Pretty smart don't ya think?

She's been away basking in the sunshine, playing in the water and I've been slogging in the heat and dripping with perspiration....well not quite, but you get the picture.

However, with the help of my grandson Jonathan and of course our Anita, two general orders are now out on the shelves and one more of beading is underway.  So drop into the store to see the beautiful new Fall and Christmas papers, they're a treat.  Also a few new Christmas stamps are in.

The signup for the Christmas card classes are moving along nicely, so if you want to get in on the early classes, don't delay in contacting us.  Remember the early bird catches the worm.  The dates are Saturday October 15th and October 29th at Nippissing University, and November 2nd at The Independent Grocers.

Still some Basic Grey to be picked up too.

I think there's only one more spot in the Tuesday night card class if you're thinking about that, again don't delay.

I didn't forget about putting on the photo of the Blog Challenge prize that Angela won, here it is.  Keep looking for the next challenge to come your way.  I really liked how some of you stepped outside your comfort zone and created different ideas this time.  That's what the word challenge means doesn't it.

I was thinking today how fast summer is coming to a close and how soon the long winter will be upon us.  With winter of course comes all those wet boots and mittens.  Well while surfing for a while tonight, I came upon this sign and thought it would be perfect for some of our papercrafting customers to copy using their cutting machines to cut the letters.  If you don't have a Silhouette or Cricut, then we have lots of alphabet sticker for you to use.  I can't tell you where it came from unfortunately, because when I clicked on the image Explorer couldn't find the page.  So enjoy and have a chuckle.

                                  

And finally, my man's back home again.  He flew out to Winnipeg early Wednesday morning, and then by coach to Kenora where he picked up a bus that he drove back to Bracebridge. 

Now remember, I love this man, but he has to be crazy to find any pleasure in that! 

He does however get great pleasure from driving and he always comes home with a story or two. 

This time he told me about being held up on the highway for an hour and a half after an aircraft in Marathon hit a car on the highway. Thankfully Ron was about a km away and no-one was hurt.    Do I miss him when he's away.  He brings me tea in bed in the mornings and spoils me in other ways too.  Yes I miss him, but here's the picture I had on our iPad to look at each time I turned it on.

Lilian

All the Entries for the Blog Challenge.

Ain't they sweet!   I never tire of seeing the creativity of our customers.  Today I was privy to some photos of work done by a gentleman who, with his wife, owns a Silhouette.  They've even revamped their office space because they give the machine such a work out.  I've asked him if he would send some photos of his work that I could share with you, so hopefully he won't forget.   Amazing, spectacular are just some of the adjectives that come to my mind and so outside the box of what most people use their Silhouette for. 

That's enough tease for the moment though, here to titillate your senses are the blog entries all in one place.  We had an entry today, so don't miss your first look at that one also.  It was from Madison. 

Here again is the Home Decor sample that I made.

1.Diane                                                                  2.  Lisa                                                              

    

3. Lisa                                                                          4.  Angela        

       

                  

 5.  Lisa                                                                6. Christine



7. Bernice                                                                                 8. Bev 

                                                                                       

                                                                                                       

9.  Madison                                                                       10.  Tammy

                                                         

And the Winner is.........................

True Random Number Generator

Min: Max:

  Result: 4

Powered by RANDOM

  

HEY....it's Angela!!!

Congratulations Angela.  Drop into the store to pick up your prize.

I'll post a photo of the prize in the next day or two.

*****

Once again thank you to everyone

for playing along and sharing the fun with us. 

It only works when you participate.

Lilian

Christmas Card Classes - It's Confirmed!

I received the call at 4:55pm today (Monday) to say that both dates that we were waiting on for the Christmas Card Class are now confirmed. 

Thank you Jan for your help with this.

So here's the listing:  

Christmas Card Class (1) - Saturday October 15th 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

Venue: Nippissing University Science Room 

Christmas Card Class (2) - Saturday October 29th 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

Venue: Nippissing University Science Room 

Christmas Card Class (3) - Wednesday November 2nd 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

Venue: Independent Grocer's Bracebridge Community Room

Mark your Calendar and plan on attending one of them. 

They may be subject to some change with sign up considerations. 

Call or drop into the store to reserve your spot with pre-payment in the time slot of your choice.

The fee will be $40.00 plus tax.

Bring a bag lunch and any beverages you need.

More information will be forthcoming regarding any tools beyond your basic tool kit that you will need.

Lilian

Still Waiting on Confirmation of Dates for Christmas Card Class

I had hoped to tell you the dates were confirmed, but due to holidays and the person that I have to talk to being away I can't confirm until Monday.  Hopefully I can blog the dates then.

In the meantime I came upon this that I thought may be of interest to some of you.  Not to me, because my least favourite room in the house is my kitchen!  However of nescessity I have to spend some time there.  Perhaps you could print them out and incorporate them as a hostess gift in the upcoming Christmas season.  I'll see if I can find anything else as hostess gifts. 

Also this week I've had some customers in that have asked for help with their knitting projects.  One, a Grandma, hadn't knitted in years and wanted to teach her granddaughters, so we did a quick refresher lesson.   Another today was needing some help on sewing up seams.  Here's a useful site for the beginner knitter.  You'll probably have to sign up to the site, but like the book you can download, it's free to sign up.

Anyone who's signed up to the Basic Grey program, it came in late yesterday afternoon and I sorted it today.  You will be getting your email from Linda to tell you that it's ready for pickup now.  Some nice winter papers and embellishments this time.

Linda mentioned in last week's newsletter that we had confirmed the dates for the Mega Crop Weekend.  Have you cleared those dates, because we will be starting registration soon and have had a number of out of towners interested in participating.   Space is limited so make sure you aren't disappointed.

Only one Silhouette still available now with the Home Decor CD special, don't delay if you are thinking you'd like one.

Hmmm, no photos to post this time, but did you look at the cards from last Thursday's class?  They're here, and anyone that didn't take the class but has seen the punch all around the page card has really liked it.

  

Oh I've just noticed the date, and here's one of my quirks for you to ponder.  I often associate a date with someone or something to do with a family member, present or past.  Today was my aunt's birthday and she always maintained that contrary to popular belief, 13 was NOT an unlucky number. Given that her birthday was on the 13th and my two sisters who are twins have the 13th as their birthday, albeit a different month, I think she may have had a good point!  So there's my quirky bit of useless information to clutter up your brain cells...LOL.

Hope you enjoy your weekend, or what's left of it, despite the rain. 

Lilian

OOP's I GOOFED!

When I went into the store on Tuesday morning my eyes fell on a most lovely journal!  Hmmmmm I thought, guess I was wrong there, it wasn't a card Lisa had made for the blog challenge but a really punched up journal.  Unfortunately that's the trouble when you're looking at a photo.  No matter how good the photo is, the real thing is even better and that's exactly what happened here.  In hindsight I look at the photo and say to myself, how could you not see that it's a journal!   Look again here at Lisa's journal it's stunning. Then when I looked more closely in real life at her flower card here, I realised not only were the flowers popped on dimensional dots, they were beautifully cupped too. So there you go, my apologies to Lisa for not describing her work better, we've had a few laughs about it since Tuesday.  Have you begun to work on your blog challenge entry?  Last day is Monday at closing on August 14th.

But now it's Thursday and if you weren't at class tonight, then you missed a few laughs there too.  We made three very different cards tonight and ventured into the art of Zentangling.  This is a fancy word for Doodling and you either love it or not.  From my experience, the younger you are the more free you feel to doodle.  That said the youngest in our class tonight was celebrating her 14th birthday today and she loved the Zentangle card, but for us who've been around a while, we find it more difficult to be free with our doodling.  Take a look here on Flickr at the cards we made tonight.  Here's a sneak preview of just one of the cards.

This was perhaps the most popular card tonight.  An easier than you think card made with two Martha Stewart punches.  One was a square anywhere on the page punch and the border punch was the bangle chain punch.  The bottom layer we created with our favourite background stamps made by Impression Obsession.  They transform a plain piece of cardstock to a work of art that was almost a shame to have covered up here. The card was completed with some stamped flowers, a ribbon tie and embossed in the corners with a Cuttlebug folder.

I had hoped to be able to give you the dates and confirmations for the all day Christmas Card Class, but have still not heard back from one venue.  If I hear back tomorrow, I'll write a quick post tomorrow on the blog.

Lilian

How Creative!

Well I suggested that it would be good if you stepped outside the box as you created for this challenge and that's exactly what some of you did!   From scrapbook pages to sewing, for some of you it wasn't what you traditionally did.  Well done!  We can get comfortable doing what we always do and never try something new.  That's what this challenge is supposed to cause you to do....try a new thing at the same time...have fun!

Linda and I wondered how each person would interpret the colours we put forward.   Would you would use mainly black and white, or whether they would be just a touch of colour with the colour of your choice being most predominant. 

Well we had some of both, and here they are for
your enjoyment.

Lisa's card beautifully highlights one flower in the colour of her choice.  Love the stitching along the bottom too.  Must ask her if she did it with the new stitching tool.

Angela is predominantly a scrapbooker, but she made this fun and cheerful card whilst away on vacation!   Easier to manage than a scrapbook page, how we do love to craft! The checks make such a cheery summer card don't they.

 

Christine tells me she has never stitched before, so she was stepping outside her box in creating this card.  She used a Martha Stewart all around the page punch to create the flower.

 

Bernice used neon green as the mat and stitching on her card and it really pops with the black and white.  Like the way she stamped the greeting along the stem of the flower too.

 

Lisa made a gorgeous flourishy card here and chose to "stitch" the ribbon through the card.  Neat idea. Do you see the bling...WOW!

 

Bev created a simple yet stunning silhouette card with just a touch of bling on the flower accents and the lower border where she stitched.  Very effective.

Another card made while on vacation.  Di used an Impression Obsession background stamp and heat embossed it in white on black.

The touch of stitching on the side of the card just sets the focal point off.

In creating this card, Lisa had a fairly even balance of black, white and her colour.  The faux stitching around the edge of her focal point draws your eye to it, and just a touch of bling this time to hold the greeting in place.

Tammy loves to make scrapbook pages that she can give to friends and they can just pop the photos into.  The combination of colour here is quite effective, and the stitching under the banner is quite lovely.  Nice use of the corsage pins in the top left too.

 I've never seen any of Bernice's scrapbooking before as she seems to be predominantly a cardmaker.  However she has great talent here too.  The orange she chose draws your attention to Nick's tie and pocket handkerchief beautifully.  Don't you love the pretty little rosebud at the top left too.

So there you have the first entries into this month's blog challenge. 

Were you thinking of entering,but haven't got around to it yet?  Though I forgot to tell you the closing date of the challenge, fortunately Linda put it into the newsletter last week.  Just in case you missed it though, you have until closing on Monday next week, August 15th.

To all of you who asked.  My sister in law Di and I had a lovely time crafting together and were able to get all of the wedding "stuff" done that she had in her mind.   In saying that, we had lots of time to enjoy other things too.  Di joined us for a card class and crop at the store.  Terry (my brother in law) had an overnight fishing trip with the guys near Parry Sound where he met most of our mosquitos up close and personal.  We had an evening meal at the horse race track in Barrie and the guys went to the car races another night.  We hadn't realised we'd never taken them to the Marine Railway near Coldwater, so a pleasant afternoon was spent there too, with a side trip to see a lovely roadside garden.  There were swimming times and a picnic at Boyer's beach , a boat cruise, glow in the dark mini golf and a lovely dinner at the Mandarin in Barrie to celebrate both Terry and Di's birthdays, so lots of fun packed into three short weeks.  The only thing we didn't do that we planned was a morning at Gravenhurst farmer's market, we were rained out for that.

Lilian

We're Doing it Again - Are You Going to Play With Us?

Here we go with another blog challenge. 

Recently our friend Lisa was shopping in the store and told us she'd been thinking about what might be a nice combination for our next blog challenge.  She had some great suggestions and she'd thought carefully about them too.  With some brain storming between us we fine tuned her suggestions and came up with the requirements for our fourth blog challenge.

Here's what you have to follow.  Whatever you make, be it a scrapbook page, papercraft, general craft, card or home decor item, it must only have these colours.  Black, white and ONE other colour of your choice.  It must also have some bling and stitching on it.  So that's not too hard to follow is it?  Only five things to remember.

Here's my interpretation of this challenge:

You'll see I've made my sample as a home decor item.  I used card stock from Basic Grey's Passing Notes Hopscotch Line.  As my black frame was 11x14 I had to add a piece in to make my 12x12 cardstock stretch.  Black cardstock worked well for the background of my stitching piece where I used a silver ribbon (bling) with some black ribbon on top.  I stitched a single line with blue embroidery floss and then wove white floss through it.  Note the crystal bling too on the words and lines.

I'm thinking that this may find a home in my craft room. 

We were taking a look at our friend Tracey's blog too and came across this lovely example of black, white, one colour, stitching and bling.  (Look closely in the middle of the flower you will see a pearl).   Tracey didn't even know about our challenge!           Click Here for a larger look.

And now it's your turn.  Easy Peasy...only five things to remember.  Black, White, ONE colour of your choice, Bling and Stitching.  Happy Crafting, look forward to seeing what you come up with this time.  Why not step outside your comfort zone and create a scrapbook page if you're a cardmaker or a Home Decor piece even.  It's really only a larger canvas to work on.

Lilian