Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone has a fantastic time trick-or-treating tonight!  Here are my little munchkins before heading out:

Connor and Gary put several hours into his iPod costume - isn't it fantastic?  And Aili insisted on being Scooby Doo this year - she ditched the vampire princess idea once she saw Connor's old Scooby costume...

Have fun and don't eat too much candy!!

Paging the Tooth Fairy...

We have a pick up in Aisle 9...

WeScrap Blog Hop!!

Welcome to the Fall Inspired Blog Hop for WeScrap.com!

We are pleased to have you along this fine fall week. As you hop from one iTeam member to the next you will be inspired by all things fall related.

We have some prizes to offer and possibly some RAKs to offer up too! To be eligible for any of the prizes or RAKs, please leave a comment for each designer as you go along your journey today. All prizes will be announced in the WeScrap forum on Friday November 5th. Prizes must be claimed no later than Friday November 12th.

Let’s hop along with our Inspiration Team from WeScrap.com today:

Tara Thynne (Thynner..... All Tangled Up)
Sue Sykes (Kewl Beans) <-- you are here!
Sarah Nolan (The Occasional Creation)
Fleur Smith (FleursByDesign)
Allison Cope (Your Memories)
And then one final stop HERE in the WeScrap forums.

(Please note:  if you didn't arrive here from Tara's blog, please visit it now and hop along so you don't miss out on anything!)

And here’s my Fall Inspired project that I’d like to share with you….

Supplies:  Kraft cardstock (unknown), 3 Bugs in a Rug patterned paper, Marvy Uchida punches, Maya Road trinket pin, downloadable floral tag by Scrap in Style TV, ribbon, hemp.

These were so easy to create!  I was inspired by Pink Petticoat's version here - I made mine a little bigger, using a 5"x7" piece of cardstock.  Just decorate with some patterned paper and ribbon, and attach a tag printed on matching cardstock and you're done!  You could even use these as party favours or placemats, adding the person's name to the tag!

Please leave a comment on my blog to win and then head to Sarah's blog for more inspiration!  Thanks for hopping with us today!

Memories Montage - ScrapFest Oshawa 2010

Just wanted to share some quick images from the photo booth that we ran at the Canadian Scrapbooker booth at ScrapFest in Oshawa a few weeks ago...

I had the chance to see some old friends, finally meet some online friends in person and make some new friends - I love my job! :)

Here's a mini montage of everyone who visited our booth:

Thanks to everyone - i hope you had a great time! 

Here are more photos to share:

My sweet friend, Vanessa, joined us from Ottawa on our crazy girls' weekend.

 Here's the gang, prior to taking the MarketPlace by storm (clockwise from far left):
Lori Mancini, Katrina Murphy, Vanessa Fuller, Jennifer Hottinger-Sloan and me!

I also visited briefly with the uber artistic Karen Ellis:

And had a chance to meet up with some online friends, like the very talented Angie Blom:

And my fellow WeScrap DT member, Tara Thynne:

 The lovely (and TALL!) Lee Currie:

And the wonderful Kelly Panacci (and her sweet hubby, Mario):

Last but not least, I visited with the amazing ScrapFest crew and their families:

 Sadly, I missed the Saturday night dinner after party... I'm sure it was a hoot!  Next time for sure, ladies!

Thanks to everyone - I had a great weekend!

CreativFestival 2010

I'm back!

I spent the weekend in Toronto, working the Canadian Scrapbooker magazine (or BOOK, as my lovely, dear, talented friend, Cathie Allen, refers to it!) booth for the Fall 2010 CreativFestival!

We had a blast!  I love these two ladies with all my heart - so much fun, and they're talented to boot!

Plus, they love to drink so no wonder we all got along! :)

(Are you drooling over my yummy Jackarita from Jack Astor's?  You haven't LIVED until you've had one of these babies!)

There were set-up mixups, long days, overpriced food ($8 for a smoothie??) and lots of walking - I have a blister to prove it - but I wouldn't have traded it for the world. 

My friend, Jennifer, met us on the Saturday, and took this wonderful group shot of the three of us:

Thanks, Jennifer!  And another thanks to Cathie and Jackie - for all the giggles, un-diet food including ice cream, and for being you.  Love you guys.

So I arrived home yesterday, safe and sound with a mound of laundry, and feeling none the worse for wear, aside from a chesty cough.  Off to the doctor's today to make sure it's not turned into pneumonia!7

Hop along...

... with the WeScrap Team!


We will be hosting a Fall Inspired Blog Hop on Friday, October 29th!  Join Sarah, Ally, Tara, Fleur, Tina and I as we hop along and share some fall inspired projects!


Please be sure to check back on Friday at 12:00pm EST for details!

New to my camera bag...

On my way to ScrapFest, I stopped in London at Henry's - I wanted to pick up a flash diffuser and lens UV filters for my 50mm f/1.8 lens and my NEW Nikkor DX VR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens that I just received from Nikon!!  Woot Woot!  She's a beauty and oh, so appreciated after having gone for months with photos with focus issues!

Image courtesy of www.letsgodigital.org

I went with a Gary Fong Puffer pop-up flash diffuser - still not sure if I'm liking it?  Sadly, upon hearing that I didn't need a bag as I was planning on storing all of my purchases in my camera bag, the Henry's sales rep RIPPED open the packaging and tossed it in the garbage.  So I think I'm stuck with it.  I may just need to play with it a bit more...

The new lens is a pre-cursor to the new camera that will be coming my way this fall!  I'm still debating between the D300s and the D7000 - I had a wonderful time with the D300s this summer during our trip to NJ/PA (thanks, Nikon, for the evaluation unit!).  I want to give the D7000 the same courtesy, but I don't think the evalution unit from Nikon will be available until later this month and I want to have my new camera in hand for my trip to Saskatoon on the 11th!!

Ah, what to do, what to do...?

We Scrap - Sketchy Saturday

I just posted a sketch for We Scrap's Sketchy Saturday Challenge:

The sketch was based on this layout that I completed:

Supplies:  Bo Bunny double dot cardstock, Bazzill Basics cardstock, Little Yellow Bicycle patterned paper, American Crafts letters, Jenny Bowlin ticket, chipboard stars (can't remember!), Tsukineko ink and embossing powder.

I love to use sketches as a starting point... unless I am the one creating the sketch!  Then I usually start with the design and create the sketch from that!

Fellow design team member, Sarah Nolan, created a fantastic layout for an example that can be found in the post HERE.

Sony Digital Photo Frame/Printer

Lisa Furtney, planner extraordinaire of ScrapFest, came up the idea to have me snap photos of the ScrapFest attendees and Katharina arranged for Sony to sponsor us!  They sent us this awesome little printer:

It's a digital frame and printer in one.  For more info, you can read a review from the Photography Blog HERE.

Aside:  my apologies to everyone at the ScrapFest show - In checking with the Sony Canada site, I see that the printer retails for $269.99, not approximately $200 as I first believed.  As well, the colour print packs are $29.99 on the website, not under $20.00.  I'm sorry for the confusion!  I think we may have been sent product from the US, as it was pricemarked as we originally stated.

Having said that, this little printer packs a mighty punch!  It was out of the box and functional, within 10 minutes - and that's with me having to review how to put the ink cartridges in!

Because we were doing a no-fuss, quick-and-dirty snapshot sort of booth, I didn't bother with any photo editing software.  I think it has basic photo editing capabilities, but I didn't use them.  I basically just cycled through two memory cards, one in the camera and one in the printer.  Cards went from the camera directly to the printer and were printed in a one-touch process!  It reads both SD and CF cards, and has a port to link to your camera or computer, in the event that you want to upload photos that way. 

Now, you may or may not know, I am pretty particular about my image processing.  I will only use Blacks' or Green Pixel Printing for personal photos and a professional lab for any professional photos.  But considering that the photos were printed SOOC (straight out of the camera) and the lighting was less than desirable (fluorescent lights and *gasp* I used my flash!!), the photo quality was pretty good! 

In fact, my daughter was Petit Prof (teacher's helper) on Wednesday this week and needed to bring in a photo of her family.  Of course, being a digital photographer without a functional ink jet printer, we didn't have any on hand.  So I popped open the box, quickly set up the printer and transferred an image from my hard drive to my memory card.

As an aside, did you know that you can SAVE TO your memory card from your computer?!?!  I didn't know that!!  LOL!  I've only ever gone the other way! :)

Anyhow,  I popped the card in and hit "Print".

The quality of the photo that came out was incredible, compared to those from the ScrapFest show.  It had been edited in Photoshop, to lighten it a bit (I tend to like my photos a bit "hot") and cropped and sharpened very slightly, as I do with most of my photos, which I think helped clean up the printed image.  The photo was only taken on our little Nikon Coolpix S560 so I'm anxious to try out some edited photos with my D70!

The only disadvantage of this printer is that it only prints 4"x6" prints (or wallets).  But this is a lifesaver to a scrapper who scraps late at night (me) and who never has any printed photos on hand (also me) and who loves something that is quick and easy (yep - me, again). 

It has the advantage of also working as a digital image screen so you can have it sitting on your shelf.  Then let's say Grandma comes over and as the images cycle through, she exclaims, "Oh, I'd love one of those photos!"  All you have to do is add the paper tray and click "Print"!

Like I said, quick and easy!  

Creative Prompts For You - Challenge #38

This week's challenge at CP4U blog comes from fellow teammate, Debbi Tehrani.  I loved the piece she chose to use as inspiration this week - you can check it out HERE, along with my fellow teammates' designs.

And here's my design:

Supplies used:  Bazzill Basics cardstock, Fancy Pants & Crate Paper patterned paper, Martha Stewart butterfly punch, Fiskars border punch, Marvy Uchida flower punch, EK Success fern punch, Making Memories distressing tool, Ranger Stickles, Fancy Pants pins, Offray ribbon

The background looks a little off - it's a steel grey with black damask patterns.  I loved the mix of grey and black with the yellow - I think it's my new favourite colour combo!

Here are some detail shots:

Thanks for looking - be sure to check out the CP4U October challenges for a chance to win a prize from this month's sponsor, A Little Bit of Whimsy!

ScrapFest Memories - Oshawa 2010

Well, I think I may have finally recovered from my ScrapFest weekend!

I was starting to feel the rumblings of an almighty chest cold, going into it, so I had been dosing up on Vitamin C and liquids.  It seems to have helped because I never really developed a full blown cold (touch wood!) - although I did lose my voice completely!

I suspect that may have had more to do with the talking, hysterical laughter and drinking on Saturday! :)

I left early on Friday, hoping to miss good ole' GTA traffic.  Had to stop in London at Henry's (less than 10 minutes - it always helps when you know exactly what you need) and made it to Brooklin/Oshawa in about 4.5 hours.  Thanks to my awesome friend, Jennifer, for putting me up for the weekend!!

My scrappy friends and I have been planning this weekend for a while!  We have been friends since 2005, when we met in an online forum.  It's been a while since we've seen each other so it was nice to connect and giggle like schoolgirls again.

Did I mention the X-rated conversations and alcohol consumption? ;) 

During the day, we were all well behaved though!  I worked Friday night and Saturday at the Canadian Scrapbooker magazine booth with co-founder, Katharina Doyle.  I've known Katharina since beginning with the magazine at its' debut, but we've never had the pleasure of meeting.

Have you every met someone and felt like you've really known them for years?  That was Katharina and I!  We had so much fun, chatting with our readers and subscribers, as well as new friends we met along the way.

At the booth, I took snapshots of the attendees and printed them out on a sweet printer that Sony donated for the show.  I'll review it in a few days, but suffice it to say that it was an impressive little printer!!

Stay tuned for a montage of photos from our booth photo sessions - coming up in the next few days!

WeScrap Challenge

Today, I posted a DT challenge in the WeScrap forum - have you checked out the forum yet?  Click here to meet some new friends!

My challenge this month is to use an unconventional shape for your layout's background!  In this layout, an oldie but still one of my favourites, I used a Bazzill Basics Cardstock with an Edge circle shape for the background:

Supplies used:  Bazzill Basics cardstock, Cherry Arte patterned paper & rub-ons, Heidi Swapp ghost clock, Just Cre8 Tailg8 stamps, Scenic Route die cut arrow, Art Institute glitter, American Crafts felt flowers & brads, Tsukineko ink & embossing powder.

I stamped the title with the Tailg8 stamps and embossed them.  I then rimmed the edges of the letters with my liquid glue pen and sprinkled them with glitter:

Don't be afraid to let some of your page elements hang off the page - especially if you're using a size smaller than 12x12 as it will still fit in your protectors!

Thanks for looking!

Back from ScrapFest!!

Minus a voice, any sort of finished (or even started!) scrapbooking project and a terrible cough!!


But oh, what fun we had!  I met so many online and new friends while working at the Canadian Scrapbooker booth!

I have to run into work this morning to finish up any inventory procedures but will upload photos and post tonight!

We Scrap October Kit!

The October kit has finally been revealed at We Scrap!  The site has been going through an overhaul (it looks fabby - come check it out here!) so the kit has been delayed a few days, but oh, so worth the wait!

You can view the designers' layouts here, and purchase your own October kit here!

I can't wait to get my kit for November... :)

Still here!!

*cough*

Just a quick post to let you know that I'm still alive... barely!  Thanks to my FB friends for all the home remedies to nip this throat tickle in the bud... I'm going to load up on Vitamin C and garlic!

This is the worst week for me to start feeling sick - I have a huge whole store inventory on Thursday.  Have to dash into work on Friday morning to prepare the inventory package to be sent by courier, then race to Oshawa for ScrapFest!!  I'll be at the Canadian Scrapbooker magazine booth Friday night and Saturday, meeting and greeting with Katharina Doyle - and I'll also be running an informal photo booth there!  I'm not sure of the times yet, but will let you know - you'll have to drop by to have me snap your photo and then print it out for you, right there, thanks to our sponsors, Sony!

When I'm not working the booth (or shopping at all the vendor booths! :)), I'll be hanging with my scrap buddies - hoping to get something done, since I have a few deadlines, but I haven't even started packing yet! :s

I'm back on Sunday and then into work on Monday for a Loss Prevention audit... Tuesday and Wednesday are regular work days (although I may take Wednesday off, since I'm working Monday) and then I'm back in Toronto for the Creative Festival!  Again at the CS magazine booth, so if you're planning to attend, stop by and say hello!

And because no post is complete without a photo:

Aili, 2 months, in 2004 at our last Thanksgiving dinner with my mom before she passed.  I'm hoping to work on a mini album with all of the photos from this celebration this weekend!

So much to catch up - kids, school, Thanksgiving, life in general... soon!!  Wishing everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving!

Creative Prompts For You - Challenge #36

It's Thursday again, and you know what that means... A new challenge is up on the Creative Prompts For You blog!

This week, it's a great sketch from my talented fellow teammate, Allison Cope.  And here's my simple verson of it:

Supplies used:  Doodlebug Designs embossed cardstock (white); Bazzill Basics cardstock (black); Fancy Pants patterned papers; Heidi Swapp chipboard; Me & My Big Ideas rubons, rhinestones; KaiserCraft rhinestones; Paper Adventures stickers; EK Success, Martha Stewart Crafts and Fiskars border punches; American Crafts Memory marker

Check out the challenge today and upload your image before October 31st for a chance to win a prize from this month's sponsor, A Little Bit of Whimsy.

Thanks for looking!

Time Flies...

When you're having a blast!!

To celebrate our 5th anniversary, Canadian Scrapbooker is offering their subscribers a special collector's edition of the Winter 2010/11 issue!  See more details here on the Canadian Scrapbooker website.

I can't believe it's been five years since our first issue hit the shelves.  Even longer that I've been working with Jackie & Katharina.

I've been so blessed.  I'm doing something that I love to do, in an industry that embraces two of my passions, photography and scrapbooking.  Working for the magazine has given me so many incredible opportunities that I can't imagine life without CS!

Congratulations, Jackie & Katharina, on celebrating five wonderful years in an industry that has seen magazines come and go.  Thank you for providing Canadian scrapbookers with an inspiring magazine.  Thank you for listening to my hare brained ideas.  Without laughing out loud. :)  And a big huge thank you for the incredible opportunity and for welcoming me into the Canadian Scrapbooker family.  Love you guys.

World Card Making Day

Isn't it mind-boggling?  Millions of people around the world are making cards today.  Cards for their child's birthday, to profess their undying love for their sweetie, to express their sympathy over a friend's loss of their mother...

Who will YOU be making a card for?

At WeScrap, we are having a World Card Making Day crop!  Each of the former and current design team members is challenging everyone to create a card using a specific technique.

My challenge is to use watercolours or watercolour pencils to colour a stamped or digitally stamped image:

Supplies used: Bazzill cardstock, Pink Petticoat digital stamp, General watercolour pencils, Maya Road trinket pin, American Crafts Memory Marker, Ranger Stickles.I used dimensional foam to raise the matted stamped image from the corrugated pink background:

I am offering up a mini stamp set for all who participate in my challenge so check it out HERE!

Thanks for looking!

Whoop whoop!!

Guess what?

For the next six months, I am an official...

The announcement was made today - I'll be joined by Tina Guigui and Fleur Smith, in addition to owners Allison Cope, Tara Thynne and Sarah Nolan.

Visit the friendly forum here and say hello!  And don't forget to join us tomorrow for our World Cardmaking Day card crop!