Scrapbook Expo + a GIVEAWAY!!!

Howdy folks! Friday I went to the Scrapbook Expo in Puyallup Washington. I had a good day. There was one disappointment, which I'll talk about in a bit, but overall I would do it again.

I decided to volunteer at the Expo, and I met some really nice fellow volunteers. The Scrapbook Expo staff are also very kind. In the morning, I volunteered at Will Call. The biggest thing I learned was: Don't come between a scrapbooker and her scrapbooking! =D  Overall, most people were happy and excited to be there. No matter where you go or what you do, you'll run into a Grumpy Gus or two. I've done enough volunteer work in my life to know that it comes with the job. I'm sure they'll never know I'm blogging about them, but a shout out to a couple of Scrapbook Expo employees, Jerry and Sam. Also, a shout out to my fellow volunteers, Diana and Michelle. Everybody was so kind and patient, even when I got into "Miss Bossy Boots" mode a little bit too much. ;) Have I ever mentioned I'm an anal-retentive, obsessive compulsive perfectionist? LOL.

Because Puyallup is over three hours from my home, I had left around 3:30 in the morning to be there for my 7:30 am shift. By the time I was done at 11:30 am, I was pretty tired since aside from a nap the day before, I didn't sleep at all Thursday night. After grabbing myself a yummy Fisher's scone from their booth at the fairgrounds, I went out to my car and had myself a nice little nap so I could enjoy the rest of the day.

The one thing I really really really wanted to do was the Make & Take at the Fun Stamper's Journey booth. They are a pretty new direct sales business in the paper craft industry. If it was open to Canadians, I probably would have signed up with them, instead of Close To My Heart (sorry CTMH, I still love you!) for the simple reason that they sell steel metal dies as opposed to CTMH who sells Cricut, which I don't own. I was excited to try out their product, they've been touting their new 'hybrid' inks which I really really wanted to try. Also, they were giving out a free stamp set to all participants. That's pretty sweet! I wanted it so bad, since I can't get it or try it up here without spending money first via an American consultant who has offered to ship to me. Now for the disappointing part. By approximately 3:30 in the afternoon, they had run out of supplies and had to shut their booth down. Apparently they had been short-shipped, and were expecting to have more the following day. Sadly for me, I couldn't afford to stay overnight, and it was just too big of a trip to go back on Saturday. I won't lie, I thought I was going to cry. I was still running on not much sleep and my emotions tend to come to the surface when I haven't slept properly. I basically just had to walk away, because seeing a grown woman cry is just not a pretty sight, and I didn't want to inflict that on anybody. I had hoped they'd at least have their stuff out for people to visit after the last Make & Take, but they literally packed everything up. I guess they figured it was easier to close their booth than to placate angry scrapbookers. I can't say I blame them, but by the same token it left a yucky taste in my mouth. Oh well.

One super fun thing I did was go the Creativity Center. Scrapbook Expo hosts an all-day continuous Make & Take showcasing a ton of different products. When I got there, they were going to die-cut and emboss a Tim Holtz Alterations butterfly out of plastic, and use Ranger Adirondack alcohol inks to give it some color. That was really appealing to me, since I've wanted to play around with those. Shout out to Scrapbook Expo staffer Lorraine for being such a great instructor, and her volunteer Rita who was very diligent in making sure we had the stuff we needed.

For those who've never used alcohol inks before, you squeeze out a drop or two on the felt bottom of the applicator, and dab it on the item you want to colorize. Because alcohol ink dries instantly and is permanent, this was perfect for using on plastic.

You can't really see it in the photo, but the matte was white cardstock, and I grabbed some Gelatos to play around with in matching colors. I rubbed them on a scrap piece of paper, and then rubbed them lightly onto the matte. I thought it was subtle but added a nice touch.

The show floor closed at 6 pm, and I had signed up to volunteer again at the Crop and Make & Take Extravaganza in the evening. My shift was from 8:30 till 12:30 (yes that's half past midnight! I'm a crazy gal, what can I say?!)

I spent about 40 minutes trying to decide where to eat, when I found out that Puyallup had been visited by Guy Fieri from Dinners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the Food Network. Hubby and I love that show and we've always wanted to check out some of the spots he has showcased. The place in Puyallup was called Crockett's Public House. Not much to look at from the outside, but the service was great and the food was fantastic! There was a 40 minute wait, so I sat at the bar instead. I was happy to see that one of Guy Fieri's showcased meals was one that I really wanted to eat, Mom's Sloppy Joe, and dang was it amazing!!! It had just the right amount of heat. The hand cut fries were yummy, and the homemade ranch dressing was a nice cooling effect from the sloppy joe's heat.

I ate every last bite of that sloppy joe, I just couldn't bear to leave any behind! When I was done, I headed back over to Scrapbook Expo for my volunteer shift. I was assigned to work in the 'Tool Shed', and my fellow volunteer was Rita, the same lady who'd been helping at the Creativity Center earlier. This was a pretty good gig, I got a chance to get up close and personal with a lot of stuff I'd never used before. They had a half dozen or so different die cutters and embossers, everything from the Ebosser to the Cuttlebug. They had a ton of Spellbinders dies, some Sizzix dies, and also some Little B dies which I'd been wanting to check out for some time. They also had four Canon Selphy photo printers that allowed you to print directly from your phone! They had a bunch punches, as well as We R Memory Makers Lucky 8 punches and Mini 8 punches. They had a ginormous binder full of embossing folders, and a ton of stencils as well. Last but not least, they had all of the We R Memory Makers punch boards. It was a lot of fun working with Rita, I think we were a great team, and between the two of us we knew how pretty much everything worked!

Finally midnight rolled around and the last of the scrapbookers had gone home, or back to their hotel rooms. We did a little clean up, which was very minimal since we'd been keeping it clean the whole evening, and then we were done!

All in all, it was a good day. I learned some new tips and tricks, saw some new stuff, figured out what I would do different next year. If I volunteer again, I'd want to sign up for a later shift, I would love to be in the Creativity Center because you're helping with one Make & Take after another, how much better can it get?! I'd also probably sign up for the evening Extravaganza, I think they got their money's worth with the amount of Make & Takes they were given... even though I'm not keen on cropping if it requires packing up my entire craft room on a wagon! LOL. I'd probably want to take some classes too. In hindsight, the Copics class, coloring on glitter would have been really cool. It just wasn't in the cards this year, since I didn't have a lot of money to spare.

Anyhow, down to the reason you're probably here: a giveaway! Thanks to my diligent volunteer work, I earned two free admissions to ANY Scrapbook Expo in ANY city in 2015! Puyallup was the nearest one to me, I'd have to fly to go to any other one. So I figured, why keep these two admissions just to go to waste, why not share them with my readers?! There are a bunch of ways you can enter the draw, see Rafflecopter below for more info.

San Diego, CA May 29–30

Chantilly, VA June 12–13

Akron, OH June 26-27 *NEW SHOW*

Kansas City, MO July 10-11 *NEW SHOW*

Duluth, GA July 17–18

St. Paul, MN July 24–25

Santa Clara, CA Aug. 7–8

Schaumburg, IL Aug. 21–22 *NEW VENUE*

Somerset, NJ Sep. 11–12

Marlborough, MA Sep. 18–19 *NEW SHOW*

Mesa, AZ Sep. 25–26

Denver, CO Oct. 2–3

Sacramento, CA Oct. 16–17

Ontario, CA Oct. 23–24

Please note that this giveaway is NOT sponsored by Scrapbook Expo. They gave me free tickets for volunteering, and I in turn am giving them away. I am not affiliated with any of the companies or products listed above, all links are provided as a courtesy to my readers, and I do not receive any compensation or product for anything on my blog.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wedding Butterflies (not mine!) - Cure for the Monday Blues Challenge #39

I had so much fun designing this card, I just let my mind flow. I only used a very loose interpretation of the Cure for the Monday Blues Challenge #39; primarily the colors, the circular and square shapes.

I love black, white and gold, I love shiny, I love metallic, and I love glitter. One of the challenges I face is limited supplies, so I really have to stretch myself to create what I need. Not that it's difficult, just more time consuming. So I used a gold glitter embossing powder to create some of the gold paper, and Ranger sticky powder to create the shimmery white and the other gold paper I used. I have to mention a caveat though, that since I started cardmaking last November, I've been very blessed to join a community of wonderful people, and in particular two very kind ladies both whom I met through SplitCoastStampers: Jan, and Krista. Both of them, completely of their own volition, saw my posts and comments and realized that I was just starting out with very little. They both (unbeknownst to each other, this wasn't a collaboration, or a board challenge, or anything like that) put together very large packages of stamping goodies for me. I can never thank them enough, and I look forward to the day that I am in a position to Pay It Forward. And that's not to mention the other kind people who have befriended me, offered moral support, constructive comments, praise, and all other forms of friendship.

So, on to this week's challenge. I'm down to my chinny chin chin hair with this one, the deadline is in less than 6 hours, and my pictures still aren't taken. I gave up, and had to solicit my husband's help. He's better at the photography thing than me, but it's also the middle of the night so there is no natural light to use. And let me tell you, for all that I love working with metallic and glitter, it is a son of a gun to photograph! Any suggestions or pointers, or links to tutorials would be very appreciated!!!

I knew I wanted to try out the Paper Smooches 'congratulations' die that Krista gifted me. I love script sentiment dies!! This is my only one, and I didn't know how I was going to use it until I was at the dentist last week, and the office administrator who I love to bits and pieces set my next appointment. She said she would make sure whoever is working at the time sends me an email reminder, as she might not be back from her honeymoon to Hawaii yet. This triggered thoughts of a wedding card, and wouldn't that be perfect for white, black and gold with a congratulations sentiment? Yes!

I somehow cut a square card, out of 110 lb Neenah cardstock. I don't think I intended to cut a square. I'm numerically challenged, and when it comes to measurements things don't always turn out the way I planned. I wanted to go with a big black circle in the middle, and I had just the perfect black shimmery cardstock to use. For Christmas, I treated myself to some a Lifestyle Crafts circle die set. I still desperately want squares and rectangles, not to mention all the lovely ones with faux stitching and piercing, etc. Anyhow, one thing at a time!

I die cut 'congratulations' into the circle so that I could use the negative space. I made some gold glitter paper and glued it behind the circle. I then proceeded to pop in all the centers of the letters (the 'o's, the 'a's, ect) so that the word was complete. Oh joy, that was fun. Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!

Then I started working on the butterflies. I used another die Krista sent me, a SU! Sizzix Embosslit of five different little butterflies. I thought that a more bold gold than the one I used for the sentiment might be good, so I heat embossed some cardstock with a glitter gold embossing powder by Stampendous that I had. I had to give it two coats because it looked really watered down to me. Then, I made a white shimmery paper and cut out some more butterflies. I positioned everything on the card, and it just fell flat. I knew the stark white cardstock background wasn't going to cut it. So I put everything on hold till I could get to Michaels and find something suitable.

I don't have any foam tape, and I didn't want to use a million foam dots under the circle, so I used an idea I saw in a Jennifer McGuire video: I used some fun foam (which funnily enough I do have, don't ask!) I didn't want the fun foam to be visible from the sides, so I die cut a slightly smaller circle out of it. Glued the fun foam to the black circle, then attached it to the new white cardstock which I had cut out to fit on top of the Neenah cardstock.

Last but not least, I started positioning the butterflies on the circle with glue dots. I decided the corners looked empty, so I made some more gold glitter paper out of the same glitter I used for the sentiment. I thought they should be a bit lighter than the bigger ones. Got those cut out, finished gluing everything together, and voila. All I had to do was enlist hubby while I started writing my blog post. I'm a little verbose, in case you hadn't noticed. ;)

p.s. See the itty bitty butterfly above the 's'? Yeah that's because I spilled some glue in that spot and it left a matte smudge. Thank goodness for itty bitty butterflies :D
p.p.s. No supplies list today, I might come back and edit later, but I'm tired and haven't slept yet. Yes it's 7:30 am on the west-coast. Hubby works a night shift, and since I'm not working right now I tend to follow his schedule. For the record, I only put a supplies list because I'm a very visual person, and I love visiting blogs where I can see what they used at a glance.