What a great time I had, but I am still exhausted! I went from 4 p.m. on Friday to 2 a.m. on Sat, then was back at 8 a.m. till 6 p.m. on Sat.
It was put on by our church and they did a great job! There were about 120 on Friday and about 110 on Saturday. (About 90 of us were there both days.) There were 5 vendors and the door prizes were fantastic. We also played "SCRAP": had contests for page designs, for "who has ...", and who completed the most pages each day. Even the vendors had prize drawings and/or discounts. Anyone attending could bring items they no longer wanted for the"garage sale". I got several pages, sticker holder pages, stickers, a scrap organizer for $5 that was never used (this retails for over $40 and was the grand prize for the door prizes!) At the end, some garage salers left their stuff in a "free box, so I got some more stuff. They also offered several classes for a minimal fee and had some make and takes. There was even a massage therapist there who gave 15 minute massages for $10. Of course, she was booked immediately.
We also got dinner--pizza and salad; coffee break--Starbucks type coffees and cheesecake; breakfast--fruits, croissants, breads, yogurts and the coffees along with juices and smoothies; lunch--box lunch from a deli with sandwich,fruit, chips; as well as pop and water. Everyone brought snacks to share.
I won once at SCRAP and a door prize. Got a neat packet of summer papers and stickers for SCRAP and a plastic carry bag with bright color 12 x 12 card stock and smaller sized papers from CM for door prize.
We sat 3 to a round table and it worked out great! I also met a lot of new people and everyone walked around to see what others were doing.
In my class we made 5 cards that were vintage looking. I made 3 birthday, 1 valentine, and 1 thank you. We did paper tearing, inking, sandpapering, eyelets, brads, painting, stamping--I think that was all. It was about a 2 hour class. AT the end she gave us two more vintage papers so now I can make the other two cards I need for family birthdays. She gave us a lot of good hints too. The one I liked the best was to set up a notebook with page protectors. Then when you are done making a scrapbook page, put the extra smaller size pieces you have in the protector. Add any embellishments, card stock, paper, etc. and when you need a card, you have coordinating elements together and don't have to go hunting around. I knew there was a reason I have all these extra notebooks and page protectors! She said even if you don't want to use them for cards, you have coordinating elements together and you can add/subtract as you work on your books.
So, in the 14 hours that I probably spent scrapping after the breaks, my class, setting up and tearing down, visiting around the room, shopping for supplies and at the garage sale, bathroom breaks, etc, I got 17 pages done and have layouts ready to go for about that many more. I just need to get some different papers and some embellishments. The one vendor that I really liked has papers that I need, but of course could not bring them all, so I am going to make a run to her store and spend the day there.
I fell in love with the sizzix. Need to save my money for the machine as well as all the fonts and such. The machine isn't so badly priced, but it is all the extras. Michaels and JoAnns will have to have a lot of coupons for me to get what I need!
So, all in all, it was a great experience and I am ready to go again next year. I hope to have my layouts ready to go, so I can get more pages down. One scrapper completed 28 pages on Friday and 33 on Saturday. I never saw them, so don't know how detailed they were or if she had them ready to go ahead of time. Another had 26 one day, another had 25 one day. Most were about where I was, some only 3 or 4. One scrapper thought there should have been a consolation prize for the least done. There was one mother-daughter team that was just starting--they came on Saturday. They didn't get many done, but they went to a lot of the classes and walked around talking to people. There were lots of tables of friends and lots of people came on their own, but had new friends by the time they left.
It was really interesting to see the different ways that people scrap--some were more plain and others were very detailed with lots of elements!
The church also had youth group members there to help carry your stuff in and out. What great help that was!
Sorry this is so long!
