Just look at my rainbow of colored papers!

They’re organized on the Clip it Up Jumbo and Upper Tier by sizes and colors. The top tier is filled with smaller scraps and the bottom tier is loaded with larger papers.


I’ve also arranged them by color by using Renee’s plastic divider tabs plus her labels to separate colors. By putting a colored label on both sides of the plastic tabs, I can see the dividers from any place I’m sitting and creating.

Just the other day, I designed a new series of journals. I knew I wanted to utilize green, brown, and natural papers. The process was made so much easier by spinning the Jumbo, unhooking papers that may coordinate together, and laying them out on my work table. The ones that didn’t work just got clipped back up. Compare the ease of that to unloading and reloading all my manila file folders full of decorative papers.

Some of my papers are delicate rice papers and some are ultra-suedes. Since they require special treatment, I’ve added Clip Grips and they don’t have a single indent on them when I take the clip off.

And now that I’m organized, I’m super motivated to stay organized as I add new papers.

Renee Reese

www.hopscotchart.com

Country Vintage...

This beautiful tree stamp just whispered that to me! ;) But seriously, it was my inspiration for this simple, country card. I chose muted tones for my patterned papers and cardstock. I wanted a soft brown for the ink shade to keep with the theme. I also had fun with my distress ink – I wanted to keep the rustic, country feel so I ‘dirtied it up’ a bit! And the finishing touch is just a simple piece of twine. Viola! A beautifully simple country vintage card!!!!

Supplies:
Canson cardstock,
Graphic 45 papers,
Cornish Heritage Farms stamps,
Ranger Distress Ink

Danielle Holsapple
http://www.danielleholsapple.blogspot.com/

Quote of the Week

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
-William James

Gone are the tangles and knots...

Armed only with a stud-finder, a level, an electric screwdriver and a pencil, I installed this fabulous Ribbon Organizer myself!

My motivation was getting all those fablous ribbons out of the plastic stackables and up on the wall where they could inspire my next project. The top section houses all my ribbons on spools, and the bottom bar lets me clip up ribbons I bought by the yard or loose antique laces from flea markets. Using the cushiony Clip Grips on delicate ribbons helps protect them (like the pink and yellow crocheted flower trim). If the folds of ribbon were too bulky to clip, I placed them in small recycled plastic bags and then clipped the bag.

Gone are the tangles and knots of ribbons stored in boxes! And having my ribbons off the floor means that they aren’t getting chewed by the art room rabbits, Sir William Wallace and Cocoa Reese!

I ordered a second organizer which I am going to use exclusively for my holiday ribbons.

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Renee Reese

www.hopscotchart.com

Renee Reese

At the end of one of the days during the National Stationary Show, a darling lady with a cool name… Renee Reese came back into the show after seeing the ribbon organizer in the Winner’s Circle. I commented on her name because my granddaughter’s name is Renee Reese. Then I noticed she was from Hummelstown PA which is right by Hershey PA where I was going to be the next week. So that started a whole other conversation and when we realized we were only about 5 mins away from each other in PA, we decided to get together while I was in PA.

I took my daughter-in-law and my two grandkids and we meet Renee, her bunnies, and had tour of her beautiful home, and her “Creative Retreat /work room. Renee makes cards, paints pictures, etc. and she does beautiful work! She knew it was Reese’s b-day and even had a gift for her! What a talented, sweet, and oh so kind kindred spirit! I’m sad I didn’t take any pictures, but we have some from her room. She ordered some products and took some pictures. Over the next 3 Fridays we'll post her pictures and critiques.


Thanks again Renee!

Butterfly Note Card Gift Set

It is always better to give than to receive. That’s one of my favorite sayings because it is so true! I just love gifts and everyone who knows me knows that. The only problem is it can sometimes be costly, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of spending a lot of money on gifts that sometimes go unappreciated and unused, you can spend very little and create a gift that the recipient is sure to love and remember forever!

Here is a gift I made that I like to call the Butterfly Note Card Gift Set. It cost me all of $4.00 to make. Everyone who’s ever received it from me has always loved it. It’s a very practical gift that I love to make and the recipient loves to use.

All you need to make this is:·

1 Quarter Box Template-The Cutting Café·

(3) 12 x 12 sheets of Cardstock-Bazzill·

12 x 12 sheet of Patterned Paper- American Crafts·

½ sheet of Glittered Cardstock- Doodlebug·

Butterfly Stamps- Cornish Heritage Farms

Ribbon

This gift can be tailored to your own tastes and subjects. For example, instead of having a butterfly theme, your theme can be holidays, sports, flowers, spiritual, birthday, or whatever your heart desires! My mom loves my gifts so much that she has requested that I never buy her another gift. She wants all of hers handmade by me! So try your hand at creating your own personalizes gifts and see if it doesn’t save you some money and make you feel great!

Robyn Weatherspoon

http://www.herebygrace.typepad.com/

Quote of the Week

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
~Alan Kay

Christine Real

One of the best parts about this job is all the talented and created people we get to meet. Christine Real is one of them. She recently purchased a Clip it Up and generously sent me pictures so we could share her scrapbook room and thoughts with you.

Bio: Married for 31 years to my high school sweetheart, two kids, Kelly is 28 a elementary school librarian and Brian is 26 and also a librarian at our local library! I am retired on disability from the Census Bureau, I have something called Meniere's Disease, ever heard of it? Don't worry, most people haven't. I get severe bouts of vertigo. Don't like to talk about it much, just try to get through it and go on! I have also started fostering dogs in my home for the local dog shelter, I really enjoy doing that, even though it is sometimes hard to say goodbye to the dogs when they leave.

"This is a dream come true for me! I have wanted one for so long. I thought about making a homemade one and I looked at them here on scrapbook.com, but this was on sale and then I had a $10 coupon, so I decided to go with the "real thing" I'm glad I did! It was so easy to put together! I put it together myself (usually wait for hubby to do that sort of thing) very easy instructions, took just minutes and the clips are very strong. I know this is a good investment in my scrapbook room that will last for years. I'm going to put everything else on my wish-list so the hubby and kids can get it for me for birthdays and Christmas!"

"Here is the Clip-It-Up in my scrapbook room, see what a small space it takes up? I am a very 'hands on person' I like to be able to see my stuff while I am working. I hate it when I finish a layout and then find an embellishment that would have been perfect. This gives me a place to store everything at my fingertips. When I was hanging things on it, I discovered things that i didn't know I had!"

Christine- thanks so much for sharing with us!!!

Colors of my Heart

I am sure this layout looks like it must have taken me forever! I will admit that it did take some time, but it’s fun time! This is the kind of project I love to work on when I am sitting outside and watching the kids play or when I just want to sit and watch a movie. Lately, when I am creating something I really try to incorporate new things. I try to push myself creatively and show others that if I can do it anyone can!! On this layout the new things for me were creating a custom shape from hole punches and then machine stitching the shape. I’ve never machine stitched anything other than a straight line so this was a definite first for me. I was really scared that I would mess it up after I took all the time to make the shape, so I did test out stitching in a heart shape on some scrap paper before I actually started on my layout. Even after the testing I still held my breath the whole time I was stitching, but it was worth it because looking at this layout makes me happy to have tried something new!


To make the heart shape I started with some scraps of papers (all American Crafts) in a rainbow array. Then I grabbed my hole punch and punched out a bunch of circles from each. I kept them separated into individual bowls.

Then I cut a 4” heart using the Making Memories Slice for my template.


I put the heart on a piece of 12”x12” white cardstock with some removable adhesive. Then starting with the purple I layered the circles around the outside of the heart. I used a glue stick as my adhesive here so I could move the circles around as needed to get them how I wanted and to prevent my needle from getting all gunked up when I stitched it later. After I had the row of purple done I removed the heart template.


I continued layering my circles around the heart in rows of rainbow color. After I had my heart complete and the glue was dry I stitched each row of colors using a straight machine stitch. (If you do not have a sewing machine this layout would look just as nice without the stitching!)


Once the heart was done I was ready to finish my layout. I cut the cardstock down to 10.5”x10.5” and mounted it a base piece of 12”x12” American Crafts Patterned Paper. (note: I started with a 12”x12” and cut it down after I finished the heart because I knew my heart wouldn’t be perfect, but I would want to have it centered on my layout. This gave me some playing room to cut it down). I stitched the cardstock and the patterned paper together for a cohesive look.

Lisa Day
http://www.lisaday.typepad.com/

Trips, trips and more trips...

I was home from NY for 3 ½ days, then packed up again to fly back to PA for my granddaughter's 3 yr old birthday. I stayed a week with them and helped my daughter-in-law and my two grandchildren fly back to UT with me. My son who is finishing his second year of Med School stayed to finish studying for the first part of the boards, then fly out to UT to go on vacation with us for a week, and then fly home with his family.

Grandkids with their new sunglasses from Grandma for our vacation to Lake Powell.

Waking up to that smile will make it all worthwhile (even though he and his sister wake up at 5-5:30 every morning)

What more could a little girl want besides a Ariel umbrella, wallet and rings!

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While in PA the last time visiting my kids, I ran into a scrapbooking store (just to see if they had our products). They did and we had a fun visit with them. I told them the next time I came out to PA, I’d bring some new products so they could use them for a give-away. So I spent two hours meeting and visiting with some wonderful new friends. Here’s a pic with my granddaughter and Jackie.

We have been going to Lake Powell for 22 years for our vacations! If you’ve never seen or heard of Lake Powell – it is a slice of heaven on earth. We have a houseboat with other people and we go at least once a year if not two or three times (since I started the business we’ve only gone once a year – bummer!!!). There really isn’t a better place for a family of boys to go and have wakeboarding, skiing, sky skiing, tubing, water, places to explore, sand, cliffs, and fun in the sun! We were there from Sunday to Sat. and had a wonderful time. It was fun to start the “next generation” of Lake Powell adventures with the grandkids!

"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in."
—Robert Orben

Renee

Quote of the Week

A man may fall several times, but he isn't a failure until he starts saying somebody pushed him.

The Marathon

My husband ran his marathon on Sat. the 13th. For those of you who want to know more about the marathon, you can check out his blog: run4sci.blogspot.com.

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He truly is a remarkable man and makes me feel like a slug for not exercising when he has so many things to overcome with his Spinal Cord Injury and I’m just lazy and don’t like to sweat! If you want a story to make you feel better – read his!

Having a treadmill in a pool makes running possible because of the buoyancy created because of the water.

Grandkids wanting to get in and run with “Papa"

Grandma “Nae” enjoying the time with Reese

Former patient of Dale’s with her girls Dale delivered. They stopped by to cheer him on and made a donation!

Renee

NSS and New York

This is one reason I was worried about starting a blog! Time to post!!!!! So, here are some “late” things I have finally gotten around to writing about:

Sorry it took me soooo long to get this posted. You’ll know why as you continue…

This year I decided to “branch” out a bit. We’d been asked to go to the National Stationary Show (NSS)the year before, but we already had a full schedule. So we signed up for NSS (the fact it was in New York wasn’t influencing me at all!!!)

I took my two sisters Carolyn and Dianna with me (they’d never been to New York before). We packed our bags and headed to the “big apple” for the show and some fun “tourists” activities. While in NY my sisters went to the famous “Canal Street” shopping experience with Alicia and Lorie from Robert’s Craft. They had a great time and were quite the shoppers as Lorie negotiated the bargain prices with ease!!!

It was a great show and my favorite surprise was when the NSS Show Manager – Patty Stracher stopped by our booth to present us with the Best New Product Award for the Papercraft / Scrapbooking Category. I was so surprised and excited to have the recognition since it was our first year exhibiting there!

(I really dislike this pic – my hair is naturally curly and when I try to wear it straight in places where there is humidity – not a good combo!)

Here are some pics of the trip while out being tourists:

Live with Regis and Kelly

(Renee and Diana on top, Renee and Carolyn on bottom)

Plays:

The Marvolous Wonderettes- my personal favorite

9 to 5

Thanks to Diana and Carolyn for all your support and a fun trip!

We met Monica Davis at the show. What an genuinely nice, smart and sweet person. Her husband called and asked which booth she was in so he could join her. When he got there, Di recognized him. He is Clive Davis and starred in several tv shows. He had just tried out that morning for a broadway play and was feeling good about it. We wish you luck Clive and your wife is amazing!

After New York I headed to Pennsylvania. Check back for a post about that.

Renee

Quote of the Week

There is less to fear from outside competition than from inside inefficiency, discourtesy and bad service.
~Unknown

And the Winner Is...

Congratulations to Nicole Kohler from Ohio. She is the winner of our first ever blog drawing!!! Thanks to everyone who entered and we received many fabulous ideas.

Nicole's idea: "I think it would be the perfect wedding shower gift. At every one I've ever been to, there are people sharing family recipes (both sides) and talking about the food, etc. This would be a fantastic present--and something everyone could participate in. When announcements are sent, a recipe card is also sent. Then the attendees would just have to bring the card along with their gift. If people can't make it, it won't cost much to send the recipe card back. Cards are added to the Clip it Up as they arrive. This way, it's not only something that the entire family (both blood and by marriage) can share with, it's a lot less stressful for the bride to plan those meals as a newlywed (she knows what her new husband's favorite dish is, etc.)."

For those of you who weren't aware of the drawing. We asked everyone to email us their idea on how they'd use any of the Clip it Up products. We received many fabulous entries and I love how creative our readers are. Check back for our next drawing!!!