Archivers

Since I have nothing I must do today, I'm going to head to Archivers as soon as I can get all my stuff together. I'm going early to work in their great workspace. The Mania (their word for group scrapbooking session) goes from 5:00 to 11:00, so will do that, too, but might not stay till the end. I come home so keyed up and it takes me a couple of hours to wind down. They really are fun, though, and my friend Diana who works there, is the hostess. I tease her mercilessly because on one of her evaluations forms, one of the attendees told her to "get a personality." If you know Diana, you know she has a great personality and a highly developed sense of humor. Well, you can't please everyone.

Archiver's is a place to consider for birthday parties or Girl Scouts meetings. Check my link to the side and click it for the Memphis store's calendar of events. Did you know there's a Scrapbooking Badge now? More about Scouting in another post.

Valentine Cards

Here's one of the grand total of five Valentines I made - just made them today. For as much Valentine's stuff as I bought, my cost per card is very high. I'll mail them tomorrow and the ones in town might make it to their destination on time. Oh, well. I only got about half my Christmas cards out. I should start on St. Patrick's day cards now!

I might try to take another picture of this one in the morning when the light is better. I used the "museum" setting on my camera with the Valentine taped to my kitchen's yellow wall, and it turned out way too yellow.

I downloaded a free 30 day trial of Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and am going to give it a try. It's what all the scrapbooking gurus use, so it must be good. I could probably correct my color on that. I'm sure I can. I want to do a slide show with music for all our old family photos. I'll also have to buy a color scanner, but they're not too expensive. Mack's cousin Heather did it for Christmas for all their family and it was really wonderful. She used a program called PhotoStory, but Elements can do it, too, plus all the photoediting and digital scrapbooking stuff.

My favorite things to use right now, as far as scrapbooking and cardmaking, are my acrylic (clear) stamps and ink on all the edges and rhinestones. Brown and pink and aqua are the colors I love - not just now but always. They happen to be the hot colors in the scrapbook world at the moment. I think brown is big for weddings, too. My friend Ruth's future daughter-in-law, Lenox, is having brown bridesmaids dresses. I think she said she is pairing them with crimson or some shade of red. It sounds very pretty.

I had the best dinner tonight. I called a takeout order into the new PeiWei on Mendenhall and Evans picked it up on the way home. I had the Kung Pao Shrimp. So good. I guess this teenager driving thing has its benefits. His car locks have frozen twice, so I need to go to WalMart or AutoZone and buy one of those lock unfreezer things. I think they really exist and I'm not imagining them.

I can't believe it is 9:00 already and I haven't done a third of the things I hoped to. Well, there's tomorrow. My friend Sally P is having a Homemade Gourmet party in the morning, so I will go there and have coffee and pick up a few things to make. A girl I used to work with sold it and I liked everything I tried. I'm probably due to go to the grocery store again. I cannot keep the kid in milk. Do milkmen still exist? I wish I could have it piped in from the street. Well, that's enough rambling for now. Suddenly I'm very tired.

Stampin' Up + Entrepreneurial Friends

I went to a SuperBowl Scrapbooking Party at Archiver's Sunday and ran into Juli Bowen, my former Archiver's co-worker and fellow scrapbook fanatic. She said she reads my blog, so I thought I'd feature her here! She is SO creative. Maybe she'll let me feature some of her layouts or cards here soon. Well, if you're interested in hosting a Stampin' Up party or ordering some of their products, check her link at: http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/stampwithjuli/ They have great cardmaking supplies in addition to scrapbooking stuff. She does a pre-teen cardmaking class - wouldn't that be a great Tween Birthday Party! If she can work Hannah Montana in, it would be a huge success - maybe you could charge admission!!

I seem to find myself surrounded by entrepreneurial people lately. I'm thinking of Juli as well as my friend Julia E. (beading), Angela L. (diaper cakes), Kim M. (Sweet Celebrations - beautiful cakes), and of course, the fabulous Lundy - web guru and my partner in the soon to come women's resource website (to be called MemphisMom.com).

For my crafty friends who are interested in selling some of their creations, take a look at Etsy.com (see link to the left). It's an alternative to eBay. You pay a small fee per listing and another fee when it sells. No baby-sitting auctions. It's geared to handmade items. It's a great place to find the going rate for your wares.

Let me know if you have any other tips or resources you'd like to share.