I’m back from my trip April 8, 2008
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed when I haven’t written on here in a while. Not sure why. I guess it could be because I have a lot to say and I don’t want to write a long ass blog. But I am going to do it today. Yahoo!!!!!!!!
Okay, so onto our trip to St. Louis and the awesome convention that we went to. It started off with us driving out there. We had a lovely-that’s sarcasm- drive through a lightning storm for 2 hours and it was super duper scary. AHHH!!! I hate lightning so this was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been in. Once we got there we checked in and went to sleep pretty quickly. Oh ya, for those who don’t know, I went with one of my best buddies Amanda, and we had an awesome time. Anyways… On Friday we had 3 classes and a crop plus lots of time to shop.
Our first class was Acrylic Craze. I would have to say that this was a good class to start with as I would have been disappointed with it if it had been in our later classes. We had a lot of fun and learned about what you can do with acrylic. Since I’m a very new scrap booker this is great because I would have felt funny asking someone how to do use this. I didn’t actually finish a layout, I did get to use different shapes of acrylic and I used stamps and all kinds of fun stuff. I will be working on a page with this pretty soon, I hope.
Our second class was My Heart Belongs to Daddy. I really enjoyed this class because I felt like I learned a lot of different things. It did feel a bit rushed, but as the instructor said this is usually a 2 hour class that was crammed into 1 hour. I only have a little bit to work on from that project but it looks really awesome. I can’t wait to finish it and put pictures in it. I’m not sure what I should do with it, keep it or send it to my dad for Fathers Day. I’ll have to think about it.
Our last class that day was Home Tour. I LOVED this class. It turned out great. We used a chipboard flip album and I actually finished this. It was fairly simple to do which is nice because I will be able to take what I learned and put it to good use. YAY! What is funny is that earlier that day I bought the exact same album we used so at least I will be able to use it.
The crop was great. It was a bit cramped but I really feel like it was well worth the $25 fee to attend. We got a goodie bag and lots of free stuff. I bought two stamp sets from Technique Tuesday for 50% off and was very happy. I didn’t have an alpha set yet so I got one and I LOVE IT! I also bought a kit from SEI-I think- for $5 bucks. It looks really nice. It is the 2 page layout of me and Amanda. I worked on a few pages that night. I lost a picture and couldn’t find it, seriously for like an hour I was saying “where the F is my picture”. The lady sitting next to me took over my side so that sucked so I started putting my stuff on hers. I have to say that we sat with a great group of ladies. They didn’t seam to mind my offensive language or my lame jokes so that was nice. I would hate to have been sitting by a bunch of super Christians because I would have offended them and I wouldn’t want that. I know the person I am and when I’m scrappin all I think is “Fuck I put that picture in the wrong spot”, but without thinking I say it outloud and it’s not the most appropriate thing. Anyways.. Thank you nice ladies who sat with us that work in Hospice, you guys were nice and sweet and I could never do your job, I just don’t have a sympathetic bone in my body.
Okay, onto day 2, Saturday.
Our first class was 4 Velvet Paper Techniques by SEI. This I have to say was my FAVORITE class. I had so much fun making this album and I had almost finished the whole thing in class. I learned about embossing velvet, stamping on velvet, using rub-ons on velvet and inking on velvet. They had the best directions by far. I am one of those “If I see it I can replicate it” types of people so even though I didn’t finish it in the classroom I went back to my hotel room and finished with no problem! The instructor was great. She was helpful, informative and gave away prizes. All of which are good in my book. I have pictures for this that I posted at the bottom of this post. This class was by far my favorite. Amanda and I are going to take more of the SEI classes next year because we loved them.
Our last class for Sat was Thinking Outside of the Box. When I saw what were making I wasn’t really impressed, that was until I actually made it. It turned out freaking awesome. I’d love to make one of these of each of my nephews. Now, I didn’t learn a lot from this class, but I did make a really nice looking exploding box. Amanda and I didn’t really like the paper that came with the class so we took the liberty of using some of the free SEI paper we had gotten the night before at the crop. I chalked the hell out of my box and made it look like it was wood and not so much paper. I’ll post a picture tomorrow. I didn’t take it with me to work and that is where I am writing this.
We went back to the hotel after our last class, and shopping at like 2 on Saturday and went back at 6 for the crop. Which we got more free stuff and we got to take up a whole table just for ourselves. We actually got to sing a song for the Cuttlebug prize, which we didn’t win. Boo! I think we were too young and not pregnant enough to win. Oh well! We did get some fun pictures so that’s worth it to me! Oh and I bought a silent eyelet setter for like 12 bucks. I’ve been researching it a little online and it looks like it was a pretty good deal, especially because I’d never used an eyelet in my entire life and its super easy to use. At the very end they put out all the left over goodie bags and we were able to take what we wanted, which was glue sticks for me and Amanda. You can never have too many of those, oh and I took another set of papers. Lots of fun!
We had a lot of fun shopping on Friday and Saturday. I know it was a bit cramped on Sat but I still enjoyed myself. I spent tons of money and bought a lot of stuff that I am actually using. YAY!!!!!!!! We only did 2 make-n-takes. The SEI make-n-take was awesome. I made the Christmas one and it turned out beautifully. I purchased the make-n-take from Storytellers, but these two women were taking forever to do their layouts so I took it with me and messed with at the crop on Saturday night. I have to say that I found 3 places to be my favorite places. Of course the dollar store, who doesn’t love a dollar store dedicated to scrapbooking, the Scrap-Mart store- I really liked all the paper that they had and the 20 page for 5 bucks deal that I got, and the SEI store- although things were quite pricey and I was trying to not buy anymore paper I really loved this store. I bought a mini album with my 40% off coupon so I could have a little book to put all of our fun pictures from this trip in it.
My overall opinion of this convention. This was my first convention that I took classes and was able to buy a lot of things and I thought it was great. We will be going again next year, and hopefully every year until we have kids-but that shouldn’t be for quite a while. The only things that we have made a mental note to do differently would be to not work on Thursday and head down there in the morning and go to the Thursday night crop. The drive doesn’t seem so bad during the day and we heard that the preview crop had better goodie bags. Ummm oh and we would take the following Monday off so we could spend the day scrapbooking because we were so amped up to scrapbook that we wished that we had been able to do more the next day.
Okay, so that’s my review of this trip. It was great, especially for a beginner like me.
I might write more later. Not sure, as this was a super long post. I’m planning on spending my lunch scrapbooking again so I may post a picture from that.
Steph 
P.S. Here are some pictures from our trip. Amanda has a lot of the pics from Sat as I thought it was silly to ask people to take duplicates of the same pic.
