Scrapropos

National Scrapbooking Day is this weekend. There are loads of things going on online and off. Like these!

• A Cherry on Top will host its 2nd Annual MSD Crop Around the Clock event, with 52 hours of cropping, challenges, games, make’n'takes, bingo, and classes. The crop starts at 3 p.m EST Friday, May 4th and ends at 7 p.m. EST on Sunday, May 6th. Check their message board for more info.
• AllyScraps kicks off their celebration at 1 p.m. EST on Saturday, May 5, with challenges, a trivia contest, hourly prizes and games.
• ScrapFabulous is holding a weeklong celebration of National Scrapbook Day! From April 30 to May 4, there will be challenges, games, giveaways and of course, cool prizes.
• Treasured Scrapbooking will have an online crop this weekend starting on Friday, May 4 at 7 p.m. EST until Saturday, May 5 at 11 p.m. (EST).
• What’s Scrappening! is holding a Meet and Greet in Tulsa, Oklahoma, plus an online crop on May 5. There will be giveaways and prizes so check them out.

Don’t forget to ask your local store if they have events planned. My LSS is having a special 12-hour crop, double-punches, and a sale!

Brooks Barnes, a reporter for Wall Street Journal, has labeled scrapbooking as a ‘dowdy craft business’.

And scrapbookers are hopping mad!

Brooks wrote the article, “Dowdy Craft Business Gets Martha Stewart Makeover“, about the launch of Martha Stewart’s crafts line. It could have been a straightforward analysis of the profit-driven decision. Instead, he peppers it with statements like these (emphasis mine):

What does the domestic-arts maven see in a dowdy industry where merchandise is sold in cluttered stores stacked floor to ceiling with pipe cleaners, Styrofoam balls, glue sticks, beads and fake flowers?

To succeed, Ms. Stewart will have to connect with a far-flung world of customers, including legions of Middle Americans who may never have used her tips on home decor or holiday cooking. She put her designers to work coming up with new twists on such mundane products as scrapbooks, ribbon, and cardboard boxes. Her executives went looking for a retail partner whose stores didn’t look like a mess.

The crafts business, in some ways, is eccentric. Even outlets operated by big craft chains often resemble Main Street hardware stores from a bygone era, with oddball items stacked inefficiently in a dusty jumble. Suppliers are a hodgepodge, ranging from the office supply giant 3M Co. to a two-person company that sells a single item, Baby Tooth Album Inc.

(more…)

I have some more NSD events to tell you about. But before I go to that, here’s a contest you might want to check out:

What: Altered Idol (Junkitz) Contest

Where: Cropper’s Cottage

When: First project is due on May 4, 2007

Details: Here are the contest rules:

1. This contest is for non-Design Team members.
2. Product used must be 70% Junkitz product.
3. The contest is a 3-phase contest, being voted on by the Design Team.
4. The contest begins immediately. The first project must be completed by May 4th and uploaded to the Gallery in the Junkitz Contest section by May 4th.
5. The first project is to be an altered letter of your choice that is at least 8 inches in height or bigger.
6. The second and third projects will be spaced 10 days from the time of announcement of winner of the previous round.

The prize is donated by Junkitz, worth over $50 (Tim Holtz stamps, Tim Holtz Ruler book with refills, and a class kit). If you love altered projects, you have one week to join this fun contest, and maybe win some great new products!

Tags: scrapbooking, Cropper’s Cottage, Tim Holtz, scrapbook contest, Junkitz

Just in time for National Scrapbooking Day, Martha Stewart is finally launching her own line of scrapbooking and papercrafting products.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (NYSE: MSO) announced the Martha Stewart Crafts (TM) line will debut on May 1, 2007. The line features more than 650 SKUs, including a wide array of materials for paper crafting and scrapbooking, with exclusive paper designs, beautiful embellishments, smartly designed tools every crafter needs, as well as convenient binders and storage systems that help keep everything organized.

Debuting exclusively at more than 900 Michaels stores in the U.S. and Canada and at marthastewartcrafts.com, the Martha Stewart Crafts line will be a complete crafts destination, including products, inspiration, and educational materials, all arranged to create a “store-within-a-store” feel.

EK Success will manufacture the Martha Stewart-designed products, which include

(more…)

May 5 is National Scrapbooking Day. Do you have anything special planned?

If you want to catch some scrapbooking celebrities online and elsewhere, here’s some information I was able to find:

* Ali Edwards will host an online crop on the Creating Keepsakes message board from 12 noon to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. There will be challenges and other fun stuff (like chatting with Ali herself!) during the crop.

* Recollections is offering three days of fun activities to mark NSD. Heidi Swapp, Tim Holtz and Ali Edwards have designed layouts for crop participants on May 4-6, 2007.

* The Fiskateers will hold a huge online crop for the entire month of May. Lead Fiskateer May Flaum is organizing the big event, which has lots of princes, give-aways, and a big contest.

Me? I’ll be scrapping and preparing for a crop the following week. I’ll tell you more about that later.

Tags: scrapbooking, National Scrapbooking Day, Ali Edwards, Recollections, Tim Holtz, Heidi Swapp

The search has begun for the Memory Makers Masters for 2008!

Submit your best work today for a chance to earn the title of Memory Makers Master and become an integral part of the Memory Makers publishing staff. Ten lucky scrapbookers will be awarded more than $2,000 in cash and prizes, and will work directly with Memory Makers editors, creating layouts and projects for the magazine for an entire year, beginning August 15, 2007.

In addition, each Memory Makers Master will also receive:

* A full line of Memory Makers 2008 products, including a magazine subscription and books.

* Exclusive opportunities to create art and to be published in Memory Makers magazines and books.

* Payment for published pages.

* During your term, special recognition each time your pages are published in Memory Makers magazine.

* Your name on the magazine masthead alongside the Memory Makers staff.

ENTRY DEADLINE: July 31, 2007

Tags: scrapbooking, Memory Makers Masters

One of the fun things I’m starting here at Scrapropos is a feature called “One Week to Scrap”. I’ll be highlighting a contest, challenge, or page call that will end one week from the date of its posting here. I don’t know about you but I need reminders every now and then of events that I want to join. This feature will hopefuly serve that purpose.

Here’s the first One Week to Scrap feature:

What: Caardvarks Felt Challenge

When: ongoing until May 2, 2007

Where: http://caardvarks.blogspot.com/

Details: Make a card using felt on your cardfront. Link your creation(s) to Caardvarks in the comments section of the post announcement or email them to caardvarks@yahoo.com (under 200k please). Entries will be added to the Challenge Gallery. The winner will be announced on on May 5. The prize is sponsored by 2Jills. Plus the winner will be invited to be a Guest Designer at Caardvarks!

Here’s a sample card made by Bety, posted at Caardvarks:

Remember, you have One Week to Scrap and finish the card! Have fun!

Tags: scrapbooking, cardmaking, Caardvarks

Have you heard who the new Making Memories Idol is?

It’s Joey Whittaker!

Joey bested thousands of initial submissions and several rounds of challenges to come out on top. The final challenge was to make a baby gift using scrapbooking supplies and black-and-white photos. Below is Joey’s winning entry:

Here’s how Joey felt about winning:

“Relieved and excited. I slept off and on last night. I woke up every couple of hours thinking about the competition. At least I don’t feel like I’m going to be sick anymore!�

She will be joining the MM design team as the contest winner. Congratulations, Joey!

via MM Idol blog

Tags: Making Memories, MM Idol, scrapbooking

Hello, fellow scrappers and paper lovers! My name is Maricar and I’m the new blogger here at Scrapropos. I’m excited to be here at 451 Press, blogging about this hobby/therapy called scrapbooking. Stacy has certainly done a great job here, and I hope you will welcome me as warmly as you did her.

I’ve been fascinated by pretty papers since childhood, and have been scrapbooking since 2000. But before I found out about acid-free scrapbooking, I dabbled with arranging photos and magazine cut-outs in magnetic pages (horrors!). Now that I know a bit more the proper archival preservation, my photos and memorabilia are safe. But scrapbooking is not just about the photos. And though the papers and embellishments certainly make my heart flutter, I tell myself that it’s not about those either. My goal is to tell my story and leave a record for future generations to discover.

As Stacy Julian said:

Scrapbook your life, and a whole lot more!

I want to learn more this hobby and, in the process, discover more about myself and this thing called life. Will you join me?

Tags: scrapbooking, Scrapropos, scrap blog

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond.

To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process and generate financial support.

The fund will be used to cover expenses including but not limited to:

• Grief counseling
• Memorials
• Communication expenses
• Comfort expenses
• Incidental needs

If you plan to give, please click the link below:

This site is currently in need of a writer. If you have any interest in writing on the topic this site covers, feel free to submit an application at 451 Press. Thank you.

451 Press, Writer Needed, (Scr)apropos

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interesting article about men and scrapbooking. Read it here.

A million years ago when I was a Creative Memories consultant, I held an annual “Sweetheart Crop” in February, at which the women would coerce their husbands to sit beside them and crop photos, peel stickers, and journal. The guys always made lots of noise about how it was damaging their manly reputations to be sitting there, but the truth is, most of them enjoyed it, and a LOT of them were really good at it. Some of them were more creative than their wives! With beer cans in their cup holders and college basketball playing on their headsets, the guys scrapped photos of Christmas (I remember a paper-pieced tornado with toys flying all around it, created by a macho cowboy-type named Phil), images of NASCAR (Charles documented photos of his 25th birthday, on which he paid big bucks to drive a car at breakneck speeds around the Texas Motor Speedway), and memories of fishing trips, hunting weekends and vacations.

Long after Darren was forced to co-host those Sweetheart Crops with me, he still occasionally scraps. Our “Ireland” album is a joint effort. He wants to scrap our most recent Colorado vacation with me, too. And one of the albums I’m most proud of is this: Daddy/Daughter Backpacking Trip which he created himself, 100%.

Yep, it’s true. Real men DO scrap.
I don’t need the industry marketing it that way to tell me so.

At the beginning of the year, I blogged the following scrapbooking resolutions:
1. Keep my studio tidier.
2. Clean up and reorganize after each project.
3. Keep regular scrapbooking hours. If I don’t have a paid job to be working on, work on my own photos during those “office hours�.
4. Submit for publication. I’ve always wanted to, but I’ve never gone to the trouble of doing it.
5. Participate in one class/new challenge per month, whether it’s online or at a local scrapbook store.
6. Update my business site on a more regular basis. (www.stacykocur.com)
7. When I’m hosting a Fortress scrapbook ministry crop, do NOT work on a job - instead, work on Fortress photos or my own.
8. Send physical thank-you notes for every donation to the ministry.
9. Finish the charity albums I’ve promised, and take on more charity projects when those are done.
10. Page protect and add pages to my albums as they’re completed instead of stacking them in “the pile�.

Tonight, Darren was watching something on TV about some young kid who knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. Darren commented, “I wish I had known so clearly.” Me too, baby, me too. Funny how God handed me a life I didn’t even KNOW I wanted. I made this page about 4 years ago or so. The journaling still rings true today. So glad I have this. And I imagine in about 10 years or so, I’ll be even MORE glad. My challenge for you: scrap something about yourself this week. Who are you? Document it. You’re just as important as the other people you scrapbook. And probably just as cute!

While shopping at a local scrapbook store in Wisconsin, I saw a layout on the wall that caught my eye and made me say, “I wanna CASE that!” Back at the retreat center, Sue helped me figure out how it was done. After we completed our layouts using this technique, several of our fellow retreaters copied US. And that’s part of what I love about this community of scrapbookers. We all share freely, and don’t mind being CASEd. In fact, we take it as a high compliment when we are!

What I loved about the layout was the technique the artist used when laying out the paper: the diagonal swath of pattern that unites the two pages. Here’s how it’s done:

Choose two coordinating papers. One will be your “base paper”, and the other will be your “swath paper”. I think it looks best if the swath paper is a random pattern as opposed to a symmetrical one. Cut both sheets of paper diagonally from one corner to the other, creating large triangles. Take your two base triangles and separate them into their far corners… upper left and lower right. Do not turn or flip these papers - just pull the original square of paper apart into two triangles.

Next, look at your swath paper, and switch the two triangles, placing them “back to back”. The bottom right swath triangle should join the upper left base triangle to form a square. Likewise, the upper left swath triangle should form a square with the bottom right base triangle.

When you look at this layout as a two-page spread, it should appear that there is a swath of patterened paper running diagonally from the left, up to the right.

Hint: I used three sheets of paper. The two base sheets are intact - uncut. I cut the swath piece and adhered it TO the base sheets. This wastes a sheet of paper, but it makes the technique easier, and I didn’t have to worry about my cut edges lining up perfectly.

Click to enlarge: