ScrapFest 2013

I can't believe that it's already/only been two weeks since I have been home from ScrapFest 2013 which was held at Mall of America in Minneapolis, MN!  I had a fabulous time.  First of all, I met 3 other ladies that are members of one of the blogging groups that I belong to - Paper Bloggers Reunited on Splitcoaststampers.com.  This is a great group of ladies, and we were so sad that the rest of the group couldn't be there with us.

This is Brandy, Brenda, Nancy, and me.

We were there from Thursday the 19th (I got there late that evening) through Sunday, the 22nd.  My weekend was packed full of workshops.  First we had to check in and get our badge and map of the Mall.  It's a HUGE place and was the first time I had ever been there.

I wanted to get the most out of the trip as well as hanging out with the Paper Bloggers. There were plenty to choose from.   I must say even with having a map of the Mall (which is HUGE), I still had some trouble locating a couple of the workshop classrooms.

 My first workshop was with Tim Holtz at 9 a.m. on Friday. After getting in to the hotel about 11 the night before, it was hard to get up at 6 so I could get breakfast before going over to the Mall.  Brandy and Brenda made the sacrifice to get up early too to meet up with me before I left for my workshop.

What a fun guy!  And a great workshop.  This is a picture that Brenda took of me at the workshop unbeknownst to me.  LOL!  I was really hard at work.

 We made this beautiful Christmas wall hanging and we were given a fabulous package of gifts.

In many areas of the Mall, they had booths set up for Make & Takes. This is just one area and must have been early in the morning because they usually had long lines to wait for a turn to play.

 It was fun playing with lots of different products and seeing what all the vendors had to offer.

Here are a few that we did.

Bo Bunny

Doodlebug

Petaloo

 

I can't remember what Make & Take this was.  Sorry.  But it was fun as well as all the others that I was able to make.  

As fun as the Make & Takes were, I loved all he workshops that I signed up for.  In addition to the Tim Holtz one, I went to the following ones:

Northwoods Rubber Stamps

The Northwoods class is the only workshop that all 4 of us went to. We learned to blend marker colors using water and a paintbrush.  To save time the images were already stamped and we added the color.

Here are 3 cards that we made in the Holiday HoneyPOP card class that Brenda and I went to.  There is one more that is Halloween.  I didn't get that one finished yet. Here you can see the inside of one of them so you can see the POP.

This was presented by Inky Antics and you can now buy the special honeycomb pad that you use to make the pop in the middle of the card.  Brenda was the lucky winner of a random drawing and won the Halloween stamp set and a pad of the honeycomb paper.  Go you Brenda!

After all this, we ate a quick dinner and then went to the Basic Gray Crop Night. I must say I didn't get a whole lot of my own work accomplished.  I did get to meet Paige who I know from one of the other blogging groups that I belong to - I Dream of Paper Bloggers -

She's such a sweet person, and I was so glad that we got to meet up.  It's always nice to put faces to names.

There were a couple of issues with the crop - mainly the area of the Mall where they had it.  The lighting was terrible and the chairs they had were hard and low to the ground.  I had intentions to color some digital images with my Copic markers to make my Christmas cards.  I think I ended up getting 2 of them done.  Not much we could do about the lighting, but Brenda had the great idea to go get some pillows since our table was right outside of the Sears store.

LOL!  Those pillows ended up going home with Nancy since she had the room in her car to take them.  Basic Gray also had a Make & Take at the crop so we all worked on that together.

On Saturday morning I attended the Capture Travel Journal Album workshop presented by Basic Gray.  It is so full of fabulous pages that there was not enough time to get it all done at the workshop, but they had great written instructions so I could finish it at home. One of these days after I get the photos in it, I'll do up a blog post to show the whole album, but here is the cover and one set of pages.

I have a lot of photos to resize to fit into this album.

Saturday afternoon I attend the Graphic45 Steampunk Tags workshop!  Next to Basic Gray, Graphic45 is one of my favorite companies. I'm just learning about Steampunk so it was fun to go to this class   Here are the 3 tags that we made using the Steampunk Spells Collection.

As I was sitting there working on my cards, they were doing a random drawing and I was thinking that I would just love to be a winner and guess what!!!!  They called my name!   I was so excited to see my gift which included a 6 x 6 paper pad, stickers, chipboard, and a stamp set for Secret Garden collection.

After dinner at Tony Roma's Saturday night, then packing up and getting ready to leave in the morning, and a good night's sleep (well, maybe not all that much sleep), we all went off early to the Mall.  The one Make & Take I wanted to go to was Graphic 45, but the line was always so long, we never had time for that one.  We decided to get to the Mall early so we'd be first in line and I'd be able to go to it before my last Workshop at 11. Well, we neglected to look at the time schedule and realize that it was Sunday, so the Mall didn't open early and the Make & Takes didn't open until 11 which meant that I was going to miss the Make & Take.  I asked the other girls to see if they could make an  extra one for me.  The Graphic 45 girls did even better.  They sent me a baggie full of chipboard and tags from Bohemian Bazaar, some Steampunk cardstock flowers and some stickers from the Twelve Days of Christmas collection.  These Graphic 45 girls are the best.

So I come to the last workshop - Santa's List Album by Teresa Collins.

 I didn't realize that this was a 2 hour class and I had only allowed one hour for it before I had to leave to check out at the hotel and catch my airplane so I only was able to get my pages in order and have them bound into the album, but I've since been able to get the pages all finished.  Here is the front of the album.  The pages are various sizes.  It's going to be a Christmas gift.

 That was it.  A great time and so glad that we all decided to go this year.  It was the first time for all of us.  We heard just a few days after it was over that Archiver's (the sponsor of ScrapFest) was closing its store at Mall of America and so we're not sure if there will be another one or where it would be if they do it again.  We all hope they do.  I know some of our other Paper Bloggers were hoping to go next time.

I'll leave you with one last photo of the 4 of us as we left to go our separate ways.

What a great bunch of girls. I'm so happy that I was able to meet them and enjoy their company for a few days.  It's a memory that I'll carry with me forever and look forward to many online chats and maybe more meet ups in the future.  Blessings to all the Paper Bloggers.