Weekend away, project round up

If you're here for the Paper Girls Blog Hop, head this way. 

I'm so lucky that we have a flexible college life! I was at Scrapbooksteals Retreat all weekend and took an extra day off to hang with girlies in Salt Lake City. After the last of them boarded airplanes I spent Sunday photographing and editing the projects I'd finished. Dude! I got so much done on this awesome trip and made so many friends, really hoping I can go again next year. 

Today's post is an ensemble of photos from the make and takes/classes, all of them except one that I'm saving for a DT post because it was more of a concept class. 

So the first class of the weekend was American Crafts and we used Pebbles papers and Chips. You'll have to forgive me because I forgot which line we used. :/

Ten of the cards were made based on 5 sketches provided. We were challenged to design our own for the other two. Well, I was working fast and decided to take on a personal challenge. I grabbed a sheet of paper from the goodie bag that Scrapbooksteals provided and set out to create a layout using only scraps from the project kit. 

Remember, photographed in a hotel room, some of this batch of photos have a strange blue cast that I couldn't fix. But how cute is this? I still had a few strips left over of that red checkered print but I got 10 cards and a layout (minus the 12x12 out of the kit provided. 

So the next company to arrive was My Mind's Eye taught by the famous K.C., last year he had us write answers to a list of questions to create something in the allotted time that was somehow related to those questions. You'll see that project in October. :)

As we were finishing up Teresa Collins came in and let me tell you the energy you get when you add TC and K.C. in a room is stinkin' awesome. So much fun! Both had so many great things to say about creativity and why we need to be creative and why documenting our stories is important. LOVED those two classes.

We used Summer Stories to make this little A-Z mini book, to document our stories. I haven't written in it yet, but everything she said hit home with me and I fully intend to fill it out. To record me, right now. It took a long time to set up the mini so I didn't have time to make the two page layout (with hidden photos and such) so I have more goodies to work with in coming weeks. I have seriously fallen for this line. 

Remember how I said that Teresa walked in while K.C. was still there (handing out goodies!), well, Madison from Echo Park came in and both were there. The joking and teasing that comes from friendly rivalries was highly entertaining and while I didn't want to put the mini away I did so that I could work with the new Reflections line designed by Lori Whitlock (seriously, my fave EP and Silhouette Studio shape designer). 

Both of these projects were based closely on instruction sheets, I know I could have created my own, but I just liked them so much that I didn't feel like thinking that hard. 

And a close-up of all the layers. Yummy!

All of that took all morning and afternoon. After dinner a new company coming out, Hazel and Ruby, came to demo their products. While I LOVED the scrapbook paper lines (and bought a couple from Lindsey because they were so unique) I was thrilled to learn about their DIY, reusable, repurpose mentality. Stemming from that concept, they're releasing some awesome reusable icons and letters to use when doing mixed media type projects. Those things wiped off so easily, and peeled off like a dream! I'm so gonna have to get my hands on them and their new tissue and gift wrap lines as they get released.