Two Weeks, Two Complete Albums!!!!

Yep, can you believe it!?!  Going to the Album Retreat a couple weeks back, we created an entire album in only 3 days!  It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to share with you all that we created but I am still waiting for some of my pictures for the layouts to come in so I will post those layouts as soon as I can. 
However, can you believe then in  two evenings, less then 6 hours I had my album completely finished from our trip to Cancun!?!  I decided the best way for me to remember everything and be able to get it all down in my album was for me to scrapbook it quickly which meant digitally – using Studio J.  Now for those of you who are a true, traditional scrapbooker – let me tell you – so am  I!  I love using the papers, ribbons, stamps, cutters and whooo don’t forget the bling – love the bling!!!!  But, sometimes I want to get an event done before the time passes and I forget many of  the special memories or funny little tidbits that made us laugh.  With kids, homeschooling, church and lots of other events, my life is usually in high speed so it’s hard for me to scrapbook events during the same month, or sometimes same year, as they happened.  I’m sure that never happens to you – LOL! 
So – here is a peak into out trip to Cancun:






Beautiful wasn’t it.  I honestly have to brag on Studio J with these layouts. Last year Close to My Heart came out with Express Collections in Studio J.  These collections are theme related and make scrapbooking as easy as it can get.  It is pretty much a drag and drop option to scrapbooking where the layouts are completely created for you and you drop your pictures in, add your journaling and Viola – you are done.  You can add additional embellishments, journaling blocks, change titles, colors, and more if you want but you don’t feel like you have to because the layouts are completely gorgeous already.  You can pick one layout from the express collections or use the whole album.  I created my layouts from a few different albums, whatever I needed to get the look I wanted.
If you like the idea of digital scrapbooking but you want to make it completely yours, without the layout completely created for you already, Studio J still has their original line, with more and more papers and layouts added throughout the year.  These layouts give you maximum flexibility letting you choose what papers, layouts, colors, embellishments, font, etc. – everything to create your own layout but completely from your computer.  AND no matter what option you choose, the double-page layouts are only $6.95!!!  Now – that definitely can’t be beat!  Check out Studio J  for yourself.  Happy Creating!!!

Hello from Cancun!!!

Well it has been a very busy week.  Last week started me off in Utah for Close to My Heart’s Album Retreat getting me back late Sunday night and leaving Monday night for Cancun!  It’s been a busy time but an absolutely wonderful time too!  Both trips have been amazing!!!

In my last post, however, I was telling you about the Album Retreat and I wanted to give you a closer peak into my weekend.  As soon as we arrived and were registered, we were ushered in to our event and immediately received another gorgeous shoulder tote.  This is the same bag we received at Convention last year but I absolutely love this bag. It has a vinyl cover to help keep it clean and fits my album, cutter and even my laptop for Studio J scrapbooking too!  I love it so much, I even brought it to Cancun with me for my carry on bag!  Anyway, back to the retreat – lol! . 

Inside the bag was all this wonderful product including a zipper down CTMH jacket, Black Scrapbook Album, 8 different stamp set, a ton of embellishments, and on and on.  I know this picture doesn’t do it justice to show how generous corp. was to us but it was the only picture I had time to take before they started us out on our first project! 


As a special gift during one of our late night crops, we also received this cute little stamp set design my Jeannette Lynton, founder of Close to My Heart.  She made it specifically for the Album Retreaters.    The wording says “Friends make memories and the Heart preserves them.”  How cute is that!!!  We were also supplied with a package of our cute My Creations small paper pouches (Z1827) so we could create the following cards and gift bags. This was perfect as I always include a small card inside my kids lunch during our coop days, and being out of town on their next day, I wanted to make sure I had my cards ready before I left.  This helped me get things together ahead of schedule.  For the boys, I made a couple just like below but stamped in Pacifica blue  to make it a little more masculine .    Just a little hug from mama as I was out of town.  I probably should have made some for the grandparents who watched the kids while we were away .

2013 Close to My Heart Album Retreat Rocked!!!

Wow!  What an amazing trip this weekend was!  I was blessed to be able to go to Utah for the weekend to take part in an amazing, scrapbook filled weekend, hosted by Close to My Heart staff for their consultants.  This was a closed event, for consultants only  - I just love being a CTMH consultant!!! 
The Album Retreat was exactly what it sounds like, one weekend to create a complete scrapbook album. The theme – me.  Now, I have to confess that I didn’t know what the theme of the album was going to be about when I signed up for the retreat – I was just ecstatic that I was going to be able to participate in an album retreat from CTMH.  I have always heard awesome things from everyone regarding the past album retreats and I knew I didn’t want to miss this one if I could help it.  Once I heard the theme, I was a little nervous – I mean who ever scrapbooks about themselves.  We scrapbook about our kids, our husbands, our trips and travels, just about everything else but never ourselves!
The homework started rolling in (homework  -i.e.., what we want you to do to prepare for the retreat) and I was having to find pictures and journal about my favorite things, people, best friends, spaces, colors, etc. – WOW,  was that tough!  I think this had to be one of the hardest projects I have worked on in a long time but the end result – AMAZING!!!
Over the next several posts I will share some of the things we received and created, people I saw, what’s going on with Close to My Heart and so much more but until this check out this cute gifts I received as soon as I arrived.
This is a picture of a lanyard that one of my roommates made out of our For Always Textiles.  The beautiful flowers were made using our paper flowers, sparkles and Black Tulle Ribbon.  Isn’t it gorgeous!!!

Kristine Winfield from our corporate office, recently did a video on the Textiles and how to use them. You can watch it below.


If you would like to try the Textiles – you can get some here on my website.

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