Today's The Day! Woo-Hoo!!

The My Creative Classroom Grand Opening event kicks off today!! This is strictly by invitation only, so if you haven't signed up to the newsletter, you won't be invited! Not to worry tho' it doesn't start until 5pm CST (that's 11pm to us in the UK), so pop over now & get yourself registered.

Nearly There!

Bit of a panic this weekend (& a major hissy fit!) as my internet connection went down on Friday & didn't come back until the early hours of Monday morning. I had planned my tasks and everything was on schedule - now I'm waaaaay behind!
Anyway, I've been catching up & obviously my priority had to be My Creative Classroom - the Big Opening Event starts on Sunday & I'm sooooo excited to get going! I have my FREE class loaded and (more or less) ready to go. This is a li'l sneak peek from one class! Check out my blog at My Creative Classroom for another!
For this course, I'm not going to stick to the usual format - most of the features will be there but I'm not going to have a audio visual presentation for every class - usually there would be one or two new classes each week but for this one, I've gone for seven classes in seven days!
I wanted to make sure there was enough there for everyone to get a real 'feel' for our class experience. It's a bit different to any of the others I've seen so far. So I'm cutting back on the presentations and adding extra downloads. So fun!
There's over $1500 in prizes and soooo much going on - loads of free classes (not just mine), competitions and challenges, forums, live chats, galleries, blogs - fabulous!
But you only get in by invitation, so pop on over and sign up for the newsletter - then get ready to stalk your e-mail on Sunday! LOL

My First DT Card for Di

Here's my first card as a bona fide official member of Di Hickman's card sketch team - which means this week's sketch (Jan #3) is up now. I have had soooo much fun with these over the past who-knows-how-many months, so if you haven't had a go, why not make this the week to start!
I'm still keeping up with the LOAD layouts but I've had to use a few from upcoming classes to keep up & I'm not ready to unveil yet - So if you signed up to LOAD, you can find them in my Gallery & if you didn't you'll have to wait a li'l while longer! LOL.

Quick reminder: if you've not yet signed up for the My Creative Classroom newsletter you still have time before the opening events start on 27 January. It's going to be a fab event with loooooads of prizes, free classes, free tips, forums & chats. I'm very excited about it but you will miss out if you haven't subscribed. You can sign up here ;o)

LOAD 8-12

I'm still managing to keep up with the LayOut A Day challenge over at BPS - here's the last 5 days (evidently I'm not so good at blogging them! LOL) I'm also still working through all my old stash - This lot are all HOTP. They are also mostly retro 8x8, which I have now finished save for a few card size scraps (YAY!) The ecxception is the 'AJ' layout below, which comes from the HOTP September 2007 Personal Shopper kit. My fave from this selection is 'Traveling Ted Came To Stay'. That one was definitely not a quick LO. It might be little but it still took a couple of hours to put together. I'll be back tomorrow with some non-LOAD stuff to share. And my latest li'l bit of good news!

Did You See It?

Di Hickman has announced the new additions to her Card Sketch Team. Check it out here! So the answers to my questions in this post are: yes & a week! LOL.

Random Memories!

I don't have a DT layout at Journaling Junkie this week as we are now doing a fortnightly rota - but I loved the challenge so I'm playing along anyway. You have until Saturday to get your entries in, so why not have a go. All the info is here.

I'm hoping to have a li'l bit of news to share at the end of the week - and some more makes before then - so do pop back often to see what's new.

Another LOAD of Layouts.

These are my latest layouts for days 3-5 on the LayOut A Day challenge over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. All 3 use supplies from the HOTP Personal Shopper September Kit. They were all really quick and easy to do - although I am struggling a bit with the concept of 'simple'. I'm going to stick with it as a personal challenge but I have to say i like taking days to do a layout. I get that for some people, fitting in time to scrap can be really hard & for them, maybe quick & easy 'speed scrapping' is a great idea. I guess if you are only scrapping for yourself then so long as you like the resulting page it doesn't matter how simple or complex the design is.
But for me, it isn't what I want. I want to scrap fabulous, complex, chuck it all at the page & then add a bit more layouts. I don't want to think about stamping a title rather than die cutting one because

it will be quicker - I don't want to stop inking or sanding my papers or elements because it takes time (an hour on the last LO I did).
For me, the challenge is to go with the flow. It's an organic process that just keeps on going until it is done. Some pages might come together in an hour, others could take days - but always it's done when it's done & not before. These are the pages I'm using for classes, the ones I'll be teaching online & the ones I'll be submitting for magazines.
So I'm still planning on doing the LOAD challenge & I will try to create a LO every day for it (I have done day 6 but I can't go public for a few days) - I just don't think these will be my best!

Sorry, I Forgot! LOL

I promised to upload a li'l sneak peek of the free class I'll be teaching over at My Creative Classroom during the week-long launch at the end of the month. Anyway, this is one of the projects I'll be including for one of the topics. It's all a bit secret squirrel (anyone remember him??) at the moment, so I can't say too much except that the class will cover 7 topics in 7 days - all for free.
Only those signed up for the MCC newsletter will be invited to the launch, so if you haven't already, pop on over & get signed up. I've updated the link in the side bar for the main site (it's just undergone a facelift!) or click here to go straight to the newsletter registration.
There's going to be a whole bunch of free stuff, competitions, chats etc going on - I can't wait! LOL. I know we have almost 2000 signed up already and around 25% of them are from the UK (YAY FOR US! LOL) not bad for a tiny li'l country like ours huh??
And if you want to get a head start on your chance to win $100 gift certificate for My Creative Classroom - check this out - Help us spread the word & maybe you'll be taking the prize!

Get a LOAD Of This!

I may not have posted for a few days but I've not been idle. As well as packing up at the old store, I signed up for the free class 'Get a LOAD of This' at BPS. 'LOAD' stands for LayOut A Day - clever huh? Anyway, these are my LOs from January 1st & 2nd.
This first one is 8x8 & no matter what I did, I couldn't get a decent photo or scan. I'm still on a mission to use my scraps - and all my old stash, scrap or otherwise. This one uses MAMBI 8x8 Collage Papers, HOTP cardstock, Making Memories snaps & a couple of buttons. The ribbon was free with a magazine I think. You'll have to take my word for it that the photo is actually a good one - taken of Fish at the garden centre where we go to visit Santa every year. The second is photos from when we took fish to the Zoo in 2006. I'd had this TLC kit for about 3 years or so - earmarked for these photos but hadn't got around to it yet. The class was just the excuse I needed to finally do it. Probably my quickest LO to date but it still took an hour! So either I need to scrap quicker - or stop signing up for things where you need to create something every day!
Seriously tho' - it's a great challenge and even if you didn't scrap every day, it could be the incentive to finish up a few half done LOs or use up some of that forgotten stash that I know you have! It's not too late to join in - they are accepting registrations until January 15th.

And while we are on the subject of free classes, look out for a post coming later today. A sneak peek of the free class I'll be running over at My Creative Classroom at the end of the month. You must be signed up to the MCC newsletter to be offered the free classes & there will be loads to choose from, with a whole bunch of different instructors. Don't miss out - it's gonna be a blast!