Mall of America Scrapfest Review

I wasn't sure that I was going to attend Scrapfest this year. To be honest, attending events like CKU has made me picky. I am really only interested in big name teachers or manufacturer's classes. My local/regional events have been devoid of big names in the past few years. The only big name at Scrapfest this year was Tim Holtz. I had just taken a class from him at CKU Chicago in April. His classes fill up almost immediately. The other thing that had me turned off was the notoriously long make and take lines.

So, I didn't sign up right away. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I decided to sign up. Most everything had sold out the very first day. Luckily, they added a few more classes, but it was still slim pickins. There were 2 classes on Sunday that were acceptable to me. I thought I might try to pick up another one if someone cancelled that day.

I was surprised that the KI Memories class: Beauty in a Box still had openings. Love their stuff so I took that. Then there was a Birthday accordian album book by American Traditional Designs. Normally I'm not a fan of their stuff, but the project sounded cute and if I didn't like it a birthday book would always make a good gift. A week before Scrapfest. My friend Wendy needed to sell her classes so I picked up her Sunday one: K&Co. Flip Book for the Journey. I took an accordian album with them last year at the MWSA convention and was happy with it.

Sunday arrived and I tried to head down to MOA with plenty of time to get in some make and takes before my noon class. I forgot that traffic is always bad on the road I need to take to get to MOA and that day was no exception. Then of course, there is the walk from the parking area to the Rotunda. So when all was said and done, I got there at 11:30 a.m. one half hour before my first class.

Check in was a breeze - there was no one else waiting. I got my packet. The giveaway was some cute Harvest Daisy D's paper pack in 8x8 size....perfect for fall pix. I looked to see where my classes were. All 3 were on the main level with the make and takes...super convenient...no esculators or elevators. So I had plenty o' time. First, I scoped out all the make and takes. Lots of cute projects. Lines were semi-small. 6-8 people doing the make and take with lines of 8-12 people waiting. It was about 11:45 by the time I'd previewed them all. At the end, the Die Cuts With A View people had a Thank YouDaisy card with their self-adhesive cardstock. Cute card but nothing specatular. I made the card, but left of the Thank You. It was time for class.

My first class was the K&Co class. The teacher was Lynn....she sounded Australian. This was a cute flip book using new blue and green K&Co papers. Super cute project. Great instructions...she was obviously a pro at this. Nice color hand-out. Papers were pre-cut. We completed the cover and about 5-6 pages in class. She did a couple techniques like folding a pocket and cutting a tag with K&Co was very generous with stickers and chipboard letters and flowers. I ended up having to buy a couple more of the papers because there was plenty of pages left in the book to decorate. All in all a good class.

Since the classes were 50 mins. long, I went straight to the Birthday class. I haven't liked American Traditional Designs in the past, but the birthday stuff was cute. It was a 4x6 accordian album. The papers were cute and they gave a sheet of sparkly stickers, a sheet of vellum saying stickers, and a package of cute file folders to complete the project. The only thing they didn't include was the ribbon used to tie the book together(she had on her sample). This was pretty much a beginner project. We had to cut our paper - there were good color instructions, but some people in the class were getting confused by the odd dimensions. The class had a couple of simple techniques - a pull out tag and the file folder on the front. Overall, I thought it was a cute project. The only thing I didn't really like is that if you followed the literal example, there would not be much room for photos. I was pleasantly surprised by this class.

I had an hour between classes so my I joined the make and take lines. My goal was to get as many as I could in between my last 2 classes. I got 4 in. Since it was Sunday, a lot of people who traveled had headed home. I averaged 15/mins per make and take....wait and project completion included. People in line told me they had waited 55+ minutes to do make and takes on Sat. I did a cute tag at the K&Co booth, a Happy Mini CD holder book at the Daisy D's booth, a very cute Halloween Card with a folded no glue envie at the American Traditional Designs booth, and a ok card at the Chatterbox booth. The Chatterbox booth gave you a card, a coordination piece of pattern paper and then let you go...they had boxes of stickers and rub-ons. Most of it had been really picked through by the time I got there so I just found the first suitably saying and slapped it on.

The last class of the day was the KI Memories class. They were very generous with a lime green plastic tote bag full of their new tins...gotta love that. We covered a mini hatbox with stuff from their POSH line. They were generous and gave us stickers, gel candy, hip chip, and chipboard monograms. We cut out circles from the paper and stuck that along with chipboard flowers and monograms on the box. We cut some pattern paper for the sides of the lids. Cute project, but would have looked better on a brown hat box...the white with the paleish papers seemed washed out. Not too much instruction...kinda do your own thing, which was probably good for the end of Scrapfest.

So in conculsion, Sunday seems to be a good day if all you have is one day at Scrapfest. The crowds have died down. You can get a couple classes in and move fairly quickly through the make and take lines.

My strategy for next year is going to be to come early on Friday and devote it to doing all the make and takes. I am curious to see how long it would take to just do that.

Attended A Crop By Myself

For the first time in literally years, I attended a crop alone. I didn't know a soul. I planned to go to the Crop Around Town for the Scrapfest with my friend Wendy. A couple weeks before the event she had to cancel. But I decided to go anyway. It was my local Archiver's and close to home so I thought why not and didn't even give it another thought...until a few days ago.

Probably the last time I attended a crop totally alone was in either 1999 or 2000. Since then I have made a number of scrapping friends that I go to crops with. I also have a fully stocked scraproom so I don't have to go out if I don't want to. In the back of my mind, I started remembering all those crop horror stories on 2Peas. I was a little nervous. I packed a fully charged iPod just in case along with some page kits and my tote-ally cool tote packed with tools.

I got there fairly early and no one was at my table. There were only a few people there. I got a little nervous when a group at a back table started complaining about having a singleton that they didn't know at their table. They seemed like a little clichey and one of them had an annoying ring-tone that kept going off every hour like clockwork. Any worries melted away as I met my first tablemate. She was going solo like I was and we chatted a bit. Found out we had both been to the Minneapolis CKU and had worked at the same place( but at different times). Our other 2 tablemates came in about 2 hours late. They got lost on the drive up from the Mall of America. Very nice gals. We all chatted and got along well. It was a very fun mellow evening. My iPod stayed in my scrapbag.

I ended up completing 4 pages tonight and meeting some nice people. Reminds me why I love this hobby. Not only is it a creative outlet, but a great way to connect with others. Most scrapbookers are awesomely nice people!

I am taking tomorrow off, but will be attended Sunday classes at Scrapfest at Mall of America. It will be interesting to see how different a Sunday is from the Friday and Saturday classes I usally take. I am going to check to see if there were people that dropped classes and see if I can't pick up an extra class or two.

Update

Wow! Almost 3 months have gone by. Summer soccer has ended and fall has started. The girls are back in school for a week now. We're getting ready to start skating and swimming lessons.

Joined an Exhaust Your Reserves challenge on 2Peas and got 50 pages done in the last 2 months with only my stash. Pretty awesome feeling. 4 pages done this month so far...but only one was done with just my stash. In other scrapbooking news, I am getting ready to go to Scrapfest this weekend, but had to decline on the awesome Wisconsin retreat my friend Jody is putting on. Shawn will be in Arizona for work. Can't leave the girls all alone....plus there is the fall soccer schedule. I was also excited to see that my trip to Myrtle Beach is the weekend before the MWSA scrapbook convention so I can attend that, too. And the break is over for Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking...too cool. Plus, I am also taking Beth Proudfoot's Power of Ten class. Heard nothing but awesome things about that class the first time it ran. So excited to be taking it. Love the first project already.

Looking forward to attending more Friday night crops now that my days at the rink don't include Friday nights. Oh, happy scrapbooking days ahead!