I’m back! From CKU! And I still can’t believe how awesome it was!
But first: if you’re not a scrapper, or don’t care about scrapbooking, you’re probably going to want to find another blog to read right now. This is some serious inside-the-industry geekiness.
So last year there was a CKU-A (two days of making 1 album - very intense) in Chicago. I was SO going! Not a far drive, love Chicago anyway. Then I got pregnant and my due date fell about 2 weeks after the event. And it’s a good thing I didn’t try to risk it, because I ended up having Jack 3 days after CKU ended. But when I heard there was going to be one in Detroit this year, you better believe I signed up!
Last Wednesday, I left Jack with my parents and my friend Becky and I drove up to Dearborn to check into the hotel. There were no official events that day, so we met up with a woman from Iceland to do some shopping. (I was on a Yahoo group for the event, and this woman posted that she wanted to go to some LSS but didn’t have a car since, you know, she was coming from Iceland. I offered up my services because I figured, when am I ever going to meet anyone from Iceland again? And it was cool because she was so fun.) We hit 3 stores and also rush hour traffic. The first thing I noticed was how HUGE the stores all were - the smallest one still had room for at least 32 croppers, and one of them was literally in a warehouse. The second thing I noticed was that no matter how many stores I go to, there are always new things at every one. And that is why I must continue to seek them out and leave my money with their owners. Oh, you want to know where we went, just in case you get to the Detroit area and need to do your own research? First, Scrapbook Emporium: AWESOME selection, space for 48 people to crop, and a Slurpee machine! (that was unfortunately out of order while we were there) We got a goodie bag, 20% off, a make-n-take and they took a picture of our little group and printed it out for us on their picture maker machine. Next, Little Scrapbox. This was the warehouse store - they were originally just an online store. They were also the one that had room for 70 croppers, and they get that many! In fact, it was a Wednesday and their space was almost half full. At my LSS in Wooster, they haven’t been able to get 4 people at a Friday night crop in over 2 months. Finally we went to Scrapbook Tree (which I can’t find a website for). This may be my new favorite store, even beating out my own local store. There were amazing layouts hanging up all over, and they carry the entire Heidi Grace *catalog*. It seemed like the store just kept going and going, and maybe it was because I was tired and very hungry, but I had to give up at the end. I did do the cute little keyring mini-book make-n-take though.
We got back to the hotel after 11 and met our roommates. The rooms weren’t overly expensive, but splitting them 4 ways rather than 2 was going to let us shop more. We got really lucky, because our roomies were both awesome and funny and cool. I found them through the Yahoo group too, and it’s always a gamble - you could end up with a bad match. Fortunately we didn’t, and we’re all going to try to go to the same CKU next year together.
Thursday morning came way too quickly and we got up to register and get our free stuff! I don’t have pictures of everything yet, but believe you me it was a lot of swag. A canvas shoulder tote, a Cropper Hopper Vertical to Go tote, and all sorts of stuff inside both. Then we were whisked away to the make-n-take room. There were about 20 vendors set up and each one had a 6×6 page for us to make. I got through 15 of them, including Becky Higgins’ 2-page spread
Tim Holtz’s awesome alcohol ink demo (gotta get some of those now)
and the most popular one which was from the Scrapbook Tree. They even had their page worked into a 12×12 double spread using the new Tres Jolie papers from My Mind’s Eye.
They also used this cool Glue Pad, which was a stamp pad but instead of ink it was glue so you could put glitter or beads on the image. I also learned that they LOVE people to take pictures of the layouts all over their store, so I knew I had to go back there at some point.
After the make-n-takes were over, Becky and I met two other women from Columbus that we knew and went to The Scrapbook Zone. This was a store that everyone raved about but after the Tree I was left…a bit unimpressed. They certainly did have a LOT of stuff, and another HUGE class/crop room, and a 40% off coupon to boot, but I still liked the Tree better. Then we ate dinner at a little Italian restaurant a few doors down, which boasted this sign.
Thursday night was the “opening ceremonies” and a crop. The dorms also performed that night. See, to further the whole university theme, you can set up a dorm. Your dorm has a theme, and there are 4 contests: song, centerpiece, nametag and costumes. A lot of people in dorms never meet until they get to CKU, and do everything online. We saw the Scrappin’ Sisters (nuns), the Soulful Scrappers, Memory Mechanics (who won for their awesome song), Scrapbusters (who won for their Sta-Puft marshmallow man centerpiece), the Things (Cat in the Hat and a bunch of Things, complete with blue wigs, who won for costumes), and the Lima Beans (all women from Lima, Ohio who won for their nametags). There were a few more too. I didn’t join a dorm because I figured it was my first time and I didn’t want to get in over my head, but next time I think I will. Looked like a lot of fun. Then there was the crop, where no one really got much done, but we did get more goodies: a copy of Heidi Swapp’s book Love Your Handwriting and a Purple Cow laminator/trimmer. Sweet!
Friday I had 5 classes which lasted all day. Two with Bazzill, one with Reminisce (where we made the cutest little mini-book EVAR), one about photography and one with Becky! Higgins! I was very happy with all five, including the photography one which I only picked because it was the least boring one during that time slot. The Bazzill classes were not what I was expecting, but I left with 6 12×12 pages between the two of them and learned some pretty cool tricks for using their scallop-edged paper. The Reminisce class used their Boys Gone Wild paper line which I love love love. And Becky’s class was about using her sketches, which have changed the way I scrap. I didn’t get a whole lot of new information out of that class, but I do have 3 finished layouts and it was awesome just to see what her process is. It was also cool to see that she’s very sweet and down-to-earth. I had heard that she was kind of diva-ish and full of herself, and she certainly didn’t seem that way.
Another day, another store. This time, the Sticker Store and More. Definitely the closest to the hotel - the others were a good 45-minute drive, while this one took us about 20 minutes to get to. I really only wanted to go because they were giving out a free lapel pin to CKU attendees, and it was a good thing I didn’t expect more. The vibe I got from the store was that they opened during the beginning of the scrapping craze and just never advanced. There were framed layouts on their walls that used nothing but Mrs. Grossman stickers! Yikes.
Then back to the hotel for another crop, and more free stuff: a 12×12 Bazzill album and a bag full of paper packs and other neat stuff. Also a silent auction - Ali Edwards has a son with autism, so some of the people taking her album class organized a silent auction with proceeds going to autism awareness. Many of the teachers there donated items, and they ended up raising over $4,000. Ali was so cool too. I didn’t end up taking any classes of hers, but I talked to her one night and she was way different from what I expected. Her standard head shot picture makes her seem very sweet and girly and soft-spoken, and I was surprised to hear a pretty husky voice come out of her mouth, and there was nothing soft-spoken about her, she was all awesome fun chick.
Saturday I took my all-day album class. This format was new this year: in previous years, you either took all classes or one two-day album class. Everyone seemed to enjoy the melding of the two, and I did too. Especially since I didn’t do my homework for my album class and finished everything way ahead of schedule and sat and gabbed for an hour or so. The album I made is called Encyclopedia of your Ordinary Life. It’s based on a book (which I read and which was a very cool concept) and we made a 12×12 page for every letter. We were supposed to have written 2-3 “entries” for every page and taken pictures to go along with them, but I just ran out of time. I was actually going to use my extra time in class to hand write all my entries, but after seeing a lot of other peoples’ computer journaling and how nice it looked, I decided to do that too. So I just made all the pages and I’ll fill everything else in later. The only thing I’d change about the class is that there was no embellishing at all on our pages, just cardstock and patterned paper. And it’s no big deal, I’m going to add things myself, and I know that’s just the instructor’s style, but it would have been nice to have a little something more.
After classes were over, we had commencement. We all “graduated” with our degrees in Scrapbooking Arts and got paper mortar boards to wear. This is me and my roomies.
Johnny told me to put this on my resume, ha! We didn’t get any more free stuff so we had to go shopping again. Back to the Scrapbook Tree so I could get one of those glue pads and take about a hundred pictures of the layouts. Here are some of them.
