Challenge 74

Wow, what a wild and wooly week! (Nice alliteration, huh?!) My rant from the other day was barely the tip of the iceberg. I have been so busy and going non-stop and it's Friday already. How does that happen so friggin' fast? This week's post marks the official end of Session One with the Design Team but there isn't anything to post for Sallie this week and poor Danielle...her husband left for logging camp and took her USB cord so unless she can swipe one from one of her kids' electronics her page will remain a secret for now! It will get posted once she's 'connected' again.
This week's challenge is loads of fun. I love a good advertisement for design inspo! And I love circles...this fantastic Volkswagon ad is just OOZING design goodness. If you want to create something from this week's challenge, make sure you upload to our Flickr Group so that you can have a shot at winning May's Blast Off Couture Collection. All you have to do is indicate which weekly challenges your uploaded pages are for so we (the design team) know who to vote for. Once you've uploaded your page to Flickr, don't forget to add your page to the Lotus Paperie Photo Pool. You don't have to create your page using the Couture Collections but you can if you've got them.This is the final challenge for May and we won't be voting until after the first challenge of June is posted to give you enough time to get all five weeks' worth of May's challenges uploaded to the photo pool. Some absolutely amazing artwork has been submitted thus far and I can't see what is added after today.

Jessi

Vanessa

Ronda

Tania

Chrissy

Chrissy was pretty stoked to get started with her new DT position so here's an early contribution from her for this month's final challenge (LOVE that pencil crayon business on that page!)

And this tidbit is an extra from Jessi...what a kick-ass way to use of the matrix from chipboard letters! Note to self: save chipboard alpha matrix! Love it, Jess :)

One thing leads to another

Sometimes it feels like life is a little like a hamster wheel, doncha think? My day starts out so normal and quiet, cup of java in hand and laptop fired up...then it starts...total and complete chaos! Now, we bake our own bread here at the farm (a strong aversion to white fluffy air-bread found at most grocery stores) so that means I'm tied to my kitchen for a good three hours every other morning. During that time I get caught up on other domestic tasks like laundry! If you know me AT ALL you know I have very strong feelings about laundry (and I DON'T mean the good kind of feelings!) so while I'm cursing the neverending pile of laundry that seems synonymous with farm life & boys, I'm attempting to motivate myself with rewards like warm home baked cookies (which are a great way to make good use of a pre-heating oven while rising the bread dough) and a clean kitchen - eventually...which is always short lived but still worth the trouble of cleaning it! (Can I get a "Hell ya!" from the ladies!?)

Then there's the phones. We have a total of four phone lines in our home. One is solely for outgoing long distance calls so its only in use if we choose for it to be. The other three are not so quiet! One is my business phone line and the others are the farm business line and my in-laws' personal line. It's not uncommon to see me with a phone on each ear while pulling something out of the oven with a basket of laundry balanced on one hip! Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration but you get the idea.

I think I need a personal assistant or a slave or a clone. Something. Someone whose sole purpose on the planet is to make my life easier. That would be lovely, wouldn't it? Damn, and here all this time I thought husbands were for that...how wrong was I?! (sorry Ray, but it's true and you know it! Spider squisher, okay...lifter of heavy things, you're the man for the job...cat barf cleaner-upper, I'll give you that too but I think that's pretty much it.)

Right now it's two thirty in the afternoon and I'm fighting to keep my eyes open. I think I want a nap but if you saw how long my to-do list was, you'd understand why I can't nap. Well, looking at the list I've got a choice between cleaning the bathrooms or more payroll. I'll take bathrooms for four hundred, Alex!

UGH! I will definitely be needing a glass of wine at the end of THIS day.

Challenge 73

How much fun is this sketch!! Of course, I created it specifically to coordinate with our robot papers but as you can see below, there is so much room for interpretation that it really doesn't matter how you arrange your page and how you embellish it.

There have been tons of contributions to our Flickr Group this month and I can't wait to see more. So keep 'em comin! If you haven't added photos to the Flickr Group yet you can do so by going to your Flickr Account (or creating one if you don't have one) and uploading a photo of your page to the Lotus Paperie Photo Pool. Please remember to include in the title which challenge your page was created for so that we know which pages in the pool to choose from when we vote. Voting is conducted at the end of the month, after the last challenge has been posted and we ALWAYS leave enough time after the last challenge being posted to give you lots of time to get those pages uploaded. You do not have to use the Couture Collections to create your pages but you CAN use it if you've got it! The winner of the monthly challenge will receive that month's Couture Collection for FREE!!!! Winners are announced right here on the blog. So have a look at what our talented DT created for your scraplifting pleasure this week!!

Vanessa

Ronda

Tania
Jessi

Danielle

New Class listed!

A quick note for my subscribers (and anyone else who's interested)...I've just added a new class running on 2 dates on my classes blog. We're creating Paper Bag albums on May 29 and June 10 at The Boardroom from 7pm-10pm. I chose to run the class on two separate nights to try and accommodate as many schedules as I could. Please go HERE to see what we'll be making. There are Paypal registration buttons listed on the sidebar for both nights, be sure to sign up for the right night.

Hope to see you all there!

They're not gone, just relocated!

Okay, this is an official notice that the DT's who are NOT returning for the next session beginning in June are still part of the gang for the remainder of this month! There was some blog sidebar/links re-arranging that led to confusion for the DT's and perhaps for all you lovely readers...the retiring DT's links are at the top right of the page (minus one DT who will no longer be participating) so please visit them and dole out the LUB!

Sallie is having some technical blog issues that have screwed up her link list, header & comments section (c'mon Blogger tech-support guys!) so you'll just have to shout out the props to her here...cuz I know she reads every day (Sal, this is the part where I send out a little "MOO" just for a laugh!)

Danielle has done some serious overhaulin' on her blog...it looks so bright and fresh. I love it! And be sure to check out her killer slideshow. She's got all her recent work circulating round and rounds...man, she's got a lot of pages done.

There are still 2 fridays left for these guys to rock out the challenges along with the rest of the gang, so be sure to check back on Friday to see our newest challenge and to celebrate these guys and all their hard work. They have all stuck with me on a very bumpy ride of learning the ropes of running a DT (not as easy as it looks, folks! LOL) and have offered fantastic feedback that has been indispensable in helping me master this crazy plan! They have offered me words of encouragement and even offered their ass-kicking services when manufacturers screw up my shipments (or when anything else goes awry!) I have been super lucky to have these guys with me building this effin crazy business. Thanks a million, everyone...my blog readers, my DT, MOST of my suppliers...wow man, what a ride!

So stay tuned, there's all kinds of tricks up my sleeve yet!

Challenge 72

Are you ready?! This week's challenge will push the limits for sure! This image is entirely non-photo based and is bursting with creative mojo to inspire you and get your juices a-flowin'. I am a faithful blog-stalker of Kal Barteski and using this sketch gave me an opportunity to bust out a little Kal-style pencil crayon sketch & scribble! It has been a very long time since I played with non scrappy art stuff but let me tell you how liberating it was to unleash my pencil crayon-wielding self onto a scrap page!
This amazing piece was found on Modish and is created by artist Jennifer Judd-McGee. This piece is called The lives of a Cell. Go buy it, it's a super cool piece of art (and there's only 2 prints left!)

If you want to participate in this week's challenge, just create your page, photograph it and upload it to Flickr. Be sure to indicate which week's challenge your page is for and don't forget to add it to the Lotus Paperie photo pool (if it's not in the photo pool, we can't see it and therefore can't vote on it at the end of the month). All your pages for May's challenges need to be uploaded by the first friday of the next month (June, of course) and we'll vote on a favorite. That lucky winner will receive a free Couture Collection just for playin'. You can use any products/materials you wish for your submitted pages, not just the Couture Collection contents, although if you have them feel free to use those too!

Vanessa

Jessi

Ronda

Tania
On Wednesday evening this week (for Open Crop Night) at the studio, I managed to get caught up a little on a few new-ish and not-so-new pics and I felt so great getting them done. What a fantastic feeling. And let's face it, there's something to be said for scrappin' for fun and not just scrappin' for deadlines. WAY funner!!!

Oh, and can I tell you how beautiful this little one is! Her name is Brianna and her mama is my husband's best friend. She lives in Grande Prairie Alberta and get a load of her mama's amazing business, 911 Industrial Response...she provides emergency response teams to the oil patch and other industrial emergency care...I assure you, this woman has more good Karma than any one person could ever possibly use up in one lifetime!!! She's one of my most favorite people. She's one of those gals you just really REALLY like the moment you meet her. No wonder this little girl is so lovely...runs in the family!!
I hope you all have a fantastic long weekend...we will be doing farm equipment maintenance and yard clean-up (and yes, it is gonna be as fun as it sounds...maybe even FUNNER! - love that word!) If I'm really lucky, I'll bust out the camera some more and have a schwack of new photos to scrap....maybe.

Aprils Flickr Winner (late, I know!)

Okay, so I'm a big fat slacker and should have posted this a week ago but it's here now and I know you'll enjoy the slide show! Our design team voted and we had a 3-way tie so I in the name of fairness, I had my husband randomly choose a number (poor unsuspecting husband!) to serve as the tiebreaker vote. The lucky winner of April's monthly challenges is Scrappymom123 (AKA Stacey!) Here's her winning page:
I love me a 6x12 layout! Don't you?! Fantastic page, Stacey. Please email me at lotuspaperie@shaw.ca so I can get your mailing info to send out your Rookery Road Couture Collection! A giant thank you to everyone else for playing along with April's challenges. If you haven't tried our weekly challenges, you should! Every week, we post challenges to the blog. You are welcome to try your hand at the challenges - sometimes they're sketches and sometimes they're other images that we use for inspo. Create your page, upload to Flickr (make sure you've joined the Lotus Paperie Group) don't forget to say which challenge your page was created for and wait to see if you win. You can enter as many times as you want and you don't have to create your artwork using our Couture Collections but if you have them already, please do use those products on your pages. There were some unbelievable pages and it was so hard to choose. It's pretty easy to see why we had a tie over which page should win! Check out the amazing pages that were submitted to the challenge...

A little somethin'

Get a load of this bad boy! Here's a little somethin' to excite your imaginations...a wee glimpse of what's to come in June's Couture Collection. There are beautiful textiles & paper embellishments to create wonderful pages throughout the beginning of summer and the weekly challenges will blow your mind!!! To order this kit, use the paypal button on the sidebar titled "Peaceful Couture Collection"

Hello Monday!

I love Mondays. I don't know about you but I think they are just great...bursting with opportunity and promise...and To-do lists! LOL I am in the process of learning Simply Accounting which I'm not exactly feeling all warm and fuzzy about...we're taking over Ray's parents' sod farm (which is why we moved to Whitehorse) so in addition to wrapping my head around this less than user-friendly product, I'm also trying to fully grasp all the details of the farming side of the biz. Oh, and then there's still this little issue of my business and my exciting new DT. PHEW!!! I'm getting worn out just thinking about it all! I was going to have a booth at the local farmers market this summer but I'm feeling a smidge overwhelmed so I opted out of the craft booth!

Today is all about administrative thrills like contracts & payroll (yawn) and finishing up a delightful custom Knitted Babe for a customer on Etsy. Meet Cerulean, the blue-eyed, hot-pink haired ballerina doll. OOOOH baby, she's a fine specimen of hand-knit perfection! LOL (no modesty for me, man!) I think she rocks! I'm putting the finishing touches on her amazing tutu and will be whipping up a few special surprise goodies to go with her cute self. I will be packaging and mailing all DT Couture Collections for June as well as all the Collections that have been ordered online (for all you gals who are patiently awaiting their arrival!!) If I'm really lucky I'll get out to the studio for a little digital sketch creation for the coming months and at the end of the day I think I might be wrung dry of all my creative mojo.

So, true to Monday's promise, let's get organized and let's GO!

Challenge 71

It never stops blowing my mind how fast a week can go by. We have been overcome by Spring cleaning urges here at our farm and with big changes like building a house and other structures, I know that the chaos and craziness has only just begun! I've barely unpacked and reassembled my studio after the crop - so exhausted!- but have so many exciting things coming up for the fall...but we'll talk about that later seeing as Spring really only started for us yesterday. What I do like about our current season is that I feel rather creatively charged and somehow can't seem to get everything made that I want to...an abundance of creativity and a shortage of time.

I have some fun classes that I'm offering over the summer so if you live in the Whitehorse area, please visit the Classes site for details on that.

So this week for challenge 71 (I can hardly believe we're there already!)I created a really fun 6x12 sketch. I love this format and the vertical orientation makes me super happy. I am a lover of the single photo scrap page and these 6x12 pages just ROCK for that! American Crafts just introduced a 6x12 vertical album too...can't wait to get that sucker and fill 'er up! It seems that having a pre-schooler at home makes him the most likely candidate for the majority of my pages just because it's opportune to grab more photos of him than anyone else...so that means that when I made this page, it was using another Sethy photo. The photo is from his birthday...Noah gave him his hand-me-down Gameboy and Sethy sat right down and knew exactly what to do. Too cute!

I know that there are lots of you who are playing along with our weekly challenges and posting your pages to the Flickr Group. I love that! It's so exciting to see how you interpret the artwork week by week. Please continue with your submissions!! If you haven't contributed yet, visit our Flickr Group, upload your page (make sure to add it to the LP Photo Pool!) and make sure to indicate which week your page is made for. The design team will vote on a favorite and the winner will be awarded with a free Couture Collection! You don't have to use the Couture Collection to be able to submit your pages, just use the amazing goodies that I KNOW you have in your stash.

Vanessa

Ronda

Jessi

Tania

Christine

Danielle

Meet the new Design Team!

Wow, can I tell you how blown away I am at the level of talent that exists out there?!! I have been reading (and re-reading) everyone's DT applications and I gotta tell you how HARD it has been for me to decide on the new Team!! But after much ado, I am ready to make the grand announcement!

Most of you are familiar with a few DT members who are returning for another go round and that is so exciting. They, along with the new members, bring with them an eye for design and a personal flair that sets their pages apart. Their creations inspire me every time I view them and I'm blessed to have them on my team. The gals who are returning for another session are

Tania
Ronda
Jessi
And the new gals who I'm super excited to introduce you to are...
Gillian
Who I have no photo for...but she's gonna email me one (Right Gill?)

Chrissy

These guys submitted some amazing work using this sketch...I can barely contain myself thinking about the artwork that's gonna come our way over the coming weeks. Here's Gill's page from the sketch
and this is Chrissy's page... I have a special fondness for this page as Kal is one of my favorite bloggers & artists...her blog is an absolute hoot to read every day and I can only imagine what she's like in person. I'm sooooooo jealous that Chrissy knows her (maybe I can live vicariously thru you, Chrissy!)
and from our talented returning DT's here's Tania's pageThis is Ronda's page...an all digi layout for a change. Ronda rocks the digi pages but doesn't get to show her stuff here often because we use the paper kits. I thought this was a fun and different submission. A change of pace...keepin' it interesting!

and last, but CERTAINLY not least is Jessi. She used this page to illustrate why she enjoys this artform. Sort of an introspective piece...love it!
Many, many talented ladies tried out for the team and didn't make it this time but please keep in mind that the cycles run for 6 months and you are all more than welcome to try out again in November for the next cycle which starts in December. Also, if you are interested in being one of our guest designers, send us a note with your name, email addy and a bit about yourself so that we can add you to our list of talented designers. Check out some of the other design inspired pages that caught our eye!

Oh what a day!

What an amazing experience I had this weekend. If you haven't visited my Classes Blog, I've been planning a NSB Day crop at one of our local hotels and it went down this past Saturday. PHEW! I'm tuckered out! It ran from 9am to 5pm and we had challenges & contests, prizes & giveaways. I taught 6 classes that were so much fun and we had a couple of mini-stores set up for a little shopping too! Boy it was busy.

I remember watching a video post on Donna Downey's blog after her Inspired event last week and laughed to myself when she confessed that she didn't take a single photo. I thought, that's really easy to avoid...but you know, I didn't get any either! So technically, other than my tired feet and my totally disheveled studio, there's no evidence of the event!

I've already booked the same location for next year's event and I'm hoping to get more people to attend. We'll have a vendor's fair (gotta love the shopping!) and maybe it'll be over 2 days...man, I feel tired just thinking about teaching for 2 solid days!

A big warm thank you to everyone who was with us for the day (a very special thank you to my husband, Ray for keeping an eye on things when I was out of the main room teaching) and thank you to the hotel staff for helping me put on such a fun day. Can't wait for next year!!!

If you live in the Whitehorse area (or neighboring communities) the 20% discount on store merchandise is good for the entire month but restricted to in-person purchases (online sales do not qualify). Each time you make a purchase, your name is entered into the draw for 6 months of FREE couture collections! If you want to get your name in the draw, the studio is open Mon, Weds & Fri 10-5 and any other time by appointment. If you purchased goods at the Crop and already turned in your coupon, you can make additional submissions with each purchase so you can enter more than once!

Open Crop night is scheduled to run as usual this coming Wednesday so c'mon out and bring a page or two to work on. Hopefully I'm able to put the studio back together by then!

Happy National Scrapbooking Month everyone!

Challenge 70- Blast Off Couture Collection

This week's challenge is a home decor image swiped from Domino Magazine, an absolutely fabulous place to drool over amazing home decor ideas...and the BEST DIY section EVER!

I really enjoy working with challenges like these because you have to look inside the design & composition to find the page hiding there. If you like this week's challenge and think you'd like to take a stab at it, please show us whatcha got! You don't need to create your page using this month's Couture Collection but you can if you want to! :) Be sure to upload your page to the Flickr Group and don't forget to add it to the photo pool so we know it's there to be voted on at the end of the month.

So enjoy the amazing creations that the gals came up with for this week...(some of whom managed to pull it together even with a very very late kit delivery!)

Jessi
oh, and check out the amazing class she's offering at The Inked Barn

Ronda

Vanessa
Tania

Christine
SallieDanielle