Challenge 87

It never ceases to amaze me how fast an entire month can go whippin' by and I somehow seem to barely notice! While I'm feelin' the love for Back-to-School, I'm flabbergasted that it can even be that time yet. But I must admit, there is something that I love about this time of year...maybe it's the promise of a little more studio time than I get during the summer (which is honestly next to nothing). Somehow, I find myself a little inspired despite the fact that the leaves are changing color already (acutally, the've been doing it for a couple of weeks)...I love knowing that I get to wear my lovely hand-knit socks & sweaters - but a few days of kick-ass sun wouldn't have hurt though :(

This week's challenge was great fun to scrap with. We all busted out some dynamite pages and I'm certain that you'll find yourself compelled to do the same! If you want to join us in our Flickr Group, all you have to do is A) join Flickr if you haven't already done so, B) make your fabulous page & upload it to the group, C) make sure you include the weekly challenge number in the title of your page. You can use any products you want to and if the scrapbooking gods see fit, you'll be the winner of this month's Flickr Challenge which means you'll receive the current Couture Collection! Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?!

In the meantime, get a load of our talented designers' handiwork...

Vanessa

Chrissy

I love it when the gals rock out a little bonus project or two using their Couture Collection leftovers!

Ronda

Tania

Tania - as always- has made a fabulous page using the leftovers in her kit...lovely!

Holly
This is Holly's final week as our Guest Designer. Don't forget to visit this post to upload your scraplift of her work so you can be in the running to win the prize pack consisting of some of Holly's favorite scrap supplies (see them at the end of this post). You have until the last day of the month to upload your work to the Meet Holly post...don't miss out! I have absolutely loved each and every one of Holly's pages...what a treat to have her join us for August. Thanks a mil, Holly!

coffee and lists

It's Thursday morning (but oddly, it feels like a Monday) and I think I'm getting the hang of this school stuff. 6:00 the alarm goes off, 6:12 make coffee, 6:30 pour the perfect cup and hit the ignition on my brain...next step is to wake up the oldest son and begin our respective days...mine with caffeine, his without! He goes through the morning checklist for himself (breaky, pack lunch, personal grooming, etc) and I sit down at the computer - after I ensure that his time management skills aren't suffering today- and begin the mental checklist...maybe today I'll even commit it to paper (just don't be shocked when you see it!).

Today's list of to-do's includes some boring studio stuff (admin things, mildly creative things and a few boring -albeit satisfying- organization things. Then after that is done, I gotta do something truly creative. In case you didn't spot the newest blog addition, check out the sidebar at the top ------> and there you'll see all my upcoming classes for the next few months. The Classes Blog will have photo samples, product lists & registration available for most classes if you check it out! So if I'm A) organized, B) focussed, and C) really friggin' lucky, I'll get to go and play in the studio.

Maybe if I drink my coffee super fast, I'll get a bigtime whammo of caffeine and rock out the morning like nobody's business. I'm gonna try...

School & shopping

(this photo was taken by my pal, Shannon who I was visiting in Edmonton)

Hooray for Back to School!!! Monday was officially the first day of school and Noah is happy to be back. Seth, on the other hand is in for a bit of culture shock now that his playmate/squabble-mate is gone all day. But you know, for me life kinda gets back to normal...early rising (some days I'm not exactly feelin' the love for the alarm clock though)and a bit more productivity.

My week in Edmonton was great...the weather was beyond HOT and I got in some great shopping. I got a load of great kids clothes (from The Children's Place) and a tons of new scrap stuff for me. I have GOT to get out into the studio later today and do some scrapping! There is a crazy quantity of Thickers that are just calling to me! LOL I also indulged my need for pink things a little and have got a stack of pink scrap goodies to inspire a few ME pages...it's the only way to realistically scrap with pink and not traumatize my all-male family (can't exactly scrap 4&9 year old boys with pink, now can you?)
One of my favorite shopping moments in Edmonton was definitely the shoe stores (I really only hit Payless). It was a good thing that my size section was small or else I'd have wound up with far more of their inventory in my bags!

Well, one kid's up and outta bed and hopefully the other stays asleep for a while. And if I'm extra lucky, I'll get to the studio today. Fingers crossed.

Challenge 86

Again with the warp-speed thing...how is it that fridays can creep in so effin' fast?! Well, at any rate, Friday's here and we're all rockin' out the pages! Gotta love it. This week's challenge is a book cover that just begs to be scraplifted. I use magazine & book layouts all the time for scrapping inspo. Balance and composition are always bang-on.

Of course, as always, we invite you to use this image to boost your creativity and to post your creations to our Flickr Group. Remember to indicate which week your pages are created for. You are free to use any and all products from your stash that make you happy and you need to get your artwork uploaded by the last day of the month to qualify in the voting process for August. The winning layout will receive a complete Couture Collection! WOW!

Also, don't forget that the 50th person to join our Flickr Group will receive a prize!!! So if you've been sitting on the fence about joining us over there, let the promise of free stuff motivate you!

AND there's still time to scraplift Holly's pages from this post. More free stuff for that too! C'mon everyone...get scrappy!!!!!

Vanessa

Chrissy

Tania

Ronda

Gillian
Holly

July's Flickr Winner and a sneaky-peeky!

Here's a little somethin' to get your creative juices flowing...September's Couture Collection, Treehouse is sure to inspire you to get scrappy and rock out piles of pages like never before! Check out the sidebar where you can order your Couture Collection right away...you definitely don't wanna miss out on this one. There will be a complete list of the kit contents posted after it goes 'live' in September.

Oh, and I know you're all dying to know who is the lucky winner of July's Flickr challenge...the winner is Laradee! Laradee, please email me at info@lotuspaperie.com with your mailing information so I can send you your Couture Collection! Congrats!!! Here's her winning page
Here's some of the other amazing artwork contributed to our Flickr group in July...

I did it. I took matters into my own hands and hit London Drugs computer department for a wireless router. That means that my laptop is ONLINE! that also means that my email is fully functional once again. Thank the Gods! So since all is well with the tech-universe, I can show you Holly's page. This page is inspiring me for my return home from holidays when I get to play with some of my new scrap supplies...like my fave paper of all the multitudes that I bought; the green houndstooth print (that's the black & white stuff on Holly's page). Can wait to print all my new photos and get a little scrap crazy!

Thanks for sending me your page, Holly....sorry it was a late post everyone!

Challenge 85 - and a freebie

Ahhh...holidays! I'm chillaxin' in HOT HOT HOT Edmonton after a day of scrapbook shopping and pedicures (really, does it get any better than that?) and this morning I'm fully embracing the mellow-ness that IS holidays...that is, until I try and connect my laptop to the internet. After troubleshooting last night on my own for hours and even recruiting an innocent Shaw tech-support worker into trying to solve my problem, it turns out to be a 'simple' hardware/driver flaw. Great. So while I'm working on not hating my computer, I'm loving the rest of modern technology at the same time. Between my iPod and the usb port on my laptop (and my handy-dandy flash drive) I'm able to access all but one of the images for today's post. Since I don't have internet on my laptop, I don't have Holly's page yet but I hope she send it to my other email address so I can post it later!

~Holly, email me your page again so I can post it!!!!

Today's challenge was such a great sketch to work with. I'm a chronic one-photo scrapper so I try and 'trick' myself into using more photos by making multi-photo sketches...so two is a pretty big deal for me :). I love my page for this week and I'm thrilled with everyone else's pages too! Yay for my die-hard Design Team who still stay inside on summer days to scrap for deadlines!

So as always, if you are a die-hard summer scrapper too, make sure you upload your page to our Flickr group with the week that you page is for in the title of the image so we can include it in our voting for the month...who knows, you could end up winning free scrap supplies just like these!

Chrissy

Ronda

Gillian

Vanessa

Tania

And for those of you closely following the competition in the Scraplift Challenge (found here) this is your prize pack...Holly is a lover of the Hambly so I figured it to be fitting that our prize pack for this month's Scraplift Challenge be ALL Hambly...overlays & Rub-ons...so go check out the link above and get your page linked up. You definitely wanna get in on this prize pack!!

Spoiled Rotten

Good morning my blog friends. I just received the most wonderful and totally unexpected gift yesterday from my husband...a brand spankin' new Fuju S5Pro and a 12-24 wide angle lens. Say Wha? Yup, last weekend he bought me a cool new sling backpack for my camera with compartments for all my lenses and I guess he just felt that a brand new camera bag deserved one more lens and a brand new body! Holy Crap-oly! So I guess I better get this bad boy in active duty and start rockin' out some kick-ass images, hey? I'm planning on photographing our farm lots so I can use the images on the website and for our trade show booth. And coolest of cool, he also got me a remote so I'm going to try and fiddle with the camera mounted on the tripod in the hopes of getting more self portraits that aren't out of focus. Yay for that!

A big fat industrial sized "Thank you Ray!!!" so everyone can hear it! :)

Well, the sun is coming up over the giant hill beside our house and trying to melt the frost -yes, frost- on the field so I'm going to suck back my coffee and bundle up to go grab a few golden-hour images of my beautiful farm.

Happy Sunday and don't forget all the contests announced yesterday!

Free stuff and more free stuff

Okay, I just climbed off the elliptical machine, I'm all sweaty and haven't even had a coffee yet but since that long awaited package finally arrived....I can now show you what Shelley won! YAY!

Her prize pack consists of a whackload (that's official scrapbooking terminology, by the way) of assorted flowers-metal flowers, rhinestone flowers, silk flowers, chipboard flowers and paper flowers....holy MAMA!
So Shelley, your goodies will be in the mail tomorrow and I'll be posting the prize pack for this month's scraplift challenge so be sure to go back and re-read the post where we first met Holly. The three pages shown with that post are for you to scraplift and there will be some more amazing treats to be won.

Oh, another challenge, our Flickr group is growing but I'd like to see more of you join us over there SOOOOO there's another bundle of freebies comin! There's a prize for the 50th member to join and if I can really push my luck, let's aim for 100....that means that the 100th member to join will win a super duper knock-your-socks-off kinda prize! Let's set a deadline of Aug 31. If you haven't seen our Flickr group, head on over and if you have been sitting on the fence about joining, what's the worst that could happen? If you're the lucky type, you could wind up winning one of the monthly contests and that would be okay, wouldn't it?

Challenge 84

It's amazing...a summer full of rain (the most rain in 35 years) but finally the good weather is here and the sun is shining! Hooray! Life is pretty dang good! I'm heading off to visit my very best friend in the whole wide world on Wednesday so I've been crazy busy sewing dresses for her daughters, knitting baby sweaters for her babies, scrapping pages so they're ready for posting next Friday and getting the farm office all set up to be without me for a week (yikes!)- good thing my Mother in Law is going to be at the helm in my absence and she's my predecessor at this joint so she totally knows what she's doing.

~on a side note, I just need to vent a little...rude and grouchy customers really REALLY piss me off! Grrrr....okay, I'm better now! LOL

Some sad news, Jessi won't be with us for the rest of this session with our current designers. We're sorry to see her go but holy CRAP, the pages that girl has rocked out have fueled my inspiration for pages upon pages! Jessi, may your life be filled with joy and blessings - more than you can measure! Thank you soooooooooo much for all that you've contributed to our fantastic team (and thanks for reminding me of all that was good from high-school like our shared love of Dolce & Gabbana!!!) We're gonna miss ya...but you better come around and leave comments & post pages to the flickr group! Love ya babe!!! Onward & upward!!

Below is our challenge image for this week. I honestly don't remember where I found it but I knew the moment I spotted it that it would be the inspo for a lot of killer pages...and it was! Get a load of what the girlies threw down this week. Woot! You can do amazing things with this one too, just show us! Upload your work to the Flickr Group (don't forget to tell us which week it's for so it can be included in the voting process).

Holly

Tania

Chrissy

Vanessa
Gillian
Ronda

Ingredients

If you've noticed the new header at the top of the page as per usual for the beginning of the month, I'm sure you're wondering how much stuff REALLY comes in one of those Couture Collections...well, here's a list of ingredients:
This Couture Collection is called Take Note and features several printed papers from Pink Paislee among other wonderful items that coordinate perfectly with the papers.

1 sheet Lily White Bazzill cardstock
1 sheet Petunia Bazzill cardstock
1 sheet Blue Eyes Bling Bazzill cardstock
1 sheet Parakeet Bazzill cardstock
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Casual Friday
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Fast Track
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Lunch Hour
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Cubicle
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Bottom Line
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Close the Loop
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Outside the box diecut
1 sheet Pink Paislee—Roundtable Scallop
1 sheet KI Memories Lace cardstock— Teal
1 11x11” Michael Miller avocado damask fabric
1 yard Maya Road grosgrain striped ribbon
1 Daisy Bucket acrylic stamp—Brackets
1 American Crafts glitter marker—Lipstick
5 Asst. Maya Road Sheer Log Cards
1 Pkg 7 Gypsies metal index tabs-numbers
3 Asst 7Gypsies 97% complete journaling tags
Basic Grey Urban Border—Black
6 Asst American Crafts Flowers—Emily Large
1 75ml. Tube Kaiser Kraft paint—orange

There's so much stuff that each of the gals always has tons of stuff leftover at the end of each month. Gotta love it! Better get yourself one!

half the information

So the houseguests have all gone home and life is feelin' pretty dang quiet! I'm enjoying the smell of squash baking in the oven for spiced squash soup (that's gonna be lunch - YUM!) and the peacefulness of an empty house. I've plugged myself into my iPod and am eager to announce our winner for the July Scraplift challenge. Susan was our very talented Guest Designer and her pages inspired a few of you to take a shot at winning some free stuff (which still isn't here - booo to Canada Post!) so while we wait for the box to arrive, I'll tell you who is the lucky recipient of the mystery prize...recognize this page???


Shelley is the lucky winner of this July's Scraplift Challenge. She really rocked out the flowers & chipboard...so romantic and feminine. Shelley, email me at info@lotuspaperie.com with your mailing info so I can get your prize pack shipped to ya...once it arrives! LOL Check out some of Shelley's other beautiful artwork here. Congratulations, Shelley! Thanks to everyone for participating...make sure to have another go with Holly's pages this month!

Oh, and I will post a photo of Shelley's winnings once they arrive!