Living and Scrapping My Life: CKC Mesa Projects and Class Reviews

A little over a month ago we had what will be our only scrapbook convention in Arizona this year. For the past several years we have had one in the spring in Mesa and another in the fall in Phoenix and last year Glendale. So me and the scrap friends were a bit dissapointed that we would only get one girls weekend this year. We considered going to the Riverside CKC but it is scheduled for Father's Day weekend, so although I will be in California for Father's Day I will be hanging out with my dad and the family and not scrapbooking.

To make the most of it we signed up for several classes, had 2 full days of shopping and stayed over at the hotel Friday night. This time we skipped the crop. We didn't need to spend the money to walk away with a goodie bag filled with stuff that I will probably give away. We had our hotel room, a bottle of wine and some chocolate. That was all we needed for a little scrap night.

The shopping this time around was very good. In the past few years it has felt like all the vendors just have a bunch of close out stuff at great prices. Which is great if you are looking for a bargain, but generally I want new things that have been released in the previous CHA. This year I was not disappointed, I ended up spending way more than I expected to. I picked up lots of new Basic Grey, Fancy Pants, Pink Paislee, American Crafts including Dear Lizzy and tons more. Plus I liked some of the new little finds like Arc Crafts wood veneer pieces. I always love the bling at Queen & Co. There were a few new close out discount places that had things I hadn't seen several times before. So all in all a good although expensive shopping weekend.

Now for the classes. I took 8 classes over the 2 days. I spread them out enough that it didn't get to overwhelming. I have mostly learned who I like to take classes from and who to avoid. I broke that rule with one class, and will go back to my stick with who to avoid list in the future. I finished up all my class layouts a few weeks ago which I am sharing below.

Tool Time - A Paper Crafts class taught by Kim Kesti. In addition to the layout we made the pieces to a card and tag (that I used on a card). We used the Epic Die Cut/Embossing machine. A simple layout kicked up with some embossing. I need to pull out the old Cuttlebug a big more often, it does add something. The card and tag were cute with the same colors (I didn't take pictures of them).

Always a favorite class, Embellish It's Latest and Greatest with Shelby Dredge. We always get to play with the new Basic Grey and Fancy Pants lines. And we always end up with 4 layouts that we like and will use. And we always pick up the 2nd page kit you can buy at the booth for $12. They make for good pages that you can get a lot of pictures on.

This layout uses Basic Grey Green at Heart

This layout uses Basic Grey Kioshi

This layout uses Fancy Pants My Family

This one using Basic Grey's Origins ended up being my favorite layout. Mike has become quite the chef and I am glad I finally scrapped about it.

Clearly Creative Acrylic by Story Tellers Club - The sample mini album picture looked cute, so against my better judgement I signed up. I was pretty sure from my past shopping that their kits weren't really something I liked. We got to the class and the project was different than the sample, but still along the same lines. But we didn't think the colors matched well, the class moved too slow, working ahead was a bit tough because the instructions were missing some things. So we just winged it. I wasn't really thrilled with the finished product, and although I finished it I didn't put any pictures in it, so I didn't photograph it. If you don't mind the "it looks like ribbon but it is just a photo copy of ribbon die cut look (but not really you have to cut them out yourself) than maybe you won't mind this class.

Ribbon Girl taught by Queen & Company

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this layout based on the sample, but I liked that we would get some ideas for ribbon, and my friends wanted to take it so I signed up too. I LOVED this class! The teacher was entertaining, we had plenty of time to work on our layouts, they had giveaways where it seemed like just about everyone won something. And we made these cute ribbon flowers on our pages too. Of course although I am a mama of boys, I do have 6 nieces. So I just had to dig out some pictures of some of them to finish this layout. I have to say it worked perfeclty for these pictures from Christmas morning. Mike's brother and his family spent Christmas with us last year and their 4 girls were all in their pink PJ's Christmas morning. So they were perfect for this layout.

Live In the Moment Designed by Ali Edwards taught by Technique Tuesday - This is the 2nd Technique Tuesday class I have taken and I am always so inspired to stamp on my pages more after taking the class. The class kit is pretty generous with product with a few leftover pieces and a stamp set you get to keep. We made the left side of the layout (which is a shaped layout not on a background) in class and I finished the second one at home. I also ended up getting lots of TT goodies back at their booth.

I Dare You taught by Kim Kesti for Creating Keepsakes - I liked this class based on Elizabeth Kartchners book 52 More Scrapbooking Challenges. The layouts were cute, quick and easily adaptable. The misting got a bit messy, with the first layout if you were one of the last to go up. The bottles were a bit clogged and the boxes to mist in were a bit saturated. We had to cut lots of circles so sharing the Coluzzle took a bit of time, but other than that we mostly finished up these 1st two layouts in class. The 3rd layout was quick to put together later. More memories quickly scrapped.

All In the Family taught by Tattered Angels - I was excited to take this class, because I wanted some more misting ideas. Although between the time of signing up in January and the class in April I have decided I like Maya Mists a little more that the Tattered Angels mists. The Maya mists are darker and give a more painted look, where the Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists are lighter. We used Glimmer Masks, TA chipboard and TA stamps in the class and got quite messy.

Fabulous Flower Techniques taught by Maggie Holmes for Creating Keepsakes - Upfront I am going to say I loved the idea of this class, but I don't think the class works well and I think now that it has been taught a few times CK has to know it.

Maggie was teaching the class but Kim Kesti was also helping and they had several classroom assistants. I know that the teachers didn't design the class and I felt sorry for them for having to teach what was probably 60 plus people to use a tool that has a bit of steep learning curve. I think under the circumstances Maggie and the others did a great job. They should have been paid double to teach this class, because they had to put up with a lot of annoyed women,

We were supposed to make either 3 or 4 brads using the Imaginisce I-Top tool. We should have made one brad with the tool and then we should have made a few more of the cute flowers that they showed in class or were included in the class handout. At our table 2 of the 3 I Top tools were broken on one of the 2 sides. We had to share about 3 people to a tool. Getting the hang of the I Top tool was not easy, I have one at home that I had not used, so I didn't even really try to do it in class.

There are so many cute ideas with flowers that are inexpensive to make and easy to do that would have kept the layout cute and kept a lot more people happy. I did like the flower we made out of the dictionary paper. And the layout did come out cute.