One Craft Fair Down/One to Go!

Yesterday was Country Fest in Mt. Vernon, TX, and students on the DI teams I manage sold their wares outside of M. L. Edwards & Company Emporium on the square. While the stamps they used were SU! only, many kind people donated supplies for us to work with, and we were more than happy to use them!

We sold over half the bags of Autumn Trail Mix and Texas Trash that the students made on Friday afternoon. The rest will go quickly when we get back to school tomorrow. I'm very thankful to my friend, Ellen, for giving us the Autumn Trail Mix recipe last Wednesday. We started using it on Thursday, and it's been a BIG hit. Plus we're super excited to have something to sell that doesn't have to be coated in white chocolate almond bark first!

We had one table (the one with the green cloth) of $1 items that sold well. Besides the bags of trail mix and trash, we had the large decorated magnet paper clips, the garden pebble magnets, and the chocolate mints covered with scallop circle toppers. One set was white with ghosts. The other was pumpkin pie with spiders.

We also sold quite a few cards on this table. Most of them were my examples from classes I've taught over the past six months since some of our "helpers" on Friday managed to damage the majority of the cards the kids had ready to sell. Fortunately, most of them were not damaged beyond repair, so we should be able to rework them in time for our craft fair at school at the beginning of December.

Our other table had items ranging in price from $3 - $10. We sold almost all of the little trinket boxes we made (thank you, Dollar Tree!), most of the altered Halloween letters, most of the small altered frames, a few medium altered frames, and two large altered frames.

The kids were disappointed that none of their framed words sold. We'll need to decide if we should add more embellishments to them or lower the price, but in this economy, we had a hard time moving the $10 items.

One of the teachers at our school donated tons of tiles to us. We stamped small and medium-sized tiles with StazOn. We hot glued matching ribbons on the back to make them wall hangings and sold about 2/3 rds of the ones we took. We even got a special order for one from a customer who offered to pay in advance. That was one of the highlights of the day.

The main benefit of the craft fair (besides the money the students earned) was the fact that it was an incredible bonding experience for the children, and by the end of the day, they'd turned into very savvy sales people!

5th Best Ever Spread - Part 1

This is the right-hand side of our final Best Ever double-page spread. When I took all the photos on Sunday night, I still didn't have the rest of it finished! I used my Sizzix Big Shot to create the Ridinghood Red photo corner at the top. I was going for a more sophisticated look with these last pages since I'm always struggling for the appropriate pages to scrap my mother-in-law's birthdays. I used Stampin' Dimensionals for the cardstock sticker in the center and added Kraft cardstock to the kit for the mats. I took my camera to work yesterday to start taking pictures of our Craft Fair items and forgot to bring it home. As soon as I take the rest of the photos of these pages, I'll add them to my blog.

4th Best Ever Double-Page Spread

This double-page spread was easy peasy to make!


The only DSP I had to cut was the strip on the left-hand side of this page! Once again, I used Stampin' Dimensionals to make the circle stickers "pop" on the left-hand side.


And the faux DSP at the bottom of this page is actually a boarder sticker placed on top of the Ridinghood Red word border sticker! How simple is that?

I used Stampin' Dimensionals under the cupcake stickers so it would be easier for people to go back and add their pictures. I also did something daring for me by mixing up the photo mats instead of lining them up by size. I like the funky way it turned out!

This is my 7th Simply Scrappin' Kit to design, and the hardest part is keeping the pages from all looking the same! While it would be fun to use circular mats or very odd-shaped ones, I try to stick with variations of the 4 1/4 x 6 1/4 size to make it easier for people to use uncropped pictures or photos that just need a little trimming.

That way they can adhere their pictures fast and spend their time focusing on journaling, titling, and the other little techniques that personalize the pages we make in our club.

3rd Best Ever Double-Page Spread

This is the 3rd double-page spread my Simply Scrappin' Kit Club will make on Sunday. I must say it's one of my favorites because I love the color green, and Kiwi Kiss is really growing on me!


People who scrap with me know most of my layouts are very symmetrical. I like everything balanced and even, but when I saw the Make a Wish sticker and the cock-eyed cupcake on the samples that come with the kit, I just had to use them on a layout. If anyone asks me about it, I'm going to "blame" the crooked cupcake on the candles since I used more on this layout than the others! :-)


Whenever I design the pages for the month, I try to include one set like this to give scrappers with LOTS of photos of one event the chance to collage as many as possible.

And while I love the way Kiwi Kiss and Baja Breeze look together, I added a small strip of Ridinghood Red under the cardstock sticker strip on each page to make it really stand out.

One of the things I love most about using these Simply Scrappin' Kits is the way they encourage me to move outside my comfort zone and try colors I normally wouldn't think to put together. Now that I've worked with these pages, I know I'll be using Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, and Ridinghood Red together a lot more while they're In-Colors.