Scrapping and Lunching at Lain's

Last December, Lain Ehmann  (the scrapbooking superhero organizer of Layout a Day (LOAD), True Scrap and so much more...) did a series of 12 "Deal-of-the Day" offers with special prices on many of her classes.  A portion of each sale went to support the Aasha Foundation, helping orphaned street girls in India to gain independence through education, friendship and love.  The girls received new sport shoes and you can see a lovely photo of some of them wearing their shoes on the Facebook page for the foundation HERE.

In addition to great deals on her classes, one of the items Lain offered was the chance to come to her house to make a project and have lunch.  Since she lives in Lexington and I live in Concord (neighboring towns), I thought this would be fun.  I was lucky enough to be able to get online and reserve one of the spots for the event in February which seemed very far away at the time.

When we arrived, the tables were set up with lots of scrappy goodness - and some goodie bags to take home.  The project we made was a chipboard mini album with a black, white, red and pink color scheme that was perfect for the day after Valentine's Day.

We used the insert pages for the six by six BoBunny chipboard albums and after choosing our papers and covering the pages we all set about embellishing our books.  It is always fun to see how a group of people given the same items to use for a project will come up with very different end results.

We each had a small tin tagged "the little stuff" that was full of the tiny treasures to use to embellish our books.  Lain made these from Altoid mint tins.  I wondered how long it took to save up the tins and she said they had been given to her by a friend who knew she was "crafty" - do your friends do this too?  I have bags of odds and ends that people have saved for me and I need to repurpose them or pass them along soon!

These tins are fun to decorate - especially if you use some washi tape to cover the sides.  The tape is the right width, simple to adhere and easily movable if you get it crooked on the first try.  (For more ideas and tips on using washi tape you can check out Monica Bradford's webinar HERE).

As we used various items we could mark them on our "bingo" cards with M and M's.  I got the first bingo (lucky for me one of the categories was "whoops" and I forgot to punch the holes in the paper on the second page I covered for the album.  I fixed my mistake by using another uncovered page as a guide for the hole punch).

Here you can see parts of my album - I wanted to add a few things to finish it up at home so I'll post the final version once I complete it.  I used Scor-Tape to adhere the paper to the chipboard  and had a lot of fun adding labels, twine, borders, flowers and bling as I went along.

In no time time at all, we had the table cluttered with creativity!

The time went quickly and soon we were enjoying our lunches.  There were all sorts of salads and sandwich options and I tried quite a few!  Isn't the red and white placemat pretty?  It gave me an idea for another project...

I brought along a little treat for each of my fellow scrappers.  These favor bags are one of my "go-to" token gifts and you can find the directions and see some other versions by clicking on the photos below to go to some older posts.

Sometimes I design a fancy edge to cut with the Cricut or Cameo but lately I have been using my Martha Stewart border punches for these treat bags (I have to justify having so many on the shelf!).

Lain's birthday is coming up on Monday so I made her a little extra something.  This mini album holds wallet size photos or credit cards.  I personalized it with vinyl.  I took a screen shot of her signature from her blog and traced it in the Silhouette software

The image was small and my screen shot had low resolution but I was able to get a good trace with a little extra work in the software - I'll give more details about how I did this in another post...

Lain liked the little book but little did she know the best was yet to come (!).  If you have taken any of her classes you might know that she has a "thing" about Hugh Jackman, so I thought it only fitting to fill the book with photos of him for her.

When she saw the photos, her reaction was priceless and after she composed herself she posed with a few of the pages.  I told her she could add her own photos or cards but I think she is going to keep the "Hugh collection" for now.

These adorable mini cupcakes were our desserts - each one more tempting than the next...

...of course, I went for the chocolate topped with chocolate!

I brought along some extra Hugh photos for anyone else who wanted one and also designed and cut some heart medallions for everyone.

I have lots and lots of leftover hearts after cutting out a dozen medallions - watch for them to appear in other projects!  I cut the medallions with my Cameo and the cuts lifted from the mat beautifully (yes that is a Cricut mat - I use them in the Cameo interchangeably with the Cameo mats).

I used a sticker journal block to provide a spot for Lain to sign the back of my album...

and we posed for a photo together that I will use for the album.

We all had a great time and I think Hugh would approve...

We had a very early morning wake up on Saturday to take our younger son and his girlfriend to the airport - they will be visiting our older son and his wife in California for the vacation week.  They left just in time as more snow is coming...it is still winter after all.  I ended up napping for a good part of the day so I didn't finish this post until late.

I hope you are having a nice weekend - my big plan for the rest of the day is watching the last episode of season three of Downton Abbey tonight - are you a fan?

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