Happy Stampers - Inks, Inks and Inks!!

One of the most common questions we hear is

"what ink do I use with ...."

There are so many kinds of inks out there.  Here in the store, we currently carry Ranger's Distress Inks, Ranger's Archival Inks, Staz On Inks, Memento, Brilliance and Versamark.  And yes, each of those inks are all different from each other!

Our staff is always happy to help you out when you have questions, but after highlighting Jennifer Maguire last week, I remembered a fantastic video she did on inks and such.

Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday - Sept 24, 2014

Our 5 Instagram faves:

hausofw

Justagirl

studiobpaperdesigns

marah_johnson

(for her daughter's wedding!!)

simplestories_

Mixed Media Mania - Karenika Style

Several years ago, I was at a scrapbook event that was held for retailers in town.  At the time, I taught for a store and was thrilled to be given the opportunity to go and take classes from amazing people in the industry like Tim Holtz (an incredible instructor), Vicki Boutin (fabulous and funny!), Liz Hicks (ah-maz-ing and totally got that my hands were my best paintbrush) and companies like Tattered Angel, Bo Bunny, Graphic 45 and many more.  It was a fun weekend and I really learned a lot. 

At the time, Margie Romney had just started up a company called The Girls' Paperie, sadly gone now :( and so we were very excited to see it.  As we wandered through the booths, we stopped and chatted with many of the salespeople and artists who were in them.  Margie had us chatting for a long time...her warm and genuine spirit had us from the get go.  As we were chatting, a layout caught my eye and I was stunned by how much I loved it.  It was nothing like most layouts I had seen before.....lots of white space and random, messy journaling....random?... messy? that was my kind of style!

After gushing over it, Margie allowed me to take a picture of it and so I went home and googled...and came across a blog that I have now followed ever since - Karenika.

  Imagine how happy I was to discover that not only did she scrapbook like me (one pagers, lots of white space, love of banners and stitching...I was in heaven!) but she also ART JOURNALED!!

I was a little bummed out by the fact that most of her pages involved drawing but was still drawn to them and found myself just wandering through her galleries for inspiration.  

I encourage you today to wander her blog or search for her work on Pinterest and feel inspired!!  

Here are some of my favourites

What's Up - Sept 22-28

Happy first day of fall!!  

You would never know that summer has ended with the absolutely gorgeous weather we are having (28 degress!!).  

Last week brought a lot of fun ladies, teens, and tweens to join in the fun here - Bree had a Project Life class, Jenn had a Harry Potter Canvas Class, and Cori-Lyn taught the Art Journal class on Tuesday and again on Sunday.

We are looking forward to some more fun things this week:

Tuesday - A shipment is due in ...including the fabulous new Tim Holtz Distress Sprays!

We also have the advanced Copic class at 6:30.  This month, we are colouring two super cute Whimsy Stamps - if you have taken a beginner's class with Cori-Lyn, you are welcome to join in the fun!

We are also expecting Stencil Girl and Blue Fern to arrive back in stock this week as we sold so much of it in Sherwood Park last weekend!

This weekend, Ivy and Cori-Lyn are packing up the store again and heading off to Calgary to join Canadian Scrapbooker for another fun weekend!  We are looking forward to meeting some new scrappers :)

Wishing you a fantastic, fun-filled and crafty week!

Spark Your Inspiration - Friday Sept 19

Happy Friday!!!

It has been a pretty busy week around here and I am definitely glad the weekend has arrived :)

We started up a brand new Instagram this week and now we would like to introduce you to our sparkly new Pinterest Board as well!!

Pinterest is a fantastic source of inspiration - whenever a new line comes in, I love checking out different pins and seeing what is out there!

Here are our top 5 pins this week - hope you enjoy them!  Please click on the links below each picture to follow the Pin.
Have a fantastic weekend!

Super cute layout using American Crafts brand new Shimelle line.

Cigar Box Secret Layou by Shirel for Prima

Frank Garcia's STUNNING altered clock for Prima

(did we mention Frank is coming to teach here in February?!)

This one gave us a good giggle!

And Gabrielle Pollaco's gorgeous Maya Designs Canvas

Happy Stampers - Jennifer McGuire

Happy Thursday!

Today, I wanted to showcase a Happy Stamper that I have followed for years.

Jennifer McGuire is one of those stampers that takes a simple stamp and makes a card so quickly, you almost miss the techniques hidden in it.

Her style is crisp and clean, even when she uses Tim Holtz's Distress products!  She is a great blogger - always willing to share her techniques, organization tips, and pictures of her adorable family :)

Please check out her blog - make sure not to miss some of my favourite posts!

Altering Stamped Images

Organizing Clear Stamps

Stencils and Distress Ink

Gradients 

Her favourite Copic colours

Let us know what your favourite post is!  And if you happen to create something from one of her fabulous tutorials, we would love to see it!

Wordless Wednesday

I know it's supposed to be wordless...but allow me a few quick words to tell you that we have a brand new Instagram account!! We had a blast last night at our Art Journaling class - met some fantastic new journalers and even welcomed back an old friend :)

When I instagrammed our background page, I added a few hashtags as I usually do.  After class, I have a hard time sleeping so I was clicking on our hashtags and seeing what else came up. And so, today I will share some of my favourites with you.

 Check us out - http://instagram.com/scrapaddicts !  Follow us and we will follow you!  

# artjournal - from instagrammer marksqueen

#yeg - from instagrammer breezy252

#mixedmedia - from instagrammer scrapwitchlisa

#izinks - from instagrammer yvonneyam

#ScrapAddicts - from one of our instructors!