Wednesday, April 30, 2008

*my heart wrencher and inspiration*

ok.
Everytime I listen to this song it just rips my heart and I have a cry. It reminds me of my little girl and her Dad (dearly belovered). Its called Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle. As butterflies are so in atm I am inspired to create a LO on these lyrics. Its a work in progress but will post when done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgZftrobqlg&feature=related
FYI. link to this song clip on YouTube. get the tissues handy

[i lied]

ok i am back LOL.


Just wanted to share those images i am talking about - the things i stopped to capture on my camera simply because they caught my eye. These were taken on my phone camera so the quality is fairly poxy.


The first is an amazing shop sign in Melbourne Street in Adelaide. The colour was a beautiful dark eggplant - which is kinda hard to see here but the font looked incredible. I am going to try and copy that at some stage with something - either in photoshop or with rubons. Love it
The second image is from the Cummins Bakery (hiya Katy) and it is of a GORGEOUS plate which i always admire. I love how the element of this are placed, the colour and how vintage it looks. Again i am going to use this for inspiration one day.

[the idea]

Now i have had a bit more of a think about how this blog will work......my idea is as follows.

1. to keep the local girls 'in the know' about upcoming Escape 2 Create retreats

2. as a source of inspiration

3. to share pages that local girls have done that have been inspired by this blog.



So as i said in my post below, there WILL be another retreat. We know the date, things are booked and it is all systems go. We can tell you (as i said before) that it wont happen in 2008............everything else is a secret. Bit by bit we will give you nibbles of info - so stay tuned.


I would really love Meredith, Tiff, Sue, Val and myself to post on here things that inspire us. It could be a quote, a photo, a LO sketch (need to put credits in here) or anything else that catches our eye. Today for example i found a fantastic article in the Creating Keepsakes magazine which i will post later - i thought that it was brilliant.

I also have taken photos at different times of things that inspire me to create. I can share those too and hopefully they will help to get your creative juices flowing as well. I was reading today (again that magazine) about creative translators. Being able to look at anything and translate it into a page or project. I know that men's shirts inspire me so much - the designs, colours and stitching just seem to 'do it' for me. :) Have a think about what YOU can translate onto a page today!

Last but not least i would love for the retreat girls to share projects with us. It might be something you are particularly proud of, something you did on our retreat (i would love to see some of your finished chip albums!) or even something that we have inspired you to create from our posts on here. If you would like to share something please email me ga.hall@bigpond.com and i can either post it on here or drool over it privately :)

I will be back later after netball training *groan*

Woohoo a blog

I mentioned the idea of a blog, I think just before the retreat and then forgot about it! So thank you Amanda for doing such a great job and surprising us with it!! :-) It looks great.

The reason I thought a blog would be a good idea was to be able to post pictures or sneak peeks of the class projects for the next retreat (not that we are definite about what the classes will be but we do have some ideas already!!) We'll keep you in suspenders!!

This is my first time of being a part of a blog so it will be fun.

Keep scrapping and snapping!

Logged by Meredith

I did it.

well I have just bust my blog cherry. Not a virgin anymore. Am learning (slowly) how to navigate blogger. Have just popped in a group photo of us organizers. Will learn new tricks tomorrow (yawn). Is late. Night.

blogged by Tiff

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

[update]

well Tiff, Meredith, Sue, Val and myself took ourselves out to tea thanks to the gorgeous money gift from the retreat girls.

The good news is.................there WILL be another retreat!!

The bad news is...........it wont be this year :(

Due to family, footy, netball, hunting, work and other commitments we have decided for the sake of our mental health to have a little time off before planning for a bigger and better ESCAPE 2 CREATE.

Never the less we have all had our little brains in action and a lot of hashing out, improving and re working has been taking place.

I for one have worked on a new colour scheme AND logo..............you will have to wait for that though.

Val will be on board again as caterer extraordinaire!!

Class registration will be different - much improved.

more gossip to follow.

blogged by amanda

[the rundown]



So we all had a most marvellous time on our ESCAPE 2 CREATE retreat at Nth Sheilds.

O.M.F.G is all i can say.

It was the best bloody weekend of my whole life. Excellent excellent excellent. I am still pumped if you hadn't noticed



ok i headed over to the venue at about 11am. Setup everything with M, S andT.

The retailers came not long after (we had 5 at the retreat) and they set up their huge stalls.

The first lot of scrappers arrived about 3.30pm (they couldn't wait til 4pm )

On arrival they recieved their passport, wine glass, t-shirt transfer and goodie bag. Showed them the accomodation, toilets, kitchen and also the big scrapping shed.


All arrived by 6.30. Had an intro/welcome speech - was very nervous as i had nominated myself to do it *doh*. but it was ok. Pizza tea.

Then i did my powerpoint talk on basic tips to improve photography - everyone said it was really great and very helpful. I was so pleased with how this went off.


After that we did our jointly taught mint tin album class. Only had about 8girls pop their name on the registration list but they loved it and it really enthused the others when they got back in the shed to think about the Sat classes (which were still in secret squirrel mode lol)After the mint tin class it was free scap time and most people stayed up til the wee hours - T, M, S and myself included until 3am


Sat was absolutely full on.Woke early 7am as people were up and keen ascustard to get scrapping. Breakfast and greeted the 'day trippers' who werearriving. We had advertised that 9am was registration time but at 8.45am thegirls were in a FREAKING LINE lining up to pop their name on the class regolists for the Sat workshops. Meredith's acryilic album class was totally booked out at 9.01am There were a couple of extras wanting to do my classes so i had 18 and 16 in my mini album and layout classes.

Tiff did her workshop first - everyone stoked with their creations. Then i did one at 11am, another at 1.30pm and i was all done by 3.30pm.We also did that grid bingo - lots of techniques to cross off as well as that other ummmmmmmm brand name bingo thing that Rach did at our scrappy awards. The second one was A BIG HIT lol. - you could have heard a pin drop in the shed while they were waiting for the names to be called out


Meredith had her class at 3.30pm.After that had finished we had free timeuntil we went to the pub for tea (short walk) and back to free scrap time into the wee hours (again) 2am for me and Tiff again, nearly 6am for Meredith (she is a bloody machine let me tell you )

Up early for bacon and eggs breaky on Sunday. Totally free day to shop and scrap - no classes. Packed up and all gone by 4pm.

T, M and I stayed there last night on our own just tidying up and packing stuff away. I have not long been home but i am all unpacked as well (lol running on adrenalin still!)

We had such fantastic feedback too. We did some forms up so people could tell us where we went wrong and how we can improve and they were all so positive!

To the point were on Sat night at the pub on of the scrapping guests (a paid retreat go-er) got up and made a speech, thanking us organizers infront of everyone and gave us an envelope of a 'whip around' token of their support and gratitude. It was for us all to go out for tea so we can plan the next retreat LOL - over $200 in that envelope that they gave us all Just amazed to think that paid guests would do that.......

Lots andlots of positive feedback - the one girl there who had been to lots of scrapping retreats (all others and ourselves were scrap retreat virgins) said it was, by far and away the best one she had ever attended. She used to live over in the eastern states and said that she had been to a fair few retreats in the past. Wow what a huge compliment!!

meet and greet table. Collect passport, wine, glass and bag before proceeding :)




wine glasses with the transparent tag thingos.



Tiff and Sue doing meet and greet



Meredith and my mess. Note half finished LO on table!




one side of the shed. Yep other side equally as packed.




one of my classes




our logo on the backs of shirts (meredith's here)




busy fingers :)

blogged by amanda