BACKGROUND

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Bottle Swap

Have you ever heard of a Bottle Swap? While looking on YouTube to find videos to offer to my facebook fans and blog followers I came across a series of videos by Yoliebean!



Yoliebean, Yolanda Pasillas, is a long time crafter, 16+ years. She's a mother of 7 children (YES I said 7), wife and lover of all things crafty. She first did the bottle swap about 15 years ago with a group of ladies attending classes at a local rubberstamp store. After watching YouTube and seeing swap videos, she realized that no one knew about swapping items in a plastic bottle. She thought it would be cool to do so she made a video.


This video explains the rules and details on getting your bottle ready.


About 30 people participated in her first swap while her second one had 104! She recieved emails everyday asking when the next one was going to be.



This video shows you what your bottles should look like when they are completed. If you are packing them in a box to ship, feel free to decorate the outside of the bottles as well.

If you wanted to start one yourself, this is what Yolanda suggests you do:
*Get confirmations from all who want to participate - give them a date to do so by.
*Pair people up, have them answer basic questions about themselves and their crafting style, likes and items they'd really like to get in their bottle.
*Give a dollar amount per bottle.
*Give a time frame to have them mailed by.
*Contact people via email with gentle reminders.
*Have at least one bottle packed and ready to go - just in case someone drops out last minute!
*She also suggested to limit US swaps to US and abroad swaps abroad. Shipping these items can be tricky across the borders.

I was thinking about all the possibilities for this idea - they are endless. I'd like to share with you what I came up with - but I'm too excited with what I'm thinking about that I want to consider it as a challege for our facebook FANS! We'll see !!!

In the meantime, get out there and start your own bottle swap. Make sure to let us know how it worked out!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

WE DID IT!

We reached over 1000 fans on both our Paper Creations and Scrapbooking & Beyond facebook pages! I just can't believe it! If there were a way to shoot fireworks out from your computer screen to show my excitement, believe me I'd do it! You'll just have to settle for a picture of it for now.

I'm so grateful to all of our fans for referring us to their friends and helping us grow! This was all accomplished in less than a month and I can only image where we will be with our fan base - let's say - by the beginning of the summer! A big THANK YOU goes out to all of our fans! I can't wait to start sharing tips, contests, videos and to continue to have giveaways on our facebook pages!

THANK YOU!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Paper Creations Summer 2010 issue



I am so excited to be posting Paper Creations Summer 2010 issue here on the blog. I've met a few of our designers in this issue on our facebook page and I want to share a few of their pieces.

Maricel Fabi (who's card made the cover)



Diane Noble



Charity Hassel



Michelle Woerner



Jennifer Hansen



I'm so thankful to have such a creative group of designers that make our magazine what it is. Thank you so much ladies for being so creative! I am looking forward to getting to know all of you - through the blog and on facebook!

Friday, April 9, 2010

Facebook Fan Winners


We have a new Bic Marker winner on each of our facebook fan pages this week. Rachel Houghton on Scrapbooking & Beyond's page and April Ford on Paper Creations page. We've had a surge of fans this past week and I'm so excited how everybody else is thrilled to be connected with us on facebook!

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Happy Easter


I wanted to share one of my favorite Easter treats (other than anything and everything chocolate/peanut butter) - PEEPS. First of all their shelf life is FOREVER! Secondly, they have so many different shapes and flavors to choose from. (Note: At Christmastime the gingerbread men are delicious!) Finally, did you know some great Peeps recipes include peanut butter and peeps sandwich, chocolate covered peeps, peeps wrapped in bacon, deep fried peeps, and even a peep turducken (peep stuffed with a cadbury egg stuffed into a chocolate bunny.)

Ok,I'm sure I wont be trying any of those but I might try my hand at peeps smores. Toasting those little buggers over a camp fire - I bet the sugar coating forms sort of a crispy crust & the marshmallow insides get all melty & gooy! I'll save these for our campouts this summer!

Happy Easter!