Spring Retreat

We have started our waiting list for the Spring retreat. Please contact us before paying for your spot at retreat.

Spring 2013 Update

We are excited to say that we are just about sold out for Spring 2013.  We only have about 10 spots left.  Please be sure and submit your registration and payment soon if you're planning on joining us!

2013 dates

GREAT news. We are so excited to announce our 2013 dates...

Spring Retreat will be March 15-17
Fall Retreat will be November 8-10
Both will be at Embassy Suites in Rogers, AR

We will start taking sign ups today.

2 Katie Design Class for Fall Retreat

2 Katie Design will be back with another fabulous class at the Fall Retreat. The class will be taught at 10:30 on Saturday the 10th. The cost is $15. Sign up using the paypal button on the top right side of this page.

There are only 23 seats available for this class. Pre-register now before they are SOLD OUT.

 Echo Park, Everyday Eclectic line

Wendy Senger

We have been keeping a secret since April and can finally tell you. We are busting with excitement.

Wendy Senger, the creator of Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist, will be doing a demo at the Fall Retreat on November 10th. She will be sharing her knowledge of Glimmer Mist, Glimmer Glam and some new products you cannot create without.

This retreat has only one opening left. For those of you signed up, we are very excited for you. You don't want to miss this.

Tattered Angels is one of Dora's favorite products. Having this celebrity at our event is so, so amazing.

Fall Retreat

We are almost sold out for the Fall Retreat. There are two spots left. Please email us before paying to ensure we have room for your group.
We are so excited for the things we have "up our sleeve" for you... activities, special guests and more.
Keep croppin'

Miscellaneous Musings

Gosh! What happened to the month of July?!?

August will be here in just a few days, and, along with it, the beginning of school! If you're in Arkansas, remember that August 4 and 5 are "tax free" days in Arkansas. Be sure and check the details, as not everything is tax free.

If you live in Northwest Arkansas, you're probably familiar with the annual "Best of Northwest Arkansas" contest. If you're voting in the contest, we would like to ask you to vote for "Croppin' Train Scrapbook Retreat" for the "Best Weekend Get-Away" in the "Entertaiment" section. There is a complete ballot included in the Sunday paper, or you can enter online at nwaonline.com/best. Voting closes tomorrow, July 30.

Our final Croppin' Train Express event of the summer will be Saturday, August 4, at the Benton County Public Works building (formerly the Health Dept)on Hwy 102 in Bentonville. We will throw the doors open at 9:00 a.m. The building is air conditioned, so we can all enjoy a comfortable day of scrapbooking. We still have some empty seats, so if you need more details about this event, please contact us by phone (479-531-8518) or email (croppintrain@aol.com).

If you've read the July 9 posting, you'll see where Dora undertook the enormous task of organizing YEARS worth of digital photos - congratulations! I wanted to add a suggestion for those of you that are considering the same type of task. Because I've had 2 external hard drives crash, and lost everything that was on one of them, I don't like to keep all of my pictures in one place. I started buying 8GB and 16GB thumbdrives when they're on sale (like now!). I put all my pictures for one year on a separate thumbdrive. Most years, I can get by with an 8GB, but, if we had a wedding, a big vacation, or something else very special, I'll use a 16GB. For the older years, I've tried to at least create a subfolder for each month, and file the pictures accordingly. A couple years ago, though, I started creating both monthly and specific folders. I have specific folders for each person's birthday and one for each holiday. I haven't yet gone to the detail that Dora has, with reviewing what I've printed, scrapbooked, etc., but that is a great idea and one that I definitely need to do.

Has anyone NOT been on PINTEREST yet? I fear I could live there some days! There are some really great ideas with links to specific websites, blogs, etc. The "photography" category has terrific ideas for individual and family poses, clothes to wear, backgrounds, etc. Type "scrapbook" in the search box, and you'll see all kinds of layout ideas. As always, the "DIY and Crafts" category is chock-full of ideas for every crafter and every occasion.

Hope you enjoy your last few days of July, and are ready for school bells, books and bus traffic. :)

Pat

Photo Organization

I just finished a very long project. I took 8.5 years of digital pictures (that I sometimes had 3 digital copies of) and organized them by year. THEN I went through all the pages I have scrapbooked and noted those digital photos as printed. Then I went through all the pictures I have printed and begging to be scrapbooked and marked those as printed.

I have accomplished three things:
1. When their is a photo special, I can print unprinted photos.
2. I will stop printing pictures I have already printed and forgot about. (found a few LARGE groups of these). Saving money!
3. I can find photos quicker now when I am looking for that "one special one".

Also, I have a clean copy of digital photos (on my external hard drive) that I can put in the safety deposit box in case of a disaster.

I have created a habit of downloading and backing up my digital pictures each month. So I will never have to go through this again.

I feel so much better.

Take a Spin!

I made this card for my sister-in-law's birthday earlier this month. I used the Scallop Square Bigz Clear die from Stampin' Up! for the card base. Very carefully, line up your folded card stock just UNDER one of the scallop edges, and that allows you to cut scallops on three edges, but leave the fourth uncut and folded. For the three layers, I just cut one edge of my cardstock, and then cut each piece the same width.

The fun part of this card, of course, is the stamped section! This is from the Take a Spin SU! set. I stamped the image once on white cards in blue, then on a separate piece of cardstock in red. I cut out the red-stamped image, right on the edge, and mounted that on top of the blue-stamped image. I also colored in a few of the images with a marker. BEFORE you adhere the stamped image pieces to the rest of the card, you need to add the spinner. You can get those through Stamin' Up!, too. There are three parts to the spinner - a brad, the spinner itself, and a washer. I put the brad and spinner on top, and the washer on the bottom, then used pop-dots to lift the entire stamped image from the card base.

Hope you have a great week, and get to stamp and scrap a bit!

Pat

VACATION!

We're enjoying a fun week-end in Nashville, Tennessee! My husband, daughter and I met my brother (traveling from Montana through Ohio) in Nashville, will be here Friday and Saturday, then leave Sunday to spend the night in Memphis before heading home on Monday. We visited the Wild Horse Saloon Friday night, enjoying dinner and really good music. Saturday, we're taking a trolley tour of the city, and separate tours of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Ryman Auditorium. We have tickets for the Opry Saturday night, seeing some older country artists - TG Sheppard, Riders in the Sky, and Little Jimmy Dickens.

Aside from the fun of visiting Nashville, it's great to spend some time with my brother - we only see him every 2-3 years, and this is the first time he's visited Arkansas since 1994! Just a quick photo of Michael (brother), Robin (daughter) and Michael (husband). Spending time with family is the best!!



Have a great week! Pat

Crop Express on June 16

We are sold out for the Crop Express on June 16th. Thank you for all your support.  - Now to make the Prima goodie bags for you -

Miss You Latte Card

I made this card for a friend that lives in another state and I hadn't heard from her in quite a while. I used a retired Stampin' Up! stamp set (What's Brewin'?), with Chocolate Chip, Sage Shadow, and Vanilla card stock. I stamped everything in Chocolate Chip ink and then heat embossed with a Clear Embossing Powder. I cut the spoon out separately and used pop dots to adhere it. I used the Ticket Punch for the corners of the Vanilla card stock - I just love that punch and use it a lot. I added the Chocolate ribbon on the bottom and the 5 brown brads to the side. On the inside (of which I forgot to take a picture!), I adhered a piece of Vanilla cardstock, stamped in Choclate with the phrase "Taking a break from the daily grind to see how you've bean!" from the stamp set. This was a really quick, easy card to do, and nice to send to a friend. Hope you all have a great week - maybe do some scrapping or stamping! :) Pat

Crop Express on June 16th

We just sent emails to everyone that we have signed up for the Crop Express on June 16th. If you did not receive an email from us, please let us know. We only have two spots left open for this crop.

Happy Anniversary!

Today, June 3, would be my maternal grandparents' 80th wedding anniversary! Unfortunately, my grandfather died in 1954 and my grandmother in 2000. My grandfather was one of six children; his mother died when he was a youth, and his father was a rural mail carrier in Minnesota. My grandmother was the only girl (and the youngest child)in a family of 3 boys, so she was probably a little spoiled - even in the early 1900's. As a sidenote, my maternal great-grandparents did celebrate 79 years of marriage, before my great-grandfather passed away at the age of 100!

I love this wedding photo, and have tried to scrapbook it a dozen times (well, okay, maybe 4 or 5 times). I like each one of the attempts I've made, but have never fallen in love with any of them, so I just keep looking and trying. Following are my latest two digital attempts. I used Stampin' Up!'s "My Digital Studio" for both. I love layouts with lots of flowers and bling on them, but, when I work on a layout, it all seems foreign - like it doesn't belong, so I wind up with pretty sparse layouts.

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Have a great week!
Pat

Graduation Cards

We had two great-nieces graduate together this year, so I made the same card twice, but personalized each with a chipboard letter for their name.

One of my most favorite types of cards to make is a criss-cross card. You can do so much with these cards - they can be very simple or quite elaborate. The final outcome looks a lot more complicated than it really is. :) There is a great tutorial by Beate Johns on the SplitCoast Stampers site - http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/criss_cross_card/.

Let me give you an extra hint about making this card. The instructions call for "One 4" x 5" piece of patterned paper". This paper is cut in half diagonally and used to decorate the front of the card. In the tutorial, Beate uses double-sided patterned paper. You MUST use double-sided patterned paper to make this work correctly. If you do not use double-sided patterned paper, you will need to have TWO pieces of 4"x5" patterned paper. Cut in each in half diagonally and use half of each to decorate the front of the card. With this in mind, it makes sense to make two of these cards at once; the extra one will come in handy!

For graduation cards, I always like to use the school colors, so these cards were made with black cardstock and a patterned (single-sided) paper pack from Hobby Lobby. On the belly-band, I used a Stampin' Up! graduation set (Go, Graduate) - I just love this image of the different graduating 'feet'. I stamped the image with Versamark and then embossed it with Stampin' Up! Cherry Cobbler embossing powder. For the embellishment on the belly band, I used some retired Stampin' Up! chipboard letters, pushed them into my Versamark pad so they got really well-coated with the ink, then embossed with the Cherry Cobbler embossing powder. While the first layer of embossing powder was still wet, I poured more powder over them for a second coating. I then took a red marker and outlined the edges so they wouldn't be the bare chipboard.

Hope you're enjoying the Memorial Day Week-end; thanks to all that have served our country!

Grad Card

I made this card for a Prairie Grove graduate. I used yellow glittery paper from Hobby Lobby and solid black cardstock.

This is a great technique for all those straps of paper we have.

Cricut - Paper Dolls

In the last couple years, Cricut has come out with so many cartridges that it's tough to keep track. It's always easy to go for the newest cartride, and sometimes I forget about some of the great older cartridges. For a 2010 Halloween layout, though, I decided to use the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge. Our youngest two grandchildren dressed as Mario (Super Mario Brothers) and a Pumpkin Fairy. By combining different cuts from the cartridge, I was able to create both images.

This first picture is of the grandchildren, and their respective 'paper doll' images follow. The faces are stamped with face stamps from Peachy Keen stamps (www.peachykeenstamps.com).

Cricut - Glitter Cardstock

For the Spring Croppin' Train Scrapbook Retreat, we created a "JOY" banner using a beautiful red glittered cardstock from Hobby Lobby. Here's a couple hints about using glittered cardstock in your Cricut:

1. Buy it on sale! At almost $2.00 per sheet, you'll definitely want to use either a 40% off coupon or wait 'till it's on sale for 50% off.

2. The glitter doesn't allow the Cricut blade to cut through the cardstock. The blade hits all that thick, crunch glitter, and isn't able to cut - sometimes it will just stick, and sometimes it will 'jump' and skip cutting lines. You'll need to turn your glitter cardstock over, so that your cutting blade is touching the reverse side of the cardstock, where there's no glitter.

3. Now the problem is that the glitter won't stick to the Cricut mat. You really need to tape this cardstock down. I was cutting an entire sheet of letters, so I taped down all 4 sides - I did not want that paper to move! I had a brand new mat, but I still used masking tape on all 4 sides.

4. The last clue here is - if you're cutting letters, don't forget to reverse your letters before you cut them. Unfortunately, yes, I do speak from personal experience - that's one sheet of glitter cardstock in the trash (at least I bought it on sale!).

This first picture shows the really pretty, thickly coated, red glitter cardstock that we used for this project.

The second picture shows a completely cut piece of cardstock, where you can see that the letters were cut in the reverse, and all 4 sides are taped. The tape, of course, took a few extra minutes to get off of my mat, but I'd rather spend a couple extra minutes peeling tape than re-cutting and wasting cardstock because it moved. I used my Gypsy, so I was able to get a couple extra letters on the mat.

Finally, you'll see a picture of the completed JOY banner.

Fall Retreat

Registration for the Fall 2012 Weekend Retreat is open. 
We will be returning to the Embassy in Rogers.

We have expanded the hours... You can now crop from noon on Friday until 2pm on Sunday. That will give you 50 hours to scrapbook. Who needs to sleep anyway!

Check out the Pricing Post for more info on changes. *

Sign up now with the registration form here.

Pay your $50 deposit by July 1st.

Pay in full by September 22nd and receive the Early Bird Layout Kit at retreat.

Otherwise, registrations must be paid in full by October 15th. 

*Due to rising costs, we will no longer offer food as part of any of the Retreat packages. If we were to accept the rate increases from area hotels, we would have to raise the registration fee to at least $295. We’re certain you can each eat for less than $80, so we chose to exclude any food options.   Remember, however, that breakfast is included if you are staying at the hotel.

We will provide Dining Car delivery service from a designated location for anyone not wanting to leave the Retreat. 

We have some exciting things planned for this Fall Retreat. Some new activities... some updated activities... and more surprises... 

You will not want to miss this!

Type Ruler

Here is a link to a handy Type Ruler
Type Ruler on Creating Keepsakes