Nancy Wethington

Happy Halloween . . .

Image courtesy Clearly Vintage.

Linens Lace & Lattes . . .

Deb has been an on-line friend for years and we finally met a couple of years ago at For Keeps Sake.  I love Deb's style.  She has a booth at the South County Antique Mall that my friends and I frequent often. In addition, Deb has an Etsy store and a blog.

This past weekend, Deb was a vendor at the For Keeps Sake Girlfriends Getaway.  If you purchased anything from her table, Deb packaged everything in these hand decorated bags that she made the morning of the sale:

Each bag was unique with either lace or linens attached. Beautifully done. We were ga ga over the bags!

And a good time was had by all . . .

Sounds like everyone had a great weekend at the For Keeps Sake Girlfriends Getaway.  I know we did! It's so fun to walk around and see what everyone is creating. Thanks for sharing your ideas. I'm so inspired!

Playing catch-up at home today.

The Vendor Faire was beyond what we've ever had.  Such a diverse group of vendors!

Theron from Lifestyle Crafts brought so many goodies and giveaways. And we heard comment after comment about his great (and funny) personality!

A big thank you to American Crafts who sent a prize to everyone in attendance.

Nancy N & Timi outdid themselves with behind-the-scenes arrangements with the hotel, placement of tables and making sure friends were seated together, numbers on chairs for even more giveaways and generally seeing that eveyone had a great time - which we all did!

Save the date of March 1 - 3, 2013 for the next Girlfriends Getaway.

Sign-ups begin November 1

 @

For Keeps Sake Scrapbook

4530 Lemay Ferry Road - St. Louis MO 63129

(314) 487-8131 

 

Friday night @ Girlfriends Getaway . . .

Theron, our Lifestyle Crafts rep spent Friday night with *the girls* at our For Keeps Sake Girlfriends Getaway.  Make 'n' Takes, samples and giveaways were the order of the night, including a HUGE sale of Lifestyle Craft dies.

Here's half of the ballroom:

And what's a Girlfriends Giveaway without a good game of . . . 

Deal or No Deal

Lifestyle Crafts style

Debbie's name was drawn as the contestant:

and then Theron received a phone call from *the Banker*

Unfortunately, Debbie didn't win as big of a prize as Sue B the night before

but it was still a great prize of

$25 shopping spree.

Not bad for a few minutes in a *game show*.

Most importantly, we all had a great time!

Thank you Theron and Lifestyle Crafts.

Thank you Lifestyle Crafts and . . .

Theron for a fun night @ For Keeps Sake. Theron is our Lifestyle Crafts rep and he is in town to help us celebrate our Girlfriends Getaway.

He popped in late yesterday afternoon and showed a few of our Lifestyle Crafts die club members how to operate the Lifestyle Crafts Letterpress.  Skeptic that I am . . . I loved how this worked! So much easier than what I anticipated.

Last night, our second die club members were @ For Keeps Sake and we did a quick make-n-take using the Letterpress.  The card was adorable and then . . . 

Sue B was chosen to play *Deal or No Deal*, the Lifestyle Crafts version and won . . .

$150 Lifestyle Crafts die shopping spree!

Theron will be at the Girlfriends Getaway this weekend so that all the attendees can see the latest from Lifestyle Crafts.

See you @ For Keeps Sake Girlfriends Getaway!

 

One more for today . . .

from the same Oxford Impressions stamp set: A Season of Giving

This time, I stamped the photo-type image onto low gloss matte paper. It's even better than the glossy!

Here's a close-up. Such detail in this stamp!

Love the holly branch (also from the same stamp set)!

You can find all the images here: http://store.oxfordimpressions.com/

 

 

If you like an old fashion Christmas . . .

then this is the stamp set for you!

Oxford Impressions Season of Giving

Here's what I did with mine:

The image of the little boy and girl was stamped on glossy coated paper to give the feel of an actual photo. I used both black Memento ink + Ranger Sepia Archival Ink to get the effect of an aged image. The rest of the images (the postcard and the NOEL word) were stamped on matte coated paper.

As a Mom to a son, I love that this stamp set includes images of little boys. Most of the Christmas images I see include girls, but not boys : (   . . . until now!

Here are a couple of close ups so you can see the details of the Oxford Impressions stamps. They're magnificent!

 

Running off to play more. You can find all of Suzanne's beautifully crafted stamp sets here:

http://store.oxfordimpressions.com/Stamp-Collections/b/2579495011?ie=UTF8&title=Stamp+Collections

Amazing ATC trade . . .

I am a member of an online ATC group called Vintage Photo Images. This is one of the most talented group of traders I've ever been involved in. Every time I'm in a trade and receive the ATC's I am amazed at the detail the members put into their ATC's.

This month, I participated in a *Gypsy* trade.

Here's the one I sent:

and here are the ATC's I received:

from Mandy

 

from April:

 

from Connie:

 

from Kris:

love how Kris built this up!

 

from Lynn:

 

from April:

Beautiful!

Thank you trade gals.

 

 

Winners, winners . . .

Thank you for all your comments and suggestions about upcoming classes for 2013. Before I announce the TWO winners of a surprise package, I thought I'd address some things on your WISH LIST.

• Home decor: I do love home decor pieces and am always on the lookout for something we can get in the store quickly, alter it AND (most importantly) make it affordable. The altered swivel desk accessory you may have seen at For Keeps Sake was not affordable (IMO). The base price of that piece was $50 unassembled. It had to be assembled (which wasn't easy) and then decorated. My guess is that when the project was completed, it probably cost somewhere in the vicinity of $75. Having said that, Mary has two adorable home decor pieces on the calendar right now that are very reasonably priced.  I'll be on the lookout for more that we can introduce as workshops at an affordable price point.
• Love the ideas you submitted re: new techniques with older products. I'll try to do more of that in 2013. 
• Encaustics (check - if you're talking about using wax. REAL encaustic requires lots of tools and special materials.), UTEE (check), metal - not so much.  We went through a HUGE metal phase at For Keeps Sake and it didn't work very well.  
• Canvas and Art Journals: Just sayin' - I had classes in both art journals and canvas work a year or so ago.  No one signed up for the canvas class and only one person for the art journal class. I'm a little leary of offering it again. Maybe we can work it in some how again - maybe.
• We did have a design team at For Keeps Sake. It didn't work out. The designers were uber-talented however it was hard to get everyone together at the same time for our gatherings to choose product etc. So probably won't do that again.
• Re: the comment about the *same old classes*. For Keeps Sake is one of the most innovative stores I have ever been in. When I travel from city to city, I always visit locally owned scrapbook stores and there have only been 2 in the hundred or so I've visited that compares to For Keeps Sake. One is in Massachusets and the other in California. For Keeps Sake gets new product in daily to keep the store fresh and up to date. Our classes are top notch, especially when compared to other classes I've seen in other scrapbook stores. We have tried so many different types of classes at For Keeps Sake, but frankly, the ones that sell the best are Sue's Preserving the Past (with 20 people each class), Missy's Month To Remember (same numbers most months) and Mary's Northwoods classes.  The numbers speak for themselves, especially from a business sense.
• Guest instructors: When the economy bottomed out, For Keeps Sake made a conscious decision not to bring in the most popular guest instructors. 99.9% of the guest instructors require that the store pay for their air flight, hotel and meals + the cost of the class (which is usually $45 - $75 and up per class). Adding that all together, the classes would have to be somewhere around $60 - $90 per class. When a guest instructor comes to For Keeps Sake, they want to teach anywhere from 2 - 3 classes @ $75 each + the other costs we have to incur, we are looking at a participant spending over $200 to attend a couple of classes.  That's pricey for most people. Thankfully, companies like Bazzill and Spellbinders are uber-generous with their instructors, so we were able to bring in Joey Otlo, Margie Romney Aslett and Ken Oliver (who has recently joined Spellbinders). . .  And I haven't even mentioned the thousands of dollars in additional product that FKS has to order for a guest instructor and may be *stuck with* if it doesn't sell.

Now that I've been this long winded and my coffee is cold . . . 

TA DA

the winners are:

Janis S & Vicki M

Congratulations girls.

I'll have your prize package available at For Keeps Sake

after 5 pm on Wednesday October 24.

 

One last thought . . .

It makes me sad that For Keeps Sake has disappointed anyone. I can't even begin to tell you how hard we all work to make this the best paper art store EVER - anywhere.  We work extremely hard on all the classes we offer and go to extremes to bring in new ideas and keep things fresh. While the *big name designers* are able to design maybe 3 things to teach in a quarter or for a half a year, each instructor at For Keeps Sake is thinking up 3 - 5 ideas each MONTH.  New product is coming in the store to keep everything up to date. We eat, sleep and think this business to make it a success. I do know that most of you love For Keeps Sake. We've been teasing for years that this is the CHEERS of the scrapbook stores (and I'm Norm). We're helpful and friendly and we know our products and how they work - again, something you can't get in all stores.

Thank you to those of you who do take my classes and workshops. I appreciate each of you and hope to see you again in the very near future.

So surprised . . .

to find two publications in the mail yesterday with some of my work published!

 

October Crafts 'n' Things

published my Graphic 45 ABC Primer altered box and album

 

and

 

Stampington's Hand Crafted Volume 8

published two of my cards

 

Very grateful!