Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Scrapbook Dreams Retreat

We had our retreat on the weekend and it was AWESOME!  What a great bunch of ladies… and the venue was fantastic too!

We had an awesome scrapping area… lots of space, varnished floors so we didn’t have to worry about making a mess… and did I mention LOADS of space?

Our space

On the Friday night we mixed and mingled, everyone got their challenge packs and we settled in for the night.  We had great accommodation and meals at the venue… it really was a one stop shop!

On Saturday morning we got started on the classes.  Our first class involved a bit of maths, lots of cutting, and using the Cuttlebugs to create texture on our pages.  I really love how differently everyone's layouts turned out!

Class 1

After some yummy morning tea provided by Mum (Thanks Mum!!) we moved onto class #2.  This time we created texture with scoring, folding, tearing and cutting.  The Graphic 45 papers we used were absolutely gorgeous!  Here’s the results of that class:

Class 2

The final class of the day was MESSY but the results were really worth it!  We got busy with Adirondack Colour Wash sprays and some fantastic paper from Pink Paislee to come up with these layouts:

Class 3

The rest of the day was spent scrapping, chatting and laughing…. and it was great!  After dinner our ‘live entertainment’ arrived.  Tautu played his guitar and sang to us and most of us joined right in. 

Entertainment

If you’re wondering about the hat it’s because we had a ‘Mad Hatters’ evening.  It was so neat to see everyone get involved.  Here’s our winners from the hat competition… Gay from Waihi Beach (in the chook costume) and Lyn from Auckland (wearing the hat with all the chocolate)… and YES she brought her hat around so we could all share it!!

Crazy hat winners

In  all her travels Esther managed to find me the perfect Scrapbook Dreams hat complete with a veil LOL

My hat

She also turned up with a few more hats and when she was being cheeky I managed to get this photo of her and Mikayla… talk about laugh!!

Esther and Tana

As I mentioned earlier, everyone received a challenge pack and this one featured some of the latest papers from Little Yellow Bicycle’s Twig collection… gorgeous papers!  Here’s the results of the challenge:

Challenge pack entries

I asked Tautu to judge this one and after looking at them all for a VERY long time he said "I've picked my 5 favourites"... unfortunately for him he had to narrow it down to just one... and after more deliberation chose this layout by Lyn E (Auckland):

Challenge pack winner

Lyn won herself a lovely 'pamper pack' to enjoy.... chocolate, wine, candles and bubble bath... what more could a girl want??

Winner

Thankfully Mum brought over her tripod on Saturday and we got a great group photo!  Here’s all our scrapbooking friends… some of us had very messy hands as we’d just finished our third class LOL

Our group

Thank you so much to everyone who came… it was a fantastic weekend filled with lots of creativity, friendship and laughs… and YES we’ll be doing it again later on this year!