What To Bring

These are a few tips on what to bring to make your retreat weekend a fun, relaxing experience. Scroll down to share our "power scrapping" tips so you can pack your scrapbook supplies more efficiently and complete a lot of great layouts during your weekend.

• Comfortable clothing - dress in layers because room temperatures may vary. Bring a light sweater just in case. Jammies and slippers are perfect for late night scrapping with the girls!
• Portable shelf to make the most of your cropping space. Stackable cooling racks from Wal-Mart or Pampered Chef are great for this.
• Seat cushion – we do not have a choice of chairs in our venues and some can become very hard after a few hours.
• Camera - take lots of pictures of your new friends and their layouts! There is no bigger compliment than having your layouts "scraplifted".
• Cash or checkbook to shop our on-site store
• Tag-along drink holder or cup with a lid - this is a great idea if you are going to have drinks in your cropping area.

Power Scrapping Tips…… Take the time to PREPLAN your pages at home and you will spend more time at the Crop completing pages. How many times have you gone scrapbooking and spent half the time staring at your pictures trying to come up with the perfect layout? Here are some tips to help in your planning….

• Purchase 2 gallon freezer bags at the grocery store - 12x12 paper fit perfectly in these.
• Sort all the pictures you might want to scrap during the weekend and make notes of any journaling you might want to include.
• Check out all the great scrapbook websites and don't be afraid to "scraplift". While it is nice to come up with an original idea for every page, it is a big timesaver to "scraplift" great layouts from other sources. Print out layouts or make sketches of these ideas (magazines, classes, etc.). 3X5 cards are great for the sketches.
• In each freezer bag, put the pictures and the sketch for the layout you want to complete. Pull any paper or supplies for that page and put them in the bag. A specific template or tool, stickers, embellishment - everything you will use on that layout.

Take your bags shopping with you - line them up on a crop table at the store and pick out just what you need to finish each layout. Pay for your purchase and then fill your "layout bags" right at the store! You now have everything you need for the layout in one place! The Crop-in-Style Paper Taker can hold about 20-25 of these bags! Once you try this system you will be hooked! Always pack a few extras…tags, embellishments, etc.  (And don't forget we will have several different neutral shades of paper at our on-site store.) This layout organizational system helps you bring the essentials needed to create fabulous layouts and saves you money because you are only purchasing the supplies that you need.