Viva Las Vegas!

A great weekend with lots of scrapping and card making.
First, a recap on my visit to Las Vegas this week. Arrived last Saturday around 2pm. Checked in at the Venetian, amazed at the sheer size and scale of the place, and immediately got a cab to Majestic Memories, a scrapbooking store. I spent a happy hour wandering round and selecting papers and embellishments, although I was disappointed not to get a couple of things on my list (Cuttlebug to name but one). The store had a LOT of Jolee's type stickers for every possible scrapbooking theme, which is not really my thing. There were plenty of papers from many of the manufacturers, and most of the Love, Elsie range.

I bought some papers, cardstock, a large punch, some Autumn Leaves transparent borders, various chipboard alphabets, some fab EK Success chipboard glitter shapes, a Stickles in magenta and the latest issue of Creating Keepsakes.

Back at the hotel, and attending our sales & marketing conference, I had no other time for shopping as we started at 7am and went through to 8.30pm, although I was desperate to try to get to a Barnes & Noble to buy Somerset Memories. Thwarted in that ambition, sadly.

I did get out on Sunday morning for an hour to take some pictures. Las Vegas really has to be seen to be believed. It's surreal, particularly at night, when the place exudes neon glamour. In the layout there's a picture of the Venetian, St Mark's Square (which looks amazingly like the real thing, although it's all indoors, including the sky and the Grand Canal!) and Caesar's Palace. I bought the Las Vegas lettering from a US online store a while ago. The frame is by Bam Pop. Paper by Doodlebug.

The other layout, Here Come the Girls, records a fun party a couple of weeks ago. CK said that grey is the new black, so, fair enough I thought, and used grey cardstock plus K&Co paper and chipboard swirl and giant brads from Dovecraft. The letters are the indispensable Heidi rub-on by Making Memories.

Three cards one stamp

Craft Stamper has a regular article where they make several different cards from one stamp. I received some new stamps for Christmas so I put my favourite one to use and created three different cards.

The stamp is called "Dreamward" by Stampington and I love the dreamy, romantic aspect it brings to cards. It seems a bit mermaid-y to me and I love anything to do with the sea.

In this version (right)I stamped directly onto a card blank in gold using another Stampington stamp in an innovative cube format. I use this one a lot - it's by Christine Adolph and has a starfish, a shell and other seaside images. Then I attached the stamped Dreamward image.

I experimented with different ways of colouring the image. My favourite is using embossing ink and embossing powder, then using chalks. To think I was indifferent to chalk for ages! I tried Twinkling H2Os and also coloured pencils too, but chalks definitely gave the best results. This third version uses paint. I sloshed violet acrylic paint onto bubble wrap and pressed the wrap against the card blank. I splashed some Iridescent Medium over the top, while it was still wet, to give an interesting pearly effect. I attached a Doodlebug frill and the "wish" letters were also stamped using a new alphabet stamp set that came in a really pretty box from AB Seas.


Off to the US
More on my US trip. I'm staying in Las Vegas for a conference. My scrapbook shopping will be on Saturday afternoon, as soon as I arrive. Some research has thrown up a store called Scrappin' Time which was voted Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas 2007. The only drawback is that their online site doesn't give any indication of which brands they carry, and as Lori comments, it's a bit hit and miss finding good stores in the US. Sometimes they turn out to be really tiny, in the back of beyond, or they've even gone bust. (And sometimes all three). Anyway, I did find a review for Scrappin' Time so it does look to be a large store with bounteous stash!
Another one worth checking out is Majestic Memories which stocks Cosmo
Cricket, Basic Gray, Bo Bunny, Chatterbox, Cloud 9, Crate Paper, Creative Imaginations, EK Success, Heidi Grace, K & Company, Karen Foster and KI Memories. Should be enough there to keep me busy! It's in the same vicinity as a Michael's (in theory, although it may be too far to walk - the Americans never walk anywhere) which I always look upon as the US equivalent of Hobbycraft: good for general crating supplies but a bit mundane for scrapbooking. But worth a visit nonetheless.

My list is growing longer by the day: Cuttlebug and alphabet dies, cardstock, patterned paper, new embellishments (bored with blooms and buttons), canvases, journalling tags....Perhaps I should take my largest suitcase just to be on the safe side...