There She Goes

Thanks to everyone on the Heidi Swapp team for coming in and taking such good care of our customers. We know it was a holiday weekend and a lot of you took time away from other plans to come in and make this event a success. Thanks to Jodi and Emily. Thanks to Janna and Kristan. Thanks to Gail and Sara. And thanks ever so much to the one and only Heidi, for caring, sharing, and enveloping us in her passion for life. There is a chair here with your name on it, and a room full of SHE-spirit. From the rafters throughout the room, the messages that you represent will linger on, filling us with the creativity to continue our explorations.

Congratulations to our prize winners:
Patricia Shawe
Melissa Parada
Heather Moses
Dedra Long
Lori Hedges
Earlene Whitehead (Grand Prize-store stash)
Wendy Williams (Grand Prize-Heidi stash)

From Kobi Yamada by way of Heidi Swapp: She Designed a Life She Loved. You can too.

Any Good Before and After Needs a Before...

This is just a sampling of the product BEFORE the Heidi Swapp Event, Saturday May 27th from 1-3pm. Each $10 purchase brings you one step closer to a fabulous prize!

It's SO Your Type

Designing With Type by Autumn Leaves arrived today. You know you want it.

It Was Here a Minute Ago...

I am lagging behind and am running into a bit of a quandary, people. By the time I find out what came in so that I can update the blog, it's been sold. Oops. So here are a few things still here:

• More Heidi arrived today. A lot are restocked items, but there are some new journaling spots, silhouette images, fuzzy rubons, large photo corners, and albums for ya. Blooms back in stock and I see a few mini pink irons hanging around.
• We R memory Keepers Tag Sets arrived to match your Boho Chic and On the Dot collections.
• Scrapbook Answers magazine is here. I'm all over this relatively new scrapbook mag because I love the CD that accompanies each issue. 2-for-1 always scores with me.
• New Prima double-sided heavy-weight paper in some really lovely patterns. We also received more bottles of some of our favorite Got Flowers? collections and at last count, we had 2 bags of Bitty Flowers waiting for homes.
• Stacy Croninger's 40 Techniques for Card-Making comes in a handy display stand format. Published by Creating Keepsakes, this one's a winner for our card-making population.
• Melissa Frances all over the place: it's a paper mache house with boxes and books in boxes in all sorts of shapes. Round, oval, square, octagon, rectangle. The geometry alone is worth the trip. Plus some fun monogram shape rubons so you can label the boxes accordingly. Swirl 1, flourish 2. Repeat.
• New QuicKutz shapes include the accent die set. Request it using any accent you choose.

There may be more. I'll check around, ask the experts, and let you know. In the meantime, preparations in the works for a doozy of a Saturday. Will you be there?

Paging Doctor Pam...

I'm breaking into regular programming to congratulate my fabulous sister #5 Pammie (ooooooh, she hates that name) who just earned her Juris Doctor and is now feverishly working to study for the Cali bar exam. No extra-curricular fun for a few months while she hits the books, so she was definitely getting some last-rites partying in while she could over the weekend. It was a mini-gaggle of the sisters (#1, #4, #5, #6) in the Bay area for a few days.

I had to dash to Brentwood (north of Frisco, not the OJ neighborhood Brentwood) to deliver some training Thursday and Friday, but made the drive daily so I could stay in Oakland. Kelsey decided to pick some fruit (she chose strawberries, even though she never eats them) so we stopped at a U-Pick for a bit. We also drove through a windfarm on our way north. I find it peaceful; one of my sisters (#1) thinks it's just creepy. Photos: creepy. She wins. Took the Bay Bridge into the city for a mad dash. Had to creep down Lombard but no time for much else.

Graduation day was Saturday and it was everything one could hope for: long speeches (hello, they are all attorneys), uncomfortable chairs, wet weather, bad photos, uncomfortable shoes (except for our favorite grad: nice boots, Pammie!) and lots of hugging from total strangers. We headed back to Oakland to Sister #1's house (#1 lives in Oakland, #5 lives in the city) for the big celebration. Too much fun, too many people I don't know, and so much food! Sister #1 is Martha Stewart's much nicer twin, I tell ya. She bakes, she creates, and you would swear you stepped in MS Living when you waltz through her home. The gardens, the staging, the furniture, and the perfect dog. Plus the genuine warmth.

Sunday we all just avoided the city: Bay to Breakers flooded all parts of Frisco with costumed runners, and the infamous bare (bear: you choose) runners. Since I am just not quick enough to cover Kelsey's eyes every time, it's better left for another time when she's a spot older. After gunning it to get to the flight via BART, we were an eyelash shy, and ended up crashing one more night and taking the first flight out Monday morning. Yes, Kelsey was 30 minutes late to school. Yikes.

We now return to regular programming. Products updates are coming...

Heidi Sighting and a Necessary Rest Period

More Heidi arrived in the store: we've gotten her Love Your Handwriting back in stock just in time for you to get her autograph next Saturday May 27 between 1-3pm. We've also just gotten in her clear single word stamps. All your favorite words in Heidi's unique handwriting, and at just $1.99 per word, you can collect them all!

In anticipation and in preparation, the store will be CLOSED THIS SUNDAY May 21. We want to ensure we are ready to rock and roll for our Heidi event, and thusly we take our leave of the store for a day. We hope you will turn out in full force for the other six days that we will, in fact, be open.

Swoon City

Basic Grey sent the most gorgeous ribbon to coordinate with their five CHAW releases. That shrieking is us. It started shortly after we woke up from hitting the ground after we passed out from the sheer beauty of it all. Got it? Well, come get it.

Stamp of Approval

Technique Tuesday Functuation arrived yesterday, accompanied by Autumn Leaves/Rhonna Farrar swirl stamps. Just in time to be used with all those Freestyle challenges going around. If you need more punctuation, QuicKutz sent the baby punctuation doublekutz. It's so cute and tiny! Hee. Plus we brought in more Sunshine, since the first order of that font just flew out of the store. But at $99 for the upper case, lower case, numbers, and shapes, it lives up to its name.

Thank Goodness It's Freestyle

The pining can cease.

More on that Heidi Gal

As the fan club knows, the always fabulous and major league chica inspiration scrapbooking goddesss Heidi Swapp is dropping by for a little make 'n take, a little demonstration, and just a few hot diggity dog giveaways on May 27th from 1-3pm. Although plenty of "SHEs" have staked a claim for a reserved seat for completing the Heidi Ho Assignment of Altered Letters, we want the legions of Heidi fans to know that there will be room for walk-ins on a first come, first served basis for the make 'n take. Come early, we'll give you a color coded ticket for the 1:30, 2:00 or 2:30 session. (Early means on the 27th. Early does not mean start asking today. Unless you are going to camp in front of the store like it's an IKEA opening. And even then, no ticket til 10am on May 27th. But we'll bring you a Route 44 cherry limeade every day. And we'll let you use the rest room on a regular basis. You can even borrow the tent in the play area.)

Heidi will take us through a couple of projects, lead some product demonstrations, and be available for pics and autographs. She will also conduct a drawing for some fun and fantastic giveaways, based on tickets earned from Heidi purchases (at our store) in May. You can also check out her gallery of inspiration featuring her amazing product line. And of course she will be dazzled by the creative genius of your projects and thrilled to see how each and every one of you have broken new ground in product application. You SHE devils.

And have I said yet that this is all FREE? If you feel the need to contribute something in return, we will have donation boxes set up for all your recent stash purges. Everything donated will go in Heidi's name to a local LifeBooks program, where all the supplies can then be used to create scrapbooks for the awesome kiddoes in the foster care system. We also asked that she donate her traditional giveaway of a personalized page to the program. (We promise that we have something outstanding to take its spot in the drawing.) Doesn't that just make you smile? It's goody goody gumdrops all over the place. Yay.

Alphabet Chipboards! In a Tin! By Prima!

Excitement! Arms Flailing! Hugs for the UPS Guy! Dancing! Cheering!

I'm tired just thinking about it, but really, the product is just lovely. Gorgeous glossy letters, packaged like only Prima does, in cute tins perfect for storage or altering. Collections of flowers, boxed up and organized, in a couple different flavor groupings. OK, you can't really eat them, but please can we call them yummy?

All That Glitters

L'il Davis foam stamps, glaze glitter paint, and sparkly flowers were unpacked today, much to the delight of everyone in the vicinity except for those who object to loads of loud squealing.














Foam stamps. Nine themes. Why are you still reading this instead of getting in your car and getting on down here? Yes, I know we're closed because it's after 7pm. I just thought you'd want to be first in line in the morning...

Remember This? It's Bisous Zoo!

One of our many CHA-W Award Winners arrived today. It's just splendid stuff all by its lonesome. Add a couple of photos and you are really so done. But also, embellish to the nines for more looks. You'll get them, along with mass quantities of ooohs and ahhhs. We're in lurve.
See?

What Exactly is a Gaffer? And Why Do They Need Tape?

Find the answers to these and other questions whilst you browse our 7Gypsies section where the brown gaffer tape is stashed. We are dismayed that TPTB (The Powers That Be, in case you're acronymn-challenged by this one) changed the packaging, cuz we were in love with the rolls. At the same time, seeing the product does have value. Need to bind something? There ya go.

Psychic Sara Hits the Aluminum Tape Jackpot

Check out page 157 of the June 2006 issue of Creating Keepsakes. In the products used, aluminum tape is one of the goodies demonstrated. Just mere weeks ago, Sara was playing around with the same such product, producing all sorts of nifty projects for us. And you ask, where oh where can I myself find such a fine product? Well, hey ya, we have it here. Currently in stock. Shake on down and grab a roll.

Maybe Bare Feet is the Answer...

Big shoes to fill with Kay's movement to the East.

Making the leap is Sara:
We know she can create. So you can call her a creative genius.
We know she can organize top to bottom and side to side. Label her efficient.
We know she loves all the bits and bytes of the computer world. Digitally inclined, you might say.
We know she has an opinion and is not afraid to use it. Assertive? We like that term.
We also know that this is a new experience for her.

We want her to succeed.
We want customers to continue to love the store and the service.

So tell us what you love, and tell us when it's not working.
We commit to listening and doing our best to respond to you.
We know the customer is not always right. (Trust me on this one. It's rare but there are a couple people out there that are just wrong. None of them read the blog, so if you think I might possibly be talking about you, nope. If you're reading this, it's not you. So settle down, already.)
We also know that the customer is always the customer. We expect you to want to be treated that way, all the time, regardless of anything else happening in the universe. And we know we can deliver.

And please welcome Sara to her Assistant Manager role. She wants to rock your world with paper and scissors, and we want to help her find her shoes. Ones that fit her just perfectly.

And It's Not Even Tuesday...

But we've got Technique Tuesday in the house. No, there's still no FUNCTUATION. We are also kinda' losing our patience over that one. We'll have to make do with the Eiffel font (a reorder), some Love Notes, and more Just Picked flower clear stamps. Florever yours, folks. (Sorry. Unable to resist bad puns.) Come on in and stamp around with the rest of us if you like.

Major Cuteness in the House

Making Memories shipped our May goodies and we are just Sister Double Happiness all over. Colorboard elements, fuzzy velvet words and quotes, Boho Chic kraft albums: combine them to make all sorts of rocking cool projects.

iHola! More Spanish Memories, Just in Time for Cinco de Mayo

New papers, rubons, and chipboard products are here from Spanish Memories. We're not here to talk immigration politics; we just want to make pages in more than one language. Come join our fiesta of fun products and see why we just love this line. iVamanos!

Mother's Day Epiphany in Pink

We finally received our beautimous (yes, I have made up that word just for this occasion) All My Memories pink and brown scrapbook totes. Cutest things ever, especially when you doll them up with ribbons and such. Attach the darling little pink cosmetic tote from Queen and Co for those wee things that get lost in the bottoms of everything, fill it with a selection of the finest adhesives and tools, and it is simply the most adorable of Mother's Day gifts. No kids? Golly gee, it's about time your dog brought you a scrapbooking present, dontcha' think? I know my dog is the most thoughtful dog ever...