EASTER CARDMAKING BONANZA

The Pick-of-the-Crop ladies got together at Suzette's house to do some scrapchat on Easter Monday. As you can see amongst the chatting there was also some productivity. Yes, Julie, I at last got round to producing some cards. Just would like to say thanks to all the easter bunnies that was a-hopping at Suzette's house. Choccies are still the best medicine (if you need it or not!) - not talking about hips of course!

- Mrs Cardie Signing Off

AN AMERICAN SCRAPBOOKING IDOL

We met one of our scrapbooking idols, Karen Burniston (http://karenburniston.typepad.com) on our recent Scrapping Cruise to Nowhere (actually we did anchor at the Portuguese Islands). Karen immediately impressed us with her down to earth personality. She is a real live wire, bubbling with life. Karen is a qualified civil engineer who has traded the engineering world for scrapbooking.

She presented a mini album class where the actual mini album had to be made from scratch and then scrapbooked with photos. the mini album contained a very intriguing and brilliantly designed hidden page technique (only an engineer could have designed this). Her notes for this class were in full colour and VERY ease to follow. It was obvious that her husband John, who also accompanied her on the cruise, was one of her biggest admirers/fans! He was so easy going and chatted alongside his wife about the scrapbooking industry.

This layout is about us meeting and very casually chatting to one of our scrapbooking idols in the Bingo Room on the Rhapsody. We were seriously thrilled!!!

- Idolising signing off

SCRAPPING MASCOT

Meet my scrapping mascot/bodyguard 'Lizzy' who watches over my scrapping activities in my Blue room. He ensures that tenacious mosquitoes, intimidating flying ants and irritating bugs don't attack and carry me off to their dens.

- Feeling Safe Signing Off

ALL DRESSED UP ON A CRUISE TO NOWHERE .....

It's 'Good Friday, and at last I got round to do a layout on our dress-up frenzy during our Scrapping Cruise on the Rhapsody (10-13 March 2006). The idea was to create a classy girly look (no reference to Jenny)which I tried to achieve with 26 eyelets with black and red ribbon threaded through each hole. Yes in total it was 54 pieces of ribbon which had to be knotted. I loved doing this - enjoy working with and feeling textures. Most edges were inked with Colorbox Charcoal Chalk Ink. The red and purple also makes for un unsual colour combination adding interest to the layout.

The plan for the rest of the Easter Weekend is to create a few greeting cards which a colleague has ordered some time ago!

(Yes, Julie I am at last getting round to it!!!)

- Easter Floating Signing Off

SATURDAY SCRAPPING MADNESS IN BOTHAS HILL

Here's the latest on Pick of the Crop's second annual Scrapathon. Tickets are flying. So act now to avoid disappointment.

PRISONER OF WORK - Thursday, 6 April 2006

'The law firm AlexanderCox's PA and Bookkeeper'

If you ever wondered where I was hiding from 9 to 5, Monday to Fridays - this is it! This is where I work for a salary to support my scrapbooking passion and addiction!

I started this position in February 2002 and is still at it after 4 years. My boss, Campbell Alexander really confuses everyone with his name being a surname as well - and then the firm's name, AlexanderCox is also two surnames. Surnames lurk everywhere.

The firm does specialised litigation and is one of a handful of law firms in South Africa which utilises a Canadian computer program called Summation which uses coded scanned images of all documentation required for a case. This system eliminates hard copy documents (which can be volumenous) in court. Images of documents can instead be viewed on a screen in court .

Interesting tidbits

• office hours 8am-4:30pm (lunch between 1-2pm)
• radio/background music banned (this was a hard one)
• smoking prohibited
• tea times 10am and 3pm (self-service)
• boss gets tea in teapot with cup and saucer on tray as well as 2 to 3 biscuits - served in his office
• office situated in lush green surroundings of Kloof, Durban, KZN
• resident monkey troop occasionally leaps through office windows - grabbing brightly coloured highlighter pens - in the hope that it might be brightly coloured fruit
• a gracious pair of woolley necked storks frequents the natural water stream in front of the office building - in search of juicy frogs
• hi-tech security system with closed circuit tv monitoring - digging for diamonds a rarity
• the closest one gets to something with colour is the office door (see pic)
• closest thing to creativity is cutting labels for the spine of lever arch files (see pic)

- monkey at work signing off

Strelitzia reginae

BIRD OF PARADISE SPLENDOUR - Wednesday, 5 April 2006

For the first time in four years all the Strelitzias in our garden are flowering profusely with orange pockets of colour all round. This is all thanks to the local clan of monkies who has got bored with the taste of strelitzia and has been excluding this from their diet the last season.

The most cutest and jolly little brightly coloured sun birds have been frequenting the strelitzia flowers, darting from one flower to the next to be the first to get that sought after beakfull of nectar. No wonder they are so jolly and hyperactive - it must be all the sweet(nes)s. Fortunately their parents do not know about Rittelin?

Interesting facts about the Strelitzia:

• Its common name is the Crane flower
• Its an evergreen shrub
• The birds automatically cross-pollinate the next plant visited
• It grows to 1,5x1,5m
• Cut flowers last well
• It is one of South Africa's most successful exports
• A traditional remedy prepared from the flower is used to deal with swollen glands

- Flowering beauty signing off

APRIL FOOLS' SCRAPPING There was no fooling around on 2006's APRIL'S FOOLS' day! It was down to serious scrapping with Layout no. 7 of Tsitsikamma seeing the light of day. Yours truly was grinding away at this LO for the whole of two weeks fine tuning the finishing touches. I have already taught variations of this layout to some of my students the past fortnight (see 'Anticipation' & 'Peanut Gallery' previous post)

Tsitsikamma Layout no.8 was also created, but this one needs to be kept secret - its possibly a LO to be presented at the 29 July Scrapathon!

- April's Fool Signing Off

YOU'RE INVITED!!! I have been quite industrious on this APRIL'S FOOL'S DAY

I designed the invite for PICK-OF-THE-CROP's Scrapathon to be held on 29 July 2006. The pink background design is a PATTERNED PAPER FROM Daisy D's on Ally Scraps web (www.allyscraps.com). I inserted the patterned paper as a .jpg in MS Word and set it to appear behind the text.

We need to produce 60 of these tickets. We have already sold some tickets before the real thing actually existed - How cool is that!

- RSVP Signing off