Where do I start... my
CKU HOUSTON review!!
Thursday... I raced to the Westin to get in line for registration. I met my friend Sandy there. To my surprise I was able to check into my hotel at 8:00 in the morning!! Talk about an early check-in!! I was so glad about that. When we got to registration ladies were lined up and the line wrapped around the room. We decided it was a waste to wait in line. Since we were already registered anyway, this was just to pick up your CKU bag and class tickets. So we shopped at the "book store". The CKU Book Store had lots of cute t-shirts and sweatshirts, books, and supplies. I bought quite a bit of stuff. Some t-shirts, a book to get signed by Donna Downey, a few CKU pins, a graduation tassel, a lanyard, etc... stuff I really didn't need.. just wanted! LOL.. By that time the registration line started moving quickly and we were able to get our registration packets and move on to the make-n-take room. There were about 30 stations to do make-n-takes. Most of them had us do a cute little 6x6 layout, to the theme of "my favorite things" some of them were really cute. The stations were manned by local stores, manufacturers, and companys. Kodak had a really cool idea, they were demo-ing one of their new portable 4x6 printers. You could take your memory card and print out a few of the pictures on your camera for free, right there... how cool! I printed a pic of me and Elsie Flannigan, who by the way was in a make-n-take booth demonstrating her own 6x6 layout with her cool stamps. i was shocked to see her out there doing make-n-takes with everyone. We did the make-n-take room until about 4 or 5 that evening. Some of the were really fun and gave me new ideas. I also took a mini-class by Junkitz, and did a cute little 6x6 page. Junkitz gave us a really cute little tool bag. The girls I hung out with wanted to make a quick run to Scrapbook Village, out in Missouri City. This was fun. We made a cute little luggage tag. Then it was off to unload stuff in our room and then back down for Campus Crop / Tail Gate Party which started at 8:00. I met up with my dormies and got ready to go to the crop. The girls in my dorm were from Arizona. They were all very sweet. One of them owns a store in Arizona called Scrap Happy Sisters. She gave us all these cute black aprons with her store logo on it. Too cute!! The ladies at the Campus Crop were WILD, I tell ya. Completely wild... and I loved every minute.
At one point, Donna Downy pulled me out my chair to do the "Do-See-Do" dance... She said I want a black girl from Texas to teach me to dance. It was so much fun. The costumes and table decorations were sooo creative. After the Campus Crop we went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We were sooooo tired! It was a struggle for me to get through dinner... LOL... I had the fried Mac and Cheese! YUMM!!!
Friday - This day began with a first round of classes. My first class was by Junkitz, Elements of Me. We did a super cute 2 page layout in this class. Using paper that Jana design her self! It was so neat to see the designer of the paper. My 2nd class was by Junkitz too, called It's All About Love. Another super cute 2 page layout. This one had some interactive elements, pockets and stuff. After lunch, I had Tropical Paradise by Magic Scraps. This class was ok. I am not crazy about Magic Scraps, but the good thing is they gave us way more product than what we needed to use to create the 2 page layout. After that was Talk to Me, with Stacy Julian. This was an awesome class about journaling. Stacy says journal like you are talking on the phone. She had all these little plastic phones on the table to create conversations. She is very inspiring. There was stuff in the kit she gave us to do a little booklet about ourselves. It was a welcomed lecture after a day of super fast cropping! Next was Simply Cardstock, by Bazzil. I was really interested in this class cause i think it's cool to sometimes just use cardstock only. We created about 3 or 4 layouts in an hour!! And they were all super cute but simple, I tried to put my own spin on some of these pages cause they were pretty simple to me. After class the girls and I decided to wait around and see what was happening at the Study Hall Crop. Good thing we stayed cause they gave us some nice goodies, my favorite was the idea book set from Creating Keepsakes they gave us. After this we snuck out and went to Grand Lux for dinner. More rich food. But it was good. While we were out we rode over to Photos Forever, to do a free make and take... which turned out not to be free. But still cute none the less. We made a little key chain fob that had scrapbook goddess on it, we got to pick the beads that went on it.
Saturday - After a late night, I was beat. I tried to stay up the night before organizing and trying to pack my stuff so that check out would be smooth. I paid for it that morning. I was a little late for my first class, Flip, Flop, and Fold for You by Catus Pink. In this class you made a mini book out of chip board and cute papers, with ribbon ties to fasten the edges. Next class, Pocket Full of Memories, by Lisa Bearnson. OMG, I loved this project. The class its self was ok. Lisa showed us a personal video of all her 2005 memories. Very sweet but took up a lot of class time. The class project was a 2 page layout of all of 2005, a photo for each month. The layout was soo cool!! At lunch I packed my car so I didn't get to sit and eat. My next class after lunch was Creative He"Art" with Donna Downey. can I just say that I love her... I don't get all wrapped in the celebrity scrapper junk. But she is just a hella cool chick! This class transformed simple blank white canvases into a piece of one of a kind artwork to display in your home. We used Golden medium to apply phone book pages to create a textured background. This took up most of the class time. Barely anyone go to finish but when it is finished, it should look great! Can't wait to finish it up. Ok, now on to Elsie Flannigan's class, Ribbon Rehab. I was almost scared to take this class, so many people complained about it. I think the thing is she is very out of the box and doesn't use traditional scrapbooking techniques. If you don't think like that it's hard to understand her style. I agree it was really different. I have never hand sewn on a scrapbook page so that was neat. The ribbon she picked for us was really cute. I loved the bright colors of the layout. Last class of CKU... Fabric of Your Life, by Tracy White. I was so beat by this time. I didn't have the energy to do another layout. But Tracy's energy was very cool. She was very personal with us, she told us things about herself. She also put a lot of emphasis on how important it is to journal/scrap about yourself, because we all have a story to tell. She also encouraged us to get infront of the camera more often. The layouts that were created for the class were pretty simple. I think I can spruce them up a little more when I finish them. They all had hidden pockets for journaling. Pretty cool.
Graduation - the energy at graduation was so high! It was so cool. We got great seats right up front. We all got little Red paper graduation caps with tassels. They were too cute. Every one was taking lots of pictures and getting excited. They announced the winners of all the contests. After that the showed a super cute video set to music of pictures that Candice Strigham took. Everyone cheered when their picture showed up on the screen. It was so much fun! We even got a printed "degree" with our names on it and it said Bachelor of Scrapbooking! How cute is that!!
Well all in all I had a wonderful time! What made it so much fun was hanging out with such cool girls... and being around so many women who have the same passion about scrapbooking and photography as you do. My first CKU was a wonderful experience... I need to go to something like this at least once a year...
