My Mind's Eye Blog

Meet Trisha...

 

Hey everyone! I am thrilled that this blog has finally taken off! Amber and the rest of the crew at My Mind's Eye have worked so very hard on it over the past couple of months and I LOVE being able to be a part of it! I have been asked to take a quick minute to introduce myself so... here I go!

My name is Trisha Ladouceur and I am a certified Scrap-A-Holic.

Yup! I said it out loud and I wouldn’t change it for a minute.

I have been an avid scrapbooker for nearly 11 years officially but have dabbled in it my entire life without knowing it.

So, a little bit about the personal side of me. Well, first, I write like I talk. Hopefully I do not ramble! I call Edmonton, Alberta, Canada home and have my entire life. I often dream of packing up my family and move to somewhere a little more exotic but alas, here is where I sit. Edmonton is a beautiful city in the summer but the winters can be brutally cold! However the freezing temperatures allow me to stay inside and get plenty of scrapbooking done, so it all works out!

 

I have been married to my husband, Drew, for nearly 17 years and we have two amazing boys, Logan and Carter who make us so very proud (most days!). At 9 and 10 years old, I am sure you can imagine some of the things we have and I am sure will continue to go through with 2 rambunctious boys. I love being able to be home with them most days and help them grow into fine young men (I hope!). Their crazy antics provide me with plenty of photo ops which can be used in the numerous scrapbook pages that fill our family albums. They are always on the go and do so at top speed I might add. So it goes without saying that I cherish my quiet time when I have the house completely silent and can pull out my scrap supplies... too bad that it is usually at about 4 a.m. that this happens ... lol!

I have had the privilege of sharing my paper addiction with fellow paper crafters around the globe for about the past 9 years. As much as I love to scrapbook, I also LOVE to travel and explore new locations. Teaching allows me to combine the best of both worlds. For more than a year, I have had the honour of bringing My Mind’s Eye Endorsed classes to people near and far. Teaching has brought me the most joy from this hobby, more than I ever would have anticipated. Not only do I get to have a creative means to preserve our family memories but I get to share this passion with others. I have met some truly amazing people whom I never would have had in my life if it wasn’t for scrapbooking. I am a lucky girl who feels extremely blessed to be living my dream!

I love to create projects that are very detail oriented and incorporate texture and dimension wherever possible. You will not find a "flat" project anywhere in my albums! My motto is that lumps and bumps are a very good thing and that is evident on every project that I do!

I noticed that the lovely Ms. Anam posted some of her favourite products (yes... you will notice I spell some words the Canadian way...lol). So, I thought I would go for it too. In no particular order, here they are:

10) Andrea Victoria Collection (especially the Black Damask pattern!). Not your typical My Mind’s Eye patterns and colour palette but I LOVE it! Sophistication and Elegance at it’s finest ... simply stunning!

 

9) Bohemia Embossed Chipboard (Bliss)... I just found these in my stash and fell in love all over again!

8) Breaking Free papers and embellishments (perfect for vacation photos!)

7) Colorful Christmas Paper Collections and coordinating embellishments (especially the brads and GLITTERED Die Cut chipboard embellishments!)

6) Bloom And Grow Collection (I love the bright colours!)

5) Laundry Line- Nature (Masculine papers and embellishments with a little bit of glitter makes this girl VERY happy!)

4) Pretty Please Collection TOTALLY makes me wish I had little girls... I tend to borrow nieces when a girl fix is needed

 

3) Glittered Chipboard Alphas.  LOVE these and would love to see more in smaller font size too - hint, hint (and I bet more than a few of you would agree, right?!)

2) Ooh La La For Him collection.  I did a layout for CHA with it and fell in love.  I now have a beautiful canvas as one of my Endorsed My Mind’s Eye classes available this fall.

1) My ALL TIME favourite collection though has to be the Bella Bella.  I think it is because of this layout.  It definitely ranks highly in my book!

 

If you want to learn more about me or see what I am up to, be sure to check out my blog at www.trishaladouceur.blogspot.com. You can also drop me an email at [email protected] if you are interested in My Mind’s Eye classes at your retail location or special event!

So there you have it! I hope you love hanging out here as much as I do and find a plethora of inspiration using the latest and greatest from My Mind’s Eye. We would love to know what you would like to see to spark your creativity, be sure to leave a comment and let us know!  Just for taking the time to comment, ONE lucky person will receive a few of MY favorite things!

Get to know Anam

Hello, my name is Anam and  I am so stoked to be here! I have been scrapbooking nearly 6 years now and enjoy it so much – it is my down time, creative space and personal therapist.  Some of you might know me as ‘Kihaku’ around the internet (it means spirit and pronounce Ki-haa-Ku and is Japanese for Anam).

 

I am originally Irish, moved to the UK a billion years ago to be with Ian – my now hubby – and then 3 years ago we moved to Canada for Ian’s work (he’s a computer games artist).  We have 2 little girls who are our blessing – both came after a long struggle with infertility so they are very precious to us. Fay is 5 ½ years old and about to enter grade 1 – She is a gentle soul but also can be frustrating. Lily is just over a year old and is the opposite of Fay – lily is loud and constantly moving – if anything just by personality Fay is Ian’s and Lily is mine except in the mornings – both Ian and lily are NOT morning people. Ian is very understanding with my paper obsession.  We’ve  been together 11 years now and he is my best friend – supportive and annoying in good measures but I love him totally.

When it comes to scrapbooking, I am all about the stories, the memories, the moments. I love bright colours, dimension and texture. I try to make the paper part of the emotions of the page – getting them to help tell the story so it’s a combined effort of photograph, title, journaling and the papers!

I have been a big My Mind’s Eye Fan since the early days of Wild Asparagus – I have a special box of My Minds Eye papers that one day I might use… maybe.. or maybe not. I love that all lines go together and all the details but mainly I adore the doublesided-ness (is that even a word – but it does explain it) and the heavy texture to the papers – yummy!

Uummmhhh…. I was asked to pick a few of my favourite MME products – that list is way long so I had to narrow it down to my top ten things:

10. Nightlight Paper "Cauldron Swirls"

09. Bohemian Transfer Titles Simply Perfect

08. Laundry Line’s Natural Glittered Alphabet

07. Boo to You Glittered Chipboard

06. Colorful Christmas Brads

05. The Spiders Web Paper "Scaredy Cats"

04. Breaking Free’s Sun Kissed collection (especially sweet)

03. Laundry Line’s Aspire Collection – any of it – its all yummy!

02. Bloom & Grow Paper “Bloom Vines”

01. Does everything from Abbey road count as a single choice?? If I was forced to pick just one or two – it would have to be the Whirly Bird "Shine" collection & Stomps "Watch Out" collection – I could happily scrapbook for ever with those two…

Some of my current favourite layouts are:

 

Best Buddies – using the Abbey Road Stomp collection and is about how Ian and Fay are equally obsessed when it comes to dinosaurs.

 

Hello World – using Abbey Road Lucky Me collection and is the first picture of Lily right after she was born.

Snow Imp – using “Colorful Christmas” collection and is Fay throwing snowballs!

Beauty – using “Ooh La La for her” collection – just because it rocked with this photo of Fay.

Morning Ritual – using “Ooh La La for him” collection – just because that paper rocks!!

1956 – using “Ooh La La for him” collection because it suited this vintage photo of my Mother in law so perfectly – who says manly paper cant be beautiful too?

And that’s me really except maybe to add that currently I have pink hair

We are excited to have Anam as part of our team.  We hope you have enjoyed getting to know her.  Leave a comment telling Anam what you enjoyed the most about her, your favorite layout ... anything you'd like to share with her.  We'll give one reader ALL of Anam's Favorite My Mind's Eye products.

Winner!

This week's blog winner is: Linda

Oh my gosh! KC could sell me the socks off his feet. Dang he's good (looking too!) I liked his "Brads....ze wee, ze wee, look at this cute little one" quote. Can't wait to shop, shop and shop for the MME goodies. Ooh La La!

Posted by: Linda | August 05, 2009 at 09:51 PM

 

The funny thing is ... KC rarely wears socks.  Linda, we want to know how much he sold his socks to you for!?

Thanks to everyone who commented! 

Starting tomorrow, we will be introducing our talented Designers.  We'll see you then!

Blog Challenge #2: PageMap

We are still thrilled about the response our first blog challenge received from you, our talented, readers. All our entries were just fantastic!

Today begins our second challenge! Your challenge is to create a layout using this sketch from PageMaps as your creative spring-board. You can change it around and do not have to use butterflies, sew or even have that exact size of photos (you know what to do with a sketch).

The rules: Use ANY My Mind’s Eye products (current or past) you’d like as long as your project has at least 80% My Mind’s Eye products.

The Deadline: Email your project to [email protected] or add a link in a comment on this post by Thursday, August 20, 2009 (midnight, MDT).

The Fun Details: Our lucky winner will be featured in a blog post and receive one of everything from the new collection of their choice!

Everyone is a winner!  We are grateful to everyone who will participate in this challenge.  We will put every entry in a photo album here on the blog.  By submitting, you are giving My Mind’s Eye permission to include your entry.

We asked two of our talented designers, Trisha Ladouceur and Anam Stubbington, to give you a couple of ideas to help get your creative juices going. 

 

Featured Collection: The Spider's Web

Designer: Trisha Ladouceur

Downloadable instructions: Constant Effort

Featured Collection: The Merry Days of Christmas

Designer: Anam Stubbington

Downloadable Instructions: For the Sake of Art 

Didn’t they do a fantastic job!

We’d like to thank Becky Fleck of PageMaps for generously allowing us to use one of her October 2008 sketches for our challenge.

You can continue leaving comments on your favorite "quote from KC" through today.  We'll announce our winner tomorrow.

Summer 09 CHA Wrap Up

We're back from the CHA show in Florida and beginning to get caught up.  We'd like to thank all of those retailers who helped support the scrapbooking industry by going the extra miles to Orlando.

We had a great time.  The show was a little smaller than usual, but that allowed us to spend more time with each customer.  If you didn't get a chance to go to the show, please watch this video.  In it, KC will show you what you missed by giving you a line-by-line tour of our show booth, just as though you were there!

It's nice to be back home in Utah, where the thermometer might actually read a little higher than in Orlando, but where the humidity is much, much lower.  It's dry as a bone here and we love it.

As always, our new-release products were very well received.  We heard plenty of oohs and ahhs -- and maybe even an "Ooh La La" 

Keep your eyes on your local scrapbook stores, because our new products should be there now or arriving very soon.

Our giveaway this week is a special one.  After you've watched the video, featuring our very own KC Burningham, we'd like you to share with us your favorite quote from KC.  We'll announce our winner on Monday.

We'd like to leave you today with a few pictures from the show.

 

Serving Tray & Coasters

One of the best things about summer is eating outside on a warm evening. There is something peaceful in the casualness of eating outside. Children can run around and play while you relax, you are usually with friends, and everyone pitches in to help cook (if you are the usual cook of the house, this may be the best part)!

Our designer, Amber Packer, has designed this beautiful and functional serving tray and coaster set. What a great way to make your outdoor eating more enjoyable and show off your family at the same time.

Sweet Taste of Summer Serving Tray

Featured Collection: Breaking Free

Designer: Amber Packer

Downloadable Instructions: Serving Tray Instructions

Coaster Box

 

 

Featured Collection: Breaking Free

Designer: Amber Packer

Downloadable Instructions: Coaster Box and Coasters_page1  and  Coaster Box and Coasters_page2

Our winner this week is:  Jolene

They are all so different and showcase the MME lines beautifully. Suzanne Sergi's "Sisters" layout really caught my eye. Great job, everyone!

Posted by: Jolene | July 27, 2009 at 09:53 AM

Coming up Wednesday: Everyone is back from CHA and rested up (sort of). We’d like to share some highlights from the show with you.