Fork and Talk Spring 2012

Well, it finally arrived!  This past Saturday EK Success hosted the second annual Craft Gossip Fork and Talk lunch!!  You may remember me posting about this a few days ago, and I had shared photos from the last one!  I had such an amazing time and I wanted to tell you about it!!  Thanks to the Flikr account that was set up, my photos are from other amazing photographers :)

Of course, first things first.  We all went around and introduced ourselves.  We talked about what blog we have and what we craft about.  Here I am sharing some pretty exciting news with my crafty friends (official announcement coming soon)!  Also, you may notice, that I got to sit next to my good friend Leslie who I met at the last lunch!  She and I have kept in touch since then and have even done a swap together!

My iPhone came in handy as well during the lunch.  One of the crafters, Ms Jeanne, was at home sick in bed with pneumonia and couldn't make it to lunch.  Instead of leaving her out of the fun, we Skyped her!!  One of the editors had brought a laptop to Skype with, but it would only show video of her, not video of all of us!  Well, I just happen to have Skype on my phone so we decided to try it out!  Well, we couldn't see her, but at least she could see all of us!!  It was so fun to be able to include her!

While we didn't play as many fun games as the last time, we still split up as tables to compete for some prizes.  The game this year was to decorate the editor that was sitting at your table!  Scarlett was our editor, and she looked pretty spiffy after our makeover!  No Fork and Talk Craft Gossip editor is complete without some FORK earrings!  I think that's what made our table WIN!! Wahoo!!  I was not on the winning team last year, so I was a proud member this time!  

After all the fund and games and lunch of course, we finally got to grab our goodie bags!  Ms Denise told us that the items inside had a retail value of $253!!!  EK Success sure does know how to spoil some crafters!! Looking through these bags was really like Christmas morning!!  

The individual craft that we got to do was an embroidery project.  We got a kit that you embroidered your very own coffee cup cozy and coaster!  Let me tell you right now, I am not very good at embroidery.  Just look at the concentration on my face while trying to read those directions!!  Luckily EK Success makes those kits so easy to follow and in no time I was stitching away!!  Unfortunately I had to scoot on over to work and didn't finish this project in one sitting.  I do have high hopes in finishing and will post a picture when I do!  

I had such an amazing time!  Thank you so much to EK Success, Trios Restaurant, and Craftgossip.com!!  And of course to the amazing editors for hosting, Denise, Scarlett, Anne, and Stacie!  I hope to see you all very soon.  Lets make this get together bi-annual!!!

Upcoming event!

Last September Craft Gossip held its first ever blogger meet up here in Little Rock, Arkansas!  This is a company that is based out of Australia, but it just so happens that four of the editors are from right around here!  I was honored to be invited to the luncheon that happened at Trio's.  I had such a wonderful time, and got away with a huge bag of goodies from EK Success!  Here are some highlights from the event.

Andi and I working on our teams hat during the hat challenge.

Baggie stuffed full of goodies from EK Success...we got another whole bag too!

We got lots of stickers....here are some of my favorites!

The whole group together at the end!

The reason that I'm posting this recap is because I just got invited to attend their next luncheon coming up this month!!  I am so excited about this because I met so many great women, some of which I keep in touch with!!  One of the ladies that I keep in touch with is Miss Leslie (http://lesliesartandsew.blogspot.com/).  She is the one that got me in to craftster.org and doing craft swaps!

I can't wait to tell you all about it!!!

I will be posting a few craft posts soon, I promise.  I have been crafting gifts but don't want to show pictures until they get to their new homes!  I have two packages going out in the post tomorrow, so I will be blogging about them soon!!!


In other news....I really want to be a part of the Arkansas Womens Bloggers! What a cool way to get my name out there.  However, I have applied, emailed, all with no response!! So if you see this, AWB's....pick me!!!!

How-To Dimensional Flower

So, here is my first review of a product I got at the EK Success Fork and Talk!!

This just happened to be the first thing that I pulled out of my EK Success goody bag.  Its like it was calling my name, waiting for me to review it.  It was super easy to use, in fact the hardest part was figuring out how to unlock the punch.


In case you can't figure it out either, there is a little pink slider on the bottom.  You need to slide it towards the bottom of the punch. Mine was pretty tough to get undone, but you will get it, I promise!!

Okay so here is how you start.  Take a sheet of 12 x 12 and insert in to the punch.  There is a little black mark....see it there?  Line your paper up and give it a punch!

It makes a cute little row of four petals.

Slide the petals over and line them up with the print on the punch.  This helps make sure you will have evenly spaced petals all the way across.

 

Keep punching until you get all the way across the page.  Punch as many strips as you'd like, the more you punch, the fuller your flowers will look in the end.


For this flower I did three different colors.


You can use some glue to layer the strips.  If you overlap the petals/spaces between, it again helps to make the flower seem more full.

Then, take a pencil, pen, anything really, and roll the strips up.

I used tacky glue to secure the end to the roll.  I love tacky glue.

After the glue has dried, fold the petals back as far as you want to open up your flower.  Start with the outside of the flower and work to the inside.  It is really easy and I promise the flower will take shape.

And, drum roll please......!

Here is my finished flower!!

Can't wait to make some more, might even make a door hanging for fall! So many ideas!

First Ever Fork and Talk

Ok.  So my current obsession is craftgossip.  I've talked about it before.  It is this wonderful blog that links to other wonderful blogs.  And, as I learned, they are an international site, and their headquarters are in Australia.  However, 4 of their editors live right here in Central Arkansas!!!  They got a luncheon together sponsored by EK Success, which is a great crafting company.  I really thought that they just did paper.  Boy, was I wrong.  At the end of the luncheon we got a giant goody bag of tons of EK Success brand items to try out!!  Now we get to try all of them out and blog about how awesome they are.  So that means that there will be a lot of posts about the new stuff I get to try....because there is so much it will take me forever to get through all of them!!!  It is fun though, and now I have lots of stuff to fill my craft room with (even though it is already pretty full...).  So, since I haven't been able to try anything yet (I've been in bed with a stomach bug all day) I decided I would blog about the actual event on Saturday, September 10.

So the first Fork and Talk was at Trio's restaurant in Little Rock.  Such a good place to eat.  You really need to go there.  We were in a room by ourselves and had a special menu to pick from for lunch.  There were four tables set up, and we got to pick where we sat!  There were five people plus one of the editors at each table.  First things first, we got lunch!!

 I got the Leilani for lunch which was this wonderful croissant with appricot jam, dried cranberries, turkey and avocado.  There was also a fruit salad with poppyseed dressing......it was SO good!!!  I wish we could have had seconds....but there was crafting to be done!!

We went around the room and told everybody about ourselves, what we blogged about and what the strangest thing we ever crafted with was.  I believe this picture is me explaining that I am way to OCD to craft with anything else besides what is made to craft with.  I guess that doesn't make me very creative....but what can I say.  The weirdest I heard was using tampons to apply chalk, and knitting with--wait for it--collected dog hair.  Blech.  Couldn't even imagine.  

Not the best picture of me.  But you can see behind me some of the goodies we get to play with in a little bit!!!

After we finished eating we had a challenge to decorate a hat within fifteen minutes with our table.  We got right to work and ours was a beautiful hat with pink sparkle ribbon, a big tulle bow, and a little bouquet of flowers in the back!!  We didn't win....super depressing.  But I thought we were awesome.  

So EK Success has these little kits that they put together.  I think they are pretty awesome.  Because I like things already ready to go....everything you need is in these little kits.  The ones we were trying out today was to make these flower barrettes or pins.  It has the fabric, the felt, the barrettes, and even a needle and thread!! The only other thing you need for this project is a hot glue gun (we used glue dots and they worked just fine). It was super simple and I loved making them!!!

 Here we are showing off our cute new flowers.  Funny story: Andi, who is on the right, was in school with me at UAMS! I haven't seen her in so long, how funny to come across her at this random event!!!!  

After we did our flowers we finally got to dive in to our goody bags.  And let me tell you, those things were PACKED full of goodies!!!!  In fact, there was so much stuff, that we got an additional grocery bag full of stuff!!  We got to look through and see all of the stuff we were going to get to take home with us!!

I'm pretty sure the things I am most excited about are the Martha Stewart Craft supplies.  I am a big fan of Martha.  

Okay.  Seriously.  We got mustache stickers.  Doesn't get any better than that.  

This is everything laid out so that you can see how many things we actually got!!! Can you believe it?? We are so lucky, and EK Success was a great sponsor for providing all of this to us!! I seriously can't wait to try every thing out!

This is a picture of all of the ladies that were at the event.  I am so excited that I got to meet all of them.  They all had such amazing stories, and I feel like I made so many friends who I have crafting in common with!  I can't wait to keep up with their blogs, and maybe meet again someday for more lunch and crafting!!!

After the lunch was over, I headed over to meet Tim for some tailgating.  He had been golfing all morning, and we got finished at the same time.  We had a blast seeing all of our friends!! Only thing I didn't like? I got beer poured on me.....twice....by two different people.  Oh well. I guess that is what happens!! 

Tim and I got tickets to the game from his uncle (thanks!!).  They did something really cool this year.  They had all of the people in the even sections wear red, and all of the people in the odd sections wear white.  The student section was given blue shirts.  We were sitting in section 19, so we dressed in white!!  

The stadium looked awesome, and I think it was such a great way to honor our country and the anniversary of September 11th.  I feel so blessed to live in the country that I do, the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Oh...and GO HOGS! We won!!