Photo Expressions

National Scrapbook Day Prerelease 5 (Friday)

Huge selection of Creative Imaginations products - 50% off!! (plus members 10% discount.) Papers, paper packs, cardstock packs, stickers, rubons, bling and more.

QuicKutz Spring Gift Sets 2009

The new Limited Edition Spring Gift Sets are being released Saturday morning at 9am. Each set comes with coloured dies, a big set of revloution dies and alphabet and a bonus tote. Super great value. No discounts apply except crew and club. QuicKutz sold out of these in a few hours, so retailers have only received partial shipments. Don't wait too long to get yours.
And each set has a code for a chance to win an all expense paid trip to Hawaii!

$114.99
Club Members and Crew Members $103.49
Gold Crew Members $91.99

American Craft Albums now have 4x6 refill pages!

Anyone who has taken one of my classes or talked to me in the store, knows that I love the Share and Tell Album concept from Pebbles inc.  You create a one or two page layout, and then the rest of your photos go into 4x6 pocket pages after the layout so you can enjoy all the pictures without having to create 4-6 layouts of each event.

Now one of your favourite album companies, American craft, also has 4x6 pocket pages to go in their 12x12 albums! Woohooo!!!

12x12 and 4x6 pocket pages combined with albums = projects done! (quickly too!)

May Page Maps

Here is the link for Becky Fleck's May Page Maps and a few examples:

By Kristi Bergin-Smith

By Megan Klauer

Pick a sketch and go create a layout!

National Scrapbook Day 4 prerelease (Thurs)

All instock regular priced Sizzix dies are Buy One Get One 50% off. No further discounts apply except club membership to the regular priced die. Includes all the dies - originals, bigz (great for cutting chipboard), sizzlits, embosslits, alphabets, sets - take your pick.

Mother's Day Gifts from Tilano Fresco

Mother's Day is coming up in a couple of weeks, and wouldn't it be nice to make her a very special, one-of-a-kind gift from the heart?

Tilano Fresco offers a wide variety of transfer kits for creating personalized photo art. They're super easy to use and yield fabulous results!

Tilano Fresco offers:

Fresco Tile Kits    
(here are the instructions for making this one!!)


 
Da Vinci Tile Kits

 
Canvas Transfer Kits

  

Glass or Marble Coaster Kits

 
and Glass or Marble Magnet Kits

The kits come with everything you'll need to make the project. All you need to supply is your photos...and you're ready to create!

Here's a how-to video on how to make the fresco tile.

You can check out Tilano's online instructions and other instructional videos by checking out their website.

Not only do we sell all these Tilano kits, but we also do the transfer photocopying that you'll need to complete your projects!

It's Your Life....Remember It!

National Scrapbook Day 3 prerelease (Wed)

Bo Bunny Double Page Layout Kit Sun & Fun - Everything you need to create this fun layout including photo and instructions and all the papers, chipboard, stickers and embellishments.

Retail Value $24.99 Sale $12.49 members $11.24

Clear Scrap acrylic albums.  6x6 tabbed, 8x8 tabbed, Word albums and shape albums. Regular $19.99. Sale 9.99 (members $8.99)

BC Crop for Kids registration is coming soon!

This is a great fundraiser done in the fall to raise money for BC Children's Hospital. Photo Express is helping to sponsor this event and is sponsoring 5 classes! Thought I'd pass on the info in case you don't get their newsletters.

REGISTRATION DAY IS MAY 7, 2009 AT 7:00 PM **DON'T MISS IT!** There are crop seats available for purchase on May 7!!! Last year crop seats sold out in 1 hour and 39 minutes. To avoid disappointment be ready at your computer at 7:00PM on May 7 when the remaining seats are released for sale. THIS IS THE LINK TO THE REGISTRATION PAGE. Bookmark it. Mark your calendars. Put a reminder in your iphone. Call your friends to remind them to remind you. Do what you need to do to avoid disappointment! Seating is limited. Don't forget!

FREQUENTLY ASKED REGISTRATION QUESTIONS:   1. What's the date again? Is it happening at the same place?   BC Scrapbooking Crop for Kids 2009 October 23-25, 2009 Ramada Plaza Conference Centre Abbotsford, BC   2. How much is it? How do I pay you? Crop admission for the weekend is $109. Payment is by cheque or PayPal and is due in full within 10 days of registration. Payment is nonrefundable.   Click HERE to see all the great stuff included in your admission.   Admission does not include accommodation. Contact the Ramada to reserve a room. Your are responsible for your own meals beyond the 2 included in your registration fee.   3. When do we register for classes? Class registration will open at in June. Be sure to read your emails and the blog and website for up to date class information. Classes are not included in the registration fee.   4. What if I'm not going to be home when it's time to register? You can register online from any computer. Or you can have someone register for you under your name. Make sure they have your complete contact info when filling out the online registration.   5. What if I just want to take classes and not crop? The classes are going to be awesome so we'd love it if you filled your days with classes! The best option for you is the Class Pass.  It gets you advance class registration along with crop attendees, and most of the perks of a crop seat, minus the actual crop seat.   Class Pass registration will also begin at 7:00 PM on May 7th.    Most questions can be answered by visiting the BC Scrapbooking Crop for Kids WEBSITE.

Mark your calendars to avoid disappointment!!   One last note: we'll be busy processing orders on the 7th and unable to answer emails during that time. Thanks for understanding.   Mary and Sandra Co-Coordinators BC Scrapbooking Crop for Kids      www.bccropforkids.ca     Email:  [email protected]

Cool Tool - Wordle

Here is a cool tool for scrapbooking - but make sure you have a chunk of time available before you try it - it's very addictive!

Wordle (www.wordle.net) is, in its own words:

...a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

You can feed it a chunk of your own text, or the web address of a blog and see what it comes up with!  For example, here is what we have been talking about on the Photo Expressions Blog for the last few weeks:

Life, photos, and backup.  That sounds like us!

Trust us with your Memories,
Ron C

National Scrapbook Day 2 prerelease (Tues)

Each day this week, a new sale item(s) will be released leading up to National Scrapbook Day this Saturday May 2nd.

Tomorrow (tues) all the new McGill flower punches and Creative Motif punches are 30% off! (40% for members). Continues for the week. Valid on current instock purchases, while supplies last.

 

Brandy Paper and Embellishment Kit from American Crafts
Includes 12 double sided sheets of 12x12 cardstock, 2 6x6 mini albums, 16 brads, 6 -4ft spools of ribbon,
1 pkg Poolside Vinyl thickers in Grapefruit, 1 rub on transfer spring/summer book (71 pieces) and 1 Remarks sticker book in Getty, black (700 stickers). Retail value $62.99
Sale $29.99 (members $26.99)

ClickFree and Breathe Easy!

OK, here is the coolest new photography product: ClickFree backup DVD's!

If you have listened to us at PE preach for the last few years, you know we always say the following:

1 - Back up your photos!
2 - Do something!

Stats show that 90% of North Americans are not even doing a basic backup of their digital photos.  Why?

1 - We don't ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO, so we don't, because...
2 - We have so very little TIME to DO STUFF...
3 - Which leads us to be OVERWHELMED AND DO NOTHING!

If that describes your photo backup strategy, you are not alone.  Don't feel guilty, get backup!

ClickFree Backup DVD's are so easy to use, all you do is put the DVD into your burner and it automatically does the rest for you!  That's right, it searches your hard drive for photos and videos and backs them up while you live your life.

At $13.99 for a DVD 3-pack (which will back up about 6,000 photos), that's a great pennies for peace of mind trade!  You can buy them in the Photo Express store or on our website.  Start backing up today!

You can also get the 120GB hard drive version at PE (that's over 50,000 photos).  Here's a video:

Trust us with your Memories,
Ron C

My Mind's Eye

Beautiful new My Mind's Eye is in, here is some of it

Your Life quote

"The principle of life is that life responds by corresponding; your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be."

~ Raymond Charles Barker

What do you want your life to be?

Chocolate Covered Caramel Popcorn

This is the amazing popcorn that Merilee brought to the crop. (We wanted to just keep it in the back for us!lol)

24 cups popped popcorn (air popped is best - don't use microwavable bag popcorn)
3/4 cup of butter
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda

8 oz white candy coating, chopped
4 oz white baking chocolate, chopped

8 oz milk or semi-sweet chocolate candy coating, chopped
4 oz milk or semi-sweet baking chocolate, chopped

Note: If using both white and milk/semi-sweet chocolate, amounts can be reduced.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place popcorn in lightly greased large roasting pan.

In heavy large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes without stirring. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and baking soda. Mixture will foam. Pour syrup over popcorn; stir until well coated.

Bake 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Spread on lightly greased aluminum foil. In a small saucepan, melt candy coating and chocolate over low heat. Drizzle melted chocolate over popcorn. Let chocolate harden (about 30 minutes).

Store popcorn in airtight container.

Recipe received from Diane S. and made by Marilee S. to share at 2009 crop.

Michele's note: you probably won't need the airtight container to store it in as it won't last long enough for that!  Yummy!!!!!

Cheddar Chive Scones

Here is the recipe for the Scones that Rose made, it was a very requested recipe.

Cheddar Chive Scones

16 large scones

Bottom of Form

Bottom of Form

Ingredients

• 4 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 3/4 pound cold unsalted butter, diced
• 4 extra-large eggs, beaten lightly (cold)
• 1 cup cold heavy cream (Can use milk, but I usually use whipping cream)
• 1/2 pound extra-sharp yellow Cheddar, small-diced (I use whatever I have sometimes, just make sure it is strong)
• 1 cup minced fresh chives  ( I don’t use this much, I buy a package of it at the store and make sure there is lots in it and use about half and freeze the other half)
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water or milk, for egg wash

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine 4 cups of flour, the baking powder, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the butter and mix on low speed until the butter is in pea-sized pieces. Mix the eggs and heavy cream and quickly add them to the flour-and-butter mixture. Combine until just blended. Toss together the Cheddar, chives, and 1 tablespoon of flour and add them to the dough. Mix until they are almost incorporated.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead it for 1 minute, until the Cheddar and dill are well distributed. Roll the dough 3/4-inch thick. Cut into 4-inch squares and then in half diagonally to make triangles. Brush the tops with egg wash. Bake on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper for 20 to 25 minutes, until the outside is crusty and the inside is fully baked.