www.paperartistsonline.com

I've bee retired six years and still haven't resorted to housework. No, no way, no housework! Too much other fun and creative things to do.

As for paper, I've got more than I'll ever use. I'm with you Pam, solids are my go to. The pages I like the most are ones that I've stenciled or done something creative to the background. I did buy at pack of 9x12 at Michaels's last week. It was 200 sheets for 2.99. I didn't buy it for the colors or pattern but for the weight of the cardstock. I thought it would be good weight to cut dies and tags. It wasn't two sided so I always have the solid side to use. And I figure at that price it's good for the kids to use in their art. They can tear through the paper.

Pam, once you retire you're wonder when you ever had time to work. It's our reward for all those hard, stressful years of working for someone else. I'm so excited for you.
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Mrs. Grossman's stickers. Is CM still on the go and with the same style?

If we're not careful that style might come back "in" again as a backlash from the pinkyellowturquoise phase.

Truth be told, I'm still thankful for CM and Mrs Grossman's, because without that first "class" and the friends that became consultants, I may never have picked up this hobby and all of the friends and joy that goes with it. I don't know if CM consulting is still a thing, but I still have tons of papers from them when they finally started doing patterned background paper, and I still love it every time I look at it. None of it is strongly themed, and some of it uses color combos I don't have in any other collection.

That said, I went to Michaels today looking for supplies for one of our craft fair projects, and perused the latest stuff, and was just "meh" about all of it. None of it struck me as new or fresh. Just more of what I already have tons of.

mpizzazz wrote:Mrs. Grossman's stickers. Is CM still on the go and with the same style?

Ok
hijack....but I just googled Mrs Grossman stickers
http://mrsgrossmans.com

They have a factory tour!

I think that 99.9% of us started out with CM and then went to CS. Now we're all PAO! (Love these acronyms!)

28 working days to go! (I forgot about the holidays so my count has shortened by 3 days. )

pbp908 wrote:I think that 99.9% of us started out with CM and then went to CS. Now we're all PAO! (Love these acronyms!)

28 working days to go! (I forgot about the holidays so my count has shortened by 3 days. )

My son was a newborn when I went to my first CM meeting. I recall the CM rep making me feel like a slug and terrible mom because I hadn't started the album with my pregnancy. She was awful but I felt guilty enough to purchase a small collection of plain white paper, stickers, alphas and a strap album that I hated. I eventually ditched that stuff and went my own route for a few months then stopped altogether. I didn't pick up scrapping again until Charley was about 12 (but did discover stamping and card making) and I stumbled upon CS.

Pam it seems like just a few months ago you were saying you only had a year left! I am so excited for you. These last few days will crawl and fly by. Get ready for a great retirement.

I hated those strap hinge albums. Sometimes I think I'll redo all of those pages and throw out those books, but then I think that they show how things have evolved and decide to keep them. Besides, it'd be a real pain to dig through all of those negatives to reprint the pictures (to replace all of those horrible crops that CM taught us).

I am loving this trip down memory lane! I actually loved the strap hinge albums. They were a pain to put together, but I absolutely love how they look on a shelf. I detest post albums with every fiber of my being, so thank goodness the three ring styles have become popular!

As far as re-doing any of my albums, there is one album that is so horrible that I barely want to acknowledge its existence, but like Pam pointed out, locating the negatives and re-printing those photos would be a serious time suck. So it will remain exactly as-is and I shall look back on those pages and get a good laugh out of them. The only albums I have re-done are those that were in the sticky albums.

Pam - I'm so excited for you to finally reach that retirement milestone! It feels like you've been counting down forever - how exciting that it's actually here!!!!

If I started a retirement ticker it would be nothing short of depressing. I've got 15 years, at the very least. I've got 16.5 more school years to go in theory, until both kids have been through four years of college and I no longer need the tuition benefit. The house is paid off in 12, but I suspect we'll quickly put ourselves in debt again buying our dream RV in preparation for retirement. Yes, my retirement plans are already underway.....

IMO the only thing good about the strap and post bound albums was how great the double LOs looked side-by-side. When LOs had a pattern or theme that flowed from one page to the next it really showed up in that style album. I will only use 3 ring binder albums but you just can't get that look in them with the gap from page to page. But that is the ONLY thing I liked about them.

Meanwhile, I am lamenting the demise of the post bound album. Not being able to find what I want in the colors and quality has seriously affected my desire to scrap. I hate a D ring album and the bulky ring mechanisms and the gap, etc.

I'll take the gap for the ease of moving pages. Those darned strap hinges drove me nuttier than I already am and the post binders never laid flat, no matter how many expanders I put into them.

Remember the CM triangles and strips? Every once in a great while I almost add one with a sticker sneeze. I did love their gingham papers and still hoard a few of those. Maybe I should pull a few out for Pam's challenge. I used all but a few scraps of the purple gingham and wish I had more. Oh, wait. I have a gingham stamp! Whoo hoo!

I use the post bound albums
I have some D-ring but they are used for pages without photos
when ever they get pickup the pages come out of the rings

I have not used the strap hinge

I usually do not have matching pages on right and left
not enough photos
my pages are not by date either- my kids can put them in
order because they will get divided by 3

ChristyB wrote:Ok
hijack....but I just googled Mrs Grossman stickers
http://mrsgrossmans.com

They have a factory tour!

This made me But if I ever find myself in Petaluma with time to kill, I'm so going on the tour!

I'm with Marianne - I far prefer postbound albums and lament that lack of variety in them these days. I've never had issues with moving pages around - whereas I have experienced the rings in a 3-ring album spilling open and the pages coming out. Plus, I still make enough double-page layouts that I like the fact that there's no gap. And the smaller footprint... yeah, I really don't how why 3-ring got so darn popular. Too bad there isn't room in the industry for both.

I never did own a strap hinge album, even though my very first page was constructed on a CM background page. Which was later taken apart, as the rep was not good at telling us in advance what kind of photos to bring and what we'd be doing with them. Even at my reintroduction to scrapping a couple years later - again at a CM party - I held fast and didn't buy into their system, choosing instead to make my layout completely on a separate piece of paper that I could put in a different album. Fortunately by then some scrapbook stores had opened up and I easily found options.

I did discover CS, ironically through the gal who worked at my LSS - she was working on a page in the store one day and I asked her about the papers. But by then I was enamoured enough of other scrapbook companies' products that I knew subscribing to the kit wouldn't stop me from shopping at the store - and I couldn't afford to double my spending. Other than her, it was years before I knew anyone else who did CS, which only happened once I got involved in online communities.