North Texas Scrap Stores

As many of you know, several years ago I posted what has become a very popular article about local scrapbook stores in the DFW area.  I pinned all the stores on a map, and posted the map on my blog.  Since that time, we’ve had many store openings and closings, and I tried to keep up with it all, but it got away from me.

Last week, I was challenged by Dee Luquette-Famularo to update the map, so out of my guilt about leaving it unattended for so long, I decided to start over from scratch!  Here it is, in all its glory…the newly updated map of North Texas scrapbook and craft stores.  Keep in mind, my info is only as good as the info I find out there, so if you hear about a store I don’t have listed, or if one of these stores closes, please let me know!  Also please note that I included all of East Texas stores in the North Texas map.  There used to be enough stores for East Texas to have its own map, but so many have closed I decided it was better to combine the two.  I do still have plans to map out the rest of the state, and maybe Oklahoma and Louisianna, too, but that will have to wait for another day! 

LOAD Day 2

Yesterday, I told you a little bit about LOAD, and I mentioned that Lain was using world travel as the basis for her daily prompts.  For each day of the week, she assigned a general theme, and then on that day, she gets more specific.  Lain’s prompt for Day 2 (Tuesday), was “Airplane”. 

Monday – Color

Tuesday  – Transportation

Wednesday – Culture – test it

Thursday – Language

Friday – Landmark

Saturday – Geography

Sunday – Food

Some of you might know that I am a travel agent by day, so there were lots of obvious choices of pages I could do to fulfill the prompt, but I decided to go for my first plane ride instead.  Since I have no photos of this event, I chose to let my journaling paint the picture.  I used travel-themed papers and ephemera in layers to give it a “busy” feel.  Do you miss the picture?  I don’t.

Layout a Day!

I can’t believe it’s already February.  Do you know what February means?  Layout-A-Day (LOAD), of course!

What is LOAD?  It’s only the most fun, challenging, and best scrapbooking challenge out there!  LOAD is hosted by Lain Ehman, founder of True Scrap and Scrap Happy.  Each February, Lain brings us a month-long challenge to create at least one layout every day.  Each challenge is themed, so she gives us prompts that we can use, bend, or just throw away.  The prompts are designed to help you think outside the box – to create pages you might not have thought of creating – and to generally just get you started.  Our finished layouts get posted to a Flickr group so we can all admire everyone’s work, and in the end we’ll wind up with a whole bunch of finished pages, some fresh ideas for even more pages, and maybe even a few new friends.  Oh, and I mustn’t forget the prizes! 

In the past, Lain has also run this challenge in May and October, and I have delightfully participated, which has really helped me grow as a scrapper.  Unfortunately, I hear this is Lain’s last year to host it.  She is passing the torch to someone else.  I hope the new hostess will be as fun, challenging, and organized as Lain has been.  I look forward to participating in years to come.

So for LOAD 216 (February 2016), the theme is Around the World in 29 days.  Lain is pulling ideas from world travel to create her daily prompts.  Our prompt for Day 1 was based on the colors of the flag of the Netherlands: red, white and blue.  Being the patriot that I am, I had to do a page about Independence Day and a new tradition we’ve started in our family.

If you are interested in LOAD, you can get more info at LayoutADay.com, and you can look back at all the pages I’ve done over the years by typing “LOAD” into the search box at the top of the page, or by clicking on the word “LOAD” in the tags cloud at the bottom of the page.