I’m starting the party a little bit early but for anyone who is not aware July 1st is Canada Day! July 1st, 1867 was the day we officially ceased to be merely a scattering of British colonies and became one big ole unified country of our own. To quote the Canadian Encyclopedia:

 ”The birth of Canada was in many ways unique. It was not achieved by war or revolution. It was not a popular uprising of the people. Nor was it a call for independence from Great Britain. Each colony faced problems that it seemed unable to solve on its own. As Great Britain wished to draw away and as the United States grew more powerful, the solution more and more seemed to lie in a union that would be better able to deal with the economic and political challenges of a changing world.” read the whole article here

So there you have it. Probably the only nation in the world who got their independance by asking for it peacefully and politely. How typically Canadian, eh?

I wanted to do something fun to celebrate this weekend so I’ve got a few things up my sleeve for you all! First up . .. .

 

Who’s up for a little trivia!? Here’s how this is going to work:

The Rules

The quiz has 6 questions. Be warned: some are a bit tricky!  Read them carefully! All of the answers are very easily google-able or easy to find in Wikipedia though so no reason why you couldn’t get them all right with a little research. I had to make them a bit tricky cuz I didn’t want it to be too easy for Canadians

Email me your answers to michelle [at] scrapbookgraphics [dot] com by midnight Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 4th to be eligible.

 DO NOT write your answers in a comment to this post! You’ll give all the answers away

 

The Prizes

1) Entries with ALL the CORRECT answers will have their names thrown into a hat for a random drawing of the grand prize:

$20 gift card to the entire ScrapbookGraphics store! 

 2) But don’t worry! You still have a chance to win even if you don’t get them all right! All of the other entries will be put into a second random drawing. Up for grabs are:

(1) $10 gift card for the entire ScrapbookGraphics store!

(2) $10 gift cards for my products at ScrapbookGraphics

3) And since it’s not in my nature to send anyone home empty handed from a party everyone who plays walks away with a little something How does a $2.00 coupon for my store plus an as-of-yet unreleased paper pack sound?

 

The Questions

Ready!? This is the time to turn on that Jeopardy theme music in your head . . .

 

1) Name the current Queen of Canada.

2) Which of the following is NOT a popular Canadian sweet snack you can enjoy with your coffee:

                       a) a timbit

                       b) an igloo pop

                       c) a beaver tail

3) In which city can you find the longest skating rink in the world?

4) Which of the following rock songs is NOT by a Canadian band:

                      a) Born to be Wild (by Steppenwolf)

                      b) Open Arms (by Journey)

                      c) American Woman (by The Guess Who)

                      d) Takin’ Care of Business (by Bachman-                                              Turner Overdrive)

 5) What is an inukshuk made of?

6) This man has been the host of a wildly popular television game show since 1984. In 2006 he received a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, making him one of the very few inductees to have a star on both the Canadian and Hollywood walks. Incidentally this man happens to have been born and raised in my hometown of Sudbury, Ontario and also attended my alma mater, the University of Ottawa where he graduated with a degree in Philosophy. Who is: ___?

 

Hope you decide to play! And I hope you have fun with it! GOOD LUCK!

 

 

 

 

The Sale

 

 

Of course you knew that was coming, right? LOL! Yeah I’ve had quite a few sales in the three months since I started designing. Some pretty big ones too. But I think this is going to be my last big one for a while so be warned!

 

So that’s all I’ve got for tonight! I’ve got to go to work in the shopping cart now to get this sale rolling then it’s off to bed for me! Big weekend ahead. A friend is driving in from out of town and we’re gonna do the whole Canada Day thing on Parliament Hill. One of my favourite artists - Feist - is going to be performing at the concerts so I’m pretty excited to see her! It’s always a fun day. They close off half of the downtown core and the streets flood with like 20 thousand people and there’s activities and street performers and musicians and mounties on horses and food everywhere you turn and a massive fireworks show at night to cap off the evening. The weather is looking real good too! Not too hot or humid. All in all I’m looking forward to this weekend!

 

Wow . .. so does anyone else feel like my blog posts are always WAY too long!? Good gravy! I feel like I’ve been doing this for hours. *sigh* I probably have LOL! Goodnight!

 

I got to go to a wedding yesterday! A big fat Greek wedding! Well Greek-Italian really. My Italian cousin  married her Greek honey. We had a lot of fun. My parents drove up from Sudbury for it so we all went as a family. It was fun to see all the Greek traditions at the ceremony and the inside of that Orthodox church was so beautiful!

 

So how gorgeous is my cousin Antonella?

And all I can say about the reception is I’ve never seen so much food in all my life! LOL! I didn’t take any pictures of it but the decor was beautiful:

It was a 6-course Italian meal. Antipasto, manicotti, salad, and a big veal steak with veggies, then a kind of ice-cream cake dessert. How anybody could eat a whole meal like that and not explode is beyond me. I ate only the salad and the steak plate and I was stuffed! LOL! And just as they were clearing the last of the dessert plates from our tables and the dancing was about to begin, they start bringing out this massive spread of food on like 30 feet of buffet tables. Fruit platters, cakes and pastries of every sort, pizzas, even a whole giant roasted pig! It was unbelievable . . . and torturous since of course I couldn’t eat any of it with all my dietary restrictions LOL!

On a side note, Jesse Palmer of the Bachelor fame was there. He’s an Ottawan and I guess a friend of the groom’s. I had no idea who he was. Someone had to tell me cuz I never watch the Bachelor. However, for those of you who do, you might be interested to know he was not there with the woman from the show

So that was my big day yesterday. I’m kinda glad it’s over. With my parents here I was ejected from my bedroom and have had to sleep on the floor in the living room the last few nights. Add to that the late hour we got in last night and that makes for a very tired little Meesha. But lucky for me I get an extra day off! I don’t have to work tomorrow. Since I work across the river in the province of Québec I am subjected to their holidays and this weekend happens to be la Saint-Jean. So I have every intention of sleeping in very late and sitting my butt down at the computer the rest of the day. I think I’m gonna try and work on a few Canada day goodies to put in the shop. There’s gonna be a slew of red, white and blue American Independance stuff hitting the shelves this week and I’m always disapointed by the lack of Canada Day kits so perhaps I need to get crackin’ on that, eh?

Well have a good week everyone

I made a new friend today

I never knew chipmunks could be so entertaining! Seriously, I think I spent 3 hours stalking this little guy in my parent’s backyard. He lives in this little hole he dug out in the lawn. Here he is peeking out from it:

He was cleaning his wittle nose. Look, I caught him with his tongue out!

There is a staircase not far from his hole so I put some nuts out on it and sat there with the camera and waited for him to come out.

He would fill his little cheeks, run back to his hole to dump the load, then come right back. When the nuts started getting low, I left the jar out for him:

Sadly we ran out of nuts so we went back in the house . .. until we thought he might like some almonds! This part was pretty hilarious. Almonds are much bigger so he had a harder time filling his cheeks. Sometimes they’d fall out as he was trying to shove in another, or he’d have to take a minute to rearrange them before going on. It was SO cute!

Here I’m laughing because the little bugger bit my finger! LOL!

Yeah. So that’s pretty how much how I spent my afternoon today! How does that expression go again? Small things amuse small minds?

In my defense, there’s not much to do around here! Friday after work I hopped on a Greyhound bus and made the long journey (7 backbreaking hours!) back to my hometown to see my parents. Sudbury, Ontario  isn’t exactly a hip and happening place and without Photoshop or my scrap stash I have to get creative with ways to entertain myself! So there’s been a lot of napping . . .and chipmunk stalking. Thank heavens for my Dad and his Canon 30D

What a crazy 24 hours this has been! People I don’t even know are starting threads about me in forums, the collection is selling like crazy, gorgeous layouts are already popping up in the galleries . . .madness I tell ya! I’m not used to this LOL!

But it gives me warm fuzzies to know so many people are appreciating the sale. Cuz that’s what it was all about! Just spreadin’ the love

I wanted to quickly mention that for those of you living in the opposite end of the world, you should have a few extra hours to shop tonight (or today for you when you read this!). I don’t know who I was kidding when I said I’d end the sale at midnight tonight. Anyone who knows me knows I have the sleeping habits of a 95 year old and I’m in bed at 9:00 most nights LOL! So it will only get turned off at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning before I leave for work .

I also just wanted to show off a few more layouts I’ve spotted tonight. I’m too tired to resize these all manually in Photoshop so you will notice a bit of fuzziness because Wordpress doesn’t resize well. Just click on the links and you can see them in their full gallery glory!

By Sabrina

Wasn’t really expecting anyone to have actual Wizard of Oz pictures for my Wizard of Oz kit LOL! How stinking perfect is this!?!?

And this one by Desiree blew me away too.

 She had the fabulous idea of recreating the movie poster with her own head instead of Kate Winslet’s like this:

 Cool, huh?

Here are a few more:

By Karen B:

By Denise:

By Lynn:

By Becky:

By Kait:

By Donna:

By Jenn

It was so fun to come home from work today and see all these! I’m probably missing some but it’s all my eyeballs can stand for this evening. WAY too much computer time these last few days = crazy eye strain! LOL! Plus it’s almost bed time

I’ll be keeping my eyes on the galleries. I LOVE seeing my stuff being used! It’s so trippy! Can’t wait to see what you make!

 

 

This is gonna be long so if you don’t feel like reading, scroll down to the bottom before leaving because there is a sale going on you do NOT want to miss!!!

 

Okay so there are some movies that I love so much I could watch over and over again a million times and never get sick of them. Since I have a television right next to my computer I often have one of those faves playing in the background while I design. On one such day I had the idea to let myself be inspired by the colours in the movie and the Reel Inspiration Collection was born!

 

It wasn’t my intention to overtly copy anything from these movies, but just to capture their essence through colour or an attitude or a mood . . . actually most people who I’ve shown these to can’t even guess what movies they are supposed to be inspired by LOL! I decided not to mention it anywhere in the product previews or descriptions at the store in case it might look like I’m trying to profit from the movie’s name or something, which I’m assuming must be illegal! But since this is my blog and I can say what I want, here they are:

 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

Far and wide one of my favourite movies of ALL time! It’s so moving, yet funny, but totally messed up all at the same time! Michel Gondry combined with Charlie Kaufman!? Sheer genius if you ask me. Anyway, this was the one that first inspired me that day. Even though I’ve seen it a million times, this one particular day I was noticing all the blue and orange in the film for some reason and then felt compelled to translate that into papers. In case you are wondering, Tangerine is the nickname that Joel (Jim Carrey) gives to Clementine (Kate Winslet) after she dies her hair orange.

 

 

 

Almost Famous

 

 

I remember being very surprised by how much I liked this movie the first time I saw it. The 70’s rock scene isn’t exactly an interest of mine but the performances are incredible and it’s such a great story. Plenty of bad 70’s wallpaper, funky dresses and bohemian chic-ness to draw inspiration from! If you haven’t seen the movie, Penny Lane is Kate Hudson’s character’s name.

 

 

 

Clueless

 

 

I was 14 years old when this movie came out. I kid you not, I could probably recite every single line of this movie in order from start to finish!  There weren’t really any colours that jumped out at me from it though so I just picked a girly scheme and tried to capture the attitude instead.

 

 

 

Pirates of the Caribbean

 

 

 

Johnny Depp . .. need I say more?  

 

Technically I could have used any of his movies since I can NEVER get tired of looking at that man’s face but I decided to go with Pirates since it was topical

 

 

 

The Wizard of Oz

 

 

I wasn’t going to admit this publicly but I suppose I can trust you guys to keep a secret. I have never seen this movie! Shhh! Don’t tell anyone LOL! I wanted to round out the collection with a colour scheme totally different from the others so when this was suggested by a CT member, I couldn’t resist!

 

And voilà! 4 weeks later we have a collection! LOL!

 

Now it’s time for the previews! Each paper pack actually has 8 papers, the six patterns you see in the preview plus 2 bonus solids. So 40 papers in all! And there are 5 coordinating alphas too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And if you can stand a little more eye candy, how ’bout some layouts for inspiration?  Most of these are not up in galleries yet but I’ll edit later with the links so you can see the full credits:

 

A few from me:

 

Using Penny Lane (and a bunch of my other products!)

 

 

Using Tangerine:

 

 

 

And now from my CT:

 

Two by Cassie using Savvy:

 

 

 

One from Desiree using Penny Lane (it’s even about Cameron Crowe, the man who directed Almost Famous!):

 

 

 

Phew! Okay . . .that’s all I got for show and tell

 

And now for the fun part:

 

 

 

Yep, you read that correctly. The entire collection is selling for $19.99 but for one day only (well, one day and a half since it’s starting tonight! LOL!) you get it for THREE DOLLARS! The paper packs will eventually be available separately for $3.00/pack and the alphas for $2.00/pack so in essence you are getting $25 worth of stuff for THREE DOLLARS! It’s been suggested I need to get my head checked but hey . . . what’s the harm in a little sale?

 

LINK TO PURCHASE

 

Have a great week everyone! Thanks for stopping by!