After Hours, After All.

Jen is painfully creative. The kind of person who makes me hang my head in shame with the shear munanity that is life before meeting her. I never miss a crop she hosts, and I'm never ever disappointed. If you're cool (and you know you are!) you'll be clickin' this here link to sign up for her Meetup group:

http://scrapbook.meetup.com/1451/

So, here's a pic of Jen and Alex, chilling after an After Hours crop last week. I got really sucked into the movie (French Kiss, admittedly one of

my girliest favorites.) so I only got a few cards made and a couple of pages finished on my in-progress honeymoon album. Unfortunately, I left a page at her house while the stickles dried so that one won't make it into this entry, but here are the cards (above). I was playing with tearing paper because it's not something I've done much. In a constructive manner, anyway.

As the name would imply, After Hours is an uber-hip kind of crop. There's typically a cocktail of the evening, candy strewn tables (very Warhol), and some type of yummy takeout or dinner by Jen. Dessert is generally provided as well, and since Scott and I discovered Henry's Gelato nearby, I sometimes pick up a sorbetto assortment to share. Mmmm.

On the big (TV) screen, there is usually a girlie film selection (get your head out of the gutter, you know I meant a romatic comedy. Yeesh.) to increase the XX chromasome energy. A good time is to be had by all.

In unrelated news, this weekend is the big ol' Fiskateer Roundup. Fiskateers http://www.fiskateers.com/ is something of a secret society of scrappers and paper crafters. Well, not entirely secret, but you do have to contact one of the lead Fiskateers and tell them you were sent by Joe (or me, Veronica, rather) to get in.

Once inside, they look deep into your soul and assign you a number in the order which you joined (apologies to Homer Simpson). From that point, you can visit the blog, edit your homepage, upload your projects, chat with other Fiskateers, and post on the message board. It's cooler than it sounds, trust me. My favorite thing they do are the challenges. Restricting what materials you can use, giving you layout maps to follow, etc. It makes you really think about the pages and stuff you're making, which helps keep things interesting. It also keeps your layouts from falling into a rut. Sometimes we need to be forced to navigate away from our regular habits.

So, this weekend is the Round Up. It's a four day (Thurs-Sun.) online crop with challenges and prizes and all kinds of stuff. While it's hard to forget that it's really a consolation prize for those of us who were passed over for the real live Fiskateer weekend in TX, it's still pretty cool. There's a ton of talk going on on the message board (much like the chatter at a real crop) and the challenges are a-flyin'. (See my entry for the Stitches challenge to the left.) They throw out various assignments with deadlines to have them posted on your profile, then give prizes to people they select among those who turned their projects in on time. If you're a challenge-junkie like me (no, I did not say "a challenged junkie", snickerpuss) it's worth devoting a weekend to. I just picked up a Fiskars paper cruncher thing that corregates paper into neat wavy ribbons, so I'm totally psyched for the tool challenge.

On that note, I'm off to booby prize central. (Oh come on. Like you wouldn't have wanted to be one of the 50 who got to go on the real trip?) Seriously, I love being a Fiskateer. If you like an active, supportive, friendly kind of scrapping place to retire to daily, you'll love it too. The more active you are, the more devoted you'll become. If you aren't one to check in often (daily or at least bi-weekly), you may not like this group as much though. It moves fast and keeps you on your toes! It's worth the time, though, so if you're on the fence about it, jump in. It's really my favorite crafting space on the web by far.

Fiskateer #1135. Signing off.