My scrapbooking stash really isn't that bad when compared to many of my friends :) as you can see from the photo here (stash is mostly housed in bookcase on the right).

From Studio M

This year I joined a Stampin' Up! hostess club to limit my spending but there are still a lot of things you can't buy from Stampin' Up! so once in a while I step into a scrapbook store (usually this one www.memorycrafts.ca). While I am not their best customer you do tend to spend more than you intended when you go there.

Yesterday I had one of those days. My friend B lives awful close to this store and I had left my laptop power cable at her house the previous evening so after collecting it, I hit the store. This time the damage wasn't too bad, a mere $95 plus taxes.

Oh well, let's see what I got:

- Ali Edwards "Life Artist" - an older book but one I've been meaning to get for a while. I noticed it had been discontinued on Amazon so I thought I'd better pick it up while stocks last.

- K&Co Photo Scrap Album - I just saw these in the Quick and Easy Photo Albums magazine. My friend Cheryl (who is on the editorial board for Simple Scrapbooks and who works at the aforementioned store) had an album in that special issue and I had wondered where to get one just like it. Duh, I should have figured that the store would have them!

- Fancy Pants 12x12 Photo Pocket pages - these hold 6 4x6 photos on a regular sized scrapbook page. Again inspired from the Quick and Easy Photo Albums magazine. I already have some of these page protectors (I often use them to house photos to scrap but now plan to actually use them as scrapbook pages.

- SEI 11x8.5 page protectors - in the words of my friend B, "I think this is my size". She is often lamenting that she doesn't have an affinity for 12x12 (even though she has 3 completed scrapbooks in that size) and wants to scrap in 8.5x11. It's interesting because I have several albums in 12x12, 8x8 and 6x6 but since noticing the landscape version of the 8.5x11, think that might actually be my true size and I've been wanting to try it out. The advantages to this size are many, you can print on a regular printer, you can use regular size paper (which I tend to buy for cardmaking), in portrait orientation it fits in office binders (you can always put your landscape pages in this way too though). So my plan for these page protectors is to intermingle them in with my 12x12 pages by simply re-punching the holes (because they don't line up).

- Karen Foster Ancestry stickers - for that unfinishing heritage album (don't remind me) - this project is taking a *long* time. I purchased the papers and cardstock for it about 2-3 years ago, and I have the black American Craft Linen D-ring albums for it, but I don't have a lot of coordinating embellishments, just some black buttons and metal photo clips etc).

- Heidi Swapp Clocks Clear Acrylic Stamps - this has to be the best deal ever. For $6.99 CDN (that's only $5.50 US) I got an acrylic stamp set with 4 clock faces and 4 hands. I've been looking for clock faces like this (rub ons or acetate embellishments) for a while but now I can make my own. They are so versatile and can be used on all sorts of layouts (Ali Edwards and Heidi Swapp use them a lot so they must be good!).

- Basic Grey Archaic Chip Stickers and Paper - Boy scrapbooking supplies aren't as plentiful as girl ones, so when I saw these stickers months ago I wanted them. They are chipboard so add some 3-dimensional bulk to layouts/projects. I also got a sheet of dinosaur paper too.

So are you thinking what I'm thinking? Did I write this blog post to justify my spending spree? I think so.... maybe I need therapy.... or an intervention.