My first post: What a weekend!

Oh my goodness everyone – what a weekend! This past weekend, my Aunt Linda and I (who have been Papercrafting buddies for over 20 years!) went to the Brutus Monroe ‘Create Your Own Ending Event’ in Pittsburgh, PA. What an awesome time!

The event started Friday night and lasted through the day on Sunday. Upon arrival to our hotel room on Friday, we had this door hanger welcoming us to the event!

The event kicked off on Friday evening with a pizza party and then a class where we created a spooky Halloween decoration. This class, taught by Michael, was so much fun! We jumped right into the action, using paints and embossing powder, and even though we were all given the same materials, everyone’s looked different! The creativity in that room was astounding!

OK, so then onto the first full day – Saturday. When we arrived in the classroom Saturday morning, there were surprises waiting at our tables! The goodie bag was chock-full of crafty goodness…. check it out!

Each day, we also received a box that contained all the products we would need to learn that day’s techniques. We were definitely spoiled during this event!

I learned some great new techniques this past weekend and I can’t wait to keep playing around with the products and making finished projects from some of the pieces I made at the event.

One of the products we received in our Day 1 Class box was a set of travel Brutus Monroe Aqua Pigments – let me tell you, these are the cutest little bottles ever! You can see them in that picture above, near the top left in the white box. One of my favorite pieces I made during the event was a preprinted floral watercolor panel – we had 10 of them in our box and picked out two to color that day. You might notice that, whenever possible, I mixed colors to make my palette consist mostly of PURPLE! My favorite color combination is purple and teal – so I try to use those colors whenever possible.

We did some foiling on Saturday as well…if you have never foiled anything, you need to get on this bandwagon. It is amazing, and one of those techniques where you will oooooh and aaaaaaaah because its so pretty! But I was introduced to a certain foil at this even that BLEW MY MIND. …if you don’t have any DecoFoil in the color Opal, you need to get some now. And you should probably buy a couple, or a few…or as many as you can find. Most foils have a silver backer on them that helps reflect the color and make it pop, but Opal does not have a silver backer on the sheet – it is translucent…so whatever you foil over, the color will show through. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a game changer, but I promise you, it is. We used some Brutus Monroe Chroma Glaze (which I had never used prior to this event…..but quickly went and bought almost all the colors), and then used the Opal Foil over top of it. I had a hard time getting a great image of how amazing this looks, so you might have to take my word for it and go try it on your own, but I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the result. What you do with this technique is use the Chroma Glaze and smooth that onto your paper over a stencil, just like you would any texture paste through a stencil – when the Chroma Glaze dries, it has a shiny, somewhat translucent color to it, very beautiful on its own! After you let it dry, you can put the Opal foil over top and run it through your Minc machine or laminator and that opal adds a layer of iridescent beautiful shimmer!

This will not be the last you see of the Chroma Glazes and Opal foil. After class on Saturday evening, my aunt and I went shopping at the Brutus Monroe store – and I stocked up on Chroma Glazes! I have so many ideas running through my head for this technique and I can’t wait to share with you! Here is a look at my haul from the Brutus Monroe store – and if you aren’t familiar with Brutus Monroe – if you subscribe to any of their monthly subscriptions (which I do!), you get 15% off your purchases online and in store – can’t beat that!

Although I could go on and on (even more!) about the great time I had at this event, I think I need to wrap this post up. One of the best things about the weekend was all the sweet, creative and awesome people I had the pleasure of meeting! The entire Brutus Monroe staff is amazing and took great care of us over the weekend! This was the first Create Your Own Ending Event, but there will be more to come! Next year’s event is already being planned so be sure to keep your eyes open for details about next year’s event, I promise you won’t want to miss it!

You can find all the products for these techniques over at the Brutus Monroe website, be sure to sign up for their rewards program if you haven’t yet! If you haven’t signed up yet, you can get $10 off a $50 purchase by using this link and signing up!

Thanks for sticking with me and reading this super long post!