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CropTalksä are available for a limited time. However, these ideas can be used with other handouts or later CropTalksä that are on a similar subject. Many CMC's do "shoptalks" (as they were called), specialty workshops or 'breakouts' where these ideas can be used. Also see Level 2 Classes.
Halloween
A 2.5-inch strip of white paper with a black DL along top edge. Place black and white polka dot DL along bottom edge, an
orange one above that, then another black one. Use black sticker letters to
spell Happy Halloween. Add bat stickers.
Christmas
1. Cut 2-inch strip evergreen paper. Use red die-cut letters to spell Ho Ho Ho...Use circles for O's instead of die-cut letters. Place holly sticker in middle of each O. This would also look good with a smaller strip of evergreen gingham on top of evergreen strip.
2. Cut a white strip. Use Christmas-colored DL's (like candy cane or holly) on top and bottom. Put two elves on either side of strip, facing in. One seated and one standing behind it on each side. Write in red callipen "All I want for Christmas is..." This is great for Letter to Santa or kids opening gifts.
Easter
Pale yellow strip of paper. Use purple or lavender letters to spell Hoppy Easter...place an Easter egg in center of 'o'. Decorate with Easter stickers and DL's.
It's a Girl!
Mint green strip of paper. Spell It's a Girl! in pen. Use yellow baby carriage sticker on right side of strip.
Decorate with pink/yellow DL's and baby stickers
Adult Birthday
Black strip of paper. Silver letters spelling Happy Birthday. Silver, gold, and copper DL's graduated from outside in (cut the DL's to different lengths) from top left and bottom right. Decorate with silver/gold confetti's or stars.
Or cut up remaining DL's into confetti. Press hard...the metallic DL's don't stick as easily as other stickers.
I do ones for top and bottom of pages because I have several 12x15 users. You can also make Jiffy borders for the sides of pages. I sell decorated strips for $2 to $3.50. This is a great way to use up old sticker letters or parts of sticker strips left over from your own books. The customer just puts it on her page, adds pics and maybe a few stickers, and the page is done! (Sherilyn)
(Most of these Ideas will work with both CropTalkä #3 and #22)
At a circle cutter workshop serve round snacks - like cookies, round tortilla chips with salsa, etc.
I used this at my Holiday workshop, and I used a "fill the stocking game" (see Workshop Games)...the giveaways had nothing to do with the croptalk. A good giveaway would be several half sheets of paper in a seasonal color, and encourage people to try out the CCS using that paper...maybe add some stickers to match one layout in the croptalk or add seasonal stickers. (Jean Gifford)
For more ideas about using the circle and oval cutters see Product Ideas.
I copied the hearts page on #3 of the "Haven of Hearts CropTalk on white paper then on BLACK paper! (I eliminated the top right and bottom left hearts because they took up too much 'photo' room!). I am going to display them side-by-side so my clients can see how eye-catching black pages can be! (Sharon in MI)
Note: The Valentines file has ideas pertaining to hearts.
In a red folder, I put the Haven of Hearts CT and copies of heart borders, valentine poems etc. I am using last years 'Your the heart of my Business' and each customer is getting a box of heart candy. I wrote on the box "Thank You - You are the heart of my business" and signed each one. I made heart shape die-cut name tags and had heart shape cookies and pink bagels. I made a couple of the pages in the CT as an example. (Racing Wife)
Use the lined template (TTY one) and put this OVER a die-cut frame to journal a shape! sort of like purchasing a whole bunch of journaling templates from "other" places...only WAY CHEAPER! You could give some die-cut frames as prizes or in a goodie bag. Another good prize for a journaling workshop would be a lined page.
Have everyone write a few minutes about one of their photos - the occasion, who the people are, what they are saying, etc. Then give the photo to another person to write about. When you read the two very different descriptions it is a visual example of the importance of journaling.
Emphasize that journaling can be the best "decoration" for an album - especially if the person uses a variety of pen colors and a die-cut or template shape to journal in.
See the Journaling file for more information.
Serve Oreo Delight (from the Cooking file) because it's Black and white and red all over!
Also a dip with black olives served with tortilla chips! Or maybe a dessert made out of blackberries.
For a game, put black and white poker chips into a box with a lid and draw one out every hour. Whoever is working on a black page when you draw a black chip wins a prize - like stickers or die cuts. Door prizes could be black or silver pens and black or white letter stickers.
See the Black Refill Pages file for more ideas.
(Sherilyn) For a seat prize I made two-inch page topper that said "NOEL". I used red letters on an evergreen background, and green letters on a cranberry background, and gold letters on a cranberry background. I decorated the letters with holly stickers. I had to cut out some of the letters, but all these letters are very easy to cut out.
Take photos of your town. Main street, where you work, favorite hangouts, etc. You'll be surprised at the changes in a short time.
Fads - tell what was in your teens. The President, mayor, pierced body parts, tattoos, cellular phones, Internet, beepers, etc. Take photos, too. (Deb B)
If there's an entire page that's blank (skipped by mistake or to get to the next 2 page spread) put all the
business cards you and/or your husband have had since you joined the workforce.
In a family album, this would be a bit of family history. In a child's album it could be titled "Mommy's work" or "What my Daddy does".
In my goody bag, I included a photo sleeve for each customer and then showed how I had used them in my own albums - with a lock of hair, for a postcard, sonogram photos, etc. (Angela in MO)
Outline of all family members hands, favorite bedtime story, prayers, pocket pages, letter to your family, letters from younger child to parent, how child or you feel about the world, your family, map of your neighborhood hand drawn. (kasey)
(based on an idea called "Center Stage")
(mrg)
I did a variation using design lines for the box. The pages are for an Easter egg hunt, so I used the Easter design line with the grass, eggs, chicks and bunnies along the bottom, then used the colored dl strips for the top and sides.
(Judy)
I used a red callipen for the outside edge, a green micro for the middle, and a
red micro for the inside. I put a holly leaf punch in each corner. I put "My Kids" in the box using the dark red letters. At the bottom where the page splits the box I cut a bow in half and put one half on each page at the bottom edge of the box. I used a small triangle (deep red) in the top corners. On the bottom used a square of cranberry
and a square of checkered tucked under the pictures on each side of the page.
Note: If you are not familiar with this idea it is used on a double page spread. You make a box for the title, decoration and sometimes journaling. The box is near the center or bottom of the page and spans both pages. You use graduated rectangles as templates to draw lines with the pen or to guide in placement of stickers. Usually you have 2 or 3 borders within borders.
Get a cheap kid's puzzle (or use one with lost pieces). Write a small prize on each piece (1/2 strip stickers, 1/2 sheet paper) and let people choose one piece, one piece for every two pages done, etc.
Since I did puzzles with the Camp Wannacropalot, I put a paper clip on each puzzle piece and people went "fishing" with a magnet. (Jean Gifford)
For ideas on doing puzzle pages see the Hobbies file.
Gave each cropper a baggie of title squares (small squares of paper). These are shown on the back page of the Croptalkä. I gave 10 squares of three different popular colors and they were a big hit.
Alternate Idea: Show how four colors (red, Caribbean blue, green and gold) can be used in different combinations and look totally different. I made titles (like the Mother's Day one on the back) for CHRISTMAS (red and green), BIRTHDAY (red, blue, gold) and BAND (blue and gold). I used shiny gold letter on each, and added a tiny sticker at the end of the word (ornament or gold star). They all looked really different, they all looked great. I used them out for door prizes. (Jean Gifford)
Serve a "Pencil" cake - Make a 13x9 inch yellow cake and a 9" square chocolate cake.
Cut the 13x9" into two sections (9 x 6 1/2) and stack them. Then cut the
square into diagonal halves and stack them at the end of the oblong one. This
makes a PENCIL shape. Ice it with yellow frosting for the pencil part, orange
for the eraser, and tan at the tip, black for the lead!
Use that gel icing stuff and write "NO.2" on the end! (CMC in COS)
Everything is rainbows...
Home Class triangles in rainbow colors for seat favors, special page ideas using rainbow
stickers, primary design lines and RAINBOW JELLO for the snack
Make a rainbow using the circle cutter (this was easier with the old cutter...you can do it with the new, but have to think it through first.)
Put a rainbow sticker in upper corner of the page, tilted. Use design line stripes to continue the "rainbow"
along the top and side of the page. The colors don't match exactly, but looks fine when you cover the "seams" with cloud stickers.
Games:
Make a 5 x 5 grid (or bigger!)
Across the top, put colors: Red Blue Black Purple Yellow
Down the side, put categories:
Food
Bird
Flower
Article of Clothing
Ice Cream Flavor
Give 2 minutes to fill in as many squares as possible.
There are several ideas we can get across and the color groups help us in that direction. The colors we offer were all chosen to some extent to "go together"...the red we have is the best red to coordinate with our royal blue and our gold.
The colors in any one group could all go with each other if you like the combination. Lemon and mint together might not be my choice, but they don't clash like they would if we offered a mustard yellow or a more turquoise shade of light green.
I show pages from my own albums and talk about where they fit in the color groups. For example, a beach layout that is done with deep blue, dusty blue and cement, with a couple shell stickers in dusty rose (point out that other page decorations - pens, stickers, etc. - can fit with the color theme as well. On the beach page the color scheme is "calm", which will be interesting to talk about, because the pictures were taken as a hurricane was moving in, and we were anything BUT calm.
I could have used vibrant colors and given a totally different feel.
You'll probably find that many of your layouts follow one theme. Most of mine are "calm" or "warm".
You might offer a small prize to anyone who will show one of their own pages and tell or let the group discuss what range it fits into.
Made a "fresh" and "calm" layout using ShortCuts and gave away - every time they finished a page they put their name in a basket and I pulled 2 at the end for the page layouts.
I made a paper sampler for each customer. I used MS Word and printed each color name and the pack it came from onto
the back of paper. Then I cut the paper into 1.5" squares, hole punched them and put them onto a ring. The paper colors are in the Storybook, but I think it will help people test what color paper they want on a page. They were time-consuming to make, but my customers went nuts over them. (Jean Gifford)
April
l.) I'm asking everyone to wear pastels - l entry in drawing
2.) Their goody bags will have Bunny die cut and flower sticker and several plastic Easter eggs. These eggs will have M and M's or tiny jelly beans.
3.) They will use the eggs to put their names in for the drawing basket.
They put one in for:
* being there
* on time
* bringing someone etc.
* finishing pages
* using a product
The hourly prizes will be Title Squares and a strip or triangle to make a
title for a page.
The grand prize is an Easter basket with pastel die-cuts, stickers, a couple of Easter things like a $l book.
Food will be cupcakes or something pastel. (CarolE)
Fan out the shapes in the ShortCutä
pack on a table along with the layout sheet. Tell workshop participants that everyone is going to get a prize today. They will be able to take any of the ShortCut pieces and create a page or two with them that day. Ask only that they allow you to take pictures of their finished pages. At the end of the workshop gather the remaining pieces and say, "Look at how all of you have made pages and there's still so many pieces left over!" By having the customers use the product and see the
results and benefits, you will sell a lot. You will also have several layout photos.
One of my customers wrote her information on them on the pages, which looked really neat.
My upline did a shoptalk on this. She had beautiful pages with the strips as borders.
1.) She put Blue with Stars on the top and bottom and the Deep Blue on the sides. At the top she put a moon cut out of yellow paper and some gold stars and the title "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".
2.) She put a half circle in the top right corner and strips coming out of it like a sun.
3.) Put YAHOO in different colored ABC stickers and a cowboy hat die-cut at the top and the same colored strips on the bottom and one side of the page and "woven" together in the corner. You could make a double page spread of this and use any words as long as the colors coordinate.
4.) A heritage page used black strips on each edge and a brown triangle in each corner, very simple and very nice!
5.) Another used the strips to make a piece of paper into a package by just placing them in the center horizontally and vertically and placing a bow at the top or in the middle. With the photos in the 4 "panes" it made. (all designed by Kristen B.)
Instructions for cutting your own ShortCuts are in the Paper file.
(Jean Gifford)
One of my demo pages for the "baby pages" croptalk uses the duck die cut. I cut a 3" square of periwinkle paper, set it on diagonal with the bottom corner trimmed off and the "flat side" on the bottom edge of the page. Adhered ducky on the square and surrounded him with a few Mrs. G Iridescent circles ("bubbles") and a few hand drawn "bubbles". "Rubber Ducky, you're the one!"
Ideas on how to adapt the spring corner on page 62 (of the Volume 6 Idea Book).
(CMCRhonda)
One of the seat favors I gave for this was a pack of peanuts like you get when you fly. I also gave a
photo-mounting sleeve and a list of uses for the sleeves and showed some examples. Open a travel pack and cut the
paper into smaller pieces or open a die-cut pack and give them one or two of those.
I made a Passport for them to gather "stamps" on. The more stamps they earned, the more they won. You'll need to adjust the prizes to what you have on hand.
Instructions:
Most of you don't usually think of yourselves as world travelers. Well, tonight you are!
You will be exploring the "World of Creative Memories" and how the different tools we have can assist you in completing your family albums. On each page of this passport you will find different categories of products and services we offer. Each page will have four "points of interest" for you to discover. Each time you complete one of these "points of interest" you will receive a "stamp" on your passport. Some are familiar, some are not! Some require little effort, some are
more challenging.
Nonetheless, I'm sure that every one of you will be able to get most of "stamps" available. The more you do, the more you can receive!
1 - 6 stamps = 2 regular Sticker Strips
7 - 13 stamps = 123 Sticker Sheet
14 - 20 stamps = ABC Sticker Sheet
21 - 27 stamps = Free Future Crop
28 stamps = Celebration Sentiments
JOURNALING
Create a border on a page using pens only, no stickers.
Use one or both of the Gold and Silver pens.
Use the Brush-Tip pen to highlight either text or decoration on a page.
Have all pages journaled!
STICKERS
Use Design Lines to decorate a page.
Use the Creative Memories water-colored stickers.
Use ABC/123 stickers on a page.
Create sticker art.
SERVICES
If you brought a new person, get a stamp.
Schedule a home class.
Register and prepay for a future workshop (save a $1)
Find out about the Creative Memories Business Opportunity.
CROPPING TOOLS
Use the Circle Cutter.
Use a pair of decorative scissors.
Use a Borderline for decoration.
Use Corner Rounder on all photos on one page.
NEW PRODUCTS - 1
Use the New Circle Cutting System.
Use the New Oval Cutting System.
Do a page using memorabilia
Try the new Adhesive Pen.
PAPER
Use printed paper on a page.
Use a die-cut shape.
Do a page with only ShortCuts.
Use ABC or 123 die-cuts.
NEW PRODUCTS - 2
Purchase an album.
Advance order a new product.
Purchase any new product in inventory
Purchase one of my featured kits.
I did a layered chip dip (refried beans on the bottom, sour cream and salsa mixed with an envelope of Hidden Valley ranch dressing, a layer of salsa, shredded cheddar cheese, and sliced olives on top). Also M and M's for Matting and Mounting and some cookies with a matted look. Crackers with pepperoni and cut out shaped cheese. I wore a layered outfit. I gave them two 4 x 6 rectangles to use for mounting, four med mounting corners, and two large mounting corners to mount memorabilia. (Iglow)
Give each person some paper and die-cuts and show how to use the die cut frame as a mat. For give-aways, give printed paper. Demo the ShortCut packs. For the seat favor, split a few packs of ShortCuts between each one. Food: Go to Sam's and get mini quiches and potato skins. (Ann)