A Whole Bunch Of A Mused Winners

Today's the day that we announced all the winners from the draws and competitions that have taken place over the A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA week. On the one hand I am soooo glad that it's all over (I could do with a little rest LOL) but on the other it's sad that the excitement is all over - well, until next time, anyway! There have been spot prizes throughout the week as well as all the lucky ladies below - so... a big congratulations to

• Donna Civelek from Crayford (Tuesday Draw Winner)
• Jane Watson from Plumstead (Wednesday Draw Winner)
• Mrs North from Darenth (Thursday Draw Winner)
• Lydia Pantelli from Bexley (Friday Draw Winner)
• Kalina Phillips from Dartford (Saturday Draw Winner)

You all win an A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA goody bag worth around £18.

More prizes too for ...

• Sarah Taylor from Sutton At Hone who's number was picked by this random number generator as the winner of the A Muse card making competition. You win a bag full of Yummy Ribbons, kindly donated by Strano Designs.

We also put together all the free draw entries from the week and picked one last winner. Congratulations to...

• Barbara Gorrod from Swanley. You win a set of 3 Marvy Matchables ink pads, kindly donated by Marvy Uchida.

I'd like to thank all the sponsors of A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA for providing so many excellent products & prizes to make our events a success. We all had soooo much fun that we can't wait to do it again next year!

And if you missed out, we still have some of the new A*Muse stamps & notecards in store. We also offer a telephone mail order service and if we don't have what you are looking for in stock, we will happily order in any of their designs for you. Why not check out the A*Muse website for images of all the current ranges (but you'll have to wait until the end of July for the newly launched products!!)

Look Who's A Mused Now!

It is ... Sharon Collins, who travelled all the way from Southampton to join in the A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA festivities (and stock up on A Muse goodies, of course!). How cool is that?? We were soooo impressed that it had to be worth an A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA goody bag, so it's just as well we kept a couple reserved for just such an occurrence! These goody bags are worth around £18 and packed full of A Muse & Clearsnap goodies - so you're really gonna kick yourself if you didn't visit & have a go at winning one!

Thanks for coming Sharon (and devoted husband, who's name we didn't ask - how rude of us LOL) it was lovely to meet you and hopefully you'll come to see us again one day.

Saturday's A Musement

It's been another long day at Crop 'Til You Drop. Today's festivities included another bunch of free make n takes and our 'ten tags' mini workshops. Check out what we made! And here's a piccie of Kirsty & Jackie as Nina helps them out with the 'Ten Tags' - they just can't get enough of A Muse!!
Watch this space for more

pics coming very soon!

Don't Hold Back on the A Musement!

Our regular Friday Classes took on an A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA twist today. First up, our usual card class became a 'five for a fiver' stamping extravaganza. Generally, we are lucky to get a couple of cards made in the two hours (but we do have a good laugh tho') so I was impressed that the ladies managed to complete all five with time to spare! Here's the photographic evidence!

The second class of the day was our Scrapbooking class - another regular fortnightly slot. Again we used A Muse stamps - the photo corner from the new collection, clear numerals that were new to us & a couple of the old favourite backgrounds. Our layouts are usually more scrappy than stampy - so it was a refreshing change to do something so stamp based. I think we might incorporate stamping a bit more often LOL. Here are the ladies hard at work!

Pokemon For Grown Ups!

Today's A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA event was an ATC workshop & swap. We had a short demonstration to show the newbies what it's all about & then spent a couple of fun hours making our own - with a selection of the new A Muse stamps of course!
I like to introduce the concept by saying that they are like Pokemon cards for grown ups - except you get to make them yourself. I alwaysget a buzz from teaching & it is really lovely when smiley, happy people say how much fun they've had as they leave!

As promised, there was cake, chocolate biscuits & A Muse lollipops. So here are today's pics: from the top 1) Jane does a swap for some of the ATCs I made as part of Design Challenge #10 over on the A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA Blog before making today's batch 2) Jackie works on her first ever ATC and quickly becomes a paper craft addict 3) Kirsty & Rosemarie complete their Grand prize draw forms in the hopes of winning a whole year's worth of A Muse goodies!

Stay tuned for more pics tomorrow!

Something Else To A Muse You

July 9th was the official start of A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA & to kick it off, we hosted a VIP night. We just had sooo much fun. Due to a bunch of unforeseen circumstances, the new products only arrived a few short hours before so the whole event when live, unrehearsed! The make 'n' takes were as new to me as they were the ladies attending but we battled through & made them both with relative ease. As soon as everyone finished, the big question was 'Can we shop now?' Two lucky ladies won A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA goody bags (worth around £18 each) in our free draw & obviously everyone filled in the grand prize forms to win a year's worth of A Muse (how cool would that be???). Here's a little pic of a looby-pop (that's Looby with a lollipop).

There will be more free draws (& lollipops) all week long, so make sure you don't miss out! There are loads more chances to try out the new products in classes & in the free make n takes (Thursday & Saturday) AND don't forget that the only place in the whole of the UK that you can get a grand prize draw form - is right here, in person, at the shop! come along, we'd love to meet you!

I'm amused too!

OK, so I'm jumping on Beverley's bandwagon with the A Muse related titles LOL, but I have completely fallen in love with A Muse stamps!

I've been playing this week and have come up with these cards and ATCs.

The little vampire ATC (just HOW cute is he?!) was made using the HOTP masculine papers. The other ATC was made with the HOTP Personal Shopper (March 2007) and 2 A Muse stamps - "car load" and "ribbon" (which is so versatile).

The Happy Birthday card was made with the Present block stamp and a previous issue of Let's Make Cards! stuff. The other 3 cards all use the English Paper Company papers.

The "You've passed!" card involved a little bit of improvisation - I didn't have anything to mask off the presents, so had to strategically place the ink and didn't do it too well and ended up with a line - so I got my black pen out and turned it into a roof rack!

Hope to see lots of you at the various A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA events in store next week - I'll be the one with the big grin on my face, randomly grabbing at yummy stamps!

Secret Stash For My A Musement

See this box? It contains Top Secret Very Important Stash! I had to rescue it from Parcelforce, who were determined to send it back to the US (should be a law against that sort of behaviour LOL).

I can't tell you what's in it, you'll just have to book for the A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA VIP night on Monday (9th June, 7.30-10pm) to find out! Here's a clue though: Mmmmmmmmm!

Tickets are £10 & are worth a £12 credit to spend at the event. This needs to be booked in advance - telephone or pop in to the store for details.

This Is A Musing

Have you seen this? It A Mused me LOL

Come Along & Be A Mused

How does a stamping session in our new play space absolutely free sound? Hmm, thought you might like the sound of that - so here's the deal: You may already know that we are the only store in the UK to be taking part in the second annual A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA stamp extravaganza from July 9th - 15th 2007 & you may also be aware that I'm competing in the AP Ambassador's competition. What you might not know is that I get points in the competition for running swaps.
So, I've decided to open the playroom at all times that there are no classes running to anyone that wants to come along & play with the A Muse stamps in mine & Auntie Jane's personal collections so long as, in return, you either take part in one of the card or ATC swaps that I'm currently running.
Beginners are also welcome & we can give you a quick intro to stamping if you've never done it before! Feel free to bring along your own supplies or use what I have up in the classroom!
You can find more info about the swaps over on my personal blog, or ask in store.

Ribbons Pack A Punch (Now That's A Musing!!)

The fabulous Auntie Jane brought back some samples from a ribbon manufacturer on her last visit to the States and a brand new product called ribbon stiffener. Happily, Strano Designs are also a sponsor of this year's A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA so everything is coming together nicely!!

This weeks AP design challenge was to create cards using not only A Muse stamps but punches too, which gave me a fantastic excuse to play with the new samples. I shall explain.

Ribbon stiffener is a product specifically designed so that treated ribbons, once dry, may be die cut, punched, cut etc without fraying. The product also acts as an adhesive and is acid free, so totally safe for your scrapbooks too! Being aware of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of many punches even on thin cardstock, I was dubious but I have to say I had absolutely no problems with any of the punches I tried.

The card to the right uses the Dovecraft medium tulip punch, which happens to fit the A Muse scribble tulip very well. I masked off the stem as the leaves wouldn't have matched up & stamped the flower over the ribbon one in black. The greeting stamp and card blank are also by A Muse; the polka dot ribbon by Strano Designs. And before you bombard me with questions: yes we will be stocking Strano Designs products & no, we haven't got them in yet LOLOLOL.

Don't forget to check out my blog, for your chance to win some blog candy & check out the other card project posted there, the forum for details of our latest ATC & card swaps & my gallery for all the other cards I made for this week's AP design challenge.

It's Official!

We've been talking about A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA for a week or two now & it's official! We are now listed as the sole store in the entire UK that will be holding this week-long stampfest! All our events (and there are quite a few!) are listed here and don't forget there are loads of goodies to be had in the run up to the big week. You will need to register to be in with a chance of winning (please put my name, Beverley Todd, in the referral box!) but don't think you can't register just because you don't have A Muse products. There has been one winner so far who got her prize for registering & I don't know how many more spot prizes there might be.
If you'd like to have a go at the challenges though, why not ask around - you need just one stamp - that's all! And if you are within travelling distance of our store, look out for information about when we will be re-opening. When we do, there will be a free A Muse playroom - access to all my stamps & Auntie Jane has pledged to donate hers too! But it's only there for registered stampers LOL

We haven't been big on stamping in the past as I'm much more of a collage artist but all we needed was the right level of support and guidance to set us on our way. A Muse have given us that and we are very grateful to have been included in this event at short notice. Once you have registered, don't forget to put yourself on the map so we can show our friends across the pond just how many of us there are over here - it's looking a bit sparse at the moment!!

Please excuse all spelling and grammatical errors in this post - I'm at home with flu but I think my head is somewhere else!!

A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA Events!!

I'm gonna announce the events for the A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA week one day at a time - there's just tooooo much to take in all at once. We have planned a couple of things (at least) for every day of the event week! So: here we go with Monday July 9th!
Early Bird Prizes: We will have a goody bag for the first FIVE customers purchasing A Muse products today. We will have available for sale, stamps and accessories that we are using in today’s card class.
Five For £5: Make 5 stunning cards, created by the A Muse Design Team using fabulous stamps from the new range. 12.30 – 2.30. Booking Required.
VIP Night: Be the first to see the newly launched A Muse collection! Free Make N Takes, Free Draw, Free Refreshments. Tickets must be purchased in advance (£10) and are worth a £12 credit against A Muse purchases at the VIP event only. 7.30 – 10.00

We are reserving tickets for the VIP night & also taking reservations for the classes now. As the shop is closed until the fire damage is sorted out all reservations can be made by e-mail or on the dedicated thread on our forum
The new 2007/2008 A Muse Collection is being kept top secret until the international launch on July 9th - we have only seen the designs we'll be using for the classes but I've gotta say, they are soooooo cute LOL. I am sooooo looking forward to the whole A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA Event Week, it's going to be a whole lot of fun!

Another UK Exclusive!

So I spent last night checking my e-mail every two minutes, and then I checked every few minutes this morning (& yes, I am aware that other parts of the world are asleep for large parts of my working day LOL) and finally, at 6.50pm the three little words I've been longing to hear dropped into my inbox: You are IN!! (bet that's not what you were expecting LOL).
Crop 'Til You Drop is to be the ONLY UK store to host A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA How exciting is that?

From the 9th to 15th July 2007 we will have special events every day in store to mark the launch of A Muse Artstamps 2007/2008 range. It's all top secret stuff & you will not be able to get sneak peaks at the new products anywhere prior to the launch (not even on their own site!) Watch this space for exciting news of all the things we have planned for you, which are to be finalised in the next couple of days. I can tell you there will be prize draws, FREE Make n Takes, brand new card classes and a fantastic Grand Prize Draw (internationally) where one lucky participant will win A WHOLE YEAR'S SUPPLY of new products!! The entry forms will be available only at A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA events (do you see why I'm soooo excited!)

And if you can't wait until July, check out the AP Blog now, where you'll find great challenges and lots of chances to pick up freebies in the run-up to the big week. And if you'd like to put my name in the referral box when you register that would be good as I've registered for the A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA Ambassador Competition (& I really want to win LOL)