I’m here today with a HUGE announcement! Many of you may know that Scrap Matters has been running a month long challenge to find the “Queen of Scrap” and the “Princess of Scrap”. This is our second year running the contest and we are amazed at how much it has grown!

This year we had an amazing 107 fantastic women enter the challenge and complete at least one layout. I am certain that they are all very anxious to read about the big winners. These women were amazing – they completely blew me and the rest of the ScrapMatters.com Team away! Not only are they fantastic scrappers, but they are quick! I am in awe at the number of layouts that they completed. Collectively, they scrapped 4,705 pages during the month of May. That is a LOT of pages!

They scrapped about their kids, and their families, their vacations and celebrations, their joys and their sorrows. They truly poured their hearts and souls into their creations, gave us windows into their lives and showed off their artistic talents.

Each and every one of these princesses should be very proud at what they accomplished. Most of them scrapped significantly more layouts than they normally do during a month. Now, their families may not have been too excited about this, as I heard lots of chatter about dirty house & extremely supportive spouses! We even had a few scrap related injuries this year! Don’t worry though – everyone is on the mend now that they can rest their “scrapping arms”

Our competition had two parts to it. First, we were looking to find the person who could scrap the most pages during the month of May. Each of the participants could receive prizes at 4 different levels. We had 95 people complete at least 5 pages to reach level 1. 80 of those reached level 2 and scrapped at least 20 layouts for the month. Level 3 was to scrap 35 pages, and 45 women reached this level! Level 4 was to complete 50 pages – we had 33 people reach this level. We couldn’t believe how many scrapped more than 100 pages for the month – 13 people! We even had 2 people scrap over 250 layouts for the month – isn’t that AMAZING!!!

The person that scrapped the most pages for the month is to be awarded a $50.00 gift card to the ScrapMatters.com shop. That amazing and very talented scrapper scrapped an astounding 260 pages during the month of May! WOW!!! That speedy scrapper is Becky (photomom1216)!!!! Congratulations Becky!

Now I mentioned that our challenge had a second part to it… one of these lucky ladies is going to be crowned ScrapMatters Queen of Scrap! Two lucky ladies will also be named the “Princess of Scrap”. The princesses will receive a one month guest spot on our CT. The Queen is to win a three month guest spot on our CT. To qualify for this part of the competition, the participants had to be in the top 10 posters with the most layouts created for May. These women worked hard to get into those top 10 spots. Each of them created over 100 layouts each! Each of these princesses should take a bow – I’m sure many scrappers struggle to make that many pages in a year! You can truly tell that they are very passionate about this craft and the subjects of their layouts.

Well, it would have been way too hard for one person to pick a winner, so we put the fantastic ScrapMatters Creative & Design team members to work! We poured over their galleries and each of us voted on who we thought should be the winners. It was such a difficult choice to make but…

We actually had a 3 way tie for the “Princess” spots and have decided to give each of them a one month guest CT spot!

These lucky ladies are:

Cristina (cristina)

Krisi (krisi616)

Jan (QuiltyMom)

They all worked SO hard – be sure to stop by their galleries to check out their hard work. You can click on their user names above.

Get your curtsy ready readers …..

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….. here’s the part where we announce the Queen…

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The Queen of Scrap is Erica (princess.erica)!!! Congratulations – the team at ScrapMatters.com is so very excited to have you join us!!! We would love to have you take on a guest CT spot on our team – allowing you access to our shop to scrap your heart out!

Not only is Erica a fast scrapper (she entered an amazing 140 pages!) but, she is very talented with her page designs and is an all around sweet gal with a great sense of humor!

Here are a few of our favorite pages that she has created. Click on the pics for credits:

Congratulations to Erica, the Princesses and everyone who participated!

ScrapMatters has so many terrific things planned for [inter]National Scrapbook Day (NSD) that I don’t know where to start. First off we are having a sale—40% off all personal use digital scrapbook products, except grab bags and clearance, on Friday, May 1st and Saturday, May 2nd. The sale continues at 30% off throughout Thursday, May 7th. Commercial use products will also be on sale for various discounts.

Did you notice the phrase, “except grab bags” in the above paragraph? Many of our designers have put together fabulous grab bags for you! We also have a new mega-collab kit called Hawaiian Happy Hour FREE with a $15 purchase in the shop. It is just fabulous—see for yourself:

Hawaiian Happy Hour Mega Kit

We are having a blog train featuring quick pages made by our CT/DT using Hawaiian Happy Hour as well. It will start on Saturday, May 2nd at 7am Pacific time on my blog: http://andilynn.wordpress.com. You might find some other little goodies as you hop on and off the blog train as well. ;D

We are having lots of speed scraps, challenges and games throughout the week as well. We had so much fun last year during NSD that I can hardly wait for the good times ahead starting this weekend.

We are announcing the winners of the Design Star Contest on Friday, May 1st. We are so excited with the talented new batch of apprentices that we have. It was such a great contest with so many good applications that it was really hard to choose who to take onto our team.

May 1st is also the start of the Queen of Scrap Competition (QOS).

Throughout the contest there will be chances for everyone to win free template sets, free kits and more. Natural Wonders, the mega kit pictured below, is one of the amazing participation prizes.

Denise Beatty, our reigning Queen, and Happy Scrap Girl are in charge of this year’s QOS competition and I know that they have lots more fun things planned. Look for additional details to be revealed soon!

The best part of NSD and QOS is getting to know and spend time with you! Hopefully you will take time to drop by, make some new friends and enjoy the fun.

Hi all, Andrea here. Thanks to our fabulous tech team at webSeitler our blog now looks like the rest of the site and is so much easier to navigate. So tell us what you think about our blogs new look. Do you like it? Did you even notice? I will draw one lucky winner from all of the comments on this post on Sunday night, April 19th and award one lucky winner a $5.00 gift code to the shop and two winner will each receive my latest kit for free. So three chances to win just for leaving a comment!

Also a heads up that we will be moving to a bigger, faster server starting around April 21st. We hope we won’t be down for long, but it could take a few days until we are all the way up and running. We will post the exact date and time on the blog as it gets closer. I am so stoked about getting a server that will speed things up during high volume times. This should also make downloads of products and freebies from the site less prone to errors.

Mark your calendars for our [inter]National Scrapbook Day extravaganza. We are starting our celebration on Friday, May 1st and the party will continue for a week. We’re having a free with purchase kit, a sale (gotta have a sale), a blog train, speed scraps, grab bags, challenges, games and more fun. Stayed tuned for more information.

The Queen of Scrap competition is coming soon too! We had a blast last year and are planning even more fun this year.

The SM newsletter was delivered yesterday to all of our subscribers. A special thanks to Jeni Hopewell and the newsletter team for working hard to get you another fabulous issue. If you didn’t receive yours in your email (check your spam) please sign up again here on this blog, your subscription will start with the next issue. You can also hop over to my blog and get links for the current issue.

The Design Star contest is coming to a close shortly, make sure that you go check out the freebies while they are still available. If you haven’t registered for the forum/gallery yet, now would be a fantastic time to do so, because that’s the only way you can see the freebies. Remember you have to be logged into the forum first, then click on the gallery tab. And once they’re gone you might not see them again! The 10 Design Star finalists have come up with some fabulous challenges with terrific participation prizes too.

Hopefully by now I’ve written enough for you to have something to comment on. I love hearing how you are inspired by each other and by our CT and DT. You are what makes the SM community so special! Thanks so much for being our inspiration.

Keep reading for Photography Phriday and What’s New at ScrapMatters!

I’m here today with a HUGE announcement! Many of you may know that Scrap Matters has been running a month long contest to find the “Queen of Scrap”.

We had 31 fantastic women enter the challenge and I am sure that they are all so very anxious to read about the big winners. These women were amazing – they completely blew me and the rest of the ScrapMatters.com Team away! Not only are they fantastic scrappers, but they are quick! I am in awe at the number of layouts that they completed. Collectively, they scrapped 1063 pages – and nope, that’s NOT a typo! That is a LOT of pages!

They scrapped about their kids, and their families, their vacations and celebrations, their joys and their sorrows and the most common theme appeared to be anything DISNEY! They truly poured their hearts and souls into their creations, gave us windows into their lives and showed off their artistic talents.

Each and every one of these princesses should be very proud at what they accomplished. So many of them scrapped significantly more layouts than they normally do during a month. Now, their families may not have been too excited about this, as I heard lots of chatter about dirty house & extremely supportive spouses!

Our competition had two parts to it. First, we were looking to find the person who could scrap the most pages during the month of May. In planning this challenge, we never expected to see numbers even close to these. We had 20 scrappers scrap over 20 pages each! 14 scrappers completed over 35 pages! 6 of these ladies scrapped over 50 pages this month! And we had 2 amazing women scrap over 100 layouts each!

The person that scrapped the most pages for the month is to be awarded a $20.00 gift card to the ScrapMatters.com shop. That amazing and very talented scrapper is Lina (ldrag2004)!!!! Congratulations Lina! Lina scrapped an astounding 122 pages during the month of May – WOW!!!

Now I mentioned that our challenge had a second part to it… one of these lucky ladies is going to be crowned ScrapMatters Queen of Scrap! The Queen is to win a guest spot on our CT. To qualify for this part of the competition, the participants had to be in the top 5 posters with the most layouts created for May. These women worked hard to get into those top 5 spots. Each of them created over 70 layouts each! Each of these princesses should take a bow – I’m sure many scrappers struggle to make that many pages in a year! You can truly tell that they are very passionate about this craft and the subjects of their layouts.

Well, it would have been way too hard for one person to pick a winner, so we put the fantastic ScrapMatters Creative & Design team members to work! We poured over their galleries and each of us voted on who we thought should be the Queen. It was such a difficult choice to make but…

Get your curtsey ready readers…..

The Scrap Matters Queen of Scrap is…. Denise (Neeceebee)!!! Congratulations – the team at ScrapMatters.com is so very excited to have you join us!!! We would love to have you take on a full time CT spot on our team – allowing you full access to our shop to scrap your heart out!

Not only is Denise a fast scrapper (she entered an amazing 113 pages!) but, she is extremely talented with her page designs and is an all around sweet gal!

Here are a few of our favorite pages that she has created. Click on the pics for credits:

You can check out more of her fantastic layouts here in her gallery.

I hope you will all join me in congratulating our new Queen!

Hey everyone, Andrea here. Today is the day we start our very first ever QUEEN of SCRAP contest and I am so excited about it! With participation prizes, a chance at becoming a guest CT member, a participation blinkie and a special blinkie proclaiming the winner as the Queen of Scrap, what have you got to lose? If you’re interested click on the ad and go visit the forum for the complete list of rules and prizes! Happy Scrap Girl has been working so hard to make this fabulous contest fun for everyone.  Hope to crown you soon!

Now continue reading for Tami’s excellent Words for Wednesday post.