A few words from Kristina, our founder...

Spring is here, and with it, less time to spend on scrapbooking. Or more opportunities to take pictures to scrapbook. I guess it is all in the way in which you look at it.

Spring is often a time that people do their big "Spring Cleaning". Weeding out the old and cleaning up all the dust from the winter months closed up inside.

The Garden Girls took a great approach to the Spring Cleaning concept and created a whole themed Creating Garden around using all of the older products that we have in our stashes that need to get used or purged. It is really very inspiring to see how each of them used some of the supplies that they have been collecting and holding onto. If you are looking to do some spring cleaning in your hobby room, stop in the Creating Garden and take a look at all the wonderful layouts created by the Garden Girls before you toss too many things away.

Spring is also a time of new beginnings, warming weather, spring flowers slowly creeping up out of the cool soil to the warm spring sun. At Two Peas, its a new beginning for our store. In the following months, we will be filling up our warehouse, bulking up our inventory with wonderful new products and supplies. It is very exciting to be looking at all the great products, and imaging all the creative things that you are all going to be doing with them. Check back often to see what is New and what is on Preorder. It is going to be a very fun spring as we begin again.

April birthdays to celebrate: Jamie on the 17th and Jeffrey on the 21st. Happy Birthday!!

Join us for National Scrapbooking Day on Saturday May 6th, 2006. This will be our 2nd Annual Online Crop event. From 9am-9pm we will be hosting an online crop with the Garden Girls. There will be contests, challenges and trivia for everyone to participate in, with prizes and other fun things to win. All it takes to participate is to log into your Two Peas user account, and participate in the special forum that will be dedicated to the crop on that day. You can come and go as you need to, participate in any contest you wish to, or just scrapbook along with us as we enjoy a day just for Scrapbooking. Post your creations from your time spent that day in our special gallery.
On that day, we will be releasing new products in our store, relaunching our new ever-increasing inventory selection. We have all kinds of great new products coming in, as well as restock on several of our favorite collections from our best manufacturers.
Special Two Peas kits will be available on National Scrapbooking Day. We will have some special Garden Girl selections as well as a Kristina's Favorite Products Kit. Special samples and kit ideas will be provided by the Garden Girls, with extras being provided with the purchase of the kits. Quantities are limited.
A very special edition of the Creating Garden will be going up that morning, we will be sharing all kinds of ideas on Inspiration.
It is going to be very exciting! So be sure to log in on Saturday, and join us while we celebrate Scrapbooking!!

All of our Preorder products are arriving this week. This includes:

• Basic Grey--Urban Couture, Oh Baby (Boy and Girl), Color Me Silly, Hang 10.
  
• Doodlebug
  
• Autumn Leaves Freestyle Book
  
• Autumn Leaves MOD, Foofala, and Rhonna Farrer Collections.
  
• American Crafts Rub Ons, Letter stickers, paper collections and more
  
• K & CO Neopolitan Collection
  
• Mustard Moon Its a Spring Thing collection is also here!
  

We are running a special on older Mustard Moon 12x12 papers, a large selection of their best patterns on sale for $.25 a sheet. Be sure to stock up on your favorite patterns!

Here are some Garden Seeds that show these new products in use!

I am so happy that I volunteered to write the newsletter this month because of this month’s garden theme: Old is New Again. At first, I wasn’t particularly enthused about this one. You see – I like the new. The new New, not the old New. A crisp pile of fresh patterned paper. Embellishments still in their original packaging. Whole sheets of letter stickers, all in the latest styles and fonts. These are the things that make me happy. Digging through my old stuff just really didn’t appeal to me.

But then, the garden girls started sharing their layouts. And it was so fun to see some of my old very favorite things brought to new life by some of my very favorite scrappers. It brought back so many memories for me. Good memories of being a new scrapper. Of discovering a hobby that would occupy my mind, my hands and my heart in equal measure. Of the excitement that was there for me at the beginning.

Of course, I still love scrapping. But, in the beginning, I was falling in love. Remember that giddy new phase where you’re discovering things about the object of your affection every day? I just wanted to scrap and scrap and scrap. And then take some more pictures to scrap. And then go shopping for scrap supplies. I was obsessed.

When I was just starting out, letter templates were big. My very favorites were the Scrap Pagerz ones. Remember those? Eyelets were just coming in and the shaped ones (Hearts! Flowers! Pumpkins!) made scrappers absolutely giddy. The skies opened up and the angels sang for me the day that SEI released their first lines. And Becky Higgin’s “Scrapbooking Secrets” book went to every crop with me. I remember I found 2peas because someone said that the Becky Higgin’s inspired layouts in the gallery were awesome.

I think I just dated myself by telling you all of that. Like your scrap-grandma. “And we had to walk through 3 feet of snow to the scrapbook store. Uphill. Both ways…”

Anyway, seeing the Garden Girls work their old supplies brought all that back to me.

For those of you out there who are beginners, enjoy the journey. I hope yours is as good as mine has been. And for those of you who are old-timers like me, look back through your old things (or the old things in the Creating Garden ) and enjoy the memories. That’s what scrapping is all about, right? The memories.

(Or is it the product?? I still think those shaped eyelets are cute...)

Five fantabulous Fiber techniques:

Ah yes. Fiber. A product that has been around for many years in the scrapbook industry. If you have been scrapping for at least several years, take a walk with me down memory lane, to a place where we were all purchasing and hoarding yards upon yards of fibers. Fibers that were fat and had sustenance, fibers that were wispy and dainty. Fibers of all colors and varieties. I am ashamed to admit exactly how many adornament brand fiber packs I had (and still have) in my scrapbook room. Fibers were hot. Fiber was ribbon before ribbon was ribbon in the scrapbook community.

If you are new to this addiction, er hobby, and haven't discovered fiber yet, then this is going to be a fun little sampling of creative ways that you can add fiber to your pages, make them look current, and fit today's scrapbooking trends. For those of us sitting on endless amounts of yarn and floss, then take note...this article is also for you. Challenge yourself to be bold, use fiber. Seriously, if leggings and flipped collar colored polos can make a comeback...surely we can make fiber hot again!

Here are just five fun ways to put fiber back in your scrapping diet:

Use fiber to add dimension to stamped images and titles. Adhere or hand stitch fiber around foam stamp titles. Love 2peas ding bat images? Why not print out a flower image and outline the image with floss? This will add a bit of pop to your page! Or create your own fun image to outline!

stitch over fibers. Remember those braided rugs that were all the rage in the 70's and early 80's? (Or did I just have a very odd childhood?..lol) Use this inspiration to create a fun fiber border or accent. You could also create scroll's and doodle accents using this technique. Using a temporary adhesive, adhere fiber to your cardstock or pattern paper, in the design of your choice. Then using your sewing machine, stitch a zigzag stitch over the fiber to create a funky stitched look.

Go back to your elementary days..and lace that fiber! Create a punched design using hole punches, circles, squares, any hole punch will do, and the lace fiber through the holes. This could serve as a border all the way around a page, or big circle accents that have fiber laced through. The ideas are endless!

String it up baby! How simple yet classic to run fiber across a page. Now how about kicking it up a notch? String bits and bobbles and photos and doodads to the fiber. Maybe add little knots of different fiber, ribbon scraps. This will create a "clothes line" look to a page.

wrap it around something. This one is easy peesy people. If fiber kind scares you, start small. Wrap it around a chipboard accent...wrap it through the top of a tag, maybe add a prima flower or two to make it even more fancy.