Scrapbooking shops....are an absolute minefield!

I am very lucky to live close to the most fabulous scrapbooking shop, where, as you can imagine, I spend a heck of a lot of my free and not so free time. It's only a five minute drive from my house and it has everything any scrapbooker could possibly dream of.

I have been visiting this shop since I moved down to the Peninsula, so about three years now and I am very embarrassed to admit that I have only ever bought papers from there. The thing is, if you are not a scrapbooker (and I do not class myself as a scrapbooker, not that there is anything wrong with scrapbooking, it's just not my bag. I just work with papers and scrapbooking papers are the most divine variety imaginable) then these shops are an absolute mine field! Papers, card stock, embellishments, cuts, die cuts, printing ink, all kinds of stamps, embossing things, buttons, stencils.......this just brushes ever so slightly over what these shops have to offer.

Don't get me wrong, if you are into all this stuff, then brilliant, wow, your every need is catered for. But if you are like me and a complete novice, then it is all a bit confusing to say the least and very overwhelming. When I go into this shop, I am, like most of us today, in a rush and never have the time to speak with the girls who work there. But it's not as if you can just look on the back of the packet and it tells you what it does. It doesn't!! It's like some secret that you are just supposed to know.

The thing is, if I knew what all these contraptions were for and I knew how to use them, then I could implement them into my work and I know I 'd be hooked (and probably a lot poorer for it), like every other scrapbooker out there.

So today, having the time for once, I thought that I'd explore just one of the corners of this magnificent store. Printing. This is a crafting passion of mine that I have never tried out. I love the look of lino and screen printing. I love black ink print on brown paper and calico material with a splash of red and I love basic, clean patterns. I have been trying to find a screen printing course near me recently, but can't find one anywhere. If you know of anywhere, please let me know :)

So anyway I grabbed the sales assistant and told her that I needed to know everything there was to know about printing with the little ink block thingy me jigs. She was lovely and spent a long time with me describing all the different ink blocks, inks and dyes. She left me and my girls to it and in no time at all we had chosen a few lovely designs and my purse was about to be $50 lighter. And I was right. Those shops are a mine field. As I was leaving the shop I noticed something called embossing ink, so asked the lady behind the counter what they were for. She looked me straight in the eye, took a very tired, deep breath and said, "maybe we can go through that on another day dear"

Experimenting with different papers and depth of ink. Can't wait to start adding some stitching 

I have now booked myself onto a few induction courses!! You never know, by the end of the year, I may know how to use everything in the shop :)