Monday, September 17, 2007

more hopping

My little personal assistant logged all our stops

Here are some more fun finds from the ShopHop last week. This is everything we did last Sunday. I dragged my mom and daughter along. I don't think mom minded too much since she's a scrapper too.

Our first stop was Screamin' Susies in Whittier. I love their logo and the bright cheery shopping baskets (the bags are the same bright green).


We met the owner Susie, but I have to admit she doesn't look at all like the logo. Here's what I picked up at Susie's - just some Making Memories brads and a used recipe stamp. Seems like I did pretty well sticking on budget here, doesn't it? Only problem is I went back to this store on Tuesday and found a couple more things-lol!

After Susies, we headed out to Torrance, where we had two stores to visit. The first was Strictly Scrapbooking. We did pretty well both on time and $$$ here. We were very disciplined even though this cute store was begging us to come in deeper and have a better look. I think the only reason we were so strong is that we'd taken a little detour (made a wrong turn) and lost a lot of time getting back on track so we didn't want to fall any further behind on our schedule. Oh yeah and it was lunchtime already and our tummies were grumbling. I picked up a set of Heidi Swapp Ghosta alphas in Icee, and we also got a make-n-take (in our case a "take-n-make") --a wooden block from Creative Imaginations Bare Elements line to alter.



After a speedy lunch our next stop was A to Z Scrapping also in Torrance. I had actually been to this store last summer on the way back from our vacation in Manhattan Beach. It looks deceptively small from the outside, tucked away as it is in the corner of a shopping center. Inside, there is a LOT of stuff tho. The name gives you a clue to how the store is arranged - "A to Z". There are signs on the walls directing customers by alphabet letter to various products. My purchase was some Primas in a pretty green shade. (Hmmm... I seem to have a green theme going here.) We also picked up another take-n-make.



We found our way to The Crop Circle in Los Angeles next. It was a bit tricky to find, but once we were there we received such a warm welcome. There was a map in the front of the store for ShopHoppers to mark where they hailed from, a table with goodies to nibble on too as well as friendly hellos from the staff.


The make-n-take was appropriately a custom title "Shop Hop" to use on scrapbook pages about the adventure. And it was made from custom ShopHop paper that was available at the store. I had Libs do the make-n-take while I browsed.

My purchases here were a wavy frame die and a sheet of the custom paper:


While we were at Crop Circle I was approached by another Shop Hopper who asked if I might have picked up her daughters passport at A to Z. At first I didn't remember seeing her at A to Z. Also, I didn't recall being near any other hoppers other than my mom. But sure, I'd check my bag for her... why not? Wouldn't you know her daughter's passport was in my bag with my own?! How on earth? Well, when I checked out, I was blabbing with my mom while the clerk rang us up and not really paying attention. The clerk opened, stamped and handed me a passport. It never occured to me that it could be anyone elses since we were the only people at the register. I must've picked up her passport at the mk-n-tk table or else it had been left at the register. I'm still not sure which it was.

Anyway, I returned the passport so there was a happy ending. Here we both are holding our *own* passports as we part ways.



On to a second Strictly Scrapbooking store, this time in Cerritos. We felt an immediate bond to this store esp since there is a wonderful huge craft store in the same center (Tall Mouse). But still being pressed for time, we were only able to do a quick browse. This was the first store I spied Jenni Bowlin at, so I grabbed me a bingo card (doggone it tho I think I already have this one from my Cupcake kit). I also picked up a handful of fun journaling cards (can't remember the company name at the moment) and a sheet of Hambly rubons:



We really had to book to get to the next store, Angel's Scrapbook Garden in Mission Viejo. We knew there had been some issues about the times posted in the passports being diferent from the actual hours. We were cutting it super close and when we called the store at ten of four they said they were already closed. WHAT?!? Eeeek, all the driving and we missed them? We told the girl how close we were and that it was still a few minutes until four and she said to come on down. Whew! We jumped in took a quick peek and were out of there by 4:02 according to my receipt. I picked up a sheet of rubons and some 7 Gypsies gaffers tape:



Our last stop was another "garden" --this time The Scrapbook Garden in Huntington Beach. It's a new store and was lots of fun to visit. There were just a TON of people in there, lots of happy faces, new product galore, yummy cookies... who could ask for anything more? The store samples were beautiful too. Got me all excited to start playing around more with Hambly overlays.

This was one of the stores I went a little crazy in:



We had hoped to get to one more store but we were defeated by the clock. Still we didn't do too bad all things consdiered.

Monday was an even BIGGER hopping day, so stay tuned for more!

1 comment:

Pixie said...

SS in Cerritos is one of my "home" stores. Isn't it cute? I've been to the Garden in HB too. I just may need to go back!